VOLUME I..............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I. ............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER II. .........................................................................................................................................60

CHAPTER III......................................................................................................................................110

CHAPTER IV......................................................................................................................................163

CHAPTER V.......................................................................................................................................197

Volume II .............................................................................................................................................289

CHAPTER VI......................................................................................................................................289

CHAPTER VII .....................................................................................................................................346

CHAPTER VIII...................................................................................................................................386

CHAPTER IX......................................................................................................................................432

CHAPTER X.......................................................................................................................................491

Volume III ............................................................................................................................................573

CHAPTER XI......................................................................................................................................573

CHAPTER XII .....................................................................................................................................619

CHAPTER XIII...................................................................................................................................661

CHAPTER XIV...................................................................................................................................710

CHAPTER XV....................................................................................................................................750

CHAPTER XVI...................................................................................................................................793

Volume IV...........................................................................................................................................892

CHAPTER XVII ..................................................................................................................................892

CHAPTER XVIII .................................................................................................................................933

CHAPTER XIX...................................................................................................................................982

CHAPTER XX..................................................................................................................................1027

CHAPTER XXI.................................................................................................................................1085

CHAPTER XXII ................................................................................................................................1143

Volume V ...........................................................................................................................................1239

PREFACE TO THE FIFTH VOLUME. ............................................................................................1239

CHAPTER XXIII ...............................................................................................................................1240

CHAPTER XXIV..............................................................................................................................1284

CHAPTER XXV. ...............................................................................................................................1324

I PURPOSE to write the history of England from the accession of King James the Second down to a time

which is within the memory of men still living. I shall recount the errors which, in a few months, alienated a

loyal gentry and priesthood from the House of Stuart. I shall trace the course of that revolution which

terminated the long struggle between our sovereigns and their parliaments, and bound up together the rights

of the people and the title of the reigning dynasty. I shall relate how the new settlement was, during many

troubled years, successfully defended against foreign and domestic enemies; how, under that settlement, the

authority of law and the security of property were found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and of

individual action never before known; how, from the auspicious union of order and freedom, sprang a

prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnished no example; how our country, from a state of

ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to the place of umpire among European powers; how her opulence and

her martial glory grew together; how, by wise and resolute good faith, was gradually established a public

credit fruitful of marvels which to the statesmen of any former age would have seemed incredible; how a

gigantic commerce gave birth to a maritime power, compared with which every other maritime power,

ancient or modern, sinks into insignificance; how Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at length united to

England, not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties of interest and affection; how, in America, the

British colonies rapidly became far mightier and wealthier than the realms which Cortes and Pizarro had

added to the dominions of Charles the Fifth; how in Asia, British adventurers founded an empire not less

Nor will it be less my duty faithfully to record disasters mingled with triumphs, and great national crimes and

follies far more humiliating than any disaster. It will be seen that even what we justly account our chief

blessings were not without alloy. It will be seen that the system which effectually secured our liberties against

the encroachments of kingly power gave birth to a new class of abuses from which absolute monarchies are

exempt. It will be seen that, in consequence partly of unwise interference, and partly of unwise neglect, the

increase of wealth and the extension of trade produced, together with immense good, some evils from which

poor and rude societies are free. It will be seen how, in two important dependencies of the crown, wrong was

followed by just retribution; how imprudence and obstinacy broke the ties which bound the North American

colonies to the parent state; how Ireland, cursed by the domination of race over race, and of religion over

religion, remained indeed a member of the empire, but a withered and distorted member, adding no strength

to the body politic, and reproachfully pointed at by all who feared or envied the greatness of England.

Yet, unless I greatly deceive myself, the general effect of this chequered narrative will be to excite

thankfulness in all religious minds, and hope in the breasts of all patriots. For the history of our country

during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual

improvement. Those who compare the age on which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only

in their imagination may talk of degeneracy and decay: but no man who is correctly informed as to the past

I should very imperfectly execute the task which I have undertaken if I were merely to treat of battles and

sieges, of the rise and fall of administrations, of intrigues in the palace, and of debates in the parliament. It

will be my endeavour to relate the history of the people as well as the history of the government, to trace the

progress of useful and ornamental arts, to describe the rise of religious sects and the changes of literary taste,

to portray the manners of successive generations and not to pass by with neglect even the revolutions which

have taken place in dress, furniture, repasts, and public amusements. I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of

having descended below the dignity of history, if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth

The events which I propose to relate form only a single act of a great and eventful drama extending through

ages, and must be very imperfectly understood unless the plot of the preceding acts be well known. I shall

therefore introduce my narrative by a slight sketch of the history of our country from the earliest times. I shall

pass very rapidly over many centuries: but I shall dwell at some length on the vicissitudes of that contest

which the administration of King James the Second brought to a decisive crisis.1

Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated the greatness which she was destined to attain. Her

inhabitants when first they became known to the Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the natives of the

Sandwich Islands. She was subjugated by the Roman arms; but she received only a faint tincture of Roman

arts and letters. Of the western provinces which obeyed the Caesars, she was the last that was conquered, and

the first that was flung away. No magnificent remains of Latin porches and aqueducts are to be found in

Britain. No writer of British birth is reckoned among the masters of Latin poetry and eloquence. It is not

probable that the islanders were at any time generally familiar with the tongue of their Italian rulers. From the

Atlantic to the vicinity of the Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries, been predominant. It drove out the

Celtic; it was not driven out by the Teutonic; and it is at this day the basis of the French, Spanish and

Portuguese languages. In our island the Latin appears never to have superseded the old Gaelic speech, and

The scanty and superficial civilisation which the Britons had derived from their southern masters was effaced

by the calamities of the fifth century. In the continental kingdoms into which the Roman empire was then

dissolved, the conquerors learned much from the conquered race. In Britain the conquered race became as

All the chiefs who founded Teutonic dynasties in the continental provinces of the Roman empire, Alaric,

Theodoric, Clovis, Alboin, were zealous Christians. The followers of Ida and Cerdic, on the other hand,

brought to their settlements in Britain all the superstitions of the Elbe. While the German princes who reigned

at Paris, Toledo, Arles, and Ravenna listened with reverence to the instructions of bishops, adored the relics

of martyrs, and took part eagerly in disputes touching the Nicene theology, the rulers of Wessex and Mercia

The continental kingdoms which had risen on the ruins of the Western Empire kept up some intercourse with

those eastern provinces where the ancient civilisation, though slowly fading away under the influence of

misgovernment, might still astonish and instruct barbarians, where the court still exhibited the splendour of

Diocletian and Constantine, where the public buildings were still adorned with the sculptures of Polycletus

and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious pedants, themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit,

could still read and interpret the masterpieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes, and of Plato. From this

communion Britain was cut off. Her shores were, to the polished race which dwelt by the Bosphorus, objects

of a mysterious horror, such as that with which the Ionians of the age of Homer had regarded the Straits of

Scylla and the city of the Laestrygonian cannibals. There was one province of our island in which, as

Procopius had been told, the ground was covered with serpents, and the air was such that no man could inhale

it and live. To this desolate region the spirits of the departed were ferried over from the land of the Franks at

midnight. A strange race of fishermen performed the ghastly office. The speech of the dead was distinctly

heard by the boatmen, their weight made the keel sink deep in the water; but their forms were invisible to

mortal eye. Such were the marvels which an able historian, the contemporary of Belisarius, of Simplicius,

and of Tribonian, gravely related in the rich and polite Constantinople, touching the country in which the

founder of Constantinople had assumed the imperial purple. Concerning all the other provinces of the

Western Empire we have continuous information. It is only in Britain that an age of fable completely

separates two ages of truth. Odoacer and Totila, Euric and Thrasimund, Clovis, Fredegunda, and Brunechild,

are historical men and women. But Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Mordred are

mythical persons, whose very existence may be questioned, and whose adventures must be classed with those

At length the darkness begins to break; and the country which had been lost to view as Britain reappears as

England. The conversion of the Saxon colonists to Christianity was the first of a long series of salutary

revolutions. It is true that the Church had been deeply corrupted both by that superstition and by that

philosophy against which she had long contended, and over which she had at last triumphed. She had given a

too easy admission to doctrines borrowed from the ancient schools, and to rites borrowed from the ancient

temples. Roman policy and Gothic ignorance, Grecian ingenuity and Syrian asceticism, had contributed to

deprave her. Yet she retained enough of the sublime theology and benevolent morality of her earlier days to

elevate many intellects, and to purify many hearts. Some things also which at a later period were justly

regarded as among her chief blemishes were, in the seventh century, and long afterwards, among her chief

merits. That the sacerdotal order should encroach on the functions of the civil magistrate would, in our time,

be a great evil. But that which in an age of good government is an evil may, in an ago of grossly bad

government, be a blessing. It is better that mankind should be governed by wise laws well administered, and

by an enlightened public opinion, than by priestcraft: but it is better that men should be governed by

priestcraft than by brute violence, by such a prelate as Dunstan than by such a warrior as Penda. A society

sunk in ignorance, and ruled by mere physical force, has great reason to rejoice when a class, of which the

influence is intellectual and moral, rises to ascendancy. Such a class will doubtless abuse its power: but

mental power, even when abused, is still a nobler and better power than that which consists merely in

corporeal strength. We read in our Saxon chronicles of tyrants, who, when at the height of greatness, were

smitten with remorse, who abhorred the pleasures and dignities which they had purchased by guilt, who

abdicated their crowns, and who sought to atone for their offences by cruel penances and incessant prayers.

These stories have drawn forth bitter expressions of contempt from some writers who, while they boasted of

liberality, were in truth as narrowminded as any monk of the dark ages, and whose habit was to apply to all

events in the history of the world the standard received in the Parisian society of the eighteenth century. Yet

surely a system which, however deformed by superstition, introduced strong moral restraints into

communities previously governed only by vigour of muscle and by audacity of spirit, a system which taught

the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was, like his meanest bondman, a responsible being, might have

seemed to deserve a more respectful mention from philosophers and philanthropists.

The same observations will apply to the contempt with which, in the last century, it was fashionable to speak

of the pilgrimages, the sanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic institutions of the middle ages. In times

when men were scarcely ever induced to travel by liberal curiosity, or by the pursuit of gain, it was better that

the rude inhabitant of the North should visit Italy and the East as a pilgrim, than that he should never see

anything but those squalid cabins and uncleared woods amidst which he was born. In times when life and

when female honour were exposed to daily risk from tyrants and marauders, it was better that the precinct of

a shrine should be regarded with an irrational awe, than that there should be no refuge inaccessible to cruelty

and licentiousness. In times when statesmen were incapable of forming extensive political combinations, it

was better that the Christian nations should be roused and united for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, than

that they should, one by one, be overwhelmed by the Mahometan power. Whatever reproach may, at a later

period, have been justly thrown on the indolence and luxury of religious orders, it was surely good that, in an

age of ignorance and violence, there should be quiet cloisters and gardens, in which the arts of peace could be

safely cultivated, in which gentle and contemplative natures could find an asylum, in which one brother could

employ himself in transcribing the �neid of Virgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of Aristotle, in

which he who had a genius for art might illuminate a martyrology or carve a crucifix, and in which he who

had a turn for natural philosophy might make experiments on the properties of plants and minerals. Had not

such retreats been scattered here and there, among the huts of a miserable peasantry, and the castles of a

ferocious aristocracy, European society would have consisted merely of beasts of burden and beasts of prey.

The Church has many times been compared by divines to the ark of which we read in the Book of Genesis:

but never was the resemblance more perfect than during that evil time when she alone rode, amidst darkness

and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all the great works of ancient power and wisdom lay entombed,

bearing within her that feeble germ from which a Second and more glorious civilisation was to spring.

Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was, in the dark ages, productive of far more good than

evil. Its effect was to unite the nations of Western Europe in one great commonwealth. What the Olympian

chariot course and the Pythian oracle were to all the Greek cities, from Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and

her Bishop were to all Christians of the Latin communion, from Calabria to the Hebrides. Thus grew up

sentiments of enlarged benevolence. Races separated from each other by seas and mountains acknowledged a

fraternal tie and a common code of public law. Even in war, the cruelty of the conqueror was not seldom

mitigated by the recollection that he and his vanquished enemies were all members of one great federation.

Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted. A regular communication was opened between

our shores and that part of Europe in which the traces of ancient power and policy were yet discernible. Many

noble monuments which have since been destroyed or defaced still retained their pristine magnificence; and

travellers, to whom Livy and Sallust were unintelligible, might gain from the Roman aqueducts and temples

some faint notion of Roman history. The dome of Agrippa, still glittering with bronze, the mausoleum of

Adrian, not yet deprived of its columns and statues, the Flavian amphitheatre, not yet degraded into a quarry,

told to the rude English pilgrims some part of the story of that great civilised world which had passed away.

The islanders returned, with awe deeply impressed on their half opened minds, and told the wondering

inhabitants of the hovels of London and York that, near the grave of Saint Peter, a mighty race, now extinct,

had piled up buildings which would never be dissolved till the judgment day. Learning followed in the train

of Christianity. The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was assiduously studied in Mercian and

Northumbrian monasteries. The names of Bede and Alcuin were justly celebrated throughout Europe. Such

was the state of our country when, in the ninth century, began the last great migration of the northern

During many years Denmark and Scandinavia continued to pour forth innumerable pirates, distinguished by

strength, by valour, by merciless ferocity, and by hatred of the Christian name. No country suffered so much

from these invaders as England. Her coast lay near to the ports whence they sailed; nor was any shire so far

distant from the sea as to be secure from attack. The same atrocities which had attended the victory of the

Saxon over the Celt were now, after the lapse of ages, suffered by the Saxon at the hand of the Dane.

Civilization,just as it began to rise, was met by this blow, and sank down once more. Large colonies of

adventurers from the Baltic established themselves on the eastern shores of our island, spread gradually

westward, and, supported by constant reinforcements from beyond the sea, aspired to the dominion of the

whole realm. The struggle between the two fierce Teutonic breeds lasted through six generations. Each was

alternately paramount. Cruel massacres followed by cruel retribution, provinces wasted, convents plundered,

and cities rased to the ground, make up the greater part of the history of those evil days. At length the North

ceased to send forth a constant stream of fresh depredators; and from that time the mutual aversion of the

races began to subside. Intermarriage became frequent. The Danes learned the religion of the Saxons; and

thus one cause of deadly animosity was removed. The Danish and Saxon tongues, both dialects of one

widespread language, were blended together. But the distinction between the two nations was by no means

effaced, when an event took place which prostrated both, in common slavery and degradation, at the feet of a

The Normans were then the foremost race of Christendom. Their valour and ferocity had made them

conspicuous among the rovers whom Scandinavia had sent forth to ravage Western Europe. Their sails were

long the terror of both coasts of the Channel. Their arms were repeatedly carried far into the heart of: the

Carlovingian empire, and were victorious under the walls of Maestricht and Paris. At length one of the feeble

heirs of Charlemagne ceded to the strangers a fertile province, watered by a noble river, and contiguous to the

sea which was their favourite element. In that province they founded a mighty state, which gradually

extended its influence over the neighbouring principalities of Britanny and Maine. Without laying aside that

dauntless valour which had been the terror of every land from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, the Normans rapidly

acquired all, and more than all, the knowledge and refinement which they found in the country where they

settled. Their courage secured their territory against foreign invasion. They established internal order, such as

had long been unknown in the Frank empire. They embraced Christianity; and with Christianity they learned

a great part of what the clergy had to teach. They abandoned their native speech, and adopted the French

tongue, in which the Latin was the predominant element. They speedily raised their new language to a dignity

and importance which it had never before possessed. They found it a barbarous jargon; they fixed it in

writing; and they employed it in legislation, in poetry, and in romance. They renounced that brutal

intemperance to which all the other branches of the great German family were too much inclined. The polite

luxury of the Norman presented a striking contrast to the coarse voracity and drunkenness of his Saxon and

Danish neighbours. He loved to display his magnificence, not in huge piles of food and hogsheads of strong

drink, but in large and stately edifices, rich armour, gallant horses, choice falcons, well ordered tournaments,

banquets delicate rather than abundant, and wines remarkable rather for their exquisite flavour than for their

intoxicating power. That chivalrous spirit, which has exercised so powerful an influence on the politics,

morals, and manners of all the European nations, was found in the highest exaltation among the Norman

nobles. Those nobles were distinguished by their graceful bearing and insinuating address. They were

distinguished also by their skill in negotiation, and by a natural eloquence which they assiduously cultivated.

It was the boast of one of their historians that the Norman gentlemen were orators from the cradle. But their

chief fame was derived from their military exploits. Every country, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Dead Sea,

witnessed the prodigies of their discipline and valour. One Norman knight, at the head of a handful of

warriors, scattered the Celts of Connaught. Another founded the monarchy of the Two Sicilies, and saw the

emperors both of the East and of the West fly before his arms. A third, the Ulysses of the first crusade, was

invested by his fellow soldiers with the sovereignty of Antioch; and a fourth, the Tancred whose name lives

in the great poem of Tasso, was celebrated through Christendom as the bravest and most generous of the

The vicinity of so remarkable a people early began to produce an effect on the public mind of England.

Before the Conquest, English princes received their education in Normandy. English sees and English estates

were bestowed on Normans. The French of Normandy was familiarly spoken in the palace of Westminster.

The court of Rouen seems to have been to the court of Edward the Confessor what the court of Versailles

The battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it, not only placed a Duke of Normandy on the English

throne, but gave up the whole population of England to the tyranny of the Norman race. The subjugation of a

nation by a nation has seldom, even in Asia, been more complete. The country was portioned out among the

captains of the invaders. Strong military institutions, closely connected with the institution of property,

enabled the foreign conquerors to oppress the children of the soil. A cruel penal code, cruelly enforced,

guarded the privileges, and even the sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, though beaten down and

trodden underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some bold men, the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook

themselves to the woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws and forest laws, waged a predatory war

against their oppressors. Assassination was an event of daily occurrence. Many Normans suddenly

disappeared leaving no trace. The corpses of many were found bearing the marks of violence. Death by

torture was denounced against the murderers, and strict search was made for them, but generally in vain; for

the whole nation was in a conspiracy to screen them. It was at length thought necessary to lay a heavy fine on

every Hundred in which a person of French extraction should be found slain; and this regulation was

followed up by another regulation, providing that every person who was found slain should be supposed to be

During the century and a half which followed the Conquest, there is, to speak strictly, no English history. The

French Kings of England rose, indeed, to an eminence which was the wonder and dread of all neighbouring

nations. They conquered Ireland. They received the homage of Scotland. By their valour, by their policy, by

their fortunate matrimonial alliances, they became far more popular on the Continent than their liege lords the

Kings of France. Asia, as well as Europe, was dazzled by the power and glory of our tyrants. Arabian

chroniclers recorded with unwilling admiration the fall of Acre, the defence of Joppa, and the victorious

march to Ascalon; and Arabian mothers long awed their infants to silence with the name of the lionhearted

Plantagenet. At one time it seemed that the line of Hugh Capet was about to end as the Merovingian and

Carlovingian lines had ended, and that a single great monarchy would spread from the Orkneys to the

Pyrenees. So strong an association is established in most minds between the greatness of a sovereign and the

greatness of the nation which he rules, that almost every historian of England has expatiated with a sentiment

of exultation on the power and splendour of her foreign masters, and has lamented the decay of that power

and splendour as a calamity to our country. This is, in truth, as absurd as it would be in a Haytian negro of

our time to dwell with national pride on the greatness of Lewis the Fourteenth, and to speak of Blenheim and

Ramilies with patriotic regret and shame. The Conqueror and his descendants to the fourth generation were

not Englishmen: most of them were born in France: they spent the greater part of their lives in France: their

ordinary speech was French: almost every high office in their gift was filled by a Frenchman: every

acquisition which they made on the Continent estranged them more and more from the population of our

island. One of the ablest among them indeed attempted to win the hearts of his English subjects by espousing

an English princess. But, by many of his barons, this marriage was regarded as a marriage between a white

planter and a quadroon girl would now be regarded in Virginia. In history he is known by the honourable

surname of Beauclerc; but, in his own time, his own countrymen called him by a Saxon nickname, in

Had the Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely, succeeded in uniting all France under their government, it

is probable that England would never have had an independent existence. Her princes, her lords, her prelates,

would have been men differing in race and language from the artisans and the tillers of the earth. The

revenues of her great proprietors would have been spent in festivities and diversions on the banks of the

Seine. The noble language of Milton and Burke would have remained a rustic dialect, without a literature, a

fixed grammar, or a fixed orthography, and would have been contemptuously abandoned to the use of boors.

No man of English extraction would have risen to eminence, except by becoming in speech and habits a

England owes her escape from such calamities to an event which her historians have generally represented as

disastrous. Her interest was so directly opposed to the interests of her rulers that she had no hope but in their

errors and misfortunes. The talents and even the virtues of her first six French Kings were a curse to her. The

follies and vices of the seventh were her salvation. Had John inherited the great qualities of his father, of

Henry Beauclerc, or of the Conqueror, nay, had he even possessed the martial courage of Stephen or of

Richard, and had the King of France at the same time been as incapable as all the other successors of Hugh

Capet had been, the House of Plantagenet must have risen to unrivalled ascendancy in Europe. But, just at

this conjuncture, France, for the first time since the death of Charlemagne, was governed by a prince of great

firmness and ability. On the other hand England, which, since the battle of Hastings, had been ruled generally

by wise statesmen, always by brave soldiers, fell under the dominion of a trifler and a coward. From that

moment her prospects brightened. John was driven from Normandy. The Norman nobles were compelled to

make their election between the island and the continent. Shut up by the sea with the people whom they had

hitherto oppressed and despised, they gradually came to regard England as their country, and the English as

their countrymen. The two races, so long hostile, soon found that they had common interests and common

enemies. Both were alike aggrieved by the tyranny of a bad king. Both were alike indignant at the favour

shown by the court to the natives of Poitou and Aquitaine. The great grandsons of those who had fought

under William and the great grandsons of those who had fought under Harold began to draw near to each

other in friendship; and the first pledge of their reconciliation was the Great Charter, won by their united

Here commences the history of the English nation. The history of the preceding events is the history of

wrongs inflicted and sustained by various tribes, which indeed all dwelt on English ground, but which

regarded each other with aversion such as has scarcely ever existed between communities separated by

physical barriers. For even the mutual animosity of countries at war with each other is languid when

compared with the animosity of nations which, morally separated, are yet locally intermingled. In no country

has the enmity of race been carried farther than in England. In no country has that enmity been more

completely effaced. The stages of the process by which the hostile elements were melted down into one

homogeneous mass are not accurately known to us. But it is certain that, when John became King, the

distinction between Saxons and Normans was strongly marked, and that before the end of the reign of his

grandson it had almost disappeared. In the time of Richard the First, the ordinary imprecation of a Norman

gentleman was "May I become an Englishman!" His ordinary form of indignant denial was "Do you take me

for an Englishman?" The descendant of such a gentleman a hundred years later was proud of the English

The sources of the noblest rivers which spread fertility over continents, and bear richly laden fleets to the sea,

are to be sought in wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in maps, and rarely explored by

travellers. To such a tract the history of our country during the thirteenth century may not unaptly be

compared. Sterile and obscure as is that portion of our annals, it is there that we must seek for the origin of

our freedom, our prosperity, and our glory. Then it was that the great English people was formed, that the

national character began to exhibit those peculiarities which it has ever since retained, and that our fathers

became emphatically islanders, islanders not merely in geographical position, but in their politics, their

feelings, and their manners. Then first appeared with distinctness that constitution which has ever since,

through all changes, preserved its identity; that constitution of which all the other free constitutions in the

world are copies, and which, in spite of some defects, deserves to be regarded as the best under which any

great society has ever yet existed during many ages. Then it was that the House of Commons, the archetype

of all the representative assemblies which now meet, either in the old or in the new world, held its first

sittings. Then it was that the common law rose to the dignity of a science, and rapidly became a not unworthy

rival of the imperial jurisprudence. Then it was that the courage of those sailors who manned the rude barks

of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of England terrible on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient

colleges which still exist at both the great national seats of learning were founded. Then was formed that

language, less musical indeed than the languages of the south, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the

highest purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to the tongue of Greece alone. Then too

appeared the first faint dawn of that noble literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the many

Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of the races was all but complete; and it was soon made

manifest, by signs not to be mistaken, that a people inferior to none existing in the world had been formed by

the mixture of three branches of the great Teutonic family with each other, and with the aboriginal Britons.

There was, indeed, scarcely anything in common between the England to which John had been chased by

Philip Augustus, and the England from which the armies of Edward the Third went forth to conquer France.

A period of more than a hundred years followed, during which the chief object of the English was to

establish, by force of arms, a great empire on the Continent. The claim of Edward to the inheritance occupied

by the House of Valois was a claim in which it might seem that his subjects were little interested. But the

passion for conquest spread fast from the prince to the people. The war differed widely from the wars which

the Plantagenets of the twelfth century had waged against the descendants of Hugh Capet. For the success of

Henry the Second, or of Richard the First, would have made England a province of France. The effect of the

successes of Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth was to make France, for a time, a province of England.

The disdain with which, in the twelfth century, the conquerors from the Continent had regarded the islanders,

was now retorted by the islanders on the people of the Continent. Every yeoman from Kent to

Northumberland valued himself as one of a race born for victory and dominion, and looked down with scorn

on the nation before which his ancestors had trembled. Even those knights of Gascony and Guienne who had

fought gallantly under the Black Prince were regarded by the English as men of an inferior breed, and were

contemptuously excluded from honourable and lucrative commands. In no long time our ancestors altogether

lost sight of the original ground of quarrel. They began to consider the crown of France as a mere appendage

to the crown of England; and, when in violation of the ordinary law of succession, they transferred the crown

of England to the House of Lancaster, they seem to have thought that the right of Richard the Second to the

crown of France passed, as of course, to that house. The zeal and vigour which they displayed present a

remarkable contrast to the torpor of the French, who were far more deeply interested in the event of the

struggle. The most splendid victories recorded in the history of the middle ages were gained at this time,

against great odds, by the English armies. Victories indeed they were of which a nation may justly be proud;

for they are to be attributed to the moral superiority of the victors, a superiority which was most striking in

the lowest ranks. The knights of England found worthy rivals in the knights of France. Chandos encountered

an equal foe in Du Guesclin. But France had no infantry that dared to face the English bows and bills. A

French King was brought prisoner to London. An English King was crowned at Paris. The banner of St.

George was carried far beyond the Pyrenees and the Alps. On the south of the Ebro the English won a great

battle, which for a time decided the fate of Leon and Castile; and the English Companies obtained a terrible

preeminence among the bands of warriors who let out their weapons for hire to the princes and

Nor were the arts of peace neglected by our fathers during that stirring period. While France was wasted by

war, till she at length found in her own desolation a miserable defence against invaders, the English gathered

in their harvests, adorned their cities, pleaded, traded, and studied in security. Many of our noblest

architectural monuments belong to that age. Then rose the fair chapels of New College and of Saint George,

the nave of Winchester and the choir of York, the spire of Salisbury and the majestic towers of Lincoln. A

copious and forcible language, formed by an infusion of French into German, was now the common property

of the aristocracy and of the people. Nor was it long before genius began to apply that admirable machine to

worthy purposes. While English warriors, leaving behind them the devastated provinces of France, entered

Valladolid in triumph, and spread terror to the gates of Florence, English poets depicted in vivid tints all the

wide variety of human manners and fortunes, and English thinkers aspired to know, or dared to doubt, where

bigots had been content to wonder and to believe. The same age which produced the Black Prince and Derby,

In so splendid and imperial a manner did the English people, properly so called, first take place among the

nations of the world. Yet while we contemplate with pleasure the high and commanding qualities which our

forefathers displayed, we cannot but admit that the end which they pursued was an end condemned both by

humanity and by enlightened policy, and that the reverses which compelled them, after a long and bloody

struggle, to relinquish the hope of establishing a great continental empire, were really blessings in the guise of

disasters. The spirit of the French was at last aroused: they began to oppose a vigorous national resistance to

the foreign conquerors; and from that time the skill of the English captains and the courage of the English

soldiers were, happily for mankind, exerted in vain. After many desperate struggles, and with many bitter

regrets, our ancestors gave up the contest. Since that age no British government has ever seriously and

steadily pursued the design of making great conquests on the Continent. The people, indeed, continued to

cherish with pride the recollection of Cressy, of Poitiers, and of Agincourt. Even after the lapse of many years

it was easy to fire their blood and to draw forth their subsidies by promising them an expedition for the

conquest of France. But happily the energies of our country have been directed to better objects; and she now

occupies in the history of mankind a place far more glorious than if she had, as at one time seemed not

improbable, acquired by the sword an ascendancy similar to that which formerly belonged to the Roman

Cooped up once more within the limits of the island, the warlike people employed in civil strife those arms

which had been the terror of Europe. The means of profuse expenditure had long been drawn by the English

barons from the oppressed provinces of France. That source of supply was gone: but the ostentatious and

luxurious habits which prosperity had engendered still remained; and the great lords, unable to gratify their

tastes by plundering the French, were eager to plunder each other. The realm to which they were now

confined would not, in the phrase of Comines, the most judicious observer of that time, suffice for them all.

Two aristocratical factions, headed by two branches of the royal family, engaged in a long and fierce struggle

for supremacy. As the animosity of those factions did not really arise from the dispute about the succession it

lasted long after all ground of dispute about the succession was removed. The party of the Red Rose survived

the last prince who claimed the crown in right of Henry the Fourth. The party of the White Rose survived the

marriage of Richmond and Elizabeth. Left without chiefs who had any decent show of right, the adherents of

Lancaster rallied round a line of bastards, and the adherents of York set up a succession of impostors. When,

at length, many aspiring nobles had perished on the field of battle or by the hands of the executioner, when

many illustrious houses had disappeared forever from history, when those great families which remained had

been exhausted and sobered by calamities, it was universally acknowledged that the claims of all the

Meanwhile a change was proceeding infinitely more momentous than the acquisition or loss of any province,

than the rise or fall of any dynasty. Slavery and the evils by which slavery is everywhere accompanied were

It is remarkable that the two greatest and most salutary social revolutions which have taken place in England,

that revolution which, in the thirteenth century, put an end to the tyranny of nation over nation, and that

revolution which, a few generations later, put an end to the property of man in man, were silently and

imperceptibly effected. They struck contemporary observers with no surprise, and have received from

historians a very scanty measure of attention. They were brought about neither by legislative regulations nor

by physical force. Moral causes noiselessly effaced first the distinction between Norman and Saxon, and then

the distinction between master and slave. None can venture to fix the precise moment at which either

distinction ceased. Some faint traces of the old Norman feeling might perhaps have been found late in the

fourteenth century. Some faint traces of the institution of villenage were detected by the curious so late as the

days of the Stuarts; nor has that institution ever, to this hour, been abolished by statute.

It would be most unjust not to acknowledge that the chief agent in these two great deliverances was religion;

and it may perhaps be doubted whether a purer religion might not have been found a less efficient agent. The

benevolent spirit of the Christian morality is undoubtedly adverse to distinctions of caste. But to the Church

of Rome such distinctions are peculiarly odious; for they are incompatible with other distinctions which are

essential to her system. She ascribes to every priest a mysterious dignity which entitles him to the reverence

of every layman; and she does not consider any man as disqualified, by reason of his nation or of his family,

for the priesthood. Her doctrines respecting the sacerdotal character, however erroneous they may be, have

repeatedly mitigated some of the worst evils which can afflict society. That superstition cannot be regarded as

unmixedly noxious which, in regions cursed by the tyranny of race over race, creates an aristocracy

altogether independent of race, inverts the relation between the oppressor and the oppressed, and compels the

hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual tribunal of the hereditary bondman. To this day, in some

countries where negro slavery exists, Popery appears in advantageous contrast to other forms of Christianity.

It is notorious that the antipathy between the European and African races is by no means so strong at Rio

Janerio as at Washington. In our own country this peculiarity of the Roman Catholic system produced, during

the middle ages, many salutary effects. It is true that, shortly after the battle of Hastings, Saxon prelates and

abbots were violently deposed, and that ecclesiastical adventurers from the Continent were intruded by

hundreds into lucrative benefices. Yet even then pious divines of Norman blood raised their voices against

such a violation of the constitution of the Church, refused to accept mitres from the hands of William, and

charged him, on the peril of his soul, not to forget that the vanquished islanders were his fellow Christians.

The first protector whom the English found among the dominant caste was Archbishop Anselm. At a time

when the English name was a reproach, and when all the civil and military dignities of the kingdom were

supposed to belong exclusively to the countrymen of the Conqueror, the despised race learned, with

transports of delight, that one of themselves, Nicholas Breakspear, had been elevated to the papal throne, and

had held out his foot to be kissed by ambassadors sprung from the noblest houses of Normandy. It was a

national as well as a religious feeling that drew great multitudes to the shrine of Becket, whom they regarded

as the enemy of their enemies. Whether he was a Norman or a Saxon may be doubted: but there is no doubt

that he perished by Norman hands, and that the Saxons cherished his memory with peculiar tenderness and

veneration, and, in their popular poetry, represented him as one of their own race. A successor of Becket was

foremost among the refractory magnates who obtained that charter which secured the privileges both of the

Norman barons and of the Saxon yeomanry. How great a part the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics subsequently

had in the abolition of villenage we learn from the unexceptionable testimony of Sir Thomas Smith, one of

the ablest Protestant counsellors of Elizabeth. When the dying slaveholder asked for the last sacraments, his

spiritual attendants regularly adjured him, as he loved his soul, to emancipate his brethren for whom Christ

had died. So successfully had the Church used her formidable machinery that, before the Reformation came,

she had enfranchised almost all the bondmen in the kingdom except her own, who, to do her justice, seem to

There can be no doubt that, when these two great revolutions had been effected, our forefathers were by far

the best governed people in Europe. During three hundred years the social system had been in a constant

course of improvement. Under the first Plantagenets there had been barons able to bid defiance to the

sovereign, and peasants degraded to the level of the swine and oxen which they tended. The exorbitant power

of the baron had been gradually reduced. The condition of the peasant had been gradually elevated. Between

the aristocracy and the working people had sprung up a middle class, agricultural and commercial. There was

still, it may be, more inequality than is favourable to the happiness and virtue of our species: but no man was

altogether above the restraints of law; and no man was altogether below its protection.

That the political institutions of England were, at this early period, regarded by the English with pride and

affection, and by the most enlightened men of neighbouring nations with admiration and envy, is proved by

the clearest evidence. But touching the nature of these institutions there has been much dishonest and

The historical literature of England has indeed suffered grievously from a circumstance which has not a little

contributed to her prosperity. The change, great as it is, which her polity has undergone during the last six

centuries, has been the effect of gradual development, not of demolition and reconstruction. The present

constitution of our country is, to the constitution under which she flourished five hundred years ago, what the

tree is to the sapling, what the man is to the boy. The alteration has been great. Yet there never was a moment

at which the chief part of what existed was not old. A polity thus formed must abound in anomalies. But for

the evils arising from mere anomalies we have ample compensation. Other societies possess written

constitutions more symmetrical. But no other society has yet succeeded in uniting revolution with

prescription, progress with stability, the energy of youth with the majesty of immemorial antiquity.

This great blessing, however, has its drawbacks: and one of those drawbacks is that every source of

information as to our early history has been poisoned by party spirit. As there is no country where statesmen

have been so much under the influence of the past, so there is no country where historians have been so much

under the influence of the present. Between these two things, indeed, there is a natural connection. Where

history is regarded merely as a picture of life and manners, or as a collection of experiments from which

general maxims of civil wisdom may be drawn, a writer lies under no very pressing temptation to

misrepresent transactions of ancient date. But where history is regarded as a repository of titledeeds, on

which the rights of governments and nations depend, the motive to falsification becomes almost irresistible.

A Frenchman is not now impelled by any strong interest either to exaggerate or to underrate the power of the

Kings of the house of Valois. The privileges of the States General, of the States of Britanny, of the States of

Burgundy, are to him matters of as little practical importance as the constitution of the Jewish Sanhedrim or

of the Amphictyonic Council. The gulph of a great revolution completely separates the new from the old

system. No such chasm divides the existence of the English nation into two distinct parts. Our laws and

customs have never been lost in general and irreparable ruin. With us the precedents of the middle ages are

still valid precedents, and are still cited, on the gravest occasions, by the most eminent Statesmen. For

example, when King George the Third was attacked by the malady which made him incapable of performing

his regal functions, and when the most distinguished lawyers and politicians differed widely as to the course

which ought, in such circumstances, to be pursued, the Houses of Parliament would not proceed to discuss

any plan of regency till all the precedents which were to be found in our annals, from the earliest times, had

been collected and arranged. Committees were appointed to examine the ancient records of the realm. The

first case reported was that of the year 1217: much importance was attached to the cases of 1326, of 1377,

and of 1422: but the case which was justly considered as most in point was that of 1455. Thus in our country

the dearest interests of parties have frequently been on the results of the researches of antiquaries. The

inevitable consequence was that our antiquaries conducted their researches in the spirit of partisans.

It is therefore not surprising that those who have written, concerning the limits of prerogative and liberty in

the old polity of England should generally have shown the temper, not of judges, but of angry and uncandid

advocates. For they were discussing, not a speculative matter, but a matter which had a direct and practical

connection with the most momentous and exciting disputes of their own day. From the commencement of the

long contest between the Parliament and the Stuarts down to the time when the pretensions of the Stuarts

ceased to be formidable, few questions were practically more important than the question whether the

administration of that family had or had not been in accordance with the ancient constitution of the kingdom.

This question could be decided only by reference to the records of preceding reigns. Bracton and Fleta, the

Mirror of Justice and the Rolls of Parliament, were ransacked to find pretexts for the excesses of the Star

Chamber on one side, and of the High Court of Justice on the other. During a long course of years every

Whig historian was anxious to prove that the old English government was all but republican, every Tory

With such feelings, both parties looked into the chronicles of the middle ages. Both readily found what they

sought; and both obstinately refused to see anything but what they sought. The champions of the Stuarts

could easily point out instances of oppression exercised on the subject. The defenders of the Roundheads

could as easily produce instances of determined and successful resistance offered to the Crown. The Tories

quoted, from ancient writings, expressions almost as servile as were heard from the pulpit of Mainwaring.

The Whigs discovered expressions as bold and severe as any that resounded from the judgment seat of

Bradshaw. One set of writers adduced numerous instances in which Kings had extorted money without the

authority of Parliament. Another set cited cases in which the Parliament had assumed to itself the power of

inflicting punishment on Kings. Those who saw only one half of the evidence would have concluded that the

Plantagenets were as absolute as the Sultans of Turkey: those who saw only the other half would have

concluded that the Plantagenets had as little real power as the Doges of Venice; and both conclusions would

The old English government was one of a class of limited monarchies which sprang up in Western Europe

during the middle ages, and which, notwithstanding many diversities, bore to one another a strong family

likeness. That there should have been such a likeness is not strange The countries in which those monarchies

arose had been provinces of the same great civilised empire, and had been overrun and conquered, about the

same time, by tribes of the same rude and warlike nation. They were members of the same great coalition

against Islam. They were in communion with the same superb and ambitious Church. Their polity naturally

took the same form. They had institutions derived partly from imperial Rome, partly from papal Rome, partly

from the old Germany. All had Kings; and in all the kingly office became by degrees strictly hereditary. All

had nobles bearing titles which had originally indicated military rank. The dignity of knighthood, the rules of

heraldry, were common to all. All had richly endowed ecclesiastical establishments, municipal corporations

enjoying large franchises, and senates whose consent was necessary to the validity of some public acts.

Of these kindred constitutions the English was, from an early period, justly reputed the best. The prerogatives

of the sovereign were undoubtedly extensive. The spirit of religion and the spirit of chivalry concurred to

exalt his dignity. The sacred oil had been poured on his head. It was no disparagement to the bravest and

noblest knights to kneel at his feet. His person was inviolable. He alone was entitled to convoke the Estates of

the realm: he could at his pleasure dismiss them; and his assent was necessary to all their legislative acts. He

was the chief of the executive administration, the sole organ of communication with foreign powers, the

captain of the military and naval forces of the state, the fountain of justice, of mercy, and of honour. He had

large powers for the regulation of trade. It was by him that money was coined, that weights and measures

were fixed, that marts and havens were appointed. His ecclesiastical patronage was immense. His hereditary

revenues, economically administered, sufficed to meet the ordinary charges of government. His own domains

were of vast extent. He was also feudal lord paramount of the whole soil of his kingdom, and, in that

capacity, possessed many lucrative and many formidable rights, which enabled him to annoy and depress

those who thwarted him, and to enrich and aggrandise, without any cost to himself, those who enjoyed his

But his power, though ample, was limited by three great constitutional principles, so ancient that none can

say when they began to exist, so potent that their natural development, continued through many generations,

First, the King could not legislate without the consent of his Parliament. Secondly, he could impose no tax

without the consent of his Parliament. Thirdly, he was bound to conduct the executive administration

according to the laws of the land, and, if he broke those laws, his advisers and his agents were responsible.

No candid Tory will deny that these principles had, five hundred years ago, acquired the authority of

fundamental rules. On the other hand, no candid Whig will affirm that they were, till a later period, cleared

from all ambiguity, or followed out to all their consequences. A constitution of the middle ages was not, like

a constitution of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, created entire by a single act, and fully set forth in a

single document. It is only in a refined and speculative age that a polity is constructed on system. In rude

societies the progress of government resembles the progress of language and of versification. Rude societies

have language, and often copious and energetic language: but they have no scientific grammar, no definitions

of nouns and verbs, no names for declensions, moods, tenses, and voices. Rude societies have versification,

and often versification of great power and sweetness: but they have no metrical canons; and the minstrel

whose numbers, regulated solely by his ear, are the delight of his audience, would himself be unable to say of

how many dactyls and trochees each of his lines consists. As eloquence exists before syntax, and song before

prosody, so government may exist in a high degree of excellence long before the limits of legislative,

It was thus in our country. The line which bounded the royal prerogative, though in general sufficiently clear,

had not everywhere been drawn with accuracy and distinctness. There was, therefore, near the border some

debatable ground on which incursions and reprisals continued to take place, till, after ages of strife, plain and

durable landmarks were at length set up. It may be instructive to note in what way, and to what extent, our

ancient sovereigns were in the habit of violating the three great principles by which the liberties of the nation

No English King has ever laid claim to the general legislative power. The most violent and imperious

Plantagenet never fancied himself competent to enact, without the consent of his great council, that a jury

should consist of ten persons instead of twelve, that a widow's dower should be a fourth part instead of a

third, that perjury should be a felony, or that the custom of gavelkind should be introduced into Yorkshire.2

But the King had the power of pardoning offenders; and there is one point at which the power of pardoning

and the power of legislating seem to fade into each other, and may easily, at least in a simple age, be

confounded. A penal statute is virtually annulled if the penalties which it imposes are regularly remitted as

often as they are incurred. The sovereign was undoubtedly competent to remit penalties without limit. He was

therefore competent to annul virtually a penal statute. It might seem that there could be no serious objection

to his doing formally what he might do virtually. Thus, with the help of subtle and courtly lawyers, grew up,

on the doubtful frontier which separates executive from legislative functions, that great anomaly known as

That the King could not impose taxes without the consent of Parliament is admitted to have been, from time

immemorial, a fundamental law of England. It was among the articles which John was compelled by the

Barons to sign. Edward the First ventured to break through the rule: but, able, powerful, and popular as he

was, he encountered an opposition to which he found it expedient to yield. He covenanted accordingly in

express terms, for himself and his heirs, that they would never again levy any aid without the assent and

goodwill of the Estates of the realm. His powerful and victorious grandson attempted to violate this solemn

compact: but the attempt was strenuously withstood. At length the Plantagenets gave up the point in despair:

but, though they ceased to infringe the law openly, they occasionally contrived, by evading it, to procure an

extraordinary supply for a temporary purpose. They were interdicted from taxing; but they claimed the right

of begging and borrowing. They therefore sometimes begged in a tone not easily to be distinguished from

that of command, and sometimes borrowed with small thought of repaying. But the fact that they thought it

necessary to disguise their exactions under the names of benevolences and loans sufficiently proves that the

The principle that the King of England was bound to conduct the administration according to law, and that, if

he did anything against law, his advisers and agents were answerable, was established at a very early period,

as the severe judgments pronounced and executed on many royal favourites sufficiently prove. It is, however,

certain that the rights of individuals were often violated by the Plantagenets, and that the injured parties were

often unable to obtain redress. According to law no Englishman could be arrested or detained in confinement

merely by the mandate of the sovereign. In fact, persons obnoxious to the government were frequently

imprisoned without any other authority than a royal order. According to law, torture, the disgrace of the

Roman jurisprudence, could not, in any circumstances, be inflicted on an English subject. Nevertheless,

during the troubles of the fifteenth century, a rack was introduced into the Tower, and was occasionally used

under the plea of political necessity. But it would be a great error to infer from such irregularities that the

English monarchs were, either in theory or in practice, absolute. We live in a highly civilised society, through

which intelligence is so rapidly diffused by means of the press and of the post office that any gross act of

oppression committed in any part of our island is, in a few hours, discussed by millions. If the sovereign were

now to immure a subject in defiance of the writ of Habeas Corpus, or to put a conspirator to the torture, the

whole nation would be instantly electrified by the news. In the middle ages the state of society was widely

different. Rarely and with great difficulty did the wrongs of individuals come to the knowledge of the public.

A man might be illegally confined during many months in the castle of Carlisle or Norwich; and no whisper

of the transaction might reach London. It is highly probable that the rack had been many years in use before

the great majority of the nation had the least suspicion that it was ever employed. Nor were our ancestors by

any means so much alive as we are to the importance of maintaining great general rules. We have been taught

by long experience that we cannot without danger suffer any breach of the constitution to pass unnoticed. It is

therefore now universally held that a government which unnecessarily exceeds its powers ought to be visited

with severe parliamentary censure, and that a government which, under the pressure of a great exigency, and

with pure intentions, has exceeded its powers, ought without delay to apply to Parliament for an act of

indemnity. But such were not the feelings of the Englishmen of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They

were little disposed to contend for a principle merely as a principle, or to cry out against an irregularity which

was not also felt to be a grievance. As long as the general spirit of the administration was mild and popular,

they were willing to allow some latitude to their sovereign. If, for ends generally acknowledged to be good,

he exerted a vigour beyond the law, they not only forgave, but applauded him, and while they enjoyed

security and prosperity under his rule, were but too ready to believe that whoever had incurred his displeasure

had deserved it. But to this indulgence there was a limit; nor was that King wise who presumed far on the

forbearance of the English people. They might sometimes allow him to overstep the constitutional line: but

they also claimed the privilege of overstepping that line themselves, whenever his encroachments were so

serious as to excite alarm. If, not content with occasionally oppressing individuals, he cared to oppress great

masses, his subjects promptly appealed to the laws, and, that appeal failing, appealed as promptly to the God

Our forefathers might indeed safely tolerate a king in a few excesses; for they had in reserve a check which

soon brought the fiercest and proudest king to reason, the check of physical force. It is difficult for an

Englishman of the nineteenth century to imagine to himself the facility and rapidity with which, four hundred

years ago, this check was applied. The people have long unlearned the use of arms. The art of war has been

carried to a perfection unknown to former ages; and the knowledge of that art is confined to a particular class.

A hundred thousand soldiers, well disciplined and commanded, will keep down ten millions of ploughmen

and artisans. A few regiments of household troops are sufficient to overawe all the discontented spirits of a

large capital. In the meantime the effect of the constant progress of wealth has been to make insurrection far

more terrible to thinking men than maladministration. Immense sums have been expended on works which, if

a rebellion broke out, might perish in a few hours. The mass of movable wealth collected in the shops and

warehouses of London alone exceeds five hundredfold that which the whole island contained in the days of

the Plantagenets; and, if the government were subverted by physical force, all this movable wealth would be

exposed to imminent risk of spoliation and destruction. Still greater would be the risk to public credit, on

which thousands of families directly depend for subsistence, and with which the credit of the whole

commercial world is inseparably connected. It is no exaggeration to say that a civil war of a week on English

ground would now produce disasters which would be felt from the Hoangho to the Missouri, and of which

the traces would be discernible at the distance of a century. In such a state of society resistance must be

regarded as a cure more desperate than almost any malady which can afflict the state. In the middle ages, on

the contrary, resistance was an ordinary remedy for political distempers, a remedy which was always at hand,

and which, though doubtless sharp at the moment, produced no deep or lasting ill effects. If a popular chief

raised his standard in a popular cause, an irregular army could be assembled in a day. Regular army there was

none. Every man had a slight tincture of soldiership, and scarcely any man more than a slight tincture. The

national wealth consisted chiefly in flocks and herds, in the harvest of the year, and in the simple buildings

inhabited by the people. All the furniture, the stock of shops, the machinery which could be found in the

realm was of less value than the property which some single parishes now contain. Manufactures were rude;

credit was almost unknown. Society, therefore, recovered from the shock as soon as the actual conflict was

over. The calamities of civil war were confined to the slaughter on the field of battle, and to a few subsequent

executions and confiscations. In a week the peasant was driving his team and the esquire flying his hawks

over the field of Towton or of Bosworth, as if no extraordinary event had interrupted the regular course of

More than a hundred and sixty years have now elapsed since the English people have by force subverted a

government. During the hundred and sixty years which preceded the union of the Roses, nine Kings reigned

in England. Six of these nine Kings were deposed. Five lost their lives as well as their crowns. It is evident,

therefore, that any comparison between our ancient and our modern polity must lead to most erroneous

conclusions, unless large allowance be made for the effect of that restraint which resistance and the fear of

resistance constantly imposed on the Plantagenets. As our ancestors had against tyranny a most important

security which we want, they might safely dispense with some securities to which we justly attach the highest

importance. As we cannot, without the risk of evils from which the imagination recoils, employ physical

force as a check on misgovernment, it is evidently our wisdom to keep all the constitutional checks on

misgovernment in the highest state of efficiency, to watch with jealousy the first beginnings of encroachment,

and never to suffer irregularities, even when harmless in themselves, to pass unchallenged, lest they acquire

the force of precedents. Four hundred years ago such minute vigilance might well seem unnecessary. A

nation of hardy archers and spearmen might, with small risk to its liberties, connive at some illegal acts on

the part of a prince whose general administration was good, and whose throne was not defended by a single

Under this system, rude as it may appear when compared with those elaborate constitutions of which the last

seventy years have been fruitful, the English long enjoyed a large measure of freedom and happiness.

Though, during the feeble reign of Henry the Sixth, the state was torn, first by factions, and at length by civil

war; though Edward the Fourth was a prince of dissolute and imperious character; though Richard the Third

has generally been represented as a monster of depravity; though the exactions of Henry the Seventh caused

great repining; it is certain that our ancestors, under those Kings, were far better governed than the Belgians

under Philip, surnamed the Good, or the French under that Lewis who was styled the Father of his people.

Even while the wars of the Roses were actually raging, our country appears to have been in a happier

condition than the neighbouring realms during years of profound peace. Comines was one of the most

enlightened statesmen of his time. He had seen all the richest and most highly civilised parts of the Continent.

He had lived in the opulent towns of Flanders, the Manchesters and Liverpools of the fifteenth century. He

had visited Florence, recently adorned by the magnificence of Lorenzo, and Venice, not yet bumbled by the

Confederates of Cambray. This eminent man deliberately pronounced England to be the best governed

country of which he had any knowledge. Her constitution he emphatically designated as a just and holy thing,

which, while it protected the people, really strengthened the hands of a prince who respected it. In no other

country were men so effectually secured from wrong. The calamities produced by our intestine wars seemed

to him to be confined to the nobles and the fighting men, and to leave no traces such as he had been

It was not only by the efficiency of the restraints imposed on the royal prerogative that England was

advantageously distinguished from most of the neighbouring countries. A: peculiarity equally important,

though less noticed, was the relation in which the nobility stood here to the commonalty. There was a strong

hereditary aristocracy: but it was of all hereditary aristocracies the least insolent and exclusive. It had none of

the invidious character of a caste. It was constantly receiving members from the people, and constantly

sending down members to mingle with the people. Any gentleman might become a peer. The younger son of

a peer was but a gentleman. Grandsons of peers yielded precedence to newly made knights. The dignity of

knighthood was not beyond the reach of any man who could by diligence and thrift realise a good estate, or

who could attract notice by his valour in a battle or a siege. It was regarded as no disparagement for the

daughter of a Duke, nay of a royal Duke, to espouse a distinguished commoner. Thus, Sir John Howard

married the daughter of Thomas Mowbray Duke of Norfolk. Sir Richard Pole married the Countess of

Salisbury, daughter of George, Duke of Clarence. Good blood was indeed held in high respect: but between

good blood and the privileges of peerage there was, most fortunately for our country, no necessary

connection. Pedigrees as long, and scutcheons as old, were to be found out of the House of Lords as in it.

There were new men who bore the highest titles. There were untitled men well known to be descended from

knights who had broken the Saxon ranks at Hastings, and scaled the walls of Jerusalem. There were Bohuns,

Mowbrays, DeVeres, nay, kinsmen of the House of Plantagenet, with no higher addition than that of Esquire,

and with no civil privileges beyond those enjoyed by every farmer and shopkeeper. There was therefore here

no line like that which in some other countries divided the patrician from the plebeian. The yeoman was not

inclined to murmur at dignities to which his own children might rise. The grandee was not inclined to insult a

After the wars of York and Lancaster, the links which connected the nobility and commonalty became closer

and more numerous than ever. The extent of destruction which had fallen on the old aristocracy may be

inferred from a single circumstance. In the year 1451 Henry the Sixth summoned fiftythree temporal Lords

to parliament. The temporal Lords summoned by Henry the Seventh to the parliament of 1485 were only

twentynine, and of these several had recently been elevated to the peerage. During the following century the

ranks of the nobility were largely recruited from among the gentry. The constitution of the House of

Commons tended greatly to promote the salutary intermixture of classes. The knight of the shire was the

connecting link between the baron and the shopkeeper. On the same benches on which sate the goldsmiths,

drapers, and grocers, who had been returned to parliament by the commercial towns, sate also members who,

in any other country, would have been called noblemen, hereditary lords of manors, entitled to hold courts

and to bear coat armour, and able to trace back an honourable descent through many generations. Some of

them were younger sons and brothers of lords. Others could boast of even royal blood. At length the eldest

son of an Earl of Bedford, called in courtesy by the second title of his father, offered himself as candidate for

a seat in the House of Commons, and his example was followed by others. Seated in that house, the heirs of

the great peers naturally became as zealous for its privileges as any of the humble burgesses with whom they

were mingled. Thus our democracy was, from an early period, the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the

most democratic in the world; a peculiarity which has lasted down to the present day, and which has

The government of Henry the Seventh, of his son, and of his grandchildren was, on the whole, more arbitrary

than that of the Plantagenets. Personal character may in some degree explain the difference; for courage and

force of will were common to all the men and women of the House of Tudor. They exercised their power

during a period of a hundred and twenty years, always with vigour, often with violence, sometimes with

cruelty. They, in imitation of the dynasty which had preceded them, occasionally invaded the rights of the

subject, occasionally exacted taxes under the name of loans and gifts, and occasionally dispensed with penal

statutes: nay, though they never presumed to enact any permanent law by their own authority, they

occasionally took upon themselves, when Parliament was not sitting, to meet temporary exigencies by

temporary edicts. It was, however, impossible for the Tudors to carry oppression beyond a certain point: for

they had no armed force, and they were surrounded by an armed people. Their palace was guarded by a few

domestics, whom the array of a single shire, or of a single ward of London, could with ease have

overpowered. These haughty princes were therefore under a restraint stronger than any that mere law can

impose, under a restraint which did not, indeed, prevent them from sometimes treating an individual in an

arbitrary and even in a barbarous manner, but which effectually secured the nation against general and long

continued oppression. They might safely be tyrants, within the precinct of the court: but it was necessary for

them to watch with constant anxiety the temper of the country. Henry the Eighth, for example, encountered

no opposition when he wished to send Buckingham and Surrey, Anne Boleyn and Lady Salisbury, to the

scaffold. But when, without the consent of Parliament, he demanded of his subjects a contribution amounting

to one sixth of their goods, he soon found it necessary to retract. The cry of hundreds of thousands was that

they were English and not French, freemen and not slaves. In Kent the royal commissioners fled for their

lives. In Suffolk four thousand men appeared in arms. The King's lieutenants in that county vainly exerted

themselves to raise an army. Those who did not join in the insurrection declared that they would not fight

against their brethren in such a quarrel. Henry, proud and selfwilled as he was, shrank, not without reason

from a conflict with the roused spirit of the nation. He had before his eyes the fate of his predecessors who

had perished at Berkeley and Pomfret. He not only cancelled his illegal commissions; he not only granted a

general pardon to all the malecontents; but he publicly and solemnly apologised for his infraction of the laws.

His conduct, on this occasion, well illustrates the whole policy of his house. The temper of the princes of that

line was hot, and their spirits high, but they understood the character of the nation that they governed, and

never once, like some of their predecessors, and some of their successors, carried obstinacy to a fatal point.

The discretion of the Tudors was such, that their power, though it was often resisted, was never subverted.

The reign of every one of them was disturbed by formidable discontents: but the government was always able

either to soothe the mutineers or to conquer and punish them. Sometimes, by timely concessions, it succeeded

in averting civil hostilities; but in general it stood firm, and called for help on the nation. The nation obeyed

the call, rallied round the sovereign, and enabled him to quell the disaffected minority.

Thus, from the age of Henry the Third to the age of Elizabeth, England grew and flourished under a polity

which contained the germ of our present institutions, and which, though not very exactly defined, or very

exactly observed, was yet effectually prevented from degenerating into despotism, by the awe in which the

But such a polity is suited only to a particular stage in the progress of society. The same causes which

produce a division of labour in the peaceful arts must at length make war a distinct science and a distinct

trade. A time arrives when the use of arms begins to occupy the entire attention of a separate class. It soon

appears that peasants and burghers, however brave, are unable to stand their ground against veteran soldiers,

whose whole life is a preparation for the day of battle, whose nerves have been braced by long familiarity

with danger, and whose movements have all the precision of clockwork. It is found that the defence of

nations can no longer be safely entrusted to warriors taken from the plough or the loom for a campaign of

forty days. If any state forms a great regular army, the bordering states must imitate the example, or must

submit to a foreign yoke. But, where a great regular army exists, limited monarchy, such as it was in the

middle ages, can exist no longer. The sovereign is at once emancipated from what had been the chief restraint

on his power; and he inevitably becomes absolute, unless he is subjected to checks such as would be

superfluous in a society where all are soldiers occasionally, and none permanently.

With the danger came also the means of escape. In the monarchies of the middle ages the power of the sword

belonged to the prince; but the power of the purse belonged to the nation; and the progress of civilisation, as

it made the sword of the prince more and more formidable to the nation, made the purse of the nation more

and more necessary to the prince. His hereditary revenues would no longer suffice, even for the expenses of

civil government. It was utterly impossible that, without a regular and extensive system of taxation, he could

keep in constant efficiency a great body of disciplined troops. The policy which the parliamentary assemblies

of Europe ought to have adopted was to take their stand firmly on their constitutional right to give or

withhold money, and resolutely to refuse funds for the support of armies, till ample securities had been

This wise policy was followed in our country alone. In the neighbouring kingdoms great military

establishments were formed; no new safeguards for public liberty were devised; and the consequence was,

that the old parliamentary institutions everywhere ceased to exist. In France, where they had always been

feeble, they languished, and at length died of mere weakness. In Spain, where they had been as strong as in

any part of Europe, they struggled fiercely for life, but struggled too late. The mechanics of Toledo and

Valladolid vainly defended the privileges of the Castilian Cortes against the veteran battalions of Charles the

Fifth. As vainly, in the next generation, did the citizens of Saragossa stand up against Philip the Second, for

the old constitution of Aragon. One after another, the great national councils of the continental monarchies,

councils once scarcely less proud and powerful than those which sate at Westminster, sank into utter

insignificance. If they met, they met merely as our Convocation now meets, to go through some venerable

In England events took a different course. This singular felicity she owed chiefly to her insular situation.

Before the end of the fifteenth century great military establishments were indispensable to the dignity, and

even to the safety, of the French and Castilian monarchies. If either of those two powers had disarmed, it

would soon have been compelled to submit to the dictation of the other. But England, protected by the sea

against invasion, and rarely engaged in warlike operations on the Continent, was not, as yet, under the

necessity of employing regular troops. The sixteenth century, the seventeenth century, found her still without

a standing army. At the commencement of the seventeenth century political science had made considerable

progress. The fate of the Spanish Cortes and of the French States General had given solemn warning to our

Parliaments; and our Parliaments, fully aware of the nature and magnitude of the danger, adopted, in good

time, a system of tactics which, after a contest protracted through three generations, was at length successful

Almost every writer who has treated of that contest has been desirous to show that his own party was the

party which was struggling to preserve the old constitution unaltered. The truth however is that the old

constitution could not be preserved unaltered. A law, beyond the control of human wisdom, had decreed that

there should no longer be governments of that peculiar class which, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,

had been common throughout Europe. The question, therefore, was not whether our polity should undergo a

change, but what the nature of the change should be. The introduction of a new and mighty force had

disturbed the old equilibrium, and had turned one limited monarchy after another into an absolute monarchy.

What had happened elsewhere would assuredly have happened here, unless the balance had been redressed

by a great transfer of power from the crown to the parliament. Our princes were about to have at their

command means of coercion such as no Plantagenet or Tudor had ever possessed. They must inevitably have

become despots, unless they had been, at the same time, placed under restraints to which no Plantagenet or

It seems certain, therefore, that, had none but political causes been at work, the seventeenth century would

not have passed away without a fierce conflict between our Kings and their Parliaments. But other causes of

perhaps greater potency contributed to produce the same effect. While the government of the Tudors was in

its highest vigour an event took place which has coloured the destinies of all Christian nations, and in an

especial manner the destinies of England. Twice during the middle ages the mind of Europe had risen up

against the domination of Rome. The first insurrection broke out in the south of France. The energy of

Innocent the Third, the zeal of the young orders of Francis and Dominic, and the ferocity of the Crusaders

whom the priesthood let loose on an unwarlike population, crushed the Albigensian churches. The second

reformation had its origin in England, and spread to Bohemia. The Council of Constance, by removing some

ecclesiastical disorders which had given scandal to Christendom, and the princes of Europe, by unsparingly

using fire and sword against the heretics, succeeded in arresting and turning back the movement. Nor is this

much to be lamented. The sympathies of a Protestant, it is true, will naturally be on the side of the

Albigensians and of the Lollards. Yet an enlightened and temperate Protestant will perhaps be disposed to

doubt whether the success, either of the Albigensians or of the Lollards, would, on the whole, have promoted

the happiness and virtue of mankind. Corrupt as the Church of Rome was, there is reason to believe that, if

that Church had been overthrown in the twelfth or even in the fourteenth century, the vacant space would

have been occupied by some system more corrupt still. There was then, through the greater part of Europe,

very little knowledge; and that little was confined to the clergy. Not one man in five hundred could have

spelled his way through a psalm. Books were few and costly. The art of printing was unknown. Copies of the

Bible, inferior in beauty and clearness to those which every cottager may now command, sold for prices

which many priests could not afford to give. It was obviously impossible that the laity should search the

Scriptures for themselves. It is probable therefore, that, as soon as they had put off one spiritual yoke, they

would have put on another, and that the power lately exercised by the clergy of the Church of Rome would

have passed to a far worse class of teachers. The sixteenth century was comparatively a time of light. Yet

even in the sixteenth century a considerable number of those who quitted the old religion followed the first

confident and plausible guide who offered himself, and were soon led into errors far more serious than those

which they had renounced. Thus Matthias and Kniperdoling, apostles of lust, robbery, and murder, were able

for a time to rule great cities. In a darker age such false prophets might have founded empires; and

Christianity might have been distorted into a cruel and licentious superstition, more noxious, not only than

About a hundred years after the rising of the Council of Constance, that great change emphatically called the

Reformation began. The fulness of time was now come. The clergy were no longer the sole or the chief

depositories of knowledge The invention of printing had furnished the assailants of the Church with a mighty

weapon which had been wanting to their predecessors. The study of the ancient writers, the rapid

development of the powers of the modern languages, the unprecedented activity which was displayed in

every department of literature, the political state of Europe, the vices of the Roman court, the exactions of the

Roman chancery, the jealousy with which the wealth and privileges of the clergy were naturally regarded by

laymen, the jealousy with which the Italian ascendency was naturally regarded by men born on our side of the

Alps, all these things gave to the teachers of the new theology an advantage which they perfectly understood

Those who hold that the influence of the Church of Rome in the dark ages was, on the whole, beneficial to

mankind, may yet with perfect consistency regard the Reformation as an inestimable blessing. The leading

strings, which preserve and uphold the infant, would impede the fullgrown man. And so the very means by

which the human mind is, in one stage of its progress, supported and propelled, may, in another stage, be

mere hindrances. There is a season in the life both of an individual and of a society, at which submission and

faith, such as at a later period would be justly called servility and credulity, are useful qualities. The child

who teachably and undoubtingly listens to the instructions of his elders is likely to improve rapidly. But the

man who should receive with childlike docility every assertion and dogma uttered by another man no wiser

than himself would become contemptible. It is the same with communities. The childhood of the European

nations was passed under the tutelage of the clergy. The ascendancy of the sacerdotal order was long the

ascendancy which naturally and properly belongs to intellectual superiority. The priests, with all their faults,

were by far the wisest portion of society. It was, therefore, on the whole, good that they should be respected

and obeyed. The encroachments of the ecclesiastical power on the province of the civil power produced much

more happiness than misery, while the ecclesiastical power was in the hands of the only class that had studied

history, philosophy, and public law, and while the civil power was in the hands of savage chiefs, who could

not read their own grants and edicts. But a change took place. Knowledge gradually spread among laymen.

At the commencement of the sixteenth century many of them were in every intellectual attainment fully equal

to the most enlightened of their spiritual pastors. Thenceforward that dominion, which, during the dark ages,

had been, in spite of many abuses, a legitimate and salutary guardianship, became an unjust and noxious

From the time when the barbarians overran the Western Empire to the time of the revival of letters, the

influence of the Church of Rome had been generally favourable to science to civilisation, and to good

government. But, during the last three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has been her chief

object. Throughout Christendom, whatever advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth, and

in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has everywhere been in inverse proportion to her power.

The loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her rule, been sunk in poverty, in political

servitude, and in intellectual torpor, while Protestant countries, once proverbial for sterility and barbarism,

have been turned by skill and industry into gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes and statesmen,

philosophers and poets. Whoever, knowing what Italy and Scotland naturally are, and what, four hundred

years ago, they actually were, shall now compare the country round Rome with the country round Edinburgh,

will be able to form some judgment as to the tendency of Papal domination. The descent of Spain, once the

first among monarchies, to the lowest depths of degradation, the elevation of Holland, in spite of many

natural disadvantages, to a position such as no commonwealth so small has ever reached, teach the same

lesson. Whoever passes in Germany from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant principality, in Switzerland from

a Roman Catholic to a Protestant canton, in Ireland from a Roman Catholic to a Protestant county, finds that

he has passed from a lower to a higher grade of civilisation. On the other side of the Atlantic the same law

prevails. The Protestants of the United States have left far behind them the Roman Catholics of Mexico, Peru,

and Brazil. The Roman Catholics of Lower Canada remain inert, while the whole continent round them is in a

ferment with Protestant activity and enterprise. The French have doubtless shown an energy and an

intelligence which, even when misdirected, have justly entitled them to be called a great people. But this

apparent exception, when examined, will be found to confirm. the rule; for in no country that is called Roman

Catholic, has the Roman Catholic Church, during several generations, possessed so little authority as in

France. The literature of France is justly held in high esteem throughout the world. But if we deduct from that

literature all that belongs to four parties which have been, on different grounds, in rebellion against the Papal

domination, all that belongs to the Protestants, all that belongs to the assertors of the Gallican liberties, all

that belongs to the Jansenists, and all that belongs to the philosophers, how much will be left?

It is difficult to say whether England owes more to the Roman Catholic religion or to the Reformation. For

the amalgamation of races and for the abolition of villenage, she is chiefly indebted to the influence which the

priesthood in the middle ages exercised over the laity. For political and intellectual freedom, and for all the

blessings which political and intellectual freedom have brought in their train, she is chiefly indebted to the

The struggle between the old and the new theology in our country was long, and the event sometimes seemed

doubtful. There were two extreme parties, prepared to act with violence or to suffer with stubborn resolution.

Between them lay, during a considerable time, a middle party, which blended, very illogically, but by no

means unnaturally, lessons learned in the nursery with the sermons of the modern evangelists, and, while

clinging with fondness to all observances, yet detested abuses with which those observances were closely

connected. Men in such a frame of mind were willing to obey, almost with thankfulness, the dictation of an

able ruler who spared them the trouble of judging for themselves, and, raising a firm and commanding voice

above the uproar of controversy, told them how to worship and what to believe. It is not strange, therefore,

that the Tudors should have been able to exercise a great influence on ecclesiastical affairs; nor is it strange

that their influence should, for the most part, have been exercised with a view to their own interest.

Henry the Eighth attempted to constitute an Anglican Church differing from the Roman Catholic Church on

the point of the supremacy, and on that point alone. His success in this attempt was extraordinary. The force

of his character, the singularly favourable situation in which he stood with respect to foreign powers, the

immense wealth which the spoliation of the abbeys placed at his disposal, and the support of that class which

still halted between two Opinions, enabled him to bid defiance to both the extreme parties, to burn as heretics

those who avowed the tenets of the Reformers, and to hang as traitors those who owned the authority of the

Pope. But Henry's system died with him. Had his life been prolonged, he would have found it difficult to

maintain a position assailed with equal fury by all who were zealous either for the new or for the old

opinions. The ministers who held the royal prerogatives in trust for his infant son could not venture to persist

in so hazardous a policy; nor could Elizabeth venture to return to it. It was necessary to make a choice. The

government must either submit to Rome, or must obtain the aid of the Protestants. The government and the

Protestants had only one thing in common, hatred of the Papal power. The English Reformers were eager to

go as far as their brethren on the Continent. They unanimously condemned as Antichristian numerous

dogmas and practices to which Henry had stubbornly adhered, and which Elizabeth reluctantly abandoned.

Many felt a strong repugnance even to things indifferent which had formed part of the polity or ritual of the

mystical Babylon. Thus Bishop Hooper, who died manfully at Gloucester for his religion, long refused to

wear the episcopal vestments. Bishop Ridley, a martyr of still greater renown, pulled down the ancient altars

of his diocese, and ordered the Eucharist to be administered in the middle of churches, at tables which the

Papists irreverently termed oyster boards. Bishop Jewel pronounced the clerical garb to be a stage dress, a

fool's coat, a relique of the Amorites, and promised that he would spare no labour to extirpate such degrading

absurdities. Archbishop Grindal long hesitated about accepting a mitre from dislike of what he regarded as

the mummery of consecration. Bishop Parkhurst uttered a fervent prayer that the Church of England would

propose to herself the Church of Zurich as the absolute pattern of a Christian community. Bishop Ponet was

of opinion that the word Bishop should be abandoned to the Papists, and that the chief officers of the purified

church should be called Superintendents. When it is considered that none of these prelates belonged to the

extreme section of the Protestant party, it cannot be doubted that, if the general sense of that party had been

followed. the work of reform would have been carried on as unsparingly in England as in Scotland.

But, as the government needed the support of the protestants, so the Protestants needed the protection of the

government. Much was therefore given up on both sides: an union was effected; and the fruit of that union

To the peculiarities of this great institution, and to the strong passions which it has called forth in the minds

both of friends and of enemies, are to be attributed many of the most important events which have, since the

Reformation, taken place in our country; nor can the secular history of England be at all understood by us,

unless we study it in constant connection with the history of her ecclesiastical polity.

The man who took the chief part in settling the condition, of the alliance which produced the Anglican

Church was Archbishop Cranmer. He was the representative of both the parties which, at that time, needed

each other's assistance. He was at once a divine and a courtier. In his character of divine he was perfectly

ready to go as far in the way of change as any Swiss or Scottish Reformer. In his character of courtier he was

desirous to preserve that organisation which had, during many ages, admirably served the purposes of the

Bishops of Rome, and might be expected now to serve equally well the purposes of the English Kings and of

their ministers. His temper and his understanding, eminently fitted him to act as mediator. Saintly in his

professions, unscrupulous in his dealings, zealous for nothing, bold in speculation, a coward and a timeserver

in action, a placable enemy and a lukewarm friend, he was in every way qualified to arrange the terms of the

To this day the constitution, the doctrines, and the services of the Church, retain the visible marks of the

compromise from which she sprang. She occupies a middle position between the Churches of Rome and

Geneva. Her doctrinal confessions and discourses, composed by Protestants, set forth principles of theology

in which Calvin or Knox would have found scarcely a word to disapprove. Her prayers and thanksgivings,

derived from the ancient Breviaries, are very generally such that Cardinal Fisher or Cardinal Pole might have

heartily joined in them. A controversialist who puts an Arminian sense on her Articles and Homilies will be

pronounced by candid men to be as unreasonable as a controversialist who denies that the doctrine of

The Church of Rome held that episcopacy was of divine institution, and that certain supernatural graces of a

high order had been transmitted by the imposition of hands through fifty generations, from the Eleven who

received their commission on the Galilean mount, to the bishops who met at Trent. A large body of

Protestants, on the other hand, regarded prelacy as positively unlawful, and persuaded themselves that they

found a very different form of ecclesiastical government prescribed in Scripture. The founders of the

Anglican Church took a middle course. They retained episcopacy; but they did not declare it to be an

institution essential to the welfare of a Christian society, or to the efficacy of the sacraments. Cranmer,

indeed, on one important occasion, plainly avowed his conviction that, in the primitive times, there was no

distinction between bishops and priests, and that the laying on of hands was altogether superfluous.

Among the Presbyterians the conduct of public worship is, to a great extent, left to the minister. Their

prayers, therefore, are not exactly the same in any two assemblies on the same day, or on any two days in the

same assembly. In one parish they are fervent, eloquent, and full of meaning. In the next parish they may be

languid or absurd. The priests of the Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, have, during many

generations, daily chanted the same ancient confessions, supplications, and thanksgivings, in India and

Lithuania, in Ireland and Peru. The service, being in a dead language, is intelligible only to the learned; and

the great majority of the congregation may be said to assist as spectators rather than as auditors. Here, again,

the Church of England took a middle course. She copied the Roman Catholic forms of prayer, but translated

them into the vulgar tongue, and invited the illiterate multitude to join its voice to that of the minister.

In every part of her system the same policy may be traced. Utterly rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation,

and condemning as idolatrous all adoration paid to the sacramental bread and wine, she yet, to the disgust of

the Puritan, required her children to receive the memorials of divine love, meekly kneeling upon their knees.

Discarding many rich vestments which surrounded the altars of the ancient faith, she yet retained, to the

horror of weak minds, a robe of white linen, typical of the purity which belonged to her as the mystical

spouse of Christ. Discarding a crowd of pantomimic gestures which, in the Roman Catholic worship, are

substituted for intelligible words, she yet shocked many rigid Protestants by marking the infant just sprinkled

from the font with the sign of the cross. The Roman Catholic addressed his prayers to a multitude of Saints,

among whom were numbered many men of doubtful, and some of hateful, character. The Puritan refused the

addition of Saint even to the apostle of the Gentiles, and to the disciple whom Jesus loved. The Church of

England, though she asked for the intercession of no created being, still set apart days for the commemoration

of some who had done and suffered great things for the faith. She retained confirmation and ordination as

edifying rites; but she degraded them from the rank of sacraments. Shrift was no part of her system. Yet she

gently invited the dying penitent to confess his sins to a divine, and empowered her ministers to soothe the

departing soul by an absolution which breathes the very spirit of the old religion. In general it may be said

that she appeals more to the understanding , and less to the senses and the imagination, than the Church of

Rome, and that she appeals less to the understanding, and more to the senses and imagination, than the

Nothing, however, so strongly distinguished the Church of England from other Churches as the relation in

which she stood to the monarchy. The King was her head. The limits of the authority which he possessed, as

such, were not traced, and indeed have never yet been traced with precision. The laws which declared him

supreme in ecclesiastical matters were drawn rudely and in general terms. If, for the purpose of ascertaining

the sense of those laws, we examine the books and lives of those who founded the English Church, our

perplexity will be increased. For the founders of the English Church wrote and acted in an age of violent

intellectual fermentation, and of constant action and reaction. They therefore often contradicted each other

and sometimes contradicted themselves. That the King was, under Christ, sole head of the Church was a

doctrine which they all with one voice affirmed: but those words had very different significations in different

mouths, and in the same mouth at different conjunctures. Sometimes an authority which would have satisfied

Hildebrand was ascribed to the sovereign: then it dwindled down to an authority little more than that which

had been claimed by many ancient English princes who had been in constant communion with the Church of

Rome. What Henry and his favourite counsellors meant, at one time, by the supremacy, was certainly nothing

less than the whole power of the keys. The King was to be the Pope of his kingdom, the vicar of God, the

expositor of Catholic verity, the channel of sacramental graces. He arrogated to himself the right of deciding

dogmatically what was orthodox doctrine and what was heresy, of drawing up and imposing confessions of

faith, and of giving religious instruction to his people. He proclaimed that all jurisdiction, spiritual as well as

temporal, was derived from him alone, and that it was in his power to confer episcopal authority, and to take

it away. He actually ordered his seal to be put to commissions by which bishops were appointed, who were to

exercise their functions as his deputies, and during his pleasure. According to this system, as expounded by

Cranmer, the King was the spiritual as well as the temporal chief of the nation. In both capacities His

Highness must have lieutenants. As he appointed civil officers to keep his seal, to collect his revenues, and to

dispense justice in his name, so he appointed divines of various ranks to preach the gospel, and to administer

the sacraments. It was unnecessary that there should be any imposition of hands. The King,such was the

opinion of Cranmer given in the plainest words,might in virtue of authority derived from God, make a

priest; and the priest so made needed no ordination whatever. These opinions the Archbishop, in spite of the

opposition of less courtly divines, followed out to every legitimate consequence. He held that his own

spiritual functions, like the secular functions of the Chancellor and Treasurer, were at once determined by a

demise of the crown. When Henry died, therefore, the Primate and his suffragans took out fresh commissions,

empowering them to ordain and to govern the Church till the new sovereign should think fit to order

otherwise. When it was objected that a power to bind and to loose, altogether distinct from temporal power,

had been given by our Lord to his apostles, some theologians of this school replied that the power to bind and

to loose had descended, not to the clergy, but to the whole body of Christian men, and ought to be exercised

by the chief magistrate as the representative of the society. When it was objected that Saint Paul had spoken

of certain persons whom the Holy Ghost had made overseers and shepherds of the faithful, it was answered

that King Henry was the very overseer, the very shepherd whom the Holy Ghost had appointed, and to whom

These high pretensions gave scandal to Protestants as well as to Catholics; and the scandal was greatly

increased when the supremacy, which Mary had resigned back to the Pope, was again annexed to the crown,

on the accession of Elizabeth. It seemed monstrous that a woman should be the chief bishop of a Church in

which an apostle had forbidden her even to let her voice be heard. The Queen, therefore, found it necessary

expressly to disclaim that sacerdotal character which her father had assumed, and which, according to

Cranmer, had been inseparably joined, by divine ordinance, to the regal function. When the Anglican

confession of faith was revised in her reign, the supremacy was explained in a manner somewhat different

from that which had been fashionable at the court of Henry. Cranmer had declared, in emphatic terms, that

God had immediately committed to Christian princes the whole cure of all their subjects, as well concerning

the administration of God's word for the cure of souls, as concerning the administration of things political.4

The thirtyseventh article of religion, framed under Elizabeth, declares, in terms as emphatic, that the

ministering of God's word does not belong to princes. The Queen, however, still had over the Church a

visitatorial power of vast and undefined extent. She was entrusted by Parliament with the office of restraining

and punishing heresy and every sort of ecclesiastical abuse, and was permitted to delegate her authority to

commissioners. The Bishops were little more than her ministers. Rather than grant to the civil magistrate the

absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the Church of Rome, in the eleventh century, set all Europe

on fire. Rather than grant to the civil magistrate the absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors, the

ministers of the Church of Scotland, in our time, resigned their livings by hundreds. The Church of England

had no such scruples. By the royal authority alone her prelates were appointed. By the royal authority alone

her Convocations were summoned, regulated, prorogued, and dissolved. Without the royal sanction her

canons had no force. One of the articles of her faith was that without the royal consent no ecclesiastical

council could lawfully assemble. From all her judicatures an appeal lay, in the last resort, to the sovereign,

even when the question was whether an opinion ought to be accounted heretical, or whether the

administration of a sacrament had been valid. Nor did the Church grudge this extensive power to our princes.

By them she had been called into existence, nursed through a feeble infancy, guarded from Papists on one

side and from Puritans on the other, protected against Parliaments which bore her no good will, and avenged

on literary assailants whom she found it hard to answer. Thus gratitude, hope, fear, common attachments,

common enmities, bound her to the throne. All her traditions, all her tastes, were monarchical. Loyalty

became a point of professional honour among her clergy, the peculiar badge which distinguished them at

once from Calvinists and from Papists. Both the Calvinists and the Papists, widely as they differed in other

respects, regarded with extreme jealousy all encroachments of the temporal power on the domain of the

spiritual power. Both Calvinists and Papists maintained that subjects might justifiably draw the sword against

ungodly rulers. In France Calvinists resisted Charles the Ninth: Papists resisted Henry the Fourth: both

Papists and Calvinists resisted Henry the Third. In Scotland Calvinists led Mary captive. On the north of the

Trent Papists took arms against the English throne. The Church of England meantime condemned both

Calvinists and Papists, and loudly boasted that no duty was more constantly or earnestly inculcated by her

The advantages which the crown derived from this close alliance with the Established Church were great; but

they were not without serious drawbacks. The compromise arranged by Cranmer had from the first been

considered by a large body of Protestants as a scheme for serving two masters, as an attempt to unite the

worship of the Lord with the worship of Baal. In the days of Edward the Sixth the scruples of this party had

repeatedly thrown great difficulties in the way of the government. When Elizabeth came to the throne, those

difficulties were much increased. Violence naturally engenders violence. The spirit of Protestantism was

therefore far fiercer and more intolerant after the cruelties of Mary than before them. Many persons who were

warmly attached to the new opinions had, during the evil days, taken refuge in Switzerland and Germany.

They had been hospitably received by their brethren in the faith, had sate at the feet of the great doctors of

Strasburg, Zurich, and Geneva, and had been, during, some years, accustomed to a more simple worship, and

to a more democratical form of church government, than England had yet seen. These men returned to their

country convinced that the reform which had been effected under King Edward had been far less searching

and extensive than the interests of pure religion required. But it was in vain that they attempted to obtain any

concession from Elizabeth. Indeed her system, wherever it differed from her brother's, seemed to them to

differ for the worse. They were little disposed to submit, in matters of faith, to any human authority. They had

recently, in reliance on their own interpretation of Scripture, risen up against a Church strong in immemorial

antiquity and catholic consent. It was by no common exertion of intellectual energy that they had thrown off

the yoke of that gorgeous and imperial superstition; and it was vain to expect that, immediately after such an

emancipation, they would patiently submit to a new spiritual tyranny. Long accustomed, when the priest

lifted up the host, to bow down with their faces to the earth, as before a present God, they had learned to treat

the mass as an idolatrous mummery. Long accustomed to regard the Pope as the successor of the chief of the

apostles, as the bearer of the keys of earth and heaven, they had learned to regard him as the Beast, the

Antichrist, the Man of Sin. It was not to be expected that they would immediately transfer to an upstart

authority the homage which they had withdrawn from the Vatican; that they would submit their private

judgment to the authority of a Church founded on private judgment alone; that they would be afraid to dissent

from teachers who themselves dissented from what had lately been the universal faith of western

Christendom. It is easy to conceive the indignation which must have been felt by bold and inquisitive spirits,

glorying in newly acquired freedom, when an institution younger by many years than themselves, an

institution which had, under their own eyes, gradually received its form from the passions and interest of a

Since these men could not be convinced, it was determined that they should be persecuted. Persecution

produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect: it made them a faction. To their hatred of the

Church was now added hatred of the Crown. The two sentiments were intermingled; and each embittered the

other. The opinions of the Puritan concerning the relation of ruler and subject were widely different from

those which were inculcated in the Homilies. His favourite divines had, both by precept and by example,

encouraged resistance to tyrants and persecutors. His fellow Calvinists in France, in Holland, and in Scotland,

were in arms against idolatrous and cruel princes. His notions, too, respecting, the government of the state

took a tinge from his notions respecting the government of the Church. Some of the sarcasms which were

popularly thrown on episcopacy might, without much difficulty, be turned against royalty; and many of the

arguments which were used to prove that spiritual power was best lodged in a synod seemed to lead to the

Thus, as the priest of the Established Church was, from interest, from principle, and from passion, zealous for

the royal prerogatives, the Puritan was, from interest, from principle, and from passion, hostile to them. The

power of the discontented sectaries was great. They were found in every rank; but they were strongest among

the mercantile classes in the towns, and among the small proprietors in the country. Early in the reign of

Elizabeth they began to return a majority of the House of Commons. And doubtless had our ancestors been

then at liberty to fix their attention entirely on domestic questions, the strife between the Crown and the

Parliament would instantly have commenced. But that was no season for internal dissensions. It might,

indeed, well be doubted whether the firmest union among all the orders of the state could avert the common

danger by which all were threatened. Roman Catholic Europe and reformed Europe were struggling for death

or life. France divided against herself, had, for a time, ceased to be of any account in Christendom. The

English Government was at the head of the Protestant interest, and, while persecuting Presbyterians at home,

extended a powerful protection to Presbyterian Churches abroad. At the head of the opposite party was the

mightiest prince of the age, a prince who ruled Spain, Portugal, Italy, the East and the West Indies, whose

armies repeatedly marched to Paris, and whose fleets kept the coasts of Devonshire and Sussex in alarm. It

long seemed probable that Englishmen would have to fight desperately on English ground for their religion

and independence. Nor were they ever for a moment free from apprehensions of some great treason at home.

For in that age it had become a point of conscience and of honour with many men of generous natures to

sacrifice their country to their religion. A succession of dark plots, formed by Roman Catholics against the

life of the Queen and the existence of the nation, kept society in constant alarm. Whatever might be the faults

of Elizabeth, it was plain that, to speak humanly, the fate of the realm and of all reformed Churches was

staked on the security of her person and on the success of her administration. To strengthen her hands was,

therefore, the first duty of a patriot and a Protestant; and that duty was well performed. The Puritans, even in

the depths of the prisons to which she had sent them, prayed, and with no simulated fervour, that she might

be kept from the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion might be put down under her feet, and that her arms

might be victorious by sea and land. One of the most stubborn of the stubborn sect, immediately after his

hand had been lopped off for an offence into which he had been hurried by his intemperate zeal, waved his

hat with the hand which was still left him, and shouted "God save the Queen!" The sentiment with which

these men regarded her has descended to their posterity. The Nonconformists, rigorously as she treated them,

During the greater part of her reign, therefore, the Puritans in the House of Commons, though sometimes

mutinous, felt no disposition to array themselves in systematic opposition to the government. But, when the

defeat of the Armada, the successful resistance of the United Provinces to the Spanish power, the firm

establishment of Henry the Fourth on the throne of France, and the death of Philip the Second, had secured

the State and the Church against all danger from abroad, an obstinate struggle, destined to last during several

It was in the Parliament of 1601 that the opposition which had, during forty years, been silently gathering and

husbanding strength, fought its first great battle and won its first victory. The ground was well chosen. The

English Sovereigns had always been entrusted with the supreme direction of commercial police. It was their

undoubted prerogative to regulate coin, weights, and measures, and to appoint fairs, markets, and ports. The

line which bounded their authority over trade had, as usual, been but loosely drawn. They therefore, as usual,

encroached on the province which rightfully belonged to the legislature. The encroachment was, as usual,

patiently borne, till it became serious. But at length the Queen took upon herself to grant patents of monopoly

by scores. There was scarcely a family in the realm which did not feel itself aggrieved by the oppression and

extortion which this abuse naturally caused. Iron, oil, vinegar, coal, saltpetre, lead, starch, yarn, skins, leather,

glass, could be bought only at exorbitant prices. The House of Commons met in an angry and determined

mood. It was in vain that a courtly minority blamed the Speaker for suffering the acts of the Queen's

Highness to be called in question. The language of the discontented party was high and menacing, and was

echoed by the voice of the whole nation. The coach of the chief minister of the crown was surrounded by an

indignant populace, who cursed the monopolies, and exclaimed that the prerogative should not be suffered to

touch the old liberties of England. There seemed for a moment to be some danger that the long and glorious

reign of Elizabeth would have a shameful and disastrous end. She, however, with admirable judgment and

temper, declined the contest, put herself at the head of the reforming party, redressed the grievance, thanked

the Commons, in touching and dignified language, for their tender care of the general weal, brought back to

herself the hearts of the people, and left to her successors a memorable example of the way in which it

behoves a ruler to deal with public movements which he has not the means of resisting.

In the year 1603 the great Queen died. That year is, on many accounts, one of the most important epochs in

our history. It was then that both Scotland and Ireland became parts of the same empire with England. Both

Scotland and Ireland, indeed, had been subjugated by the Plantagenets; but neither country had been patient

under the yoke. Scotland had, with heroic energy, vindicated her independence, had, from the time of Robert

Bruce, been a separate kingdom, and was now joined to the southern part of the island in a manner which

rather gratified than wounded her national pride. Ireland had never, since the days of Henry the Second, been

able to expel the foreign invaders; but she had struggled against them long and fiercely. During, the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the English power in that island was constantly declining, and in the days of

Henry the Seventh, sank to the lowest point. The Irish dominions of that prince consisted only of the counties

of Dublin and Louth, of some parts of Meath and Kildare, and of a few seaports scattered along the coast. A

large portion even of Leinster was not yet divided into counties. Munster, Ulster, and Connaught were ruled

by petty sovereigns, partly Celts, and partly degenerate Normans, who had forgotten their origin and had

adopted the Celtic language and manners. But during the sixteenth century, the English power had made great

progress. The half savage chieftains who reigned beyond the pale had submitted one after another to the

lieutenants of the Tudors. At length, a few weeks before the death of Elizabeth, the conquest, which had been

begun more than four hundred years before by Strongbow, was completed by Mountjoy. Scarcely had James

the First mounted the English throne when the last O'Donnel and O'Neil who have held the rank of

independent princes kissed his hand at Whitehall. Thenceforward his writs ran and his judges held assizes in

every part of Ireland; and the English law superseded the customs which had prevailed among the aboriginal

In extent Scotland and Ireland were nearly equal to each other, and were together nearly equal to England,

but were much less thickly peopled than England, and were very far behind England in wealth and

civilisation. Scotland had been kept back by the sterility of her soil; and, in the midst of light, the thick

The population of Scotland, with the exception of the Celtic tribes which were thinly scattered over the

Hebrides and over the mountainous parts of the northern shires, was of the same blood with the population of

England, and spoke a tongue which did not differ from the purest English more than the dialects of

Somersetshire and Lancashire differed from each other. In Ireland, on the contrary, the population, with the

exception of the small English colony near the coast, was Celtic, and still kept the Celtic speech and manners.

In natural courage and intelligence both the nations which now became connected with England ranked high.

In perseverance, in selfcommand, in forethought, in all the virtues which conduce to success in life, the Scots

have never been surpassed. The Irish, on the other hand, were distinguished by qualities which tend to make

men interesting rather than prosperous. They were an ardent and impetuous race, easily moved to tears or to

laughter, to fury or to love. Alone among the nations of northern Europe they had the susceptibility, the

vivacity, the natural turn for acting and rhetoric, which are indigenous on the shores of the Mediterranean

Sea. In mental cultivation Scotland had an indisputable superiority. Though that kingdom was then the

poorest in Christendom, it already vied in every branch of learning with the most favoured countries.

Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food were as wretched as those of the Icelanders of our time, wrote

Latin verse with more than the delicacy of Vida, and made discoveries in science which would have added to

the renown of Galileo. Ireland could boast of no Buchanan or Napier. The genius, with which her aboriginal

inhabitants were largely endowed' showed itself as yet only in ballads which wild and rugged as they were,

seemed to the judging eye of Spenser to contain a portion of the pure gold of poetry.

Scotland, in becoming part of the British monarchy, preserved her dignity. Having, during many generations,

courageously withstood the English arms, she was now joined to her stronger neighbour on the most

honourable terms. She gave a King instead of receiving one. She retained her own constitution and laws. Her

tribunals and parliaments remained entirely independent of the tribunals and parliaments which sate at

Westminster. The administration of Scotland was in Scottish hands; for no Englishman had any motive to

emigrate northward, and to contend with the shrewdest and most pertinacious of all races for what was to be

scraped together in the poorest of all treasuries. Nevertheless Scotland by no means escaped the fate ordained

for every country which is connected, but not incorporated, with another country of greater resources.

Though in name an independent kingdom, she was, during more than a century, really treated, in many

Ireland was undisguisedly governed as a dependency won by the sword. Her rude national institutions had

perished. The English colonists submitted to the dictation of the mother country, without whose support they

could not exist, and indemnified themselves by trampling on the people among whom they had settled. The

parliaments which met at Dublin could pass no law which had not been previously approved by the English

Privy Council. The authority of the English legislature extended over Ireland. The executive administration

was entrusted to men taken either from England or from the English pale, and, in either case, regarded as

But the circumstance which, more than any other, has made Ireland to differ from Scotland remains to be

noticed. Scotland was Protestant. In no part of Europe had the movement of the popular mind against the

Roman Catholic Church been so rapid and violent. The Reformers had vanquished, deposed, and imprisoned

their idolatrous sovereign. They would not endure even such a compromise as had been effected in England.

They had established the Calvinistic doctrine, discipline, and worship; and they made little distinction

between Popery and Prelacy, between the Mass and the Book of Common Prayer. Unfortunately for

Scotland, the prince whom she sent to govern a fairer inheritance had been so much annoyed by the

pertinacity with which her theologians had asserted against him the privileges of the synod and the pulpit that

he hated the ecclesiastical polity to which she was fondly attached as much as it was in his effeminate nature

to hate anything, and had no sooner mounted the English throne than he began to show an intolerant zeal for

The Irish were the only people of northern Europe who had remained true to the old religion. This is to be

partly ascribed to the circumstance that they were some centuries behind their neighbours in knowledge. But

other causes had cooperated. The Reformation had been a national as well as a moral revolt. It had been, not

only an insurrection of the laity against the clergy, but also an insurrection of all the branches of the great

German race against an alien domination. It is a most significant circumstance that no large society of which

the tongue is not Teutonic has ever turned Protestant, and that, wherever a language derived from that of

ancient Rome is spoken, the religion of modern Rome to this day prevails. The patriotism of the Irish had

taken a peculiar direction. The object of their animosity was not Rome, but England; and they had especial

reason to abhor those English sovereigns who had been the chiefs of the great schism, Henry the Eighth and

Elizabeth. During the vain struggle which two generations of Milesian princes maintained against the Tudors,

religious enthusiasm and national enthusiasm became inseparably blended in the minds of the vanquished

race. The new feud of Protestant and Papist inflamed the old feud of Saxon and Celt. The English conquerors.

meanwhile, neglected all legitimate means of conversion. No care was taken to provide the vanquished nation

with instructors capable of making themselves understood. No translation of the Bible was put forth in the

Irish language. The government contented itself with setting up a vast hierarchy of Protestant archbishops,

bishops, and rectors, who did nothing, and who, for doing nothing, were paid out of the spoils of a Church

There was much in the state both of Scotland and of Ireland which might well excite the painful

apprehensions of a farsighted statesman. As yet, however, there was the appearance of tranquillity. For the

It should seem that the weight of England among European nations ought, from this epoch, to have greatly

increased. The territory which her new King governed was, in extent, nearly double that which Elizabeth had

inherited. His empire was the most complete within itself and the most secure from attack that was to be

found in the world. The Plantagenets and Tudors had been repeatedly under the necessity of defending

themselves against Scotland while they were engaged in continental war. The long conflict in Ireland had

been a severe and perpetual drain on their resources. Yet even under such disadvantages those sovereigns had

been highly considered throughout Christendom. It might, therefore, not unreasonably be expected that

England, Scotland, and Ireland combined would form a state second to none that then existed.

All such expectations were strangely disappointed. On the day of the accession of James the First, England

descended from the rank which she had hitherto held, and began to he regarded as a power hardly of the

second order. During many years the great British monarchy, under four successive princes of the House of

Stuart, was scarcely a more important member of the European system than the little kingdom of Scotland

had previously been. This, however, is little to be regretted. Of James the First, as of John, it may be said that,

if his administration had been able and splendid, it would probably have been fatal to our country, and that

we owe more to his weakness and meanness than to the wisdom and courage of much better sovereigns. He

came to the throne at a critical moment. The time was fast approaching when either the King must become

absolute, or the parliament must control the whole executive administration. Had James been, like Henry the

Fourth, like Maurice of Nassau, or like Gustavus Adolphus, a valiant, active, and politic ruler, had he put

himself at the head of the Protestants of Europe, had he gained great victories over Tilly and Spinola, had he

adorned Westminster with the spoils of Bavarian monasteries and Flemish cathedrals, had he hung Austrian

and Castilian banners in Saint Paul's, and had he found himself, after great achievements, at the head of fifty

thousand troops, brave, well disciplined, and devotedly attached to his person, the English Parliament would

soon have been nothing more than a name. Happily he was not a man to play such a part. He began his

administration by putting an end to the war which had raged during many years between England and Spain;

and from that time he shunned hostilities with a caution which was proof against the insults of his neighbours

and the clamours of his subjects. Not till the last year of his life could the influence of his son, his favourite,

his Parliament, and his people combined, induce him to strike one feeble blow in defence of his family and of

his religion. It was well for those whom he governed that he in this matter disregarded their wishes. The

effect of his pacific policy was that, in his time, no regular troops were needed, and that, while France, Spain,

Italy, Belgium, and Germany swarmed with mercenary soldiers, the defence of our island was still confided

As the King had no standing army, and did not even attempt to form one, it would have been wise in him to

avoid any conflict with his people. But such was his indiscretion that, while he altogether neglected the

means which alone could make him really absolute, he constantly put forward, in the most offensive form,

claims of which none of his predecessors had ever dreamed. It was at this time that those strange theories

which Filmer afterwards formed into a system and which became the badge of the most violent class of

Tories and high churchmen, first emerged into notice. It was gravely maintained that the Supreme Being

regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government, with peculiar favour; that the rule of

succession in order of primogeniture was a divine institution, anterior to the Christian, and even to the

Mosaic dispensation; that no human power, not even that of the whole legislature, no length of adverse

possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could deprive a legitimate prince of his rights, that the

authority of such a prince was necessarily always despotic; that the laws, by which, in England and in other

countries, the prerogative was limited, were to be regarded merely as concessions which the sovereign had

freely made and might at his pleasure resume; and that any treaty which a king might conclude with his

people was merely a declaration of his present intentions, and not a contract of which the performance could

be demanded. It is evident that this theory, though intended to strengthen the foundations of government,

altogether unsettles them. Does the divine and immutable law of primogeniture admit females, or exclude

them? On either supposition half the sovereigns of Europe must be usurpers, reigning in defiance of the law

of God, and liable to be dispossessed by the rightful heirs. The doctrine that kingly government is peculiarly

favoured by Heaven receives no countenance from the Old Testament; for in the Old Testament we read that

the chosen people were blamed and punished for desiring a king, and that they were afterwards commanded

to withdraw their allegiance from him. Their whole history, far from countenancing the notion that succession

in order of primogeniture is of divine institution, would rather seem to indicate that younger brothers are

under the especial protection of heaven. Isaac was not the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacob of Isaac, nor

Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse nor Solomon of David Nor does the system of Filmer receive any

countenance from those passages of the New Testament which describe government as an ordinance of God:

for the government under which the writers of the New Testament lived was not a hereditary monarchy. The

Roman Emperors were republican magistrates, named by the senate. None of them pretended to rule by right

of birth; and, in fact, both Tiberius, to whom Christ commanded that tribute should be given, and Nero,

whom Paul directed the Romans to obey, were, according to the patriarchal theory of government, usurpers.

In the middle ages the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right would have been regarded as heretical: for it

was altogether incompatible with the high pretensions of the Church of Rome. It was a doctrine unknown to

the founders of the Church of England. The Homily on Wilful Rebellion had strongly, and indeed too

strongly, inculcated submission to constituted authority, but had made no distinction between hereditary end

elective monarchies, or between monarchies and republics. Indeed most of the predecessors of James would,

from personal motives, have regarded the patriarchal theory of government with aversion. William Rufus,

Henry the First, Stephen, John, Henry the Fourth, Henry the Fifth, Henry the Sixth, Richard the Third, and

Henry the Seventh, had all reigned in defiance of the strict rule of descent. A grave doubt hung over the

legitimacy both of Mary and of Elizabeth. It was impossible that both Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn

could have been lawfully married to Henry the Eighth; and the highest authority in the realm had pronounced

that neither was so. The Tudors, far from considering the law of succession as a divine and unchangeable

institution, were constantly tampering with it. Henry the Eighth obtained an act of parliament, giving him

power to leave the crown by will, and actually made a will to the prejudice of the royal family of Scotland.

Edward the Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed a similar power, with the full approbation of the

most eminent Reformers. Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open to grave objection, and unwilling

to admit even a reversionary right in her rival and enemy the Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament to pass a

law, enacting that whoever should deny the competency of the reigning sovereign, with the assent of the

Estates of the realm, to alter the succession, should suffer death as a traitor: But the situation of James was

widely different from that of Elizabeth. Far inferior to her in abilities and in popularity, regarded by the

English as an alien, and excluded from the throne by the testament of Henry the Eighth, the King of Scots

was yet the undoubted heir of William the Conqueror and of Egbert. He had, therefore, an obvious interest in

inculcating the superstitions notion that birth confers rights anterior to law, and unalterable by law. It was a

notion, moreover, well suited to his intellect and temper. It soon found many advocates among those who

aspired to his favour, and made rapid progress among the clergy of the Established Church.

Thus, at the very moment at which a republican spirit began to manifest itself strongly in the Parliament and

in the country, the claims of the monarch took a monstrous form which would have disgusted the proudest

James was always boasting of his skill in what he called kingcraft; and yet it is hardly possible even to

imagine a course more directly opposed to all the rules of kingcraft, than that which he followed. The policy

of wise rulers has always been to disguise strong acts under popular forms. It was thus that Augustus and

Napoleon established absolute monarchies, while the public regarded them merely as eminent citizens

invested with temporary magistracies. The policy of James was the direct reverse of theirs. He enraged and

alarmed his Parliament by constantly telling them that they held their privileges merely during his pleasure

and that they had no more business to inquire what he might lawfully do than what the Deity might lawfully

do. Yet he quailed before them, abandoned minister after minister to their vengeance, and suffered them to

tease him into acts directly opposed to his strongest inclinations. Thus the indignation excited by his claims

and the scorn excited by his concessions went on growing together. By his fondness for worthless minions,

and by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny and rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive. His

cowardice, his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person, his provincial accent, made him an object of

derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments there was something eminently unkingly. Throughout the

whole course of his reign, all the venerable associations by which the throng had long been fenced were

gradually losing their strength. During two hundred years all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the

exception of Henry the Sixth, had been strongminded, highspirited, courageous, and of princely bearing.

Almost all had possessed abilities above the ordinary level. It was no light thing that on the very eve of the

decisive struggle between our Kings and their Parliaments, royalty should be exhibited to the world

stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and talking in the style

In the meantime the religious dissensions, by which, from the days of Edward the Sixth, the Protestant body

had been distracted, had become more formidable than ever. The interval which had separated the first

generation of Puritans from Cranmer and Jewel was small indeed when compared with the interval which

separated the third generation of Puritans from Laud and Hammond. While the recollection of Mary's

cruelties was still fresh, while the powers of the Roman Catholic party still inspired apprehension, while

Spain still retained ascendency and aspired to universal dominion, all the reformed sects knew that they had a

strong common interest and a deadly common enemy. The animosity which they felt towards each other was

languid when compared with the animosity which they all felt towards Rome. Conformists and

Nonconformists had heartily joined in enacting penal laws of extreme severity against the Papists. But when

more than half a century of undisturbed possession had given confidence to the Established Church, when

nine tenths of the nation had become heartily Protestant, when England was at peace with all the world, when

there was no danger that Popery would be forced by foreign arms on the nation, when the last confessors who

had stood before Bonner had passed away, a change took place in the feeling of the Anglican clergy. Their

hostility to the Roman Catholic doctrine and discipline was considerably mitigated. Their dislike of the

Puritans, on the other hand, increased daily. The controversies which had from the beginning divided the

Protestant party took such a form as made reconciliation hopeless; and new controversies of still greater

The founders of the Anglican Church had retained episcopacy as an ancient, a decent, and a convenient

ecclesiastical polity, but had not declared that form of church government to be of divine institution. We have

already seen how low an estimate Cranmer had formed of the office of a Bishop. In the reign of Elizabeth,

Jewel, Cooper, Whitgift, and other eminent doctors defended prelacy, as innocent, as useful, as what the state

might lawfully establish, as what, when established by the state, was entitled to the respect of every citizen.

But they never denied that a Christian community without a Bishop might be a pure Church.6 On the

contrary, they regarded the Protestants of the Continent as of the same household of faith with themselves.

Englishmen in England were indeed bound to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop, as they were bound

to acknowledge the authority of the Sheriff and of the Coroner: but the obligation was purely local. An

English churchman, nay even an English prelate, if he went to Holland, conformed without scruple to the

established religion of Holland. Abroad the ambassadors of Elizabeth and James went in state to the very

worship which Elizabeth and James persecuted at home, and carefully abstained from decorating their private

chapels after the Anglican fashion, lest scandal should be given to weaker brethren. An instrument is still

extant by which the Primate of all England, in the year 1582, authorised a Scotch minister, ordained,

according to the laudable forms of the Scotch Church, by the Synod of East Lothian, to preach and administer

the sacraments in any part of the province of Canterbury.7 In the year 1603, the Convocation solemnly

recognised the Church of Scotland, a Church in which episcopal control and episcopal ordination were then

unknown, as a branch of the Holy Catholic Church of Christ.8 It was even held that Presbyterian ministers

were entitled to place and voice in oecumenical councils. When the States General of the United Provinces

convoked at Dort a synod of doctors not episcopally ordained, an English Bishop and an English Dean,

commissioned by the head of the English Church, sate with those doctors, preached to them, and voted with

them on the gravest questions of theology.9 Nay, many English benefices were held by divines who had been

admitted to the ministry in the Calvinistic form used on the Continent; nor was reordination by a Bishop in

But a new race of divines was already rising in the Church of England. In their view the episcopal office was

essential to the welfare of a Christian society and to the efficacy of the most solemn ordinances of religion.

To that office belonged certain high and sacred privileges, which no human power could give or take away. A

church might as well be without the doctrine of the Trinity, or the doctrine of the Incarnation, as without the

apostolical orders; and the Church of Rome, which, in the midst of all her corruptions, had retained the

apostolical orders, was nearer to primitive purity than those reformed societies which had rashly set up, in

In the days of Edward the Sixth and of Elizabeth, the defenders of the Anglican ritual had generally contented

themselves with saying that it might be used without sin, and that, therefore, none but a perverse and

undutiful subject would refuse to use it when enjoined to do so by the magistrate. Now, however, that rising

party which claimed for the polity of the Church a celestial origin began to ascribe to her services a new

dignity and importance. It was hinted that, if the established worship had any fault, that fault was extreme

simplicity, and that the Reformers had, in the heat of their quarrel with Rome, abolished many ancient

ceremonies which might with advantage have been retained. Days and places were again held in mysterious

veneration. Some practices which had long been disused, and which were commonly regarded as

superstitious mummeries, were revived. Paintings and carvings, which had escaped the fury of the first

generation of Protestants, became the objects of a respect such as to many seemed idolatrous.

No part of the system of the old Church had been more detested by the Reformers than the honour paid to

celibacy. They held that the doctrine of Rome on this subject had been prophetically condemned by the

apostle Paul, as a doctrine of devils; and they dwelt much on the crimes and scandals which seemed to prove

the justice of this awful denunciation. Luther had evinced his own opinion in the clearest manner, by

espousing a nun. Some of the most illustrious bishops and priests who had died by fire during the reign of

Mary had left wives and children. Now, however, it began to be rumoured that the old monastic spirit had

reappeared in the Church of England; that there was in high quarters a prejudice against married priests; that

even laymen, who called themselves Protestants, had made resolutions of celibacy which almost amounted to

vows; nay, that a minister of the established religion had set up a nunnery, in which the psalms were chaunted

Nor was this all. A class of questions, as to which the founders of the Anglican Church and the first

generation of Puritans had differed little or not at all, began to furnish matter for fierce disputes. The

controversies which had divided the Protestant body in its infancy had related almost exclusively to Church

government and to ceremonies. There had been no serious quarrel between the contending parties on points

of metaphysical theology. The doctrines held by the chiefs of the hierarchy touching original sin, faith, grace,

predestination, and election, were those which are popularly called Calvinistic. Towards the close of

Elizabeth's reign her favourite prelate, Archbishop Whitgift, drew up, in concert with the Bishop of London

and other theologians, the celebrated instrument known by the name of the Lambeth Articles. In that

instrument the most startling of the Calvinistic doctrines are affirmed with a distinctness which would shock

many who, in our age, are reputed Calvinists. One clergyman, who took the opposite side, and spoke harshly

of Calvin, was arraigned for his presumption by the University of Cambridge, and escaped punishment only

by expressing his firm belief in the tenets of reprobation and final perseverance, and his sorrow for the

offence which he had given to pious men by reflecting on the great French reformer. The school of divinity of

which Hooker was the chief occupies a middle place between the school of Cranmer and the school of Laud;

and Hooker has, in modern times, been claimed by the Arminians as an ally. Yet Hooker pronounced Calvin

to have been a man superior in wisdom to any other divine that France had produced, a man to whom

thousands were indebted for the knowledge of divine truth, but who was himself indebted to God alone.

When the Arminian controversy arose in Holland, the English government and the English Church lent strong

support to the Calvinistic party; nor is the English name altogether free from the stain which has been left on

that party by the imprisonment of Grocius and the judicial murder of Barneveldt.

But, even before the meeting of the Dutch synod, that part of the Anglican clergy which was peculiarly

hostile to the Calvinistic Church government and to the Calvinistic worship had begun to regard with dislike

the Calvinistic metaphysics; and this feeling was very naturally strengthened by the gross injustice, insolence,

and cruelty of the party which was prevalent at Dort. The Arminian doctrine, a doctrine less austerely logical

than that of the early Reformers, but more agreeable to the popular notions of the divine justice and

benevolence, spread fast and wide. The infection soon reached the court. Opinions which at the time of the

accession of James, no clergyman could have avowed without imminent risk of being stripped of his gown,

were now the best title to preferment. A divine of that age, who was asked by a simple country gentleman

what the Arminians held, answered, with as much truth as wit, that they held all the best bishoprics and

While the majority of the Anglican clergy quitted, in one direction, the position which they had originally

occupied, the majority of the Puritan body departed, in a direction diametrically opposite, from the principles

and practices of their fathers. The persecution which the separatists had undergone had been severe enough to

irritate, but not severe enough to destroy. They had been, not tamed into submission, but baited into

savageness and stubborness. After the fashion of oppressed sects, they mistook their own vindictive feelings

for emotions of piety, encouraged in themselves by reading and meditation, a disposition to brood over their

wrongs, and, when they had worked themselves up into hating their enemies, imagined that they were only

hating the enemies of heaven. In the New Testament there was little indeed which, even when perverted by

the most disingenuous exposition, could seem to countenance the indulgence of malevolent passions. But the

Old Testament contained the history of a race selected by God to be witnesses of his unity and ministers of

his vengeance, and specially commanded by him to do many things which, if done without his special

command, would have been atrocious crimes. In such a history it was not difficult for fierce and gloomy

spirits to find much that might be distorted to suit their wishes. The extreme Puritans therefore began to feel

for the Old Testament a preference, which, perhaps, they did not distinctly avow even to themselves; but

which showed itself in all their sentiments and habits. They paid to the Hebrew language a respect which they

refused to that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus and the epistles of Paul have come down to us. They

baptized their children by the names, not of Christian saints, but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors. In

defiance of the express and reiterated declarations of Luther and Calvin, they turned the weekly festival by

which the Church had, from the primitive times, commemorated the resurrection of her Lord, into a Jewish

Sabbath. They sought for principles of jurisprudence in the Mosaic law, and for precedents to guide their

ordinary conduct in the books of Judges and Kings. Their thoughts and discourse ran much on acts which

were assuredly not recorded as examples for our imitation. The prophet who hewed in pieces a captive king,

the rebel general who gave the blood of a queen to the dogs, the matron who, in defiance of plighted faith,

and of the laws of eastern hospitality, drove the nail into the brain of the fugitive ally who had just fed at her

board, and who was sleeping under the shadow of her tent, were proposed as models to Christians suffering

under the tyranny of princes and prelates. Morals and manners were subjected to a code resembling that of

the synagogue, when the synagogue was in its worst state. The dress, the deportment, the language, the

studies, the amusements of the rigid sect were regulated on principles not unlike those of the Pharisees who,

proud of their washed hands and broad phylacteries, taunted the Redeemer as a sabbathbreaker and a

winebibber. It was a sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to drink a friend's health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a

stag, to play at chess, to wear lovelocks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch the virginals, to read the Fairy

Queen. Rules such as these, rules which would have appeared insupportable to the free and joyous spirit of

Luther, and contemptible to the serene and philosophical intellect of Zwingle, threw over all life a more than

monastic gloom. The learning and eloquence by which the great Reformers had been eminently

distinguished, and to which they had been, in no small measure, indebted for their success, were regarded by

the new school of Protestants with suspicion, if not with aversion. Some precisians had scruples about

teaching the Latin grammar, because the names of Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo occurred in it. The fine arts

were all but proscribed. The solemn peal of the organ was superstitious. The light music of Ben Jonson's

masques was dissolute. Half the fine paintings in England were idolatrous, and the other half indecent. The

extreme Puritan was at once known from other men by his gait, his garb, his lank hair, the sour solemnity of

his face, the upturned white of his eyes, the nasal twang with which he spoke, and above all, by his peculiar

dialect. He employed, on every occasion, the imagery and style of Scripture. Hebraisms violently introduced

into the English language, and metaphors borrowed from the boldest lyric poetry of a remote age and country,

and applied to the common concerns of English life, were the most striking peculiarities of this cant, which

Thus the political and religious schism which had originated in the sixteenth century was, during the first

quarter of the seventeenth century, constantly widening. Theories tending to Turkish despotism were in

fashion at Whitehall. Theories tending to republicanism were in favour with a large portion of the House of

Commons. The violent Prelatists who were, to a man, zealous for prerogative, and the violent Puritans who

were, to a man, zealous for the privileges of Parliament, regarded each other with animosity more intense

than that which, in the preceding generation, had existed between Catholics and Protestants.

While the minds of men were in this state, the country, after a peace of many years, at length engaged in a

war which required strenuous exertions. This war hastened the approach of the great constitutional crisis. It

was necessary that the King should have a large military force. He could not have such a force without

money. He could not legally raise money without the consent of Parliament. It followed, therefore, that he

either must administer the government in conformity with the sense of the House of Commons, or must

venture on such a violation of the fundamental laws of the land as had been unknown during several

centuries. The Plantagenets and the Tudors had, it is true, occasionally supplied a deficiency in their revenue

by a benevolence or a forced loan: but these expedients were always of a temporary nature. To meet the

regular charge of a long war by regular taxation, imposed without the consent of the Estates of the realm, was

a course which Henry the Eighth himself would not have dared to take. It seemed, therefore, that the decisive

hour was approaching, and that the English Parliament would soon either share the fate of the senates of the

Just at this conjuncture James died. Charles the First succeeded to the throne. He had received from nature a

far better understanding, a far stronger will, and a far keener and firmer temper than his father's. He had

inherited his father's political theories, and was much more disposed than his father to carry them into

practice. He was, like his father, a zealous Episcopalian. He was, moreover, what his father had never been, a

zealous Arminian, and, though no Papist, liked a Papist much better than a Puritan. It would be unjust to deny

that Charles had some of the qualities of a good, and even of a great prince. He wrote and spoke, not, like his

father, with the exactness of a professor, but after the fashion of intelligent and well educated gentlemen. His

taste in literature and art was excellent, his manner dignified, though not gracious, his domestic life without

blemish. Faithlessness was the chief cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory. He was, in

truth, impelled by an incurable propensity to dark and crooked ways. It may seem strange that his conscience,

which, on occasions of little moment, was sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached him with this

great vice. But there is reason to believe that he was perfidious, not only from constitution and from habit, but

also on principle. He seems to have learned from the theologians whom he most esteemed that between him

and his subjects there could be nothing of the nature of mutual contract; that he could not, even if he would,

divest himself of his despotic authority; and that, in every promise which he made, there was an implied

reservation that such promise might be broken in case of necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole

And now began that hazardous game on which were staked the destinies of the English people. It was played

on the side of the House of Commons with keenness, but with admirable dexterity, coolness, and

perseverance. Great statesmen who looked far behind them and far before them were at the head of that

assembly. They were resolved to place the King in such a situation that he must either conduct the

administration in conformity with the wishes of his Parliament, or make outrageous attacks on the most

sacred principles of the constitution. They accordingly doled out supplies to him very sparingly. He found

that he must govern either in harmony with the House of Commons or in defiance of all law. His choice was

soon made. He dissolved his first Parliament, and levied taxes by his own authority. He convoked a second

Parliament, and found it more intractable than the first. He again resorted to the expedient of dissolution,

raised fresh taxes without any show of legal right, and threw the chiefs of the opposition into prison At the

same time a new grievance, which the peculiar feelings and habits of the English nation made insupportably

painful, and which seemed to all discerning men to be of fearful augury, excited general discontent and

alarm. Companies of soldiers were billeted on the people; and martial law was, in some places, substituted for

The King called a third Parliament, and soon perceived that the opposition was stronger and fiercer than ever.

He now determined on a change of tactics. Instead of opposing an inflexible resistance to the demands of the

Commons, he, after much altercation and many evasions, agreed to a compromise which, if he had faithfully

adhered to it, would have averted a long series of calamities. The Parliament granted an ample supply. The

King ratified, in the most solemn manner, that celebrated law, which is known by the name of the Petition of

Right, and which is the second Great Charter of the liberties of England. By ratifying that law he bound

himself never again to raise. money without the consent of the Houses, never again to imprison any person,

except in due course of law, and never again to subject his people to the jurisdiction of courts martial.

The day on which the royal sanction was, after many delays, solemnly given to this great Act, was a day of

joy and hope. The Commons, who crowded the bar of the House of Lords, broke forth into loud acclamations

as soon as the clerk had pronounced the ancient form of words by which our princes have, during many ages,

signified their assent to the wishes of the Estates of the realm. Those acclamations were reechoed by the

voice of the capital and of the nation; but within three weeks it became manifest that Charles had no intention

of observing the compact into which he had entered. The supply given by the representatives of the nation

was collected. The promise by which that supply had been obtained was broken. A violent contest followed.

The Parliament was dissolved with every mark of royal displeasure. Some of the most distinguished members

were imprisoned; and one of them, Sir John Eliot, after years of suffering, died in confinement.

Charles, however, could not venture to raise, by his own authority, taxes sufficient for carrying on war. He

accordingly hastened to make peace with his neighbours, and thenceforth gave his whole mind to British

Now commenced a new era. Many English Kings had occasionally committed unconstitutional acts: but none

had ever systematically attempted to make himself a despot, and to reduce the Parliament to a nullity. Such

was the end which Charles distinctly proposed to himself. From March 1629 to April 1640, the Houses were

not convoked. Never in our history had there been an interval of eleven years between Parliament and

Parliament. Only once had there been an interval of even half that length. This fact alone is sufficient to

refute those who represent Charles as having merely trodden in the footsteps of the Plantagenets and Tudors.

It is proved, by the testimony of the King's most strenuous supporters, that, during this part of his reign, the

provisions of the Petition of Right were violated by him, not occasionally, but constantly, and on system; that

a large part of the revenue was raised without any legal authority; and that persons obnoxious to the

government languished for years in prison, without being ever called upon to plead before any tribunal.

For these things history must hold the King himself chiefly responsible. From the time of his third Parliament

he was his own prime minister. Several persons, however, whose temper and talents were suited to his

Thomas Wentworth, successively created Lord Wentworth and Earl of Strafford, a man of great abilities,

eloquence, and courage, but of a cruel and imperious nature, was the counsellor most trusted in political and

military affairs. He had been one of the most distinguished members of the opposition, and felt towards those

whom he had deserted that peculiar malignity which has, in all ages, been characteristic of apostates. He

perfectly understood the feelings, the resources, and the policy of the party to which he had lately belonged,

and had formed a vast and deeply meditated scheme which very nearly confounded even the able tactics of

the statesmen by whom the House of Commons had been directed. To this scheme, in his confidential

correspondence, he gave the expressive name of Thorough. His object was to do in England all, and more

than all, that Richelieu was doing in France; to make Charles a monarch as absolute as any on the Continent;

to put the estates and the personal liberty of the whole people at the disposal of the crown; to deprive the

courts of law of all independent authority, even in ordinary questions of civil right between man and man;

and to punish with merciless rigour all who murmured at the acts of the government, or who applied, even in

the most decent and regular manner, to any tribunal for relief against those acts.12

This was his end; and he distinctly saw in what manner alone this end could be attained. There was, in truth,

about all his notions a clearness, a coherence, a precision, which, if he had not been pursuing an object

pernicious to his country and to his kind, would have justly entitled him to high admiration. He saw that there

was one instrument, and only one, by which his vast and daring projects could be carried into execution. That

instrument was a standing army. To the forming of such an army, therefore, he directed all the energy of his

strong mind. In Ireland, where he was viceroy, he actually succeeded in establishing a military despotism, not

only over the aboriginal population, but also over the English colonists, and was able to boast that, in that

The ecclesiastical administration was, in the meantime, principally directed by William Laud, Archbishop of

Canterbury. Of all the prelates of the Anglican Church, Laud had departed farthest from the principles of the

Reformation, and had drawn nearest to Rome. His theology was more remote than even that of the Dutch

Arminians from the theology of the Calvinists. His passion for ceremonies, his reverence for holidays, vigils,

and sacred places, his ill concealed dislike of the marriage of ecclesiastics, the ardent and not altogether

disinterested zeal with which he asserted the claims of the clergy to the reverence of the laity, would have

made him an object of aversion to the Puritans, even if he had used only legal and gentle means for the

attainment of his ends. But his understanding was narrow; and his commerce with the world had been small.

He was by nature rash, irritable, quick to feel for his own dignity, slow to sympathise with the sufferings of

others, and prone to the error, common in superstitious men, of mistaking his own peevish and malignant

moods for emotions of pious zeal. Under his direction every corner of the realm was subjected to a constant

and minute inspection. Every little congregation of separatists was tracked out and broken up. Even the

devotions of private families could not escape the vigilance of his spies. Such fear did his rigour inspire that

the deadly hatred of the Church, which festered in innumerable bosoms, was generally disguised under an

outward show of conformity. On the very eve of troubles, fatal to himself and to his order, the Bishops of

several extensive dioceses were able to report to him that not a single dissenter was to be found within their

The tribunals afforded no protection to the subject against the civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period.

The judges of the common law, holding their situations during the pleasure of the King, were scandalously

obsequious. Yet, obsequious as they were, they were less ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary

power than a class of courts, the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than two centuries, held in

deep abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among these courts in power and in infamy were the Star Chamber

and the High Commission, the former a political, the latter a religious inquisition. Neither was a part of the

old constitution of England. The Star Chamber had been remodelled, and the High Commission created, by

the Tudors. The power which these boards had possessed before the accession of Charles had been extensive

and formidable, but had been small indeed when compared with that which they now usurped. Guided chiefly

by the violent spirit of the primate, and free from the control of Parliament, they displayed a rapacity, a

violence, a malignant energy, which had been unknown to any former age. The government was able through

their instrumentality, to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without restraint. A separate council which sate

at York, under the presidency of Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act of prerogative, with

almost boundless power over the northern counties. All these tribunals insulted and defied the authority of

Westminster Hall, and daily committed excesses which the most distinguished Royalists have warmly

condemned. We are informed by Clarendon that there was hardly a man of note in the realm who had not

personal experience of the harshness and greediness of the Star Chamber, that the High Commission had so

conducted itself that it had scarce a friend left in the kingdom, and that the tyranny of the Council of York

The government of England was now, in all points but one, as despotic as that of France. But that one point

was all important. There was still no standing army. There was therefore, no security that the whole fabric of

tyranny might not be subverted in a single day; and, if taxes were imposed by the royal authority for the

support of an army, it was probable that there would be an immediate and irresistible explosion. This was the

difficulty which more than any other perplexed Wentworth. The Lord Keeper Finch, in concert with other

lawyers who were employed by the government, recommended an expedient which was eagerly adopted. The

ancient princes of England, as they called on the inhabitants of the counties near Scotland to arm and array

themselves for the defence of the border, had sometimes called on the maritime counties to furnish ships for

the defence of the coast. In the room of ships money had sometimes been accepted. This old practice it was

now determined, after a long interval, not only to revive but to extend. Former princes had raised shipmoney

only in time of war: it was now exacted in a time of profound peace. Former princes, even in the most

perilous wars, had raised shipmoney only along the coasts: it was now exacted from the inland shires. Former

princes had raised shipmoney only for the maritime defence of the country: It was now exacted, by the

admission of the Royalists themselves. With the object, not of maintaining a navy, but of furnishing the King

with supplies which might be increased at his discretion to any amount, and expended at his discretion for

The whole nation was alarmed and incensed. John Hampden, an opulent and well born gentleman of

Buckinghamshire, highly considered in his own neighbourhood, but as yet little known to the kingdom

generally, had the courage to step forward, to confront the whole power of the government, and take on

himself the cost and the risk of disputing the prerogative to which the King laid claim. The case was argued

before the judges in the Exchequer Chamber. So strong were the arguments against the pretensions of the

crown that, dependent and servile as the judges were, the majority against Hampden was the smallest

possible. Still there was a majority. The interpreters of the law had pronounced that one great and productive

tax might be imposed by the royal authority. Wentworth justly observed that it was impossible to vindicate

their judgment except by reasons directly leading to a conclusion which they had not ventured to draw. If

money might legally be raised without the consent of Parliament for the support of a fleet, it was not easy to

deny that money might, without consent of Parliament, be legally raised for the support of an army.

The decision of the judges increased the irritation of the people. A century earlier, irritation less serious

would have produced a general rising. But discontent did not now so readily as in an earlier age take the form

of rebellion. The nation had been long steadily advancing in wealth and in civilisation. Since the great

northern Earls took up arms against Elizabeth seventy years had elapsed; and during those seventy years there

had been no civil war. Never, during the whole existence of the English nation, had so long a period passed

without intestine hostilities. Men had become accustomed to the pursuits of peaceful industry, and,

This was the conjuncture at which the liberties of the nation were in the greatest peril. The opponents of the

government began to despair of the destiny of their country; and many looked to the American wilderness as

the only asylum in which they could enjoy civil and spiritual freedom. There a few resolute Puritans, who, in

the cause of their religion, feared neither the rage of the ocean nor the hardships of uncivilised life, neither the

fangs of savage beasts nor the tomahawks of more savage men, had built, amidst the primeval forests,

villages which are now great and opulent cities, but which have, through every change, retained some trace of

the character derived from their founders. The government regarded these infant colonies with aversion, and

attempted violently to stop the stream of emigration, but could not prevent the population of New England

from being largely recruited by stouthearted and Godfearing men from every part of the old England. And

now Wentworth exulted in the near prospect of Thorough. A few years might probably suffice for the

execution of his great design. If strict economy were observed, if all collision with foreign powers were

carefully avoided, the debts of the crown would be cleared off: there would be funds available for the support

of a large military force; and that force would soon break the refractory spirit of the nation.

At this crisis an act of insane bigotry suddenly changed the whole face of public affairs. Had the King been

wise, he would have pursued a cautious and soothing policy towards Scotland till he was master in the South.

For Scotland was of all his kingdoms that in which there was the greatest risk that a spark might produce a

flame, and that a flame might become a conflagration. Constitutional opposition, indeed, such as he had

encountered at Westminster, he had not to apprehend at Edinburgh. The Parliament of his northern kingdom

was a very different body from that which bore the same name in England. It was ill constituted: it was little

considered; and it had never imposed any serious restraint on any of his predecessors. The three Estates sate

in one house. The commissioners of the burghs were considered merely as retainers of the great nobles. No

act could be introduced till it had been approved by the Lords of Articles. a committee which was really,

though not in form, nominated by the crown. But, though the Scottish Parliament was obsequious, the

Scottish people had always been singularly turbulent and ungovernable. They had butchered their first James

in his bedchamber: they had repeatedly arrayed themselves in arms against James the Second; they had slain

James the Third on the field of battle: their disobedience had broken the heart of James the Fifth: they had

deposed and imprisoned Mary: they had led her son captive; and their temper was still as intractable as ever.

Their habits were rude and martial. All along the southern border, and all along the line between the

highlands and the lowlands, raged an incessant predatory war. In every part of the country men were

accustomed to redress their wrongs by the strong hand. Whatever loyalty the nation had anciently felt to the

Stuarts had cooled during their long absence. The supreme influence over the public mind was divided

between two classes of malecontents, the lords of the soil and the preachers; lords animated by the same spirit

which had often impelled the old Douglasses to withstand the royal house, and preachers who had inherited

the republican opinions and the unconquerable spirit of Knox. Both the national and religious feelings of the

population had been wounded. All orders of men complained that their country, that country which had, with

so much glory, defended her independence against the ablest and bravest Plantagenets, had, through the

instrumentality of her native princes, become in effect, though not in name, a province of England. In no part

of Europe had the Calvinistic doctrine and discipline taken so strong a hold on the public mind. The Church

of Rome was regarded by the great body of the people with a hatred which might justly be called ferocious;

and the Church of England, which seemed to be every day becoming more and more like the Church of

The government had long wished to extend the Anglican system over the whole island, and had already, with

this view, made several changes highly distasteful to every Presbyterian. One innovation, however, the most

hazardous of all, because it was directly cognisable by the senses of the common people, had not yet been

attempted. The public worship of God was still conducted in the manner acceptable to the nation. Now,

however, Charles and Laud determined to force on the Scots the English liturgy, or rather a liturgy which,

wherever it differed from that of England, differed, in the judgment of all rigid Protestants, for the worse.

To this step, taken in the mere wantonness of tyranny, and in criminal ignorance or more criminal contempt

of public feeling, our country owes her freedom. The first performance of the foreign ceremonies produced a

riot. The riot rapidly became a revolution. Ambition, patriotism, fanaticism, were mingled in one headlong

torrent. The whole nation was in arms. The power of England was indeed, as appeared some years later,

sufficient to coerce Scotland: but a large part of the English people sympathised with the religious feelings of

the insurgents; and many Englishmen who had no scruple about antiphonies and genuflexions, altars and

surplices, saw with pleasure the progress of a rebellion which seemed likely to confound the arbitrary projects

For the senseless freak which had produced these effects Wentworth is not responsible.15 It had, in fact,

thrown all his plans into confusion. To counsel submission, however, was not in his nature. An attempt was

made to put down the insurrection by the sword: but the King's military means and military talents were

unequal to the task. To impose fresh taxes on England in defiance of law, would, at this conjuncture, have

been madness. No resource was left but a Parliament; and in the spring of 1640 a Parliament was convoked.

The nation had been put into good humour by the prospect of seeing constitutional government restored, and

grievances redressed. The new House of Commons was more temperate and more respectful to the throne

than any which had sate since the death of Elizabeth. The moderation of this assembly has been highly

extolled by the most distinguished Royalists and seems to have caused no small vexation and disappointment

to the chiefs of the opposition: but it was the uniform practice of Charles, a practice equally impolitic and

ungenerous, to refuse all compliance with the desires of his people, till those desires were expressed in a

menacing tone. As soon as the Commons showed a disposition to take into consideration the grievances

under which the country had suffered during eleven years, the King dissolved the Parliament with every mark

Between the dissolution of this shortlived assembly and the meeting of that ever memorable body known by

the name of the Long Parliament, intervened a few months, during which the yoke was pressed down more

severely than ever on the nation, while the spirit of the nation rose up more angrily than ever against the

yoke. Members of the House of Commons were questioned by the Privy Council touching their parliamentary

conduct, and thrown into prison for refusing to reply. Shipmoney was levied with increased rigour. The Lord

Mayor and the Sheriffs of London were threatened with imprisonment for remissness in collecting the

payments. Soldiers were enlisted by force. Money for their support was exacted from their counties. Torture,

which had always been illegal, and which had recently been declared illegal even by the servile judges of that

Everything now depended on the event of the King's military operations against the Scots. Among his troops

there was little of that feeling which separates professional soldiers from the mass of a nation, and attaches

them to their leaders. His army, composed for the most part of recruits, who regretted the plough from which

they had been violently taken, and who were imbued with the religious and political sentiments then

prevalent throughout the country, was more formidable to himself than to the enemy. The Scots, encouraged

by the heads of the English opposition, and feebly resisted by the English forces, marched across the Tweed

and the Tyne, and encamped on the borders of Yorkshire. And now the murmurs of discontent swelled into

But the voice of Strafford was still for Thorough; and he even, in this extremity, showed a nature so cruel and

There was yet one last expedient which, as the King flattered himself, might save him from the misery of

facing another House of Commons. To the House of Lords he was less averse. The Bishops were devoted to

him; and though the temporal peers were generally dissatisfied with his administration, they were, as a class,

so deeply interested in the maintenance of order, and in the stability of ancient institutions, that they were not

likely to call for extensive reforms. Departing from the uninterrupted practice of centuries, he called a Great

Council consisting of Lords alone. But the Lords were too prudent to assume the unconstitutional functions

with which he wished to invest them. Without money, without credit, without authority even in his own

camp, he yielded to the pressure of necessity. The Houses were convoked; and the elections proved that,

since the spring, the distrust and hatred with which the government was regarded had made fearful progress.

In November, 1640, met that renowned Parliament which, in spite of many errors and disasters, is justly

entitled to the reverence and gratitude of all who, in any part of the world. enjoy the blessings of

During the year which followed, no very important division of opinion appeared in the Houses. The civil and

ecclesiastical administration had, through a period of nearly twelve years, been so oppressive and so

unconstitutional that even those classes of which the inclinations are generally on the side of order and

authority were eager to promote popular reforms and to bring the instruments of tyranny to justice. It was

enacted that no interval of more than three years should ever elapse between Parliament and Parliament, and

that, if writs under the Great Seal were not issued at the proper time, the returning officers should, without

such writs, call the constituent bodies together for the choice of representatives. The Star Chamber, the High

Commission, the Council of York were swept away. Men who, after suffering cruel mutilations, had been

confined in remote dungeons, regained their liberty. On the chief ministers of the crown the vengeance of the

nation was unsparingly wreaked. The Lord Keeper, the Primate, the Lord Lieutenant were impeached. Finch

saved himself by flight. Laud was flung into the Tower. Strafford was put to death by act of attainder. On the

day on which this act passed, the King gave his assent to a law by which he bound himself not to adjourn,

After ten months of assiduous toil, the Houses, in September 1641, adjourned for a short vacation; and the

King visited Scotland. He with difficulty pacified that kingdom by consenting, not only to relinquish his

plans of ecclesiastical reform, but even to pass, with a very bad grace, an act declaring that episcopacy was

The recess of the English Parliament lasted six weeks. The day on which the Houses met again is one of the

most remarkable epochs in our history. From that day dates the corporate existence of the two great parties

which have ever since alternately governed the country. In one sense, indeed, the distinction which then

became obvious had always existed, and always must exist. For it has its origin in diversities of temper, of

understanding, and of interest, which are found in all societies, and which will be found till the human mind

ceases to be drawn in opposite directions by the charm of habit and by the charm of novelty. Not only in

politics but in literature, in art, in science, in surgery and mechanics, in navigation and agriculture, nay, even

in mathematics, we find this distinction. Everywhere there is a class of men who cling with fondness to

whatever is ancient, and who, even when convinced by overpowering reasons that innovation would be

beneficial, consent to it with many misgivings and forebodings. We find also everywhere another class of

men, sanguine in hope, bold in speculation, always pressing forward, quick to discern the imperfections of

whatever exists, disposed to think lightly of the risks and inconveniences which attend improvements and

disposed to give every change credit for being an improvement. In the sentiments of both classes there is

something to approve. But of both the best specimens will be found not far from the common frontier. The

extreme section of one class consists of bigoted dotards: the extreme section of the other consists of shallow

There can be no doubt that in our very first Parliaments might have been discerned a body of members

anxious to preserve, and a body eager to reform. But, while the sessions of the legislature were short, these

bodies did not take definite and permanent forms, array themselves under recognised leaders, or assume

distinguishing names, badges, and war cries. During the first months of the Long Parliament, the indignation

excited by many years of lawless oppression was so strong and general that the House of Commons acted as

one man. Abuse after abuse disappeared without a struggle. If a small minority of the representative body

wished to retain the Star Chamber and the High Commission, that minority, overawed by the enthusiasm and

by the numerical superiority of the reformers, contented itself with secretly regretting institutions which could

not, with any hope of success, be openly defended. At a later period the Royalists found it convenient to

antedate the separation between themselves and their opponents, and to attribute the Act which restrained the

King from dissolving or proroguing the Parliament, the Triennial Act, the impeachment of the ministers, and

the attainder of Strafford, to the faction which afterwards made war on the King. But no artifice could be

more disingenuous. Every one of those strong measures was actively promoted by the men who were

afterward foremost among the Cavaliers. No republican spoke of the long misgovernment of Charles more

severely than Colepepper. The most remarkable speech in favour of the Triennial Bill was made by Digby.

The impeachment of the Lord Keeper was moved by Falkland. The demand that the Lord Lieutenant should

be kept close prisoner was made at the bar of the Lords by Hyde. Not till the law attainting Strafford was

proposed did the signs of serious disunion become visible. Even against that law, a law which nothing but

extreme necessity could justify, only about sixty members of the House of Commons voted. It is certain that

Hyde was not in the minority, and that Falkland not only voted with the majority, but spoke strongly for the

bill. Even the few who entertained a scruple about inflicting death by a retrospective enactment thought it

necessary to express the utmost abhorrence of Strafford's character and administration.

But under this apparent concord a great schism was latent; and when, in October, 1641, the Parliament

reassembled after a short recess, two hostile parties, essentially the same with those which, under different

names, have ever since contended, and are still contending, for the direction of public affairs, appeared

confronting each other. During some years they were designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They were

subsequently called Tories and Whigs; nor does it seem that these appellations are likely soon to become

It would not be difficult to compose a lampoon or panegyric on either of these renowned factions. For no man

not utterly destitute of judgment and candor will deny that there are many deep stains on the fame of the party

to which he belongs, or that the party to which he is opposed may justly boast of many illustrious names, of

many heroic actions, and of many great services rendered to the state. The truth is that, though both parties

have often seriously erred, England could have spared neither. If, in her institutions, freedom and order, the

advantages arising from innovation and the advantages arising from prescription, have been combined to an

extent elsewhere unknown, we may attribute this happy peculiarity to the strenuous conflicts and alternate

victories of two rival confederacies of statesmen, a confederacy zealous for authority and antiquity, and a

It ought to be remembered that the difference between the two great sections of English politicians has

always been a difference rather of degree than of principle. There were certain limits on the right and on the

left, which were very rarely overstepped. A few enthusiasts on one side were ready to lay all our laws and

franchises at the feet of our Kings. A few enthusiasts on the other side were bent on pursuing, through endless

civil troubles, their darling phantom of a republic. But the great majority of those who fought for the crown

were averse to despotism; and the great majority of the champions of popular rights were averse to anarchy.

Twice, in the course of the seventeenth century, the two parties suspended their dissensions, and united their

strength in a common cause. Their first coalition restored hereditary monarchy. Their second coalition

It is also to be noted that these two parties have never been the whole nation, nay, that they have never, taken

together, made up a majority of the nation. Between them has always been a great mass, which has not

steadfastly adhered to either, which has sometimes remained inertly neutral, and which has sometimes

oscillated to and fro. That mass has more than once passed in a few years from one extreme to the other, and

back again. Sometimes it has changed sides, merely because it was tired of supporting the same men,

sometimes because it was dismayed by its own excesses, sometimes because it had expected impossibilities,

and had been disappointed. But whenever it has leaned with its whole weight in either direction, that weight

When the rival parties first appeared in a distinct form, they seemed to be not unequally matched. On the side

of the government was a large majority of the nobles, and of those opulent and well descended gentlemen to

whom nothing was wanting of nobility but the name. These, with the dependents whose support they could

command, were no small power. in the state. On the same side were the great body of the clergy, both the

Universities, and all those laymen who were strongly attached to episcopal government and to the Anglican

ritual. These respectable classes found themselves in the company of some allies much less decorous than

themselves. The Puritan austerity drove to the king's faction all who made pleasure their business, who

affected gallantry, splendour of dress, or taste in the higher arts. With these went all who live by amusing the

leisure of others, from the painter and the comic poet, down to the ropedancer and the Merry Andrew. For

these artists well knew that they might thrive under a superb and luxurious despotism, but must starve under

the rigid rule of the precisians. In the same interest were the Roman Catholics to a man. The Queen, a

daughter of France, was of their own faith. Her husband was known to be strongly attached to her, and not a

little in awe of her. Though undoubtedly a Protestant on conviction, he regarded the professors of the old

religion with no illwill, and would gladly have granted them a much larger toleration than he was disposed

to concede to the Presbyterians. If the opposition obtained the mastery, it was probable that the sanguinary

laws enacted against Papists in the reign of Elizabeth, would be severely enforced. The Roman Catholics

were therefore induced by the strongest motives to espouse the cause of the court. They in general acted with

a caution which brought on them the reproach of cowardice and lukewarmness; but it is probable that, in

maintaining great reserve, they consulted the King's interest as well as their own. It was not for his service

The main strength of the opposition lay among the small freeholders in the country, and among the merchants

and shopkeepers of the towns. But these were headed by a formidable minority of the aristocracy, a minority

which included the rich and powerful Earls of Northumberland, Bedford, Warwick, Stamford, and Essex, and

several other Lords of great wealth and influence. In the same ranks was found the whole body of Protestant

Nonconformists, and most of those members of the Established Church who still adhered to the Calvinistic

opinions which, forty years before, had been generally held by the prelates and clergy. The municipal

corporations took, with few exceptions, the same side. In the House of Commons the opposition

Neither party wanted strong arguments for the course which it was disposed to take. The reasonings of the

most enlightened Royalists may be summed up thus:"It is true that great abuses have existed; but they have

been redressed. It is true that precious rights have been invaded; but they have been vindicated and

surrounded with new securities. The sittings of the Estates of the realm have been, in defiance of all

precedent and of the spirit of the constitution, intermitted during eleven years; but it has now been provided

that henceforth three years shall never elapse without a Parliament. The Star Chamber the High Commission,

the Council of York, oppressed end plundered us; but those hateful courts have now ceased to exist. The Lord

Lieutenant aimed at establishing military despotism; but he has answered for his treason with his head. The

Primate tainted our worship with Popish rites and punished our scruples with Popish cruelty; but he is

awaiting in the Tower the judgment of his peers. The Lord Keeper sanctioned a plan by which the property of

every man in England was placed at the mercy of the Crown; but he has been disgraced, ruined, and

compelled to take refuge in a foreign land. The ministers of tyranny have expiated their crimes. The victims

of tyranny have been compensated for their sufferings. It would therefore be most unwise to persevere further

in that course which was justifiable and necessary when we first met, after a long interval, and found the

whole administration one mass of abuses. It is time to take heed that we do not so pursue our victory over

despotism as to run into anarchy. It was not in our power to overturn the bad institutions which lately

afflicted our country, without shocks which have loosened the foundations of government. Now that those

institutions have fallen, we must hasten to prop the edifice which it was lately our duty to batter. Henceforth

it will be our wisdom to look with jealousy on schemes of innovation, and to guard from encroachment all the

Such were the views of those men of whom the excellent Falkland may be regarded as the leader. It was

contended on the other side with not less force, by men of not less ability and virtue, that the safety which the

liberties of the English people enjoyed was rather apparent than real, and that the arbitrary projects of the

court would be resumed as soon as the vigilance of the Commons was relaxed. True it was,such was the

reasoning of Pym, of Hollis, and of Hampdenthat many good laws had been passed: but, if good laws had

been sufficient to restrain the King, his subjects would have had little reason ever to complain of his

administration. The recent statutes were surely not of more authority than the Great Charter or the Petition of

Right. Yet neither the Great Charter, hallowed by the veneration of four centuries, nor the Petition of Right,

sanctioned, after mature reflection, and for valuable consideration, by Charles himself, had been found

effectual for the protection of the people. If once the check of fear were withdrawn, if once the spirit of

opposition were suffered to slumber, all the securities for English freedom resolved themselves into a single

one, the royal word; and it had been proved by a long and severe experience that the royal word could not be

The two parties were still regarding each other with cautious hostility, and had not yet measured their

strength, when news arrived which inflamed the passions and confirmed the opinions of both. The great

chieftains of Ulster, who, at the time of the accession of James, had, after a long struggle, submitted to the

royal authority, had not long brooked the humiliation of dependence. They had conspired against the English

government, and had been attainted of treason. Their immense domains had been forfeited to the crown, and

had soon been peopled by thousands of English and Scotch emigrants. The new settlers were, in civilisation

and intelligence, far superior to the native population, and sometimes abused their superiority. The animosity

produced by difference of race was increased by difference of religion. Under the iron rule of Wentworth,

scarcely a murmur was heard: but, when that strong pressure was withdrawn, when Scotland had set the

example of successful resistance, when England was distracted by internal quarrels, the smothered rage of the

Irish broke forth into acts of fearful violence. On a sudden, the aboriginal population rose on the colonists. A

war, to which national and theological hatred gave a character of peculiar ferocity, desolated Ulster, and

spread to the neighbouring provinces. The castle of Dublin was scarcely thought secure. Every post brought

to London exaggerated accounts of outrages which, without any exaggeration. were sufficient to move pity

end horror. These evil tidings roused to the height the zeal of both the great parties which were marshalled

against each other at Westminster. The Royalists maintained that it was the first duty of every good

Englishman and Protestant, at such a crisis, to strengthen the hands of the sovereign. To the opposition it

seemed that there were now stronger reasons than ever for thwarting and restraining him. That the

commonwealth was in danger was undoubtedly a good reason for giving large powers to a trustworthy

magistrate: but it was a good reason for taking away powers from a magistrate who was at heart a public

enemy. To raise a great army had always been the King's first object. A great army must now be raised. It

was to be feared that, unless some new securities were devised, the forces levied for the reduction of Ireland

would be employed against the liberties of England. Nor was this all. A horrible suspicion, unjust indeed, but

not altogether unnatural, had arisen in many minds. The Queen was an avowed Roman Catholic: the King

was not regarded by the Puritans, whom he had mercilessly persecuted, as a sincere Protestant; and so

notorious was his duplicity, that there was no treachery of which his subjects might not, with some show of

reason, believe him capable. It was soon whispered that the rebellion of the Roman Catholics of Ulster was

After some weeks of prelude, the first great parliamentary conflict between the parties, which have ever since

contended, and are still contending, for the government of the nation, took place on the twentysecond of

November, 1641. It was moved by the opposition, that the House of Commons should present to the King a

remonstrance, enumerating the faults of his administration from the time of his accession, and expressing the

distrust with which his policy was still regarded by his people. That assembly, which a few months before

had been unanimous in calling for the reform of abuses, was now divided into two fierce and eager factions

of nearly equal strength. After a hot debate of many hours, the remonstrance was carried by only eleven

The result of this struggle was highly favourable to the conservative party. It could not be doubted that only

some great indiscretion could prevent them from shortly obtaining the predominance in the Lower House.

The Upper House was already their own. Nothing was wanting to ensure their success, but that the King

should, in all his conduct, show respect for the laws and scrupulous good faith towards his subjects.

His first measures promised well. He had, it seemed, at last discovered that an entire change of system was

necessary, and had wisely made up his mind to what could no longer be avoided. He declared his

determination to govern in harmony with the Commons, and, for that end, to call to his councils men in

whose talents and character the Commons might place confidence. Nor was the selection ill made. Falkland,

Hyde, and Colepepper, all three distinguished by the part which they had taken in reforming abuses and in

punishing evil ministers, were invited to become the confidential advisers of the Crown, and were solemnly

assured by Charles that he would take no step in any way affecting the Lower House of Parliament without

Had he kept this promise, it cannot be doubted that the reaction which was already in progress would very

soon have become quite as strong as the most respectable Royalists would have desired. Already the violent

members of the opposition had begun to despair of the fortunes of their party, to tremble for their own safety,

and to talk of selling their estates and emigrating to America. That the fair prospects which had begun to open

before the King were suddenly overcast, that his life was darkened by adversity, and at length shortened by

The truth seems to be that he detested both the parties into which the House of Commons was divided: nor is

this strange; for in both those parties the love of liberty and the love of order were mingled, though in

different proportions. The advisers whom necessity had compelled him to call round him were by no means

after his own heart. They had joined in condemning his tyranny, in abridging his power, and in punishing his

instruments. They were now indeed prepared to defend in a strictly legal way his strictly legal prerogative;

but they would have recoiled with horror from the thought of reviving Wentworth's projects of Thorough.

They were, therefore, in the King's opinion, traitors, who differed only in the degree of their seditious

He accordingly, a few days after he had promised the chiefs of the constitutional Royalists that no step of

importance should be taken without their knowledge, formed a resolution the most momentous of his whole

life, carefully concealed that resolution from them, and executed it in a manner which overwhelmed them

with shame and dismay. He sent the Attorney General to impeach Pym, Hollis, Hampden, and other members

of the House of Commons of high treason at the bar of the House of Lords. Not content with this flagrant

violation of the Great Charter and of the uninterrupted practice of centuries, he went in person, accompanied

by armed men, to seize the leaders of the opposition within the walls of Parliament.

The attempt failed. The accused members had left the House a short time before Charles entered it. A sudden

and violent revulsion of feeling, both in the Parliament and in the country, followed. The most favourable

view that has ever been taken of the King's conduct on this occasion by his most partial advocates is that he

had weakly suffered himself to be hurried into a gross indiscretion by the evil counsels of his wife and of his

courtiers. But the general voice loudly charged him with far deeper guilt. At the very moment at which his

subjects, after a long estrangement produced by his maladministration, were returning to him with feelings of

confidence and affection, he had aimed a deadly blow at all their dearest rights, at the privileges of

Parliament, at the very principle of trial by jury. He had shown that he considered opposition to his arbitrary

designs as a crime to be expiated only by blood. He had broken faith, not only with his Great Council and

with his people, but with his own adherents. He had done what, but for an unforeseen accident, would

probably have produced a bloody conflict round the Speaker's chair. Those who had the chief sway in the

Lower House now felt that not only their power and popularity, but their lands and their necks, were staked

on the event of the struggle in which they were engaged. The flagging zeal of the party opposed to the court

revived in an instant. During the night which followed the outrage the whole city of London was in arms. In a

few hours the roads leading to the capital were covered with multitudes of yeomen spurring hard to

Westminster with the badges of the parliamentary cause in their hats. In the House of Commons the

opposition became at once irresistible, and carried, by more than two votes to one, resolutions of

unprecedented violence. Strong bodies of the trainbands, regularly relieved, mounted guard round

Westminster Hall. The gates of the King's palace were daily besieged by a furious multitude whose taunts and

execrations were heard even in the presence chamber, and who could scarcely be kept out of the royal

apartments by the gentlemen of the household. Had Charles remained much longer in his stormy capital, it is

probable that the Commons would have found a plea for making him, under outward forms of respect, a state

He quitted London, never to return till the day of a terrible and memorable reckoning had arrived. A

negotiation began which occupied many months. Accusations and recriminations passed backward and

forward between the contending parties. All accommodation had become impossible. The sure punishment

which waits on habitual perfidy had at length overtaken the King. It was to no purpose that he now pawned

his royal word, and invoked heaven to witness the sincerity of his professions. The distrust with which his

adversaries regarded him was not to be removed by oaths or treaties. They were convinced that they could be

safe only when he was utterly helpless. Their demand, therefore, was, that he should surrender, not only those

prerogatives which he had usurped in violation of ancient laws and of his own recent promises, but also other

prerogatives which the English Kings had always possessed, and continue to possess at the present day. No

minister must be appointed, no peer created, without the consent of the Houses. Above all, the sovereign must

resign that supreme military authority which, from time beyond all memory, had appertained to the regal

That Charles would comply with such demands while he had any means of resistance, was not to be

expected. Yet it will be difficult to show that the Houses could safely have exacted less. They were truly in a

most embarrassing position. The great majority of the nation was firmly attached to hereditary monarchy.

Those who held republican opinions were as yet few, and did not venture to speak out. It was therefore

impossible to abolish kingly government. Yet it was plain that no confidence could be placed in the King. It

would have been absurd in those who knew, by recent proof, that he was bent on destroying them, to content

themselves with presenting to him another Petition of Right, and receiving from him fresh promises similar to

those which he had repeatedly made and broken. Nothing but the want of an army had prevented him from

entirely subverting the old constitution of the realm. It was now necessary to levy a great regular army for the

conquest of Ireland; and it would therefore have been mere insanity to leave him in possession of that

When a country is in the situation in which England then was, when the kingly office is regarded with love

and veneration, but the person who fills that office is hated and distrusted, it should seem that the course

which ought to be taken is obvious. The dignity of the office should be preserved: the person should be

discarded. Thus our ancestors acted in 1399 and in 1689. Had there been, in 1642, any man occupying a

position similar to that which Henry of Lancaster occupied at the time of the deposition of Richard the

Second, and which William of Orange occupied at the time of the deposition of James the Second, it is

probable that the Houses would have changed the dynasty, and would have made no formal change in the

constitution. The new King, called to the throne by their choice, and dependent on their support, would have

been under the necessity of governing in conformity with their wishes and opinions. But there was no prince

of the blood royal in the parliamentary party; and, though that party contained many men of high rank and

many men of eminent ability, there was none who towered so conspicously above the rest that he could be

proposed as a candidate for the crown. As there was to be a King, and as no new King could be found, it was

necessary to leave the regal title to Charles. Only one course, therefore, was left: and that was to disjoin the

The change which the Houses proposed to make in our institutions, though it seems exorbitant, when

distinctly set forth and digested into articles of capitulation, really amounts to little more than the change

which, in the next generation, was effected by the Revolution. It is true that, at the Revolution, the sovereign

was not deprived by law of the power of naming his ministers: but it is equally true that, since the Revolution,

no minister has been able to retain office six months in opposition to the sense of the House of Commons. It

is true that the sovereign still possesses the power of creating peers, and the more important power of the

sword: but it is equally true that in the exercise of these powers the sovereign has, ever since the Revolution,

been guided by advisers who possess the confidence of the representatives of the nation. In fact, the leaders

of the Roundhead party in 1642, and the statesmen who, about half a century later, effected the Revolution,

had exactly the same object in view. That object was to terminate the contest between the Crown and the

Parliament, by giving to the Parliament a supreme control over the executive administration. The statesmen

of the Revolution effected this indirectly by changing the dynasty. The Roundheads of 1642, being unable to

We cannot, however, wonder that the demands of the opposition, importing as they did a complete and

formal transfer to the Parliament of powers which had always belonged to the Crown, should have shocked

that great party of which the characteristics are respect for constitutional authority and dread of violent

innovation. That party had recently been in hopes of obtaining by peaceable means the ascendency in the

House of Commons; but every such hope had been blighted. The duplicity of Charles had made his old

enemies irreconcileable, had driven back into the ranks of the disaffected a crowd of moderate men who were

in the very act of coming over to his side, and had so cruelly mortified his best friends that they had for a time

stood aloof in silent shame and resentment. Now, however, the constitutional Royalists were forced to make

their choice between two dangers; and they thought it their duty rather to rally round a prince whose past

conduct they condemned, and whose word inspired them with little confidence, than to suffer the regal office

to be degraded, and the polity of the realm to be entirely remodelled. With such feelings, many men whose

virtues and abilities would have done honour to any cause, ranged themselves on the side of the King.

In August 1642 the sword was at length drawn; and soon, in almost every shire of the kingdom, two hostile

factions appeared in arms against each other. It is not easy to say which of the contending parties was at first

the more formidable. The Houses commanded London and the counties round London, the fleet, the

navigation of the Thames, and most of the large towns and seaports. They had at their disposal almost all the

military stores of the kingdom, and were able to raise duties, both on goods imported from foreign countries,

and on some important products of domestic industry. The King was ill provided with artillery and

ammunition. The taxes which he laid on the rural districts occupied by his troops produced, it is probable, a

sum far less than that which the Parliament drew from the city of London alone. He relied, indeed, chiefly,

for pecuniary aid, on the munificence of his opulent adherents. Many of these mortgaged their land, pawned

their jewels, and broke up their silver chargers and christening bowls, in order to assist him. But experience

has fully proved that the voluntary liberality of individuals, even in times of the greatest excitement, is a poor

financial resource when compared with severe and methodical taxation, which presses on the willing and

Charles, however, had one advantage, which, if he had used it well, would have more than compensated for

the want of stores and money, and which, notwithstanding his mismanagement, gave him, during some

months, a superiority in the war. His troops at first fought much better than those of the Parliament. Both

armies, it is true, were almost entirely composed of men who had never seen a field of battle. Nevertheless,

the difference was great. The Parliamentary ranks were filled with hirelings whom want and idleness had

induced to enlist. Hampden's regiment was regarded as one of the best; and even Hampden's regiment was

described by Cromwell as a mere rabble of tapsters and serving men out of place. The royal army, on the

other hand, consisted in great part of gentlemen, high spirited, ardent, accustomed to consider dishonour as

more terrible than death, accustomed to fencing, to the use of fire arms, to bold riding, and to manly and

perilous sport, which has been well called the image of war. Such gentlemen, mounted on their favourite

horses, and commanding little bands composed of their younger brothers, grooms, gamekeepers, and

huntsmen, were, from the very first day on which they took the field, qualified to play their part with credit in

a skirmish. The steadiness, the prompt obedience, the mechanical precision of movement, which are

characteristic of the regular soldier, these gallant volunteers never attained. But they were at first opposed to

enemies as undisciplined as themselves, and far less active, athletic, and daring. For a time, therefore, the

The Houses had also been unfortunate in the choice of a general. The rank and wealth of the Earl of Essex

made him one of the most important members of the parliamentary party. He had borne arms on the

Continent with credit, and, when the war began, had as high a military reputation as any man in the country.

But it soon appeared that he was unfit for the post of Commander in Chief. He had little energy and no

originality. The methodical tactics which he had learned in the war of the Palatinate did not save him from

the disgrace of being surprised and baffled by such a Captain as Rupert, who could claim no higher fame than

Nor were the officers who held the chief commissions under Essex qualified to supply what was wanting in

him. For this, indeed, the Houses are scarcely to be blamed. In a country which had not, within the memory

of the oldest person living, made war on a great scale by land, generals of tried skill and valour were not to be

found. It was necessary, therefore, in the first instance, to trust untried men; and the preference was naturally

given to men distinguished either by their station, or by the abilities which they had displayed in Parliament.

In scarcely a single instance, however, was the selection fortunate. Neither the grandees nor the orators

proved good soldiers. The Earl of Stamford, one of the greatest nobles of England, was routed by the

Royalists at Stratton. Nathaniel Fiennes, inferior to none of his contemporaries in talents for civil business,

disgraced himself by the pusillanimous surrender of Bristol. Indeed, of all the statesmen who at this juncture

accepted high military commands, Hampden alone appears to have carried into the camp the capacity and

When the war had lasted a year, the advantage was decidedly with the Royalists. They were victorious, both

in the western and in the northern counties. They had wrested Bristol, the second city in the kingdom, from

the Parliament. They had won several battles, and had not sustained a single serious or ignominious defeat.

Among the Roundheads adversity had begun to produce dissension and discontent. The Parliament was kept

in alarm, sometimes by plots, and sometimes by riots. It was thought necessary to fortify London against the

royal army, and to hang some disaffected citizens at their own doors. Several of the most distinguished peers

who had hitherto remained at Westminster fled to the court at Oxford; nor can it be doubted that, if the

operations of the Cavaliers had, at this season, been directed by a sagacious and powerful mind, Charles

But the King suffered the auspicious moment to pass away; and it never returned. In August 1643 he sate

down before the city of Gloucester. That city was defended by the inhabitants and by the garrison, with a

determination such as had not, since the commencement of the war, been shown by the adherents of the

Parliament. The emulation of London was excited. The trainbands of the City volunteered to march wherever

their services might be required. A great force was speedily collected, and began to move westward. The

siege of Gloucester was raised: the Royalists in every part of the kingdom were disheartened: the spirit of the

parliamentary party revived: and the apostate Lords, who had lately fled from Westminster to Oxford,

And now a new and alarming class of symptoms began to appear in the distempered body politic. There had

been, from the first, in the parliamentary party, some men whose minds were set on objects from which the

majority of that party would have shrunk with horror. These men were, in religion, Independents. They

conceived that every Christian congregation had, under Christ, supreme jurisdiction in things spiritual; that

appeals to provincial and national synods were scarcely less unscriptural than appeals to the Court of Arches,

or to the Vatican; and that Popery, Prelacy, and Presbyterianism were merely three forms of one great

apostasy. In politics, the Independents were, to use the phrase of their time, root and branch men, or, to use

the kindred phrase of our own time, radicals. Not content with limiting the power of the monarch, they were

desirous to erect a commonwealth on the ruins of the old English polity. At first they had been

inconsiderable, both in numbers and in weight; but before the war had lasted two years they became, not

indeed the largest, but the most powerful faction in the country. Some of the old parliamentary leaders had

been removed by death; and others had forfeited the public confidence. Pym had been borne, with princely

honours, to a grave among the Plantagenets. Hampden had fallen, as became him, while vainly endeavouring,

by his heroic example, to inspire his followers with courage to face the fiery cavalry of Rupert. Bedford had

been untrue to the cause. Northumberland was known to be lukewarm. Essex and his lieutenants had shown

little vigour and ability in the conduct of military operations. At such a conjuncture it was that the

Independent party, ardent, resolute, and uncompromising, began to raise its head, both in the camp and in the

The soul of that party was Oliver Cromwell. Bred to peaceful occupations, he had, at more than forty years of

age, accepted a commission in the parliamentary army. No sooner had he become a soldier than he discerned,

with the keen glance of genius, what Essex, and men like Essex, with all their experience, were unable to

perceive. He saw precisely where the strength of the Royalists lay, and by what means alone that strength

could be overpowered. He saw that it was necessary to reconstruct the army of the Parliament. He saw also

that there were abundant and excellent materials for the purpose, materials less showy, indeed, but more

solid, than those of which the gallant squadrons of the King were composed. It was necessary to look for

recruits who were not mere mercenaries, for recruits of decent station and grave character, fearing God and

zealous for public liberty. With such men he filled his own regiment, and, while he subjected them to a

discipline more rigid than had ever before been known in England, he administered to their intellectual and

The events of the year 1644 fully proved the superiority of his abilities. In the south, where Essex held the

command, the parliamentary forces underwent a succession of shameful disasters; but in the north the victory

of Marston Moor fully compensated for all that had been lost elsewhere. That victory was not a more serious

blow to the Royalists than to the party which had hitherto been dominant at Westminster, for it was notorious

that the day, disgracefully lost by the Presbyterians, had been retrieved by the energy of Cromwell, and by the

These events produced the Selfdenying Ordinance and the new model of the army. Under decorous pretexts,

and with every mark of respect, Essex and most of those who had held high posts under him were removed;

and the conduct of the war was intrusted to very different hands. Fairfax, a brave soldier, but of mean

understanding and irresolute temper, was the nominal Lord General of the forces; but Cromwell was their real

Cromwell made haste to organise the whole army on the same principles on which he had organised his own

regiment. As soon as this process was complete, the event of the war was decided. The Cavaliers had now to

encounter natural courage equal to their own, enthusiasm stronger than their own, and discipline such as was

utterly wanting to them. It soon became a proverb that the soldiers of Fairfax and Cromwell were men of a

different breed from the soldiers of Essex. At Naseby took place the first great encounter between the

Royalists and the remodelled army of the Houses. The victory of the Roundheads was complete and decisive.

It was followed by other triumphs in rapid succession. In a few months the authority of the Parliament was

fully established over the whole kingdom. Charles fled to the Scots, and was by them, in a manner which did

While the event of the war was still doubtful, the Houses had put the Primate to death, had interdicted, within

the sphere of their authority, the use of the Liturgy, and had required all men to subscribe that renowned

instrument known by the name of the Solemn League and Covenant. Covenanting work, as it was called,

went on fast. Hundreds of thousands affixed their names to the rolls, and, with hands lifted up towards

heaven, swore to endeavour, without respect of persons, the extirpation of Popery and Prelacy, heresy and

schism, and to bring to public trial and condign punishment all who should hinder the reformation of religion.

When the struggle was over, the work of innovation and revenge was pushed on with increased ardour. The

ecclesiastical polity of the kingdom was remodelled. Most of the old clergy were ejected from their benefices.

Fines, often of ruinous amount, were laid on the Royalists, already impoverished by large aids furnished to

the King. Many estates were confiscated. Many proscribed Cavaliers found it expedient to purchase, at an

enormous cost, the projection of eminent members of the victorious party. Large domains, belonging to the

crown, to the bishops, and to the chapters, were seized, and either granted away or put up to auction. In

consequence of these spoliations, a great part of the soil of England was at once offered for sale. As money

was scarce, as the market was glutted, as the title was insecure and as the awe inspired by powerful bidders

prevented free competition, the prices were often merely nominal. Thus many old and honourable families

disappeared and were heard of no more; and many new men rose rapidly to affluence.

But, while the Houses were employing their authority thus, it suddenly passed out of their hands. It had been

obtained by calling into existence a power which could not be controlled. In the summer of 1647, about

twelve months after the last fortress of the Cavaliers had submitted to the Parliament, the Parliament was

Thirteen years followed, during which England was, under various names and forms, really governed by the

sword. Never before that time, or since that time, was the civil power in our country subjected to military

The army which now became supreme in the state was an army very different from any that has since been

seen among us. At present the pay of the common soldier is not such as can seduce any but the humblest class

of English labourers from their calling. A barrier almost impassable separates him from the commissioned

officer. The great majority of those who rise high in the service rise by purchase. So numerous and extensive

are the remote dependencies of England, that every man who enlists in the line must expect to pass many

years in exile, and some years in climates unfavourable to the health and vigour of the European race. The

army of the Long Parliament was raised for home service. The pay of the private soldier was much above the

wages earned by the great body of the people; and, if he distinguished himself by intelligence and courage, he

might hope to attain high commands. The ranks were accordingly composed of persons superior in station

and education to the multitude. These persons, sober, moral, diligent, and accustomed to reflect, had been

induced to take up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by the love of novelty and license, not by the arts of

recruiting officers, but by religious and political zeal, mingled with the desire of distinction and promotion.

The boast of the soldiers, as we find it recorded in their solemn resolutions, was that they had not been forced

into the service, nor had enlisted chiefly for the sake of lucre. That they were no janissaries, but freeborn

Englishmen, who had, of their own accord, put their lives in jeopardy for the liberties and religion of

England, and whose right and duty it was to watch over the welfare of the nation which they had saved.

A force thus composed might, without injury to its efficiency, be indulged in some liberties which, if allowed

to any other troops, would have proved subversive of all discipline. In general, soldiers who should form

themselves into political clubs, elect delegates, and pass resolutions on high questions of state, would soon

break loose from all control, would cease to form an army, and would become the worst and most dangerous

of mobs. Nor would it be safe, in our time, to tolerate in any regiment religious meetings, at which a corporal

versed in Scripture should lead the devotions of his less gifted colonel, and admonish a backsliding major.

But such was the intelligence, the gravity, and the selfcommand of the warriors whom Cromwell had trained,

that in their camp a political organisation and a religious organisation could exist without destroying military

organisation. The same men, who, off duty, were noted as demagogues and field preachers, were

distinguished by steadiness, by the spirit of order, and by prompt obedience on watch, on drill, and on the

In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn courage characteristic of the English people was, by

the system of Cromwell, at once regulated and stimulated. Other leaders have maintained orders as strict.

Other leaders have inspired their followers with zeal as ardent. But in his camp alone the most rigid discipline

was found in company with the fiercest enthusiasm. His troops moved to victory with the precision of

machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism of Crusaders. From the time when the army was

remodelled to the time when it was disbanded, it never found, either in the British islands or on the Continent,

an enemy who could stand its onset. In England, Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often

surrounded by difficulties, sometimes contending against threefold odds, not only never failed to conquer, but

never failed to destroy and break in pieces whatever force was opposed to them. They at length came to

regard the day of battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the most renowned battalions of

Europe with disdainful confidence. Turenne was startled by the shout of stern exultation with which his

English allies advanced to the combat, and expressed the delight of a true soldier, when he learned that it was

ever the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen to rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy; and the banished

Cavaliers felt an emotion of national pride, when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered by

foes and abandoned by friends, drive before it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain, and force a

passage into a counterscarp which had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the Marshals of

But that which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from other armies was the austere morality and

the fear of God which pervaded all ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists that, in that

singular camp, no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that, during the long dominion

of the soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizen and the honour of woman were held sacred. If outrages

were committed, they were outrages of a very different kind from those of which a victorious army is

generally guilty. No servant girl complained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats. Not an ounce of plate was

taken from the shops of the goldsmiths. But a Pelagian sermon, or a window on which the Virgin and Child

were painted, produced in the Puritan ranks an excitement which it required the utmost exertions of the

officers to quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficulties was to restrain his musketeers and dragoons from

invading by main force the pulpits of ministers whose discourses, to use the language of that time, were not

savoury; and too many of our cathedrals still bear the marks of the hatred with which those stern spirits

To keep down the English people was no light task even for that army. No sooner was the first pressure of

military tyranny felt, than the nation, unbroken to such servitude, began to struggle fiercely. Insurrections

broke out even in those counties which, during the recent war, had been the most submissive to the

Parliament. Indeed, the Parliament itself abhorred its old defenders more than its old enemies, and was

desirous to come to terms of accommodation with Charles at the expense of the troops. In Scotland at the

same time, a coalition was formed between the Royalists and a large body of Presbyterians who regarded the

doctrines of the Independents with detestation. At length the storm burst. There were risings in Norfolk,

Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Wales. The fleet in the Thames suddenly hoisted the royal colours, stood out to sea, and

menaced the southern coast. A great Scottish force crossed the frontier and advanced into Lancashire. It

might well be suspected that these movements were contemplated with secret complacency by a majority

But the yoke of the army was not to be so shaken off. While Fairfax suppressed the risings in the

neighbourhood of the capital, Oliver routed the Welsh insurgents, and, leaving their castles in ruins, marched

against the Scots. His troops were few, when compared with the invaders; but he was little in the habit of

counting his enemies. The Scottish army was utterly destroyed. A change in the Scottish government

followed. An administration, hostile to the King, was formed at Edinburgh; and Cromwell, more than ever

And now a design, to which, at the commencement of the civil war, no man would have dared to allude, and

which was not less inconsistent with the Solemn League and Covenant than with the old law of England,

began to take a distinct form. The austere warriors who ruled the nation had, during some months, meditated

a fearful vengeance on the captive King. When and how the scheme originated; whether it spread from the

general to the ranks, or from the ranks to the general; whether it is to be ascribed to policy using fanaticism as

a tool, or to fanaticism bearing down policy with headlong impulse, are questions which, even at this day,

cannot be answered with perfect confidence. It seems, however, on the whole, probable that he who seemed

to lead was really forced to follow, and that, on this occasion, as on another great occasion a few years later,

he sacrificed his own judgment and his own inclinations to the wishes of the army. For the power which he

had called into existence was a power which even he could not always control; and, that he might ordinarily

command, it was necessary that he should sometimes obey. He publicly protested that he was no mover in the

matter, that the first steps had been taken without his privity, that he could not advise the Parliament to strike

the blow, but that he submitted his own feelings to the force of circumstances which seemed to him to

indicate the purposes of Providence. It has been the fashion to consider these professions as instances of the

hypocrisy which is vulgarly imputed to him. But even those who pronounce him a hypocrite will scarcely

venture to call him a fool. They are therefore bound to show that he had some purpose to serve by secretly

stimulating the army to take that course which he did not venture openly to recommend. It would be absurd to

suppose that he who was never by his respectable enemies represented as wantonly cruel or implacably

vindictive, would have taken the most important step of his life under the influence of mere malevolence. He

was far too wise a man not to know, when he consented to shed that august blood, that he was doing a deed

which was inexpiable, and which would move the grief and horror, not only of the Royalists, but of nine

tenths of those who had stood by the Parliament. Whatever visions may have deluded others, he was

assuredly dreaming neither of a republic on the antique pattern, nor of the millennial reign of the Saints. If he

already aspired to be himself the founder of a new dynasty, it was plain that Charles the First was a less

formidable competitor than Charles the Second would be. At the moment of the death of Charles the First the

loyalty of every Cavalier would be transferred, unimpaired, to Charles the Second. Charles the First was a

captive: Charles the Second would be at liberty. Charles the First was an object of suspicion and dislike to a

large proportion of those who yet shuddered at the thought of slaying him: Charles the Second would excite

all the interest which belongs to distressed youth and innocence. It is impossible to believe that

considerations so obvious, and so important, escaped the most profound politician of that age. The truth is

that Cromwell had, at one time, meant to mediate between the throne and the Parliament, and to reorganise

the distracted State by the power of the sword, under the sanction of the royal name. In this design he

persisted till he was compelled to abandon it by the refractory temper of the soldiers, and by the incurable

duplicity of the King. A party in the camp began to clamour for the head of the traitor, who was for treating

with Agag. Conspiracies were formed. Threats of impeachment were loudly uttered. A mutiny broke out,

which all the vigour and resolution of Oliver could hardly quell. And though, by a judicious mixture of

severity and kindness, he succeeded in restoring order, he saw that it would be in the highest degree difficult

and perilous to contend against the rage of warriors, who regarded the fallen tyrant as their foe, and as the foe

of their God. At the same time it became more evident than ever that the King could not be trusted. The vices

of Charles had grown upon him. They were, indeed, vices which difficulties and perplexities generally bring

out in the strongest light. Cunning is the natural defence of the weak. A prince, therefore, who is habitually a

deceiver when at the height of power, is not likely to learn frankness in the midst of embarrassments and

distresses. Charles was not only a most unscrupulous but a most unlucky dissembler. There never was a

politician to whom so many frauds and falsehoods were brought home by undeniable evidence. He publicly

recognised the Houses at Westminster as a legal Parliament, and, at the same time, made a private minute in

council declaring the recognition null. He publicly disclaimed all thought of calling in foreign aid against his

people: he privately solicited aid from France, from Denmark, and from Lorraine. He publicly denied that he

employed Papists: at the same time he privately sent to his generals directions to employ every Papist that

would serve. He publicly took the sacrament at Oxford, as a pledge that he never would even connive at

Popery. He privately assured his wife, that he intended to tolerate Popery in England; and he authorised Lord

Glamorgan to promise that Popery should be established in Ireland. Then he attempted to clear himself at his

agent's expense. Glamorgan received, in the Royal handwriting, reprimands intended to be read by others,

and eulogies which were to be seen only by himself. To such an extent, indeed, had insincerity now tainted

the King's whole nature, that his most devoted friends could not refrain from complaining to each other, with

bitter grief and shame, of his crooked politics. His defeats, they said, gave them less pain than his intrigues.

Since he had been a prisoner, there was no section of the victorious party which had not been the object both

of his flatteries and of his machinations; but never was he more unfortunate than when he attempted at once

Cromwell had to determine whether he would put to hazard the attachment of his party, the attachment of his

army, his own greatness, nay his own life, in an attempt which would probably have been vain, to save a

prince whom no engagement could bind. With many struggles and misgivings, and probably not without

many prayers, the decision was made. Charles was left to his fate. The military saints resolved that, in

defiance of the old laws of the realm, and of the almost universal sentiment of the nation, the King should

expiate his crimes with his blood. He for a time expected a death like that of his unhappy predecessors,

Edward the Second and Richard the Second. But he was in no danger of such treason. Those who had him in

their gripe were not midnight stabbers. What they did they did in order that it might be a spectacle to heaven

and earth, and that it might be held in everlasting remembrance. They enjoyed keenly the very scandal which

they gave. That the ancient constitution and the public opinion of England were directly opposed to regicide

made regicide seem strangely fascinating to a party bent on effecting a complete political and social

revolution. In order to accomplish their purpose, it was necessary that they should first break in pieces every

part of the machinery of the government; and this necessity was rather agreeable than painful to them. The

Commons passed a vote tending to accommodation with the King. The soldiers excluded the majority by

force. The Lords unanimously rejected the proposition that the King should be brought to trial. Their house

was instantly closed. No court, known to the law, would take on itself the office of judging the fountain of

justice. A revolutionary tribunal was created. That tribunal pronounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer,

and a public enemy; and his head was severed from his shoulders, before thousands of spectators, in front of

In no long time it became manifest that those political and religious zealots, to whom this deed is to be

ascribed, had committed, not only a crime, but an error. They had given to a prince, hitherto known to his

people chiefly by his faults, an opportunity of displaying, on a great theatre, before the eyes of all nations and

all ages, some qualities which irresistibly call forth the admiration and love of mankind, the high spirit of a

gallant gentleman, the patience and meekness of a penitent Christian. Nay, they had so contrived their

revenge that the very man whose life had been a series of attacks on the liberties of England now seemed to

die a martyr in the cause of those liberties. No demagogue ever produced such an impression on the public

mind as the captive King, who, retaining in that extremity all his regal dignity, and confronting death with

dauntless courage, gave utterance to the feelings of his oppressed people, manfully refused to plead before a

court unknown to the law, appealed from military violence to the principles of the constitution, asked by what

right the House of Commons had been purged of its most respectable members and the House of Lords

deprived of its legislative functions, and told his weeping hearers that he was defending, not only his own

cause, but theirs. His long misgovernment, his innumerable perfidies, were forgotten. His memory was, in the

minds of the great majority of his subjects, associated with those free institutions which he had, during many

years, laboured to destroy: for those free institutions had perished with him, and, amidst the mournful silence

of a community kept down by arms, had been defended by his voice alone. From that day began a reaction in

favour of monarchy and of the exiled house, reaction which never ceased till the throne had again been set up

At first, however, the slayers of the King seemed to have derived new energy from that sacrament of blood by

which they had bound themselves closely together, and separated themselves for ever from the great body of

their countrymen. England was declared a commonwealth. The House of Commons, reduced to a small

number of members, was nominally the supreme power in the state. In fact, the army and its great chief

governed everything. Oliver had made his choice. He had kept the hearts of his soldiers, and had broken with

almost every other class of his fellow citizens. Beyond the limits of his camps and fortresses he could

scarcely be said to have a party. Those elements of force which, when the civil war broke out, had appeared

arrayed against each other, were combined against him; all the Cavaliers, the great majority of the

Roundheads, the Anglican Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Roman Catholic Church, England, Scotland,

Ireland. Yet such, was his genius and resolution that he was able to overpower and crush everything that

crossed his path, to make himself more absolute master of his country than any of her legitimate Kings had

been, and to make his country more dreaded and respected than she had been during many generations under

England had already ceased to struggle. But the two other kingdoms which had been governed by the Stuarts

were hostile to the new republic. The Independent party was equally odious to the Roman Catholics of

Ireland and to the Presbyterians of Scotland. Both those countries, lately in rebellion against Charles the First,

But everything yielded to the vigour and ability of Cromwell. In a few months he subjugated Ireland, as

Ireland had never been subjugated during the five centuries of slaughter which had elapsed since the landing

of the first Norman settlers. He resolved to put an end to that conflict of races and religions which had so long

distracted the island, by making the English and Protestant population decidedly predominant. For this end he

gave the rein to the fierce enthusiasm of his followers, waged war resembling that which Israel waged on the

Canaanites, smote the idolaters with the edge of the sword, so that great cities were left without inhabitants,

drove many thousands to the Continent, shipped off many thousands to the West Indies, and supplied the

void thus made by pouring in numerous colonists, of Saxon blood, and of Calvinistic faith. Strange to say,

under that iron rule, the conquered country began to wear an outward face of prosperity. Districts, which had

recently been as wild as those where the first white settlers of Connecticut were contending with the red men,

were in a few years transformed into the likeness of Kent and Norfolk. New buildings, roads, and plantations

were everywhere seen. The rent of estates rose fast; and soon the English landowners began to complain that

they were met in every market by the products of Ireland, and to clamour for protecting laws.

From Ireland the victorious chief, who was now in name, as he had long been in reality, Lord General of the

armies of the Commonwealth, turned to Scotland. The Young King was there. He had consented to profess

himself a Presbyterian, and to subscribe the Covenant; and, in return for these concessions, the austere

Puritans who bore sway at Edinburgh had permitted him to assume the crown, and to hold, under their

inspection and control, a solemn and melancholy court. This mock royalty was of short duration. In two great

battles Cromwell annihilated the military force of Scotland. Charles fled for his life, and, with extreme

difficulty, escaped the fate of his father. The ancient kingdom of the Stuarts was reduced, for the first time, to

profound submission. Of that independence, so manfully defended against the mightiest and ablest of the

Plantagenets, no vestige was left. The English Parliament made laws for Scotland. English judges held

assizes in Scotland. Even that stubborn Church, which has held its own against so many governments, scarce

Thus far there had been at least the semblance of harmony between the warriors who had subjugated Ireland

and Scotland and the politicians who sate at Westminster: but the alliance which had been cemented by

danger was dissolved by victory. The Parliament forgot that it was but the creature of the army. The army

was less disposed than ever to submit to the dictation of the Parliament. Indeed the few members who made

up what was contemptuously called the Rump of the House of Commons had no more claim than the military

chiefs to be esteemed the representatives of the nation. The dispute was soon brought to a decisive issue.

Cromwell filled the House with armed men. The Speaker was pulled out of his chair, the mace taken from the

table, the room cleared, and the door locked. The nation, which loved neither of the contending parties, but

which was forced, in its own despite, to respect the capacity and resolution of the General, looked on with

King, Lords, and Commons, had now in turn been vanquished and destroyed; and Cromwell seemed to be left

the sole heir of the powers of all three. Yet were certain limitations still imposed on him by the very army to

which he owed his immense authority. That singular body of men was, for the most part, composed of

zealous republicans. In the act of enslaving their country, they had deceived themselves into the belief that

they were emancipating her. The book which they venerated furnished them with a precedent which was

frequently in their mouths. It was true that the ignorant and ungrateful nation murmured against its deliverers.

Even so had another chosen nation murmured against the leader who brought it, by painful and dreary paths,

from the house of bondage to the land flowing with milk and honey. Yet had that leader rescued his brethren

in spite of themselves; nor had he shrunk from making terrible examples of those who contemned the

proffered freedom, and pined for the fleshpots, the taskmasters, and the idolatries of Egypt. The object of the

warlike saints who surrounded Cromwell was the settlement of a free and pious commonwealth. For that end

they were ready to employ, without scruple, any means, however violent and lawless. It was not impossible,

therefore, to establish by their aid a dictatorship such as no King had ever exercised: but it was probable that

their aid would be at once withdrawn from a ruler who, even under strict constitutional restraints, should

The sentiments of Cromwell were widely different. He was not what he had been; nor would it be just to

consider the change which his views had undergone as the effect merely of selfish ambition. He had, when he

came up to the Long Parliament, brought with him from his rural retreat little knowledge of books, no

experience of great affairs, and a temper galled by the long tyranny of the government and of the hierarchy.

He had, during the thirteen years which followed, gone through a political education of no common kind. He

had been a chief actor in a succession of revolutions. He had been long the soul, and at last the head, of a

party. He had commanded armies, won battles, negotiated treaties, subdued, pacified, and regulated

kingdoms. It would have been strange indeed if his notions had been still the same as in the days when his

mind was principally occupied by his fields and his religion, and when the greatest events which diversified

the course of his life were a cattle fair or a prayer meeting at Huntingdon. He saw that some schemes of

innovation for which he had once been zealous, whether good or bad in themselves, were opposed to the

general feeling of the country, and that, if he persevered in those schemes, he had nothing before him but

constant troubles, which must he suppressed by the constant use of the sword. He therefore wished to restore,

in all essentials, that ancient constitution which the majority of the people had always loved, and for which

they now pined. The course afterwards taken by Monk was not open to Cromwell. The memory of one

terrible day separated the great regicide for ever from the House of Stuart. What remained was that he should

mount the ancient English throne, and reign according to the ancient English polity. If he could effect this, he

might hope that the wounds of the lacerated State would heal fast. Great numbers of honest and quiet men

would speedily rally round him. Those Royalists whose attachment was rather to institutions than to persons,

to the kingly office than to King Charles the First or King Charles the Second, would soon kiss the hand of

King Oliver. The peers, who now remained sullenly at their country houses, and refused to take any part in

public affairs, would, when summoned to their House by the writ of a King in possession, gladly resume their

ancient functions. Northumberland and Bedford, Manchester and Pembroke, would be proud to bear the

crown and the spurs, the sceptre and the globe, before the restorer of aristocracy. A sentiment of loyalty

would gradually bind the people to the new dynasty; and, on the decease of the founder of that dynasty, the

The ablest Royalists were of opinion that these views were correct, and that, if Cromwell had been permitted

to follow his own judgment, the exiled line would never have been restored. But his plan was directly

opposed to the feelings of the only class which he dared not offend. The name of King was hateful to the

soldiers. Some of them were indeed unwilling to see the administration in the hands of any single person. The

great majority, however, were disposed to support their general, as elective first magistrate of a

commonwealth, against all factions which might resist his authority: but they would not consent that he

should assume the regal title, or that the dignity, which was the just reward of his personal merit, should be

declared hereditary in his family. All that was left to him was to give to the new republic a constitution as like

the constitution of the old monarchy as the army would bear. That his elevation to power might not seem to

be merely his own act, he convoked a council, composed partly of persons on whose support he could

depend, and partly of persons whose opposition he might safely defy. This assembly, which he called a

Parliament, and which the populace nicknamed, from one of the most conspicuous members, Barebonesa's

Parliament, after exposing itself during a short time to the public contempt, surrendered back to the General

the powers which it had received from him, and left him at liberty to frame a plan of government.

His plan bore, from the first, a considerable resemblance to the old English constitution: but, in a few years,

he thought it safe to proceed further, and to restore almost every part of the ancient system under hew names

and forms. The title of King was not revived; but the kingly prerogatives were intrusted to a Lord High

Protector. The sovereign was called not His Majesty, but His Highness. He was not crowned and anointed in

Westminster Abbey, but was solemnly enthroned, girt with a sword of state, clad in a robe of purple, and

presented with a rich Bible, in Westminster Hall. His office was not declared hereditary: but he was permitted

A House of Commons was a necessary part of the new polity. In constituting this body, the Protector showed

a wisdom and a public spirit which were not duly appreciated by his contemporaries. The vices of the old

representative system, though by no means so serious as they afterwards became, had already been remarked

by farsighted men. Cromwell reformed that system on the same principles on which Mr. Pitt, a hundred and

thirty years later, attempted to reform it, and on which it was at length reformed in our own times. Small

boroughs were disfranchised even more unsparingly than in 1832; and the number of county members was

greatly increased. Very few unrepresented towns had yet grown into importance. Of those towns the most

considerable were Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax. Representatives were given to all three. An addition was

made to the number of the members for the capital. The elective franchise was placed on such a footing that

every man of substance, whether possessed of freehold estates in land or not, had a vote for the county in

which he resided. A few Scotchmen and a few of the English colonists settled in Ireland were summoned to

the assembly which was to legislate, at Westminster, for every part of the British isles.

To create a House of Lords was a less easy task. Democracy does not require the support of prescription.

Monarchy has often stood without that support. But a patrician order is the work of time. Oliver found

already existing a nobility, opulent, highly considered, and as popular with the commonalty as any nobility

has ever been. Had he, as King of England, commanded the peers to meet him in Parliament according to the

old usage of the realm, many of them would undoubtedly have obeyed the call. This he could not do; and it

was to no purpose that he offered to the chiefs of illustrious families seats in his new senate. They conceived

that they could not accept a nomination to an upstart assembly without renouncing their birthright and

betraying their order. The Protector was, therefore, under the necessity of filling his Upper House with new

men who, during the late stirring times, had made themselves conspicuous. This was the least happy of his

contrivances, and displeased all parties. The Levellers were angry with him for instituting a privileged class.

The multitude, which felt respect and fondness for the great historical names of the land, laughed without

restraint at a House of Lords, in which lucky draymen and shoemakers were seated, to which few of the old

nobles were invited, and from which almost all those old nobles who were invited turned disdainfully away.

How Oliver's Parliaments were constituted, however, was practically of little moment: for he possessed the

means of conducting the administration without their support, and in defiance of their opposition. His wish

seems to have been to govern constitutionally, and to substitute the empire of the laws for that of the sword.

But he soon found that, hated as he was, both by Royalists and Presbyterians, he could be safe only by being

absolute. The first House of Commons which the people elected by his command, questioned his authority,

and was dissolved without having passed a single act. His second House of Commons, though it recognised

him as Protector, and would gladly have made him King, obstinately refused to acknowledge his new Lords.

He had no course left but to dissolve the Parliament. "God," he exclaimed, at parting, "be judge between you

Yet was the energy of the Protector's administration in nowise relaxed by these dissensions. Those soldiers

who would not suffer him to assume the kingly title stood by him when he ventured on acts of power, as high

as any English King has ever attempted. The government, therefore, though in form a republic, was in truth a

despotism, moderated only by the wisdom, the sobriety, and the magnanimity of the despot. The country was

divided into military districts. Those districts were placed under the command of Major Generals. Every

insurrectionary movement was promptly put down and punished. The fear inspired by the power of the

sword, in so strong, steady, and expert a hand, quelled the spirit both of Cavaliers and Levellers. The loyal

gentry declared that they were still as ready as ever to risk their lives for the old government and the old

dynasty, if there were the slightest hope of success: but to rush, at the head of their serving men and tenants,

on the pikes of brigades victorious in a hundred battles and sieges, would be a frantic waste of innocent and

honourable blood. Both Royalists and Republicans, having no hope in open resistance, began to revolve dark

schemes of assassination: but the Protector's intelligence was good: his vigilance was unremitting; and,

whenever he moved beyond the walls of his palace, the drawn swords and cuirasses of his trusty bodyguards

Had he been a cruel, licentious, and rapacious prince, the nation might have found courage in despair, and

might have made a convulsive effort to free itself from military domination. But the grievances which the

country suffered, though such as excited serious discontent, were by no means such as impel great masses of

men to stake their lives, their fortunes, and the welfare of their families against fearful odds. The taxation,

though heavier than it had been under the Stuarts, was not heavy when compared with that of the

neighbouring states and with the resources of England. Property was secure. Even the Cavalier, who refrained

from giving disturbance to the new settlement, enjoyed in peace whatever the civil troubles had left hem. The

laws were violated only in cases where the safety of the Protector's person and government was concerned.

Justice was administered between man and man with an exactness and purity not before known. Under no

English government since the Reformation, had there been so little religious persecution. The unfortunate

Roman Catholics, indeed, were held to be scarcely within the pale of Christian charity. But the clergy of the

fallen Anglican Church were suffered to celebrate their worship on condition that they would abstain from

preaching about politics. Even the Jews, whose public worship had, ever since the thirteenth century, been

interdicted, were, in spite of the strong opposition of jealous traders and fanatical theologians, permitted to

The Protector's foreign policy at the same time extorted the ungracious approbation of those who most

detested him. The Cavaliers could scarcely refrain from wishing that one who had done so much to raise the

fame of the nation had been a legitimate King; and the Republicans were forced to own that the tyrant

suffered none but himself to wrong his country, and that, if he had robbed her of liberty, he had at least given

her glory in exchange. After half a century during which England had been of scarcely more weight in

European politics than Venice or Saxony, she at once became the most formidable power in the world,

dictated terms of peace to the United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of Christendom on the pirates

of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by land and sea, seized one of the finest West Indian islands, and

acquired on the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the national pride for the loss of Calais. She was

supreme on the ocean. She was the head of the Protestant interest. All the reformed Churches scattered over

Roman Catholic kingdoms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian. The Huguenots of Languedoc, the

shepherds who, in the hamlets of the Alps. professed a Protestantism older than that of Augsburg, were

secured from oppression by the mere terror of his great name The Pope himself was forced to preach

humanity and moderation to Popish princes. For a voice which seldom threatened in vain had declared that,

unless favour were shown to the people of God, the English guns should be heard in the Castle of Saint

Angelo. In truth, there was nothing which Cromwell had, for his own sake and that of his family, so much

reason to desire as a general religious war in Europe. In such a war he must have been the captain of the

Protestant armies. The heart of England would have been with him. His victories would have been hailed

with an unanimous enthusiasm unknown in the country since the rout of the Armada, and would have effaced

the stain which one act, condemned by the general voice of the nation, has left on his splendid fame.

Unhappily for him he had no opportunity of displaying his admirable military talents, except against the

While he lived his power stood firm, an object of mingled aversion, admiration, and dread to his subjects.

Few indeed loved his government; but those who hated it most hated it less than they feared it. Had it been a

worse government, it might perhaps have been overthrown in spite of all its strength. Had it been a weaker

government, it would certainly have been overthrown in spite of all its merits. But it had moderation enough

to abstain from those oppressions which drive men mad; and it had a force and energy which none but men

It has often been affirmed, but with little reason, that Oliver died at a time fortunate for his renown, and that,

if his life had been prolonged, it would probably have closed amidst disgraces and disasters. It is certain that

he was, to the last, honoured by his soldiers, obeyed by the whole population of the British islands, and

dreaded by all foreign powers, that he was laid among the ancient sovereigns of England with funeral pomp

such as London had never before seen, and that he was succeeded by his son Richard as quietly as any King

During five months, the administration of Richard Cromwell went on so tranquilly and regularly that all

Europe believed him to be firmly established on the chair of state. In truth his situation was in some respects

much more advantageous than that of his father. The young man had made no enemy. His hands were

unstained by civil blood. The Cavaliers themselves allowed him to be an honest, goodnatured gentleman.

The Presbyterian party, powerful both in numbers and in wealth, had been at deadly feud with the late

Protector, but was disposed to regard the present Protector with favour. That party had always been desirous

to see the old civil polity of the realm restored with some clearer definitions and some stronger safeguards for

public liberty, but had many reasons for dreading the restoration of the old family. Richard was the very man

for politicians of this description. His humanity, ingenuousness, and modesty, the mediocrity of his abilities,

and the docility with which he submitted to the guidance of persons wiser than himself, admirably qualified

For a time it seemed highly probable that he would, under the direction of able advisers, effect what his father

had attempted in vain. A Parliament was called, and the writs were directed after the old fashion. The small

boroughs which had recently been disfranchised regained their lost privilege: Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax

ceased to return members; and the county of York was again limited to two knights. It may seem strange to a

generation which has been excited almost to madness by the question of parliamentary reform that great

shires and towns should have submitted with patience and even with complacency, to this change: but though

speculative men might, even in that age, discern the vices of the old representative system, and predict that

those vices would, sooner or later, produce serious practical evil, the practical evil had not yet been felt.

Oliver's representative system, on the other hand, though constructed on sound principles, was not popular.

Both the events in which it originated, and the effects which it had produced, prejudiced men against it. It had

sprung from military violence. It had been fruitful of nothing but disputes. The whole nation was sick of

government by the sword, and pined for government by the law. The restoration, therefore, even of anomalies

and abuses, which were in strict conformity with the law, and which had been destroyed by the sword, gave

Among the Commons there was a strong opposition, consisting partly of avowed Republicans, and partly of

concealed Royalists: but a large and steady majority appeared to be favourable to the plan of reviving the old

civil constitution under a new dynasty. Richard was solemnly recognised as first magistrate. The Commons

not only consented to transact business with Oliver's Lords, but passed a vote acknowledging the right of

those nobles who had, in the late troubles, taken the side of public liberty, to sit in the Upper House of

Thus far the statesmen by whose advice Richard acted had been successful. Almost all the parts of the

government were now constituted as they had been constituted at the commencement of the civil war. Had

the Protector and the Parliament been suffered to proceed undisturbed, there can be little doubt that an order

of things similar to that which was afterwards established under the House of Hanover would have been

established under the House of Cromwell. But there was in the state a power more than sufficient to deal with

Protector and Parliament together. Over the soldiers Richard had no authority except that which he derived

from the great name which he had inherited. He had never led them to victory. He had never even borne

arms. All his tastes and habits were pacific. Nor were his opinions and feelings on religious subjects approved

by the military saints. That he was a good man he evinced by proofs more satisfactory than deep groans or

long sermons, by humility and suavity when he was at the height of human greatness, and by cheerful

resignation under cruel wrongs and misfortunes: but the cant then common in every guardroom gave him a

disgust which he had not always the prudence to conceal. The officers who had the principal influence among

the troops stationed near London were not his friends. They were men distinguished by valour and conduct in

the field, but destitute of the wisdom and civil courage which had been conspicuous in their deceased leader.

Some of them were honest, but fanatical, Independents and Republicans. Of this class Fleetwood was the

representative. Others were impatient to be what Oliver had been. His rapid elevation, his prosperity and

glory, his inauguration in the Hall, and his gorgeous obsequies in the Abbey, had inflamed their imagination.

They were as well born as he, and as well educated: they could not understand why they were not as worthy

to wear the purple robe, and to wield the sword of state; and they pursued the objects of their wild ambition,

not, like him, with patience, vigilance, sagacity, and determination, but with the restlessness and irresolution

characteristic of aspiring mediocrity. Among these feeble copies of a great original the most conspicuous was

On the very day of Richard's accession the officers began to conspire against their new master. The good

understanding which existed between him and his Parliament hastened the crisis. Alarm and resentment

spread through the camp. Both the religious and the professional feelings of the army were deeply wounded.

It seemed that the Independents were to be subjected to the Presbyterians, and that the men of the sword were

to be subjected to the men of the gown. A coalition was formed between the military malecontents and the

republican minority of the House of Commons. It may well be doubted whether Richard could have

triumphed over that coalition, even if he had inherited his father's clear judgment and iron courage. It is

certain that simplicity and meekness like his were not the qualities which the conjuncture required. He fell

ingloriously, and without a struggle. He was used by the army as an instrument for the purpose of dissolving

the Parliament, and was then contemptuously thrown aside. The officers gratified their republican allies by

declaring that the expulsion of the Rump had been illegal, and by inviting that assembly to resume its

functions. The old Speaker and a quorum of the old members came together, and were proclaimed, amidst the

scarcely stifled derision and execration of the whole nation, the supreme power in the commonwealth. It was

at the same time expressly declared that there should be no first magistrate, and no House of Lords.

But this state of things could not last. On the day on which the long Parliament revived, revived also its old

quarrel with the army. Again the Rump forgot that it owed its existence to the pleasure of the soldiers, and

began to treat them as subjects. Again the doors of the House of Commons were closed by military violence;

and a provisional government, named by the officers, assumed the direction of affairs.

Meanwhile the sense of great evils, and the strong apprehension of still greater evils close at hand, had at

length produced an alliance between the Cavaliers and the Presbyterians. Some Presbyterians had, indeed,

been disposed to such an alliance even before the death of Charles the First: but it was not till after the fall of

Richard Cromwell that the whole party became eager for the restoration of the royal house. There was no

longer any reasonable hope that the old constitution could be reestablished under a new dynasty. One choice

only was left, the Stuarts or the army. The banished family had committed great faults; but it had dearly

expiated those faults, and had undergone a long, and, it might be hoped, a salutary training in the school of

adversity. It was probable that Charles the Second would take warning by the fate of Charles the First. But,

be this as it might, the dangers which threatened the country were such that, in order to avert them, some

opinions might well be compromised, and some risks might well be incurred. It seemed but too likely that

England would fall under the most odious and degrading of all kinds of government, under a government

uniting all the evils of despotism to all the evils of anarchy. Anything was preferable to the yoke of a

succession of incapable and inglorious tyrants, raised to power, like the Deys of Barbary, by military

revolutions recurring at short intervals. Lambert seemed likely to be the first of these rulers; but within a year

Lambert might give place to Desborough, and Desborough to Harrison. As often as the truncheon was

transferred from one feeble hand to another, the nation would be pillaged for the purpose of bestowing a fresh

donative on the troops. If the Presbyterians obstinately stood aloof from the Royalists, the state was lost; and

men might well doubt whether, by the combined exertions of Presbyterians and Royalists, it could be saved.

For the dread of that invincible army was on all the inhabitants of the island; and the Cavaliers, taught by a

hundred disastrous fields how little numbers can effect against discipline, were even more completely cowed

While the soldiers remained united, all the plots and risings of the malecontents were ineffectual. But a few

days after the second expulsion of the Rump, came tidings which gladdened the hearts of all who were

attached either to monarchy or to liberty: That mighty force which had, during many years, acted as one man,

and which, while so acting, had been found irresistible, was at length divided against itself. The army of

Scotland had done good service to the Commonwealth, and was in the highest state of efficiency. It had borne

no part in the late revolutions, and had seen them with indignation resembling the indignation which the

Roman legions posted on the Danube and the Euphrates felt, when they learned that the empire had been put

up to sale by the Praetorian Guards. It was intolerable that certain regiments should, merely because they

happened to be quartered near Westminster, take on themselves to make and unmake several governments in

the course of half a year. If it were fit that the state should be regulated by the soldiers, those soldiers who

upheld the English ascendency on the north of the Tweed were as well entitled to a voice as those who

garrisoned the Tower of London. There appears to have been less fanaticism among the troops stationed in

Scotland than in any other part of the army; and their general, George Monk, was himself the very opposite of

a zealot. He had at the commencement of the civil war, borne arms for the King, had been made prisoner by

the Roundheads, had then accepted a commission from the Parliament, and, with very slender pretensions to

saintship, had raised himself to high commands by his courage and professional skill. He had been an useful

servant to both the Protectors, and had quietly acquiesced when the officers at Westminster had pulled down

Richard and restored the Long Parliament, and would perhaps have acquiesced as quietly in the second

expulsion of the Long Parliament, if the provisional government had abstained from giving him cause of

offence and apprehension. For his nature was cautious and somewhat sluggish; nor was he at all disposed to

hazard sure and moderate advantages for the chalice of obtaining even the most splendid success. He seems

to have been impelled to attack the new rulers of the Commonwealth less by the hope that, if he overthrew

them, he should become great, than by the fear that, if he submitted to them, he should not even be secure.

Whatever were his motives, he declared himself the champion of the oppressed civil power, refused to

acknowledge the usurped authority of the provisional government, and, at the head of seven thousand

This step was the signal for a general explosion. The people everywhere refused to pay taxes. The apprentices

of the City assembled by thousands and clamoured for a free Parliament. The fleet sailed up the Thames, and

declared against the tyranny of the soldiers. The soldiers, no longer under the control of one commanding

mind, separated into factions. Every regiment, afraid lest it should be left alone a mark for the vengeance of

the oppressed nation, hastened to make a separate peace. Lambert, who had hastened northward to encounter

the army of Scotland, was abandoned by his troops, and became a prisoner. During thirteen years the civil

power had, in every conflict, been compelled to yield to the military power. The military power now humbled

itself before the civil power. The Rump, generally hated and despised, but still the only body in the country

which had any show of legal authority, returned again to the house from which it had been twice

In the mean time Monk was advancing towards London. Wherever he came, the gentry flocked round him,

imploring him to use his power for the purpose of restoring peace and liberty to the distracted nation. The

General, coldblooded, taciturn, zealous for no polity and for no religion, maintained an impenetrable reserve.

What were at this time his plans, and whether he had any plan, may well be doubted. His great object,

apparently, was to keep himself, as long as possible, free to choose between several lines of action. Such,

indeed, is commonly the policy of men who are, like him, distinguished rather by wariness than by

farsightedness. It was probably not till he had been some days in the capital that he had made up his mind.

The cry of the whole people was for a free Parliament; and there could be no doubt that a Parliament really

free would instantly restore the exiled family. The Rump and the soldiers were still hostile to the House of

Stuart. But the Rump was universally detested and despised. The power of the soldiers was indeed still

formidable, but had been greatly diminished by discord. They had no head. They had recently been, in many

parts of the country, arrayed against each other. On the very day before Monk reached London, there was a

fight in the Strand between the cavalry and the infantry. An united army had long kept down a divided nation;

During a short time the dissimulation or irresolution of Monk kept all parties in a state of painful suspense. At

As soon as his declaration was known, the whole nation was wild with delight. Wherever he appeared

thousands thronged round him, shouting and blessing his name. The bells of all England rang joyously: the

gutters ran with ale; and, night after night, the sky five miles round London was reddened by innumerable

bonfires. Those Presbyterian members of the House of Commons who had many years before been expelled

by the army, returned to their seats, and were hailed with acclamations by great multitudes, which filled

Westminster Hall and Palace Yard. The Independent leaders no longer dared to show their faces in the streets,

and were scarcely safe within their own dwellings. Temporary provision was made for the government: writs

were issued for a general election; and then that memorable Parliament, which had, in the course of twenty

eventful years, experienced every variety of fortune, which had triumphed over its sovereign, which had been

enslaved and degraded by its servants, which had been twice ejected and twice restored, solemnly decreed its

The result of the elections was such as might have been expected from the temper of the nation. The new

House of Commons consisted, with few exceptions, of persons friendly to the royal family. The Presbyterians

That there would be a restoration now seemed almost certain; but whether there would be a peaceable

restoration was matter of painful doubt. The soldiers were in a gloomy and savage mood. They hated the title

of King. They hated the name of Stuart. They hated Presbyterianism much, and Prelacy more. They saw with

bitter indignation that the close of their long domination was approaching, and that a life of inglorious toil

and penury was before them. They attributed their ill fortune to the weakness of some generals, and to the

treason of others. One hour of their beloved Oliver might even now restore the glory which had departed.

Betrayed, disunited, and left without any chief in whom they could confide, they were yet to be dreaded. It

was no light thing to encounter the rage and despair of fifty thousand fighting men, whose backs no enemy

had ever seen. Monk, and those with whom he acted, were well aware that the crisis was most perilous. They

employed every art to soothe and to divide the discontented warriors. At the same time vigorous preparation

was made for a conflict. The army of Scotland, now quartered in London, was kept in good humour by

bribes, praises, and promises. The wealthy citizens grudged nothing to a redcoat, and were indeed so liberal

of their best wine, that warlike saints were sometimes seen in a condition not very honourable either to their

religious or to their military character. Some refractory regiments Monk ventured to disband. In the mean

time the greatest exertions were made by the provisional government, with the strenuous aid of the whole

body of the gentry and magistracy, to organise the militia. In every county the trainbands were held ready to

march; and this force cannot be estimated at less than a hundred and twenty thousand men. In Hyde Park

twenty thousand citizens, well armed and accoutred, passed in review, and showed a spirit which justified the

hope that, in case of need, they would fight manfully for their shops and firesides. The fleet was heartily with

the nation. It was a stirring time, a time of anxiety, yet of hope. The prevailing opinion was that England

would be delivered, but not without a desperate and bloody struggle, and that the class which had so long

Happily the dangers of a conflict were averted. There was indeed one moment of extreme peril. Lambert

escaped from his confinement, and called his comrades to arms. The flame of civil war was actually

rekindled; but by prompt and vigorous exertion it was trodden out before it had time to spread. The luckless

imitator of Cromwell was again a prisoner. The failure of his enterprise damped the spirit of the soldiers; and

The new Parliament, which, having been called without the royal writ, is more accurately described as a

Convention, met at Westminster. The Lords repaired to the hall, from which they had, during more than

eleven years, been excluded by force. Both Houses instantly invited the King to return to his country. He was

proclaimed with pomp never before known. A gallant fleet convoyed him from Holland to the coast of Kent.

When he landed, the cliffs of Dover were covered by thousands of gazers, among whom scarcely one could

be found who was not weeping with delight. The journey to London was a continued triumph. The whole

road from Rochester was bordered by booths and tents, and looked like an interminable fair. Everywhere

flags were flying, bells and music sounding, wine and ale flowing in rivers to the health of him whose return

was the return of peace, of law, and of freedom. But in the midst of the general joy, one spot presented a dark

and threatening aspect. On Blackheath the army was drawn up to welcome the sovereign. He smiled, bowed,

and extended his hand graciously to the lips of the colonels and majors. But all his courtesy was vain. The

countenances of the soldiers were sad and lowering; and had they given way to their feelings, the festive

pageant of which they reluctantly made a part would have had a mournful and bloody end. But there was no

concert among them. Discord and defection had left them no confidence in their chiefs or in each other. The

whole array of the City of London was under arms. Numerous companies of militia had assembled from

various parts of the realm, under the command of loyal noblemen and gentlemen, to welcome the King. That

great day closed in peace; and the restored wanderer reposed safe in the palace of his ancestors.

THE history of England, during the seventeenth century, is the history of the transformation of a limited

monarchy, constituted after the fashion of the middle ages, into a limited monarchy suited to that more

advanced state of society in which the public charges can no longer be borne by the estates of the crown, and

in which the public defence can no longer be entrusted to a feudal militia. We have seen that the politicians

who were at the head of the Long Parliament made, in 1642, a great effort to accomplish this change by

transferring, directly and formally, to the estates of the realm the choice of ministers, the command of the

army, and the superintendence of the whole executive administration. This scheme was, perhaps, the best that

could then be contrived: but it was completely disconcerted by the course which the civil war took. The

Houses triumphed, it is true; but not till after such a struggle as made it necessary for them to call into

existence a power which they could not control, and which soon began to domineer over all orders and all

parties: During a few years, the evils inseparable from military government were, in some degree, mitigated

by the wisdom and magnanimity of the great man who held the supreme command. But, when the sword,

which he had wielded, with energy indeed, but with energy always guided by good sense and generally

tempered by good nature, had passed to captains who possessed neither his abilities nor his virtues. it seemed

That ruin was happily averted. It has been too much the practice of writers zealous for freedom to represent

the Restoration as a disastrous event, and to condemn the folly or baseness of that Convention, which recalled

the royal family without exacting new securities against maladministration. Those who hold this language do

not comprehend the real nature of the crisis which followed the deposition of Richard Cromwell. England

was in imminent danger of falling under the tyranny of a succession of small men raised up and pulled down

by military caprice. To deliver the country from the domination of the soldiers was the first object of every

enlightened patriot: but it was an object which, while the soldiers were united, the most sanguine could

scarcely expect to attain. On a sudden a gleam of hope appeared. General was opposed to general, army to

army. On the use which might be made of one auspicious moment depended the future destiny of the nation.

Our ancestors used that moment well. They forgot old injuries, waved petty scruples, adjourned to a more

convenient season all dispute about the reforms which our institutions needed, and stood together, Cavaliers

and Roundheads, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, in firm union, for the old laws of the land against military

despotism. The exact partition of power among King, Lords, and Commons might well be postponed till it

had been decided whether England should be governed by King, Lords, and Commons, or by cuirassiers and

pikemen. Had the statesmen of the Convention taken a different course, had they held long debates on the

principles of government, had they drawn up a new constitution and sent it to Charles, had conferences been

opened, had couriers been passing and repassing during some weeks between Westminster and the

Netherlands, with projects and counterprojects, replies by Hyde and rejoinders by Prynne, the coalition on

which the public safety depended would have been dissolved: the Presbyterians and Royalists would certainly

have quarrelled: the military factions might possibly have been reconciled; and the misjudging friends of

liberty might long have regretted, under a rule worse than that of the worst Stuart, the golden opportunity

The old civil polity was, therefore, by the general consent of both the great parties, reestablished. It was again

exactly what it had been when Charles the First, eighteen years before, withdrew from his capital. All those

acts of the Long Parliament which had received the royal assent were admitted to be still in full force. One

fresh concession, a concession in which the Cavaliers were even more deeply interested than the Roundheads,

was easily obtained from the restored King. The military tenure of land had been originally created as a

means of national defence. But in the course of ages whatever was useful in the institution had disappeared;

and nothing was left but ceremonies and grievances. A landed proprietor who held an estate under the crown

by knight service,and it was thus that most of the soil of England was held,had to pay a large fine on

coming to his property. He could not alienate one acre without purchasing a license. When he died, if his

domains descended to an infant, the sovereign was guardian, and was not only entitled to great part of the

rents during the minority, but could require the ward, under heavy penalties, to marry any person of suitable

rank. The chief bait which attracted a needy sycophant to the court was the hope of obtaining as the reward of

servility and flattery, a royal letter to an heiress. These abuses had perished with the monarchy. That they

should not revive with it was the wish of every landed gentleman in the kingdom. They were, therefore,

solemnly abolished by statute; and no relic of the ancient tenures in chivalry was allowed to remain except

those honorary services which are still, at a coronation, rendered to the person of the sovereign by some lords

The troops were now to be disbanded. Fifty thousand men, accustomed to the profession of arms, were at

once thrown on the world: and experience seemed to warrant the belief that this change would produce much

misery and crime, that the discharged veterans would be seen begging in every street, or that they would be

driven by hunger to pillage. But no such result followed. In a few months there remained not a trace

indicating that the most formidable army in the world had just been absorbed into the mass of the community.

The Royalists themselves confessed that, in every department of honest industry the discarded warriors

prospered beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an

alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or a waggoner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all

The military tyranny had passed away; but it had left deep and enduring traces in the public mind. The name

of standing army was long held in abhorrence: and it is remarkable that this feeling was even stronger among

the Cavaliers than among the Roundheads. It ought to be considered as a most fortunate circumstance that,

when our country was, for the first and last time, ruled by the sword, the sword was in the hands, not of

legitimate princes, but of those rebels who slew the King and demolished the Church. Had a prince with a

title as good as that of Charles, commanded an army as good as that of Cromwell, there would have been

little hope indeed for the liberties of England. Happily that instrument by which alone the monarchy could be

made absolute became an object of peculiar horror and disgust to the monarchical party, and long continued

to be inseparably associated in the imagination of Royalists and Prelatists with regicide and field preaching.

A century after the death of Cromwell, the Tories still continued to clamour against every augmentation of

the regular soldiery, and to sound the praise of a national militia. So late as the year 1786, a minister who

enjoyed no common measure of their confidence found it impossible to overcome their aversion to his

scheme of fortifying the coast: nor did they ever look with entire complacency on the standing army, till the

The coalition which had restored the King terminated with the danger from which it had sprung; and two

hostile parties again appeared ready for conflict. Both, indeed, were agreed as to the propriety of inflicting

punishment on some unhappy men who were, at that moment, objects of almost universal hatred. Cromwell

was no more; and those who had fled before him were forced to content themselves with the miserable

satisfaction of digging up, hanging, quartering, and burning the remains of the greatest prince that has ever

Other objects of vengeance, few indeed, yet too many, were found among the republican chiefs. Soon,

however, the conquerors, glutted with the blood of the regicides, turned against each other. The Roundheads,

while admitting the virtues of the late King, and while condemning the sentence passed upon him by an

illegal tribunal, yet maintained that his administration had been, in many things, unconstitutional, and that the

Houses had taken arms against him from good motives and on strong grounds. The monarchy, these

politicians conceived, had no worse enemy than the flatterer who exalted prerogative above the law, who

condemned all opposition to regal encroachments, and who reviled, not only Cromwell and Harrison, but

Pym and Hampden, as traitors. If the King wished for a quiet and prosperous reign, he must confide in those

who, though they had drawn the sword in defence of the invaded privileges of Parliament, had yet exposed

themselves to the rage of the soldiers in order to save his father, and had taken the chief part in bringing back

The feeling of the Cavaliers was widely different. During eighteen years they had, through all vicissitudes,

been faithful to the Crown. Having shared the distress of their prince, were they not to share his triumph?

Was no distinction to be made between them and the disloyal subject who had fought against his rightful

sovereign, who had adhered to Richard Cromwell, and who had never concurred in the restoration of the

Stuarts, till it appeared that nothing else could save the nation from the tyranny of the army? Grant that such a

man had, by his recent services, fairly earned his pardon. Yet were his services, rendered at the eleventh hour,

to be put in comparison with the toils and sufferings of those who had borne the burden and heat of the day?

Was he to be ranked with men who had no need of the royal clemency, with men who had, in every part of

their lives, merited the royal gratitude? Above all, was he to be suffered to retain a fortune raised out of the

substance of the ruined defenders of the throne? Was it not enough that his head and his patrimonial estate, a

hundred times forfeited to justice, were secure, and that he shared, with the rest of the nation, in the blessings

of that mild government of which he had long been the foe? Was it necessary that he should be rewarded for

his treason at the expense of men whose only crime was the fidelity with which they had observed their oath

of allegiance. And what interest had the King in gorging his old enemies with prey torn from his old friends?

What confidence could be placed in men who had opposed their sovereign, made war on him, imprisoned

him, and who, even now, instead of hanging down their heads in shame and contrition, vindicated all that

they had done, and seemed to think that they had given an illustrious proof of loyalty by just stopping short of

regicide? It was true they had lately assisted to set up the throne: but it was not less true that they had

previously pulled it down, and that they still avowed principles which might impel them to pull it down

again. Undoubtedly it might he fit that marks of royal approbation should be bestowed on some converts who

had been eminently useful: but policy, as well as justice and gratitude, enjoined the King to give the highest

place in his regard to those who, from first to last, through good and evil, had stood by his house. On these

grounds the Cavaliers very naturally demanded indemnity for all that they had suffered, and preference in the

distribution of the favours of the Crown. Some violent members of the party went further, and clamoured for

The political feud was, as usual, exasperated by a religious feud. The King found the Church in a singular

state. A short time before the commencement of the civil war, his father had given a reluctant assent to a bill,

strongly supported by Falkland, which deprived the Bishops of their seats in the House of Lords: but

Episcopacy and the Liturgy had never been abolished by law. The Long Parliament, however, had passed

ordinances which had made a complete revolution in Church government and in public worship. The new

system was, in principle, scarcely less Erastian than that which it displaced. The Houses, guided chiefly by

the counsels of the accomplished Selden, had determined to keep the spiritual power strictly subordinate to

the temporal power. They had refused to declare that any form of ecclesiastical polity was of divine origin;

and they had provided that, from all the Church courts, an appeal should lie in the last resort to Parliament.

With this highly important reservation, it had been resolved to set up in England a hierarchy closely

resembling that which now exists in Scotland. The authority of councils, rising one above another in regular

gradation, was substituted for the authority of Bishops and Archbishops. The Liturgy gave place to the

Presbyterian Directory. But scarcely had the new regulations been framed, when the Independents rose to

supreme influence in the state. The Independents had no disposition to enforce the ordinances touching

classical, provincial, and national synods. Those ordinances, therefore, were never carried into full execution.

The Presbyterian system was fully established nowhere but in Middlesex and Lancashire. In the other fifty

counties almost every parish seems to have been unconnected with the neighbouring parishes. In some

districts, indeed, the ministers formed themselves into voluntary associations, for the purpose of mutual help

and counsel; but these associations had no coercive power. The patrons of livings, being now checked by

neither Bishop nor Presbytery, would have been at liberty to confide the cure of souls to the most scandalous

of mankind, but for the arbitrary intervention of Oliver. He established, by his own authority, a board of

commissioners, called Triers. Most of these persons were Independent divines; but a few Presbyterian

ministers and a few laymen had seats. The certificate of the Triers stood in the place both of institution and of

induction; and without such a certificate no person could hold a benefice. This was undoubtedly one of the

most despotic acts ever done by any English ruler. Yet, as it was generally felt that, without some such

precaution, the country would be overrun by ignorant and drunken reprobates, bearing the name and

receiving the pay of ministers, some highly respectable persons, who were not in general friendly to

Cromwell, allowed that, on this occasion, he had been a public benefactor. The presentees whom the Triers

had approved took possession of the rectories, cultivated the glebe lands, collected the tithes, prayed without

book or surplice, and administered the Eucharist to communicants seated at long tables.

Thus the ecclesiastical polity of the realm was in inextricable confusion. Episcopacy was the form of

government prescribed by the old law which was still unrepealed. The form of government prescribed by

parliamentary ordinance was Presbyterian. But neither the old law nor the parliamentary ordinance was

practically in force. The Church actually established may be described as an irregular body made up of a few

Presbyteries and many Independent congregations, which were all held down and held together by the

Of those who had been active in bringing back the King, many were zealous for Synods and for the

Directory, and many were desirous to terminate by a compromise the religious dissensions which had long

agitated England. Between the bigoted followers of Laud and the bigoted followers of Knox there could be

neither peace nor truce: but it did not seem impossible to effect an accommodation between the moderate

Episcopalians of the school of Usher and the moderate Presbyterians of the school of Baxter. The moderate

Episcopalians would admit that a Bishop might lawfully be assisted by a council. The moderate Presbyterians

would not deny that each provincial assembly might lawfully have a permanent president, and that this

president might lawfully be called a Bishop. There might be a revised Liturgy which should not exclude

extemporaneous prayer, a baptismal service in which the sign of the cross might be used or omitted at

discretion, a communion service at which the faithful might sit if their conscience forbade them to kneel. But

to no such plan could the great bodies of the Cavaliers listen with patience. The religious members of that

party were conscientiously attached to the whole system of their Church. She had been dear to their murdered

King. She had consoled them in defeat and penury. Her service, so often whispered in an inner chamber

during the season of trial, had such a charm for them that they were unwilling to part with a single response.

Other Royalists, who made little presence to piety, yet loved the episcopal church because she was the foe of

their foes. They valued a prayer or a ceremony, not on account of the comfort which it conveyed to

themselves, but on account of the vexation which it gave to the Roundheads, and were so far from being

disposed to purchase union by concession that they objected to concession chiefly because it tended to

Such feelings, though blamable, were natural, and not wholly inexcusable. The Puritans had undoubtedly, in

the day of their power, given cruel provocation. They ought to have learned, if from nothing else, yet from

their own discontents, from their own struggles, from their own victory, from the fall of that proud hierarchy

by which they had been so heavily oppressed, that, in England, and in the seventeenth century, it was not in

the power of the civil magistrate to drill the minds of men into conformity with his own system of theology.

They proved, however, as intolerant and as meddling as ever Laud had been. They interdicted under heavy

penalties the use of the Book of Common Prayer, not only in churches, but even in private houses. It was a

crime in a child to read by the bedside of a sick parent one of those beautiful collects which had soothed the

griefs of forty generations of Christians. Severe punishments were denounced against such as should presume

to blame the Calvinistic mode of worship. Clergymen of respectable character were not only ejected from

their benefices by thousands, but were frequently exposed to the outrages of a fanatical rabble. Churches and

sepulchres, fine works of art and curious remains of antiquity, were brutally defaced. The Parliament resolved

that all pictures in the royal collection which contained representations of Jesus or of the Virgin Mother

should be burned. Sculpture fared as ill as painting. Nymphs and Graces, the work of Ionian chisels, were

delivered over to Puritan stonemasons to be made decent. Against the lighter vices the ruling faction waged

war with a zeal little tempered by humanity or by common sense. Sharp laws were passed against betting. It

was enacted that adultery should be punished with death. The illicit intercourse of the sexes, even where

neither violence nor seduction was imputed, where no public scandal was given, where no conjugal right was

violated, was made a misdemeanour. Public amusements, from the masques which were exhibited at the

mansions of the great down to the wrestling matches and grinning matches on village greens, were vigorously

attacked. One ordinance directed that all the Maypoles in England should forthwith be hewn down. Another

proscribed all theatrical diversions. The playhouses were to be dismantled, the spectators fined, the actors

whipped at the cart's tail. Ropedancing, puppetshows, bowls, horseracing, were regarded with no friendly

eye. But bearbaiting, then a favourite diversion of high and low, was the abomination which most strongly

stirred the wrath of the austere sectaries. It is to be remarked that their antipathy to this sport had nothing in

common with the feeling which has, in our own time, induced the legislature to interfere for the purpose of

protecting beasts against the wanton cruelty of men. The Puritan hated bearbaiting, not because it gave pain

to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. Indeed, he generally contrived to enjoy the double

Perhaps no single circumstance more strongly illustrates the temper of the precisians than their conduct

respecting Christmas day. Christmas had been, from time immemorial, the season of joy and domestic

affection, the season when families assembled, when children came home from school, when quarrels were

made up, when carols were heard in every street, when every house was decorated with evergreens, and every

table was loaded with good cheer. At that season all hearts not utterly destitute of kindness were enlarged and

softened. At that season the poor were admitted to partake largely of the overflowings of the wealth of the

rich, whose bounty was peculiarly acceptable on account of the shortness of the days and of the severity of

the weather. At that season, the interval between landlord and tenant, master and servant, was less marked

than through the rest of the year. Where there is much enjoyment there will be some excess: yet, on the

whole, the spirit in which the holiday was kept was not unworthy of a Christian festival. The long Parliament

gave orders, in 1644, that the twentyfifth of December should be strictly observed as a fast, and that all men

should pass it in humbly bemoaning the great national sin which they and their fathers had so often

committed on that day by romping under the mistletoe, eating boar's head, and drinking ale flavored with

roasted apples. No public act of that time seems to have irritated the common people more. On the next

anniversary of the festival formidable riots broke out in many places. The constables were resisted, the

magistrates insulted, the houses of noted zealots attacked, and the prescribed service of the day openly read in

Such was the spirit of the extreme Puritans, both Presbyterian and Independent. Oliver, indeed, was little

disposed to be either a persecutor or a meddler. But Oliver, the head of a party, and consequently, to a great

extent, the slave of a party, could not govern altogether according to his own inclinations. Even under his

administration many magistrates, within their own jurisdiction, made themselves as odious as Sir Hudibras,

interfered with all the pleasures of the neighbourhood, dispersed festive meetings, and put fiddlers in the

stocks. Still more formidable was the zeal of the soldiers. In every village where they appeared there was an

end of dancing, bellringing, and hockey. In London they several times interrupted theatrical performances at

With the fear and hatred inspired by such a tyranny contempt was largely mingled. The peculiarities of the

Puritan, his look, his dress, his dialect, his strange scruples, had been, ever since the time of Elizabeth,

favourite subjects with mockers. But these peculiarities appeared far more grotesque in a faction which ruled

a great empire than in obscure and persecuted congregations. The cant, which had moved laughter when it

was heard on the stage from Tribulation Wholesome and ZealoftheLand Busy, was still more laughable

when it proceeded from the lips of Generals and Councillors of State. It is also to be noticed that during the

civil troubles several sects had sprung into existence, whose eccentricities surpassed anything that had before

been seen in England. A mad tailor, named Lodowick Muggleton, wandered from pothouse to pothouse,

tippling ale, and denouncing eternal torments against those who refused to believe, on his testimony, that the

Supreme Being was only six feet high, and that the sun was just four miles from the earth.17 George Fox had

raised a tempest of derision by proclaiming that it was a violation of Christian sincerity to designate a single

person by a plural pronoun, and that it was an idolatrous homage to Janus and Woden to talk about January

and Wednesday. His doctrine, a few years later, was embraced by some eminent men, and rose greatly in the

public estimation. But at the time of the Restoration the Quakers were popularly regarded as the most

despicable of fanatics. By the Puritans they were treated with severity here, and were persecuted to the death

in New England. Nevertheless the public, which seldom makes nice distinctions, often confounded the

Puritan with the Quaker. Both were schismatics. Both hated episcopacy and the Liturgy. Both had what

seemed extravagant whimsies about dress, diversions and postures. Widely as the two differed in opinion,

they were popularly classed together as canting schismatics; and whatever was ridiculous or odious in either

Before the civil wars, even those who most disliked the opinions and manners of the Puritan were forced to

admit that his moral conduct was generally, in essentials, blameless; but this praise was now no longer

bestowed, and, unfortunately, was no longer deserved. The general fate of sects is to obtain a high reputation

for sanctity while they are oppressed, and to lose it as soon as they become powerful: and the reason is

obvious. It is seldom that a man enrolls himself in a proscribed body from any but conscientious motives.

Such a body, therefore, is composed, with scarcely an exception, of sincere persons. The most rigid discipline

that can be enforced within a religious society is a very feeble instrument of purification, when compared

with a little sharp persecution from without. We may be certain that very few persons, not seriously

impressed by religious convictions, applied for baptism while Diocletian was vexing the Church, or joined

themselves to Protestant congregations at the risk of being burned by Bonner. But, when a sect becomes

powerful, when its favour is the road to riches and dignities, worldly and ambitious men crowd into it, talk its

language, conform strictly to its ritual, mimic its peculiarities, and frequently go beyond its honest members

in all the outward indications of zeal. No discernment, no watchfulness, on the part of ecclesiastical rulers,

can prevent the intrusion of such false brethren. The tares and wheat must grow together. Soon the world

begins to find out that the godly are not better than other men, and argues, with some justice, that, if not

better, they must be much worse. In no long time all those signs which were formerly regarded as

Thus it was with the English Nonconformists. They had been oppressed; and oppression had kept them a pure

body. They then became supreme in the state. No man could hope to rise to eminence and command but by

their favour. Their favour was to be gained only by exchanging with them the signs and passwords of

spiritual fraternity. One of the first resolutions adopted by Barebone's Parliament, the most intensely

Puritanical of all our political assemblies, was that no person should be admitted into the public service till

the House should be satisfied of his real godliness. What were then considered as the signs of real godliness,

the sadcoloured dress, the sour look, the straight hair, the nasal whine, the speech interspersed with quaint

texts, the Sunday, gloomy as a Pharisaical Sabbath, were easily imitated by men to whom all religions were

the same. The sincere Puritans soon found themselves lost in a multitude, not merely of men of the world, but

of the very worst sort of men of the world. For the most notorious libertine who had fought under the royal

standard might justly be thought virtuous when compared with some of those who, while they talked about

sweet experiences and comfortable scriptures, lived in the constant practice of fraud, rapacity, and secret

debauchery. The people, with a rashness which we may justly lament, but at which we cannot wonder,

formed their estimate of the whole body from these hypocrites. The theology, the manners, the dialect of the

Puritan were thus associated in the public mind with the darkest and meanest vices. As soon as the

Restoration had made it safe to avow enmity to the party which had so long been predominant, a general

outcry against Puritanism rose from every corner of the kingdom, and was often swollen by the voices of

Thus the two great parties, which, after a long contest, had for a moment concurred in restoring monarchy,

were, both in politics and in religion, again opposed to each other. The great body of the nation leaned to the

Royalists. The crimes of Strafford and Laud, the excesses of the Star Chamber and of the High Commission,

the great services which the Long Parliament had, during the first year of its existence, rendered to the state,

had faded from the minds of men. The execution of Charles the First, the sullen tyranny of the Rump, the

violence of the army, were remembered with loathing; and the multitude was inclined to hold all who had

withstood the late King responsible for his death and for the subsequent disasters.

The House of Commons, having been elected while the Presbyterians were dominant, by no means

represented the general sense of the people. Most of the members, while execrating Cromwell and Bradshaw,

reverenced the memory of Essex and of Pym. One sturdy Cavalier, who ventured to declare that all who had

drawn the sword against Charles the First were as much traitors as those who kind cut off his head, was called

to order, placed at the bar, and reprimanded by the Speaker. The general wish of the House undoubtedly was

to settle the ecclesiastical disputes in a manner satisfactory to the moderate Puritans. But to such a settlement

The restored King was at this time more loved by the people than any of his predecessors had ever been. The

calamities of his house, the heroic death of his father, his own long sufferings and romantic adventures, made

him an object of tender interest. His return had delivered the country from an intolerable bondage. Recalled

by the voice of both the contending factions, he was in a position which enabled him to arbitrate between

them; and in some respects he was well qualified for the task. He had received from nature excellent parts

and a happy temper. His education had been such as might have been expected to develope his understanding,

and to form him to the practice of every public and private virtue. He had passed through all varieties of

fortune, and had seen both sides of human nature. He had, while very young, been driven forth from a palace

to a life of exile. penury, and danger. He had, at the age when the mind and body are in their highest

perfection, and when the first effervescence of boyish passions should have subsided, been recalled from his

wanderings to wear a crown. He had been taught by bitter experience how much baseness, perfidy, and

ingratitude may lie hid under the obsequious demeanor of courtiers. He had found, on the other hand, in the

huts of the poorest, true nobility of soul. When wealth was offered to any who would betray him, when death

was denounced against all who should shelter him, cottagers and serving men had kept his secret truly, and

had kissed his hand under his mean disguises with as much reverence as if he had been seated on his ancestral

throne. From such a school it might have been expected that a young man who wanted neither abilities nor

amiable qualities would have come forth a great and good King. Charles came forth from that school with

social habits, with polite and engaging manners, and with some talent for lively conversation, addicted

beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond of sauntering and of frivolous amusements, incapable of

selfdenial and of exertion, without faith in human virtue or in human attachment without desire of renown,

and without sensibility to reproach. According to him, every person was to be bought: but some people

haggled more about their price than others; and when this haggling was very obstinate and very skilful it was

called by some fine name. The chief trick by which clever men kept up the price of their abilities was called

integrity. The chief trick by which handsome women kept up the price of their beauty was called modesty.

The love of God, the love of country, the love of family, the love of friends, were phrases of the same sort,

delicate and convenient synonymes for the love of self. Thinking thus of mankind, Charles naturally cared

very little what they thought of him. Honour and shame were scarcely more to him than light and darkness to

the blind. His contempt of flattery has been highly commended, but seems, when viewed in connection with

the rest of his character, to deserve no commendation. It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it.

One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value real glory will not value its

It is creditable to Charles's temper that, ill as he thought of his species, he never became a misanthrope. He

saw little in men but what was hateful. Yet he did not hate them. Nay, he was so far humane that it was

highly disagreeable to him to see their sufferings or to hear their complaints. This, however, is a sort of

humanity which, though amiable and laudable in a private man whose power to help or hurt is bounded by a

narrow circle, has in princes often been rather a vice than a virtue. More than one well disposed ruler has

given up whole provinces to rapine and oppression, merely from a wish to see none but happy faces round his

own board and in his own walks. No man is fit to govern great societies who hesitates about disobliging the

few who have access to him, for the sake of the many whom he will never see. The facility of Charles was

such as has perhaps never been found in any man of equal sense. He was a slave without being a dupe.

Worthless men and women, to the very bottom of whose hearts he saw, and whom he knew to be destitute of

affection for him and undeserving of his confidence, could easily wheedle him out of titles, places, domains,

state secrets and pardons. He bestowed much; yet he neither enjoyed the pleasure nor acquired the fame of

beneficence. He never gave spontaneously; but it was painful to him to refuse. The consequence was that his

bounty generally went, not to those who deserved it best, nor even to those whom he liked best, but to the

The motives which governed the political conduct of Charles the Second differed widely from those by which

his predecessor and his successor were actuated. He was not a man to be imposed upon by the patriarchal

theory of government and the doctrine of divine right. He was utterly without ambition. He detested business,

and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the

administration. Such was his aversion to toil, and such his ignorance of affairs, that the very clerks who

attended him when he sate in council could not refrain from sneering at his frivolous remarks, and at his

childish impatience. Neither gratitude nor revenge had any share in determining his course; for never was

there a mind on which both services and injuries left such faint and transitory impressions. He wished merely

to be a King such as Lewis the Fifteenth of France afterwards was; a King who could draw without limit on

the treasury for the gratification of his private tastes, who could hire with wealth and honours persons capable

of assisting him to kill the time, and who, even when the state was brought by maladministration to the

depths of humiliation and to the brink of ruin, could still exclude unwelcome truth from the purlieus of his

own seraglio, and refuse to see and hear whatever might disturb his luxurious repose. For these ends, and for

these ends alone, he wished to obtain arbitrary power, if it could be obtained without risk or trouble. In the

religious disputes which divided his Protestant subjects his conscience was not at all interested. For his

opinions oscillated in contented suspense between infidelity and Popery. But, though his conscience was

neutral in the quarrel between the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians, his taste was by no means so. His

favourite vices were precisely those to which the Puritans were least indulgent. He could not get through one

day without the help of diversions which the Puritans regarded as sinful. As a man eminently well bred, and

keenly sensible of the ridiculous, he was moved to contemptuous mirth by the Puritan oddities. He had

indeed some reason to dislike the rigid sect. He had, at the age when the passions are most impetuous and

when levity is most pardonable, spent some months in Scotland, a King in name, but in fact a state prisoner in

the hands of austere Presbyterians. Not content with requiring him to conform to their worship and to

subscribe their Covenant, they had watched all his motions, and lectured him on all his youthful follies. He

had been compelled to give reluctant attendance at endless prayers and sermons, and might think himself

fortunate when he was not insolently reminded from the pulpit of his own frailties, of his father's tyranny, and

of his mother's idolatry. Indeed he had been so miserable during this part of his life that the defeat which

made him again a wanderer might be regarded as a deliverance rather than as a calamity. Under the influence

of such feelings as these Charles was desirous to depress the party which had resisted his father.

The King's brother, James Duke of York, took the same side. Though a libertine, James was diligent,

methodical, and fond of authority and business. His understanding was singularly slow and narrow, and his

temper obstinate, harsh, and unforgiving. That such a prince should have looked with no good will on the free

institutions of England, and on the party which was peculiarly zealous for those institutions, can excite no

surprise. As yet the Duke professed himself a member of the Anglican Church but he had already shown

The person on whom devolved at this time the greatest part of the labour of governing was Edward Hyde,

Chancellor of the realm, who was soon created Earl of Clarendon. The respect which we justly feel for

Clarendon as a writer must not blind us to the faults which he committed as a statesman. Some of those

faults, however, are explained and excused by the unfortunate position in which he stood. He had, during the

first year of the Long Parliament, been honourably distinguished among the senators who laboured to redress

the grievances of the nation. One of the most odious of those grievances, the Council of York, had been

removed in consequence chiefly of his exertions. When the great schism took place, when the reforming

party and the conservative party first appeared marshalled against each other, he, with many wise and good

men, took the conservative side. He thenceforward followed the fortunes of the court, enjoyed as large a

share of the confidence of Charles the First as the reserved nature and tortuous policy of that prince allowed

to any minister, and subsequently shared the exile and directed the political conduct of Charles the Second.

At the Restoration Hyde became chief minister. In a few months it was announced that he was closely related

by affinity to the royal house. His daughter had become, by a secret marriage, Duchess of York. His

grandchildren might perhaps wear the crown. He was raised by this illustrious connection over the heads of

the old nobility of the land, and was for a time supposed to be allpowerful. In some respects he was well

fitted for his great place. No man wrote abler state papers. No man spoke with more weight and dignity in

Council and in Parliament. No man was better acquainted with general maxims of statecraft. No man

observed the varieties of character with a more discriminating eye. It must be added that he had a strong

sense of moral and religious obligation, a sincere reverence for the laws of his country, and a conscientious

regard for the honour and interest of the Crown. But his temper was sour, arrogant, and impatient of

opposition. Above all, he bad been long an exile; and this circumstance alone would have completely

disqualified him for the supreme direction of affairs. It is scarcely possible that a politician, who has been

compelled by civil troubles to go into banishment, and to pass many of the best years of his life abroad, can

be fit, on the day on which he returns to his native land, to be at the head of the government. Clarendon was

no exception to this rule. He had left England with a mind heated by a fierce conflict which had ended in the

downfall of his party and of his own fortunes. From 1646 to 1660 he had lived beyond sea, looking on all that

passed at home from a great distance, and through a false medium. His notions of public affairs were

necessarily derived from the reports of plotters, many of whom were ruined and desperate men. Events

naturally seemed to him auspicious, not in proportion as they increased the prosperity and glory of the nation,

but in proportion as they tended to hasten the hour of his own return. His wish, a wish which he has not

disguised, was that, till his countrymen brought back the old line, they might never enjoy quiet or freedom.

At length he returned; and, without having a single week to look about him, to mix with society, to note the

changes which fourteen eventful years had produced in the national character and feelings, he was at once set

to rule the state. In such circumstances, a minister of the greatest tact and docility would probably have fallen

into serious errors. But tact and docility made no part of the character of Clarendon. To him England was still

the England of his youth; and he sternly frowned down every theory and every practice which had sprung up

during his own exile. Though he was far from meditating any attack on the ancient and undoubted power of

the House of Commons, he saw with extreme uneasiness the growth of that power. The royal prerogative, for

which he had long suffered, and by which he had at length been raised to wealth and dignity, was sacred in

his eyes. The Roundheads he regarded both with political and with personal aversion. To the Anglican

Church he had always been strongly attached, and had repeatedly, where her interests were concerned,

separated himself with regret from his dearest friends. His zeal for Episcopacy and for the Book of Common

Prayer was now more ardent than ever, and was mingled with a vindictive hatred of the Puritans, which did

While the House of Commons which had recalled the royal family was sitting, it was impossible to effect the

reestablishment of the old ecclesiastical system. Not only were the intentions of the court strictly concealed,

but assurances which quieted the minds of the moderate Presbyterians were given by the King in the most

solemn manner. He had promised, before his restoration, that he would grant liberty of conscience to his

subjects. He now repeated that promise, and added a promise to use his best endeavours for the purpose of

effecting a compromise between the contending sects. He wished, he said, to see the spiritual jurisdiction

divided between bishops and synods. The Liturgy should be revised by a body of learned divines, onehalf of

whom should be Presbyterians. The questions respecting the surplice, the posture at the Eucharist, and the

sign of the cross in baptism, should be settled in a way which would set tender consciences at ease. When the

King had thus laid asleep the vigilance of those whom he most feared, he dissolved the Parliament. He had

already given his assent to an act by which an amnesty was granted, with few exceptions, to all who, during

the late troubles, had been guilty of political offences. He had also obtained from the Commons a grant for

life of taxes, the annual product of which was estimated at twelve hundred thousand pounds. The actual

income, indeed, during some years, amounted to little more than a million: but this sum, together with the

hereditary revenue of the crown, was then sufficient to defray the expenses of the government in time of

peace. Nothing was allowed for a standing army. The nation was sick of the very name; and the least mention

Early in 1661 took place a general election. The people were mad with loyal enthusiasm. The capital was

excited by preparations for the most splendid coronation that had ever been known. The result was that a

body of representatives was returned, such as England had never yet seen. A large proportion of the

successful candidates were men who had fought for the Crown and the Church, and whose minds had been

exasperated by many injuries and insults suffered at the hands of the Roundheads. When the members met,

the passions which animated each individually acquired new strength from sympathy. The House of

Commons was, during some years, more zealous for royalty than the King, more zealous for episcopacy than

the Bishops. Charles and Clarendon were almost terrified at the completeness of their own success. They

found themselves in a situation not unlike that in which Lewis the Eighteenth and the Duke of Richelieu were

placed while the Chamber of 1815 was sitting. Even if the King had been desirous to fulfill the promises

which he had made to the Presbyterians, it would have been out of his power to do so. It was indeed only by

the strong exertion of his influence that he could prevent the victorious Cavaliers from rescinding the act of

The Commons began by resolving that every member should, on pain of expulsion, take the sacrament

according to the form prescribed by the old Liturgy, and that the Covenant should be burned by the hangman

in Palace Yard. An act was passed, which not only acknowledged the power of the sword to be solely in the

King, but declared that in no extremity whatever could the two Houses be justified in withstanding him by

force. Another act was passed which required every officer of a corporation to receive the Eucharist

according to the rites of the Church of England, and to swear that he held resistance to the King's authority to

be in all cases unlawful. A few hotheaded men wished to bring in a bill, which should at once annul all the

statutes passed by the Long Parliament, and should restore the Star Chamber and the High Commission; but

the reaction, violent as it was, did not proceed quite to this length. It still continued to be the law that a

Parliament should be held every three years: but the stringent clauses which directed the returning officers to

proceed to election at the proper time, even without the royal writ, were repealed. The Bishops were restored

to their seats in the Upper House. The old ecclesiastical polity and the old Liturgy were revived without any

modification which had any tendency to conciliate even the most reasonable Presbyterians. Episcopal

ordination was now, for the first time, made an indispensable qualification for church preferment. About two

thousand ministers of religion, whose conscience did not suffer them to conform, were driven from their

benefices in one day. The dominant party exultingly reminded the sufferers that the Long Parliament, when at

the height of power, had turned out a still greater number of Royalist divines. The reproach was but too well

founded: but the Long Parliament had at least allowed to the divines whom it ejected a provision sufficient to

keep them from starving; and this example the Cavaliers, intoxicated with animosity, had not the justice and

Then came penal statutes against Nonconformists, statutes for which precedents might too easily be found in

the Puritan legislation, but to which the King could not give his assent without a breach of promises publicly

made, in the most important crisis of his life, to those on whom his fate depended. The Presbyterians, in

extreme distress and terror, fled to the foot of the throne, and pleaded their recent services and the royal faith

solemnly and repeatedly plighted. The King wavered. He could not deny his own hand and seal. He could not

but be conscious that he owed much to the petitioners. He was little in the habit of resisting importunate

solicitation. His temper was not that of a persecutor. He disliked the Puritans indeed; but in him dislike was a

languid feeling, very little resembling the energetic hatred which had burned in the heart of Laud. He was,

moreover, partial to the Roman Catholic religion; and he knew that it would be impossible to grant liberty of

worship to the professors of that religion without extending the same indulgence to Protestant dissenters. He

therefore made a feeble attempt to restrain the intolerant zeal of the House of Commons; but that House was

under the influence of far deeper convictions and far stronger passions than his own. After a faint struggle he

yielded, and passed, with the show of alacrity, a series of odious acts against the separatists. It was made a

crime to attend a dissenting place of worship. A single justice of the peace might convict without a jury, and

might, for the third offence, pass sentence of transportation beyond sea for seven years. With refined cruelty

it was provided that the offender should not be transported to New England, where he was likely to find

sympathising friends. If he returned to his own country before the expiration of his term of exile, he was

liable to capital punishment. A new and most unreasonable test was imposed on divines who had been

deprived of their benefices for nonconformity; and all who refused to take that test were prohibited from

coming within five miles of any town which was governed by a corporation, of any town which was

represented in Parliament, or of any town where they had themselves resided as ministers. The magistrates,

by whom these rigorous statutes were to be enforced, were in general men inflamed by party spirit and by the

remembrance of wrongs suffered in the time of the commonwealth. The gaols were therefore soon crowded

with dissenters, and, among the sufferers, were some of whose genius and virtue any Christian society might

The Church of England was not ungrateful for the protection which she received from the government. From

the first day of her existence, she had been attached to monarchy. But, during the quarter of a century which

followed the Restoration, her zeal for royal authority and hereditary right passed all bounds. She had suffered

with the House of Stuart. She had been restored with that House. She was connected with it by common

interests, friendships, and enmities. It seemed impossible that a day could ever come when the ties which

bound her to the children of her august martyr would be sundered, and when the loyalty in which she gloried

would cease to be a pleasing and profitable duty. She accordingly magnified in fulsome phrase that

prerogative which was constantly employed to defend and to aggrandise her, and reprobated, much at her

ease, the depravity of those whom oppression, from which she was exempt, had goaded to rebellion. Her

favourite theme was the doctrine of nonresistance. That doctrine she taught without any qualification, and

followed out to all its extreme consequences. Her disciples were never weary of repeating that in no

conceivable case, not even if England were cursed with a King resembling Busiris or Phalaris, with a King

who, in defiance of law, and without the presence of justice, should daily doom hundreds of innocent victims

to torture and death, would all the Estates of the realm united be justified in withstanding his tyranny by

physical force. Happily the principles of human nature afford abundant security that such theories will never

be more than theories. The day of trial came; and the very men who had most loudly and most sincerely

professed this extravagant loyalty were, in every county of England arrayed in arms against the throne.

Property all over the kingdom was now again changing hands. The national sales, not having been confirmed

by Act of Parliament, were regarded by the tribunals as nullities. The bishops, the deans, the chapters, the

Royalist nobility and gentry, reentered on their confiscated estates, and ejected even purchasers who had

given fair prices. The losses which the Cavaliers had sustained during the ascendency of their opponents were

thus in part repaired; but in part only. All actions for mesne profits were effectually barred by the general

amnesty; and the numerous Royalists, who, in order to discharge fines imposed by the Long Parliament, or in

order to purchase the favour of powerful Roundheads, had sold lands for much less than the real value, were

While these changes were in progress, a change still more important took place in the morals and manners of

the community. Those passions and tastes which, under the rule of the Puritans, had been sternly repressed,

and, if gratified at all, had been gratified by stealth, broke forth with ungovernable violence as soon as the

check was withdrawn. Men flew to frivolous amusements and to criminal pleasures with the greediness

which long and enforced abstinence naturally produces. Little restraint was imposed by public opinion. For

the nation, nauseated with cant, suspicious of all pretensions to sanctity and still smarting from the recent

tyranny of rulers austere in life and powerful in prayer, looked for a time with complacency on the softer and

gayer vices. Still less restraint was imposed by the government. Indeed there was no excess which was not

encouraged by the ostentatious profligacy of the King and of his favourite courtiers. A few counsellors of

Charles the First, who were now no longer young, retained the decorous gravity which had been thirty years

before in fashion at Whitehall. Such were Clarendon himself, and his friends, Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of

Southampton, Lord Treasurer, and James Butler, Duke of Ormond, who, having through many vicissitudes

struggled gallantly for the royal cause in Ireland, now governed that kingdom as Lord Lieutenant. But neither

the memory of the services of these men, nor their great power in the state, could protect them from the

sarcasms which modish vice loves to dart at obsolete virtue. The praise of politeness and vivacity could now

scarcely be obtained except by some violation of decorum. Talents great and various assisted to spread the

contagion. Ethical philosophy had recently taken a form well suited to please a generation equally devoted to

monarchy and to vice. Thomas Hobbes had, in language more precise and luminous than has ever been

employed by any other metaphysical writer, maintained that the will of the prince was the standard of right

and wrong, and that every subject ought to be ready to profess Popery, Mahometanism, or Paganism, at the

royal command. Thousands who were incompetent to appreciate what was really valuable in his speculations,

eagerly welcomed a theory which, while it exalted the kingly office, relaxed the obligations of morality, and

degraded religion into a mere affair of state. Hobbism soon became an almost essential part of the character

of the fine gentleman. All the lighter kinds of literature were deeply tainted by the prevailing licentiousness.

Poetry stooped to be the pandar of every low desire. Ridicule, instead of putting guilt and error to the blush,

turned her formidable shafts against innocence and truth. The restored Church contended indeed against the

prevailing immorality, but contended feebly, and with half a heart. It was necessary to the decorum of her

character that she should admonish her erring children: but her admonitions were given in a somewhat

perfunctory manner. Her attention was elsewhere engaged. Her whole soul was in the work of crushing the

Puritans, and of teaching her disciples to give unto Caesar the things which were Caesar's. She had been

pillaged and oppressed by the party which preached an austere morality. She had been restored to opulence

and honour by libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fashion were disposed to shape their lives according

to her precepts, they were yet ready to fight knee deep in blood for her cathedrals and places, for every line of

her rubric and every thread of her vestments. If the debauched Cavalier haunted brothels and gambling

houses, he at least avoided conventicles. If he never spoke without uttering ribaldry and blasphemy, he made

some amends by his eagerness to send Baxter and Howe to gaol for preaching and praying. Thus the clergy,

for a time, made war on schism with so much vigour that they had little leisure to make war on vice. The

ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley was, in the presence and under the special sanction of the head of the

Church, publicly recited by female lips in female ears, while the author of the Pilgrim's Progress languished

in a dungeon for the crime of proclaiming the gospel to the poor. It is an unquestionable and a most

instructive fact that the years during which the political power of the Anglican hierarchy was in the zenith

Scarcely any rank or profession escaped the infection of the prevailing immorality; but those persons who

made politics their business were perhaps the most corrupt part of the corrupt society. For they were exposed,

not only to the same noxious influences which affected the nation generally, but also to a taint of a peculiar

and of a most malignant kind. Their character had been formed amidst frequent and violent revolutions and

counterrevolutions. In the course of a few years they had seen the ecclesiastical and civil polity of their

country repeatedly changed. They had seen an Episcopal Church persecuting Puritans, a Puritan Church

persecuting Episcopalians, and an Episcopal Church persecuting Puritans again. They had seen hereditary

monarchy abolished and restored. They had seen the Long Parliament thrice supreme in the state, and thrice

dissolved amidst the curses and laughter of millions. They had seen a new dynasty rapidly rising to the height

of power and glory, and then on a sudden hurled down from the chair of state without a struggle. They had

seen a new representative system devised, tried and abandoned. They had seen a new House of Lords created

and scattered. They had seen great masses of property violently transferred from Cavaliers to Roundheads,

and from Roundheads back to Cavaliers. During these events no man could be a stirring and thriving

politician who was not prepared to change with every change of fortune. It was only in retirement that any

person could long keep the character either of a steady Royalist or of a steady Republican. One who, in such

an age, is determined to attain civil greatness must renounce all thoughts of consistency. Instead of affecting

immutability in the midst of endless mutation, he must be always on the watch for the indications of a coming

reaction. He must seize the exact moment for deserting a falling cause. Having gone all lengths with a faction

while it was uppermost, he must suddenly extricate himself from it when its difficulties begin, must assail it,

must persecute it, must enter on a new career of power and prosperity in company with new associates. His

situation naturally developes in him to the highest degree a peculiar class of abilities and a peculiar class of

vices. He becomes quick of observation and fertile of resource. He catches without effort the tone of any sect

or party with which he chances to mingle. He discerns the signs of the times with a sagacity which to the

multitude appears miraculous, with a sagacity resembling that with which a veteran police officer pursues the

faintest indications of crime, or with which a Mohawk warrior follows a track through the woods. But we

shell seldom find, in a statesman so trained, integrity, constancy, any of the virtues of the noble family of

Truth. He has no faith in any doctrine, no zeal for any cause. He has seen so many old institutions swept

away, that he has no reverence for prescription. He has seen so many new institutions, from which much had

been expected, produce mere disappointment, that he has no hope of improvement. He sneers alike at those

who are anxious to preserve and at those who are eager to reform. There is nothing in the state which he

could not, without a scruple or a blush, join in defending or in destroying. Fidelity to opinions and to friends

seems to him mere dulness and wrongheadedness. Politics he regards, not as a science of which the object is

the happiness of mankind, but as an exciting game of mixed chance and skill, at which a dexterous and lucky

player may win an estate, a coronet, perhaps a crown, and at which one rash move may lead to the loss of

fortune and of life. Ambition, which, in good times, and in good minds, is half a virtue, now, disjoined from

every elevated and philanthropic sentiment, becomes a selfish cupidity scarcely less ignoble than avarice.

Among those politicians who, from the Restoration to the accession of the House of Hanover, were at the

head of the great parties in the state, very few can be named whose reputation is not stained by what, in our

age, would be called gross perfidy and corruption. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the most

unprincipled public men who have taken part in affairs within our memory would, if tried by the standard

which was in fashion during the latter part of the seventeenth century, deserve to be regarded as scrupulous

While these political, religious, and moral changes were taking place in England, the Royal authority had

been without difficulty reestablished in every other part of the British islands. In Scotland the restoration of

the Stuarts had been hailed with delight; for it was regarded as the restoration of national independence. And

true it was that the yoke which Cromwell had imposed was, in appearance, taken away, that the Scottish

Estates again met in their old hall at Edinburgh, and that the Senators of the College of Justice again

administered the Scottish law according to the old forms. Yet was the independence of the little kingdom

necessarily rather nominal than real; for, as long as the King had England on his side, he had nothing to

apprehend from disaffection in his other dominions. He was now in such a situation that he could renew the

attempt which had proved destructive to his father without any danger of his father's fate. Charles the First

had tried to force his own religion by his regal power on the Scots at a moment when both his religion and his

regal power were unpopular in England; and he had not only failed, but had raised troubles which had

ultimately cost him his crown and his head. Times had now changed: England was zealous for monarchy and

prelacy; and therefore the scheme which had formerly been in the highest degree imprudent might be

resumed with little risk to the throne. The government resolved to set up a prelatical church in Scotland. The

design was disapproved by every Scotchman whose judgment was entitled to respect. Some Scottish

statesmen who were zealous for the King's prerogative had been bred Presbyterians. Though little troubled

with scruples, they retained a preference for the religion of their childhood; and they well knew how strong a

hold that religion had on the hearts of their countrymen. They remonstrated strongly: but, when they found

that they remonstrated in vain, they had not virtue enough to persist in an opposition which would have given

offence to their master; and several of them stooped to the wickedness and baseness of persecuting what in

their consciences they believed to be the purest form of Christianity. The Scottish Parliament was so

constituted that it had scarcely ever offered any serious opposition even to Kings much weaker than Charles

then was. Episcopacy, therefore, was established by law. As to the form of worship, a large discretion was

left to the clergy. In some churches the English Liturgy was used. In others, the ministers selected from that

Liturgy such prayers and thanksgivings as were likely to be least offensive to the people. But in general the

doxology was sung at the close of public worship; and the Apostles' Creed was recited when baptism was

administered. By the great body of the Scottish nation the new Church was detested both as superstitious and

as foreign; as tainted with the corruptions of Rome, and as a mark of the predominance of England. There

was, however, no general insurrection. The country was not what it had been twentytwo years before.

Disastrous war and alien domination had tamed the spirit of the people. The aristocracy, which was held in

great honour by the middle class and by the populace, had put itself at the head of the movement against

Charles the First, but proved obsequious to Charles the Second. From the English Puritans no aid was now to

be expected. They were a feeble party, proscribed both by law and by public opinion. The bulk of the Scottish

nation, therefore, sullenly submitted, and, with many misgivings of conscience, attended the ministrations of

the Episcopal clergy, or of Presbyterian divines who had consented to accept from the government a half

toleration, known by the name of the Indulgence. But there were, particularly in the western lowlands, many

fierce and resolute men who held that the obligation to observe the Covenant was paramount to the obligation

to obey the magistrate. These people, in defiance of the law, persisted in meeting to worship God after their

own fashion. The Indulgence they regarded, not as a partial reparation of the wrongs inflicted by the State on

the Church, but as a new wrong, the more odious because it was disguised under the appearance of a benefit.

Persecution, they said, could only kill the body; but the black Indulgence was deadly to the soul. Driven from

the towns, they assembled on heaths and mountains. Attacked by the civil power, they without scruple

repelled force by force. At every conventicle they mustered in arms. They repeatedly broke out into open

rebellion. They were easily defeated, and mercilessly punished: but neither defeat nor punishment could

subdue their spirit. Hunted down like wild beasts, tortured till their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by

hundreds, hanged by scores, exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from England, abandoned at

another time to the mercy of troops of marauders from the Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood so

savage that the boldest and mightiest oppressor could not but dread the audacity of their despair.

Such was, during the reign of Charles the Second, the state of Scotland. Ireland was not less distracted. In that

island existed feuds, compared with which the hottest animosities of English politicians were lukewarm. The

enmity between the Irish Cavaliers and the Irish Roundheads was almost forgotten in the fiercer enmity

which raged between the English and the Celtic races. The interval between the Episcopalian and the

Presbyterian seemed to vanish, when compared with the interval which separated both from the Papist.

During the late civil troubles the greater part of the Irish soil had been transferred from the vanquished nation

to the victors. To the favour of the Crown few either of the old or of the new occupants had any pretensions.

The despoilers and the despoiled had, for the most part, been rebels alike. The government was soon

perplexed and wearied by the conflicting claims and mutual accusations of the two incensed factions. Those

colonists among whom Cromwell had portioned out the conquered territory, and whose descendants are still

called Cromwellians, asserted that the aboriginal inhabitants were deadly enemies of the English nation under

every dynasty, and of the Protestant religion in every form. They described and exaggerated the atrocities

which had disgraced the insurrection of Ulster: they urged the King to follow up with resolution the policy of

the Protector; and they were not ashamed to hint that there would never be peace in Ireland till the old Irish

race should be extirpated. The Roman Catholics extenuated their offense as they best might, and expatiated in

piteous language on the severity of their punishment, which, in truth, had not been lenient. They implored

Charles not to confound the innocent with the guilty, and reminded him that many of the guilty had atoned

for their fault by returning to their allegiance, and by defending his rights against the murderers of his father.

The court, sick of the importunities of two parties, neither of which it had any reason to love, at length

relieved itself from trouble by dictating a compromise. That system, cruel, but most complete and energetic,

by which Oliver had proposed to make the island thoroughly English, was abandoned. The Cromwellians

were induced to relinquish a third part of their acquisitions. The land thus surrendered was capriciously

divided among claimants whom the government chose to favour. But great numbers who protested that they

were innocent of all disloyalty, and some persons who boasted that their loyalty had been signally displayed,

obtained neither restitution nor compensation, and filled France and Spain with outcries against the injustice

Meantime the government had, even in England, ceased to be popular. The Royalists had begun to quarrel

with the court and with each other; and the party which had been vanquished, trampled down, and, as it

seemed, annihilated, but which had still retained a strong principle of life, again raised its head, and renewed

Had the administration been faultless, the enthusiasm with which the return of the King and the termination

of the military tyranny had been hailed could not have been permanent. For it is the law of our nature that

such fits of excitement shall always be followed by remissions. The manner in which the court abused its

victory made the remission speedy and complete. Every moderate man was shocked by the insolence, cruelty,

and perfidy with which the Nonconformists were treated. The penal laws had effectually purged the

oppressed party of those insincere members whose vices had disgraced it, and had made it again an honest

and pious body of men. The Puritan, a conqueror, a ruler, a persecutor, a sequestrator, had been detested. The

Puritan, betrayed and evil entreated, deserted by all the timeservers who, in his prosperity, had claimed

brotherhood with him, hunted from his home, forbidden under severe penalties to pray or receive the

sacrament according to his conscience, yet still firm in his resolution to obey God rather than man, was, in

spite of some unpleasing recollections, an object of pity and respect to well constituted minds. These feelings

became stronger when it was noised abroad that the court was not disposed to treat Papists with the same

rigour which had been shown to Presbyterians. A vague suspicion that the King and the Duke were not

sincere Protestants sprang up and gathered strength. Many persons too who had been disgusted by the

austerity and hypocrisy of the Saints of the Commonwealth began to be still more disgusted by the open

profligacy of the court and of the Cavaliers, and were disposed to doubt whether the sullen preciseness of

Praise God Barebone might not be preferable to the outrageous profaneness and licentiousness of the

Buckinghams and Sedleys. Even immoral men, who were not utterly destitute of sense and public spirit,

complained that the government treated the most serious matters as trifles, and made trifles its serious

business. A King might be pardoned for amusing his leisure with wine, wit, and beauty. But it was intolerable

that he should sink into a mere lounger and voluptuary, that the gravest affairs of state should be neglected,

and that the public service should be starved and the finances deranged in order that harlots and parasites

A large body of Royalists joined in these complaints, and added many sharp reflections on the King's

ingratitude. His whole revenue, indeed, would not have sufficed to reward them all in proportion to their own

consciousness of desert. For to every distressed gentleman who had fought under Rupert or Derby his own

services seemed eminently meritorious, and his own sufferings eminently severe. Every one had flattered

himself that, whatever became of the rest, he should be largely recompensed for all that he had lost during the

civil troubles, and that the restoration of the monarchy would be followed by the restoration of his own

dilapidated fortunes. None of these expectants could restrain his indignation, when he found that he was as

poor under the King as he had been under the Rump or the Protector. The negligence and extravagance of the

court excited the bitter indignation of these loyal veterans. They justly said that one half of what His Majesty

squandered on concubines and buffoons would gladden the hearts of hundreds of old Cavaliers who, after

cutting down their oaks and melting their plate to help his father, now wandered about in threadbare suits,

At the same time a sudden fall of rents took place. The income of every landed proprietor was diminished by

five shillings in the pound. The cry of agricultural distress rose from every shire in the kingdom; and for that

distress the government was, as usual, held accountable. The gentry, compelled to retrench their expenses for

a period, saw with indignation the increasing splendour and profusion of Whitehall, and were immovably

fixed in the belief that the money which ought to have supported their households had, by some inexplicable

The minds of men were now in such a temper that every public act excited discontent. Charles had taken to

wife Catharine Princess of Portugal. The marriage was generally disliked; and the murmurs became loud

when it appeared that the King was not likely to have any legitimate posterity. Dunkirk, won by Oliver from

Spain, was sold to Lewis the Fourteenth, King of France. This bargain excited general indignation.

Englishmen were already beginning to observe with uneasiness the progress of the French power, and to

regard the House of Bourbon with the same feeling with which their grandfathers had regarded the House of

Austria. Was it wise, men asked, at such a time, to make any addition to the strength of a monarchy already

too formidable? Dunkirk was, moreover, prized by the people, not merely as a place of arms, and as a key to

the Low Countries, but also as a trophy of English valour. It was to the subjects of Charles what Calais had

been to an earlier generation, and what the rock of Gibraltar, so manfully defended, through disastrous and

perilous years, against the fleets and armies of a mighty coalition, is to ourselves. The plea of economy might

have had some weight, if it had been urged by an economical government. But it was notorious that the

charges of Dunkirk fell far short of the sums which were wasted at court in vice and folly. It seemed

insupportable that a sovereign, profuse beyond example in all that regarded his own pleasures, should be

The public discontent was heightened, when it was found that, while Dunkirk was abandoned on the plea of

economy, the fortress of Tangier, which was part of the dower of Queen Catharine, was repaired and kept up

at an enormous charge. That place was associated with no recollections gratifying to the national pride: it

could in no way promote the national interests: it involved us in inglorious, unprofitable, and interminable

wars with tribes of half savage Mussulmans and it was situated in a climate singularly unfavourable to the

But the murmurs excited by these errors were faint, when compared with the clamours which soon broke

forth. The government engaged in war with the United Provinces. The House of Commons readily voted

sums unexampled in our history, sums exceeding those which had supported the fleets and armies of

Cromwell at the time when his power was the terror of all the world. But such was the extravagance,

dishonesty, and incapacity of those who had succeeded to his authority, that this liberality proved worse than

useless. The sycophants of the court, ill qualified to contend against the great men who then directed the arms

of Holland, against such a statesman as De Witt, and such a commander as De Ruyter, made fortunes rapidly,

while the sailors mutinied from very hunger, while the dockyards were unguarded, while the ships were leaky

and without rigging. It was at length determined to abandon all schemes of offensive war; and it soon

appeared that even a defensive war was a task too hard for that administration. The Dutch fleet sailed up the

Thames, and burned the ships of war which lay at Chatham. It was said that, on the very day of that great

humiliation, the King feasted with the ladies of his seraglio, and amused himself with hunting a moth about

the supper room. Then, at length, tardy justice was done to the memory of Oliver. Everywhere men magnified

his valour, genius, and patriotism. Everywhere it was remembered how, when he ruled, all foreign powers

had trembled at the name of England, how the States General, now so haughty, had crouched at his feet, and

how, when it was known that he was no more, Amsterdam was lighted up as for a great deliverance, and

children ran along the canals, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead. Even Royalists exclaimed that the

state could be saved only by calling the old soldiers of the Commonwealth to arms. Soon the capital began to

feel the miseries of a blockade. Fuel was scarcely to be procured. Tilbury Fort, the place where Elizabeth had,

with manly spirit, hurled foul scorn at Parma and Spain, was insulted by the invaders. The roar of foreign

guns was heard, for the first time, by the citizens of London. In the Council it was seriously proposed that, if

the enemy advanced, the Tower should be abandoned. Great multitudes of people assembled in the streets

crying out that England was bought and sold. The houses and carriages of the ministers were attacked by the

populace; and it seemed likely that the government would have to deal at once with an invasion and with an

insurrection. The extreme danger, it is true, soon passed by. A treaty was concluded, very different from the

treaties which Oliver had been in the habit of signing; and the nation was once more at peace, but was in a

The discontent engendered by maladministration was heightened by calamities which the best administration

could not have averted. While the ignominious war with Holland was raging, London suffered two great

disasters, such as never, in so short a space of time, befel one city. A pestilence, surpassing in horror any that

during three centuries had visited the island, swept away, in six mouths, more than a hundred thousand

human beings. And scarcely had the dead cart ceased to go its rounds, when a fire, such as had not been

known in Europe since the conflagration of Rome under Nero, laid in ruins the whole city, from the Tower to

Had there been a general election while the nation was smarting under so many disgraces and misfortunes, it

is probable that the Roundheads would have regained ascendency in the state. But the Parliament was still the

Cavalier Parliament, chosen in the transport of loyalty which had followed the Restoration. Nevertheless it

soon became evident that no English legislature, however loyal, would now consent to be merely what the

legislature had been under the Tudors. From the death of Elizabeth to the eve of the civil war, the Puritans,

who predominated in the representative body, had been constantly, by a dexterous use of the power of the

purse, encroaching on the province of the executive government. The gentlemen who, after the Restoration,

filled the Lower House, though they abhorred the Puritan name, were well pleased to inherit the fruit of the

Puritan policy. They were indeed most willing to employ the power which they possessed in the state for the

purpose of making their King mighty and honoured, both at home and abroad: but with the power itself they

were resolved not to part. The great English revolution of the seventeenth century, that is to say, the transfer

of the supreme control of the executive administration from the crown to the House of Commons, was,

through the whole long existence of this Parliament, proceeding noiselessly, but rapidly and steadily. Charles,

kept poor by his follies and vices, wanted money. The Commons alone could legally grant him money. They

could not be prevented from putting their own price on their grants. The price which they put on their grants

was this, that they should be allowed to interfere with every one of the King's prerogatives, to wring from

him his consent to laws which he disliked, to break up cabinets, to dictate the course of foreign policy, and

even to direct the administration of war. To the royal office, and the royal person, they loudly and sincerely

professed the strongest attachment. But to Clarendon they owed no allegiance; and they fell on him as

furiously as their predecessors had fallen on Strafford. The minister's virtues and vices alike contributed to

his ruin. He was the ostensible head of the administration, and was therefore held responsible even for those

acts which he had strongly, but vainly, opposed in Council. He was regarded by the Puritans, and by all who

pitied them, as an implacable bigot, a second Laud, with much more than Laud's understanding. He had on all

occasions maintained that the Act of indemnity ought to be strictly observed; and this part of his conduct,

though highly honourable to him, made him hateful to all those Royalists who wished to repair their ruined

fortunes by suing the Roundheads for damages and mesne profits. The Presbyterians of Scotland attributed to

him the downfall of their Church. The Papists of Ireland attributed to him the loss of their lands. As father of

the Duchess of York, he had an obvious motive for wishing that there might be a barren Queen; and he was

therefore suspected of having purposely recommended one. The sale of Dunkirk was justly imputed to him.

For the war with Holland, he was, with less justice, held accountable. His hot temper, his arrogant

deportment, the indelicate eagerness with which he grasped at riches, the ostentation with which he

squandered them, his picture gallery, filled with masterpieces of Vandyke which had once been the property

of ruined Cavaliers, his palace, which reared its long and stately front right opposite to the humbler residence

of our Kings, drew on him much deserved, and some undeserved, censure. When the Dutch fleet was in the

Thames, it was against the Chancellor that the rage of the populace was chiefly directed. His windows were

broken; the trees of his garden were cut down; and a gibbet was set up before his door. But nowhere was he

more detested than in the House of Commons. He was unable to perceive that the time was fast approaching

when that House, if it continued to exist at all, must be supreme in the state, when the management of that

House would be the most important department of politics, and when, without the help of men possessing the

ear of that House, it would be impossible to carry on the government. He obstinately persisted in considering

the Parliament as a body in no respect differing from the Parliament which had been sitting when, forty years

before, he first began to study law at the Temple. He did not wish to deprive the legislature of those powers

which were inherent in it by the old constitution of the realm: but the new development of those powers,

though a development natural, inevitable, and to be prevented only by utterly destroying the powers

themselves, disgusted and alarmed him. Nothing would have induced him to put the great seal to a writ for

raising shipmoney, or to give his voice in Council for committing a member of Parliament to the Tower, on

account of words spoken in debate: but, when the Commons began to inquire in what manner the money

voted for the war had been wasted, and to examine into the maladministration of the navy, he flamed with

indignation. Such inquiry, according to him, was out of their province. He admitted that the House was a

most loyal assembly, that it had done good service to the crown, and that its intentions were excellent. But,

both in public and in the closet, he, on every occasion, expressed his concern that gentlemen so sincerely

attached to monarchy should unadvisedly encroach on the prerogative of the monarch. Widely as they

differed in spirit from the members of the Long Parliament, they yet, he said, imitated that Parliament in

meddling with matters which lay beyond the sphere of the Estates of the realm, and which were subject to the

authority of the crown alone. The country, he maintained, would never be well governed till the knights of

shires and the burgesses were content to be what their predecessors had been in the days of Elizabeth. All the

plans which men more observant than himself of the signs of that time proposed, for the purpose of

maintaining a good understanding between the Court and the Commons, he disdainfully rejected as crude

projects, inconsistent with the old polity of England. Towards the young orators, who were rising to

distinction and authority in the Lower House, his deportment was ungracious: and he succeeded in making

them, with scarcely an exception, his deadly enemies. Indeed one of his most serious faults was an inordinate

contempt for youth: and this contempt was the more unjustifiable, because his own experience in English

politics was by no means proportioned to his age. For so great a part of his life had been passed abroad that

he knew less of that world in which he found himself on his return than many who might have been his sons.

For these reasons he was disliked by the Commons. For very different reasons he was equally disliked by the

Court. His morals as well as his polities were those of an earlier generation. Even when he was a young law

student, living much with men of wit and pleasure, his natural gravity and his religious principles had to a

great extent preserved him from the contagion of fashionable debauchery; and he was by no means likely, in

advanced years and in declining health, to turn libertine. On the vices of the young and gay he looked with an

aversion almost as bitter and contemptuous as that which he felt for the theological errors of the sectaries. He

missed no opportunity of showing his scorn of the mimics, revellers, and courtesans who crowded the palace;

and the admonitions which he addressed to the King himself were very sharp, and, what Charles disliked still

more, very long. Scarcely any voice was raised in favour of a minister loaded with the double odium of faults

which roused the fury of the people, and of virtues which annoyed and importuned the sovereign.

Southampton was no more. Ormond performed the duties of friendship manfully and faithfully, but in vain.

The Chancellor fell with a great ruin. The seal was taken from him: the Commons impeached him: his head

was not safe: he fled from the country: an act was passed which doomed him to perpetual exile; and those

who had assailed and undermined him began to struggle for the fragments of his power.

The sacrifice of Clarendon in some degree took off the edge of the public appetite for revenge. Yet was the

anger excited by the profusion and negligence of the government, and by the miscarriages of the late war, by

no means extinguished. The counsellors of Charles, with the fate of the Chancellor before their eyes, were

anxious for their own safety. They accordingly advised their master to soothe the irritation which prevailed

both in the Parliament and throughout the country, and for that end, to take a step which has no parallel in the

history of the House of Stuart, and which was worthy of the prudence and magnanimity of Oliver.

We have now reached a point at which the history of the great English revolution begins to be complicated

with the history of foreign politics. The power of Spain had, during many years, been declining. She still, it is

true held in Europe the Milanese and the two Sicilies, Belgium, and Franche Comte. In America her

dominions still spread, on both sides of the equator, far beyond the limits of the torrid zone. But this great

body had been smitten with palsy, and was not only incapable of giving molestation to other states, but could

not, without assistance, repel aggression. France was now, beyond all doubt, the greatest power in Europe.

Her resources have, since those days, absolutely increased, but have not increased so fast as the resources of

England. It must also be remembered that, a hundred and eighty years ago, the empire of Russia, now a

monarchy of the first class, was as entirely out of the system of European politics as Abyssinia or Siam, that

the House of Brandenburg was then hardly more powerful than the House of Saxony, and that the republic of

the United States had not then begun to exist. The weight of France, therefore, though still very considerable,

has relatively diminished. Her territory was not in the days of Lewis the Fourteenth quite so extensive as at

present: but it was large, compact, fertile, well placed both for attack and for defence, situated in a happy

climate, and inhabited by a brave, active, and ingenious people. The state implicitly obeyed the direction of a

single mind. The great fiefs which, three hundred years before, had been, in all but name, independent

principalities, had been annexed to the crown. Only a few old men could remember the last meeting of the

States General. The resistance which the Huguenots, the nobles, and the parliaments had offered to the kingly

power, had been put down by the two great Cardinals who had ruled the nation during forty years. The

government was now a despotism, but, at least in its dealings with the upper classes, a mild and generous

despotism, tempered by courteous manners and chivalrous sentiments. The means at the disposal of the

sovereign were, for that age, truly formidable. His revenue, raised, it is true, by a severe and unequal taxation

which pressed heavily on the cultivators of the soil, far exceeded that of any other potentate. His army,

excellently disciplined, and commanded by the greatest generals then living, already consisted of more than a

hundred and twenty thousand men. Such an array of regular troops had not been seen in Europe since the

downfall of the Roman empire. Of maritime powers France was not the first. But, though she had rivals on

the sea, she had not yet a superior. Such was her strength during the last forty years of the seventeenth

century, that no enemy could singly withstand her, and that two great coalitions, in which half Christendom

The personal qualities of the French King added to the respect inspired by the power and importance of his

kingdom. No sovereign has ever represented the majesty of a great state with more dignity and grace. He was

his own prime minister, and performed the duties of a prime minister with an ability and industry which

could not be reasonably expected from one who had in infancy succeeded to a crown, and who had been

surrounded by flatterers before he could speak. He had shown, in an eminent degree, two talents invaluable to

a prince, the talent of choosing his servants well, and the talent of appropriating to himself the chief part of

the credit of their acts. In his dealings with foreign powers he had some generosity, but no justice. To

unhappy allies who threw themselves at his feet, and had no hope but in his compassion, he extended his

protection with a romantic disinterestedness, which seemed better suited to a knight errant than to a

statesman. But he broke through the most sacred ties of public faith without scruple or shame, whenever they

interfered with his interest, or with what he called his glory. His perfidy and violence, however, excited less

enmity than the insolence with which he constantly reminded his neighbours of his own greatness and of their

littleness. He did not at this time profess the austere devotion which, at a later period, gave to his court the

aspect of a monastery. On the contrary, he was as licentious, though by no means as frivolous and indolent, as

his brother of England. But he was a sincere Roman Catholic; and both his conscience and his vanity

impelled him to use his power for the defence and propagation of the true faith, after the example of his

Our ancestors naturally looked with serious alarm on the growing power of France. This feeling, in itself

perfectly reasonable, was mingled with other feelings less praiseworthy. France was our old enemy. It was

against France that the most glorious battles recorded in our annals had been fought. The conquest of France

had been twice effected by the Plantagenets. The loss of France had been long remembered as a great national

disaster. The title of King of France was still borne by our sovereigns. The lilies of France still appeared,

mingled with our own lions, on the shield of the House of Stuart. In the sixteenth century the dread inspired

by Spain had suspended the animosity of which France had anciently been the object. But the dread inspired

by Spain had given place to contemptuous compassion; and France was again regarded as our national foe.

The sale of Dunkirk to France had been the most generally unpopular act of the restored King. Attachment to

France had been prominent among the crimes imputed by the Commons to CIarendon. Even in trifles the

public feeling showed itself. When a brawl took place in the streets of Westminster between the retinues of

the French and Spanish embassies, the populace, though forcibly prevented from interfering, had given

France and Spain were now engaged in a more serious contest. One of the chief objects of the policy of Lewis

throughout his life was to extend his dominions towards the Rhine. For this end he had engaged in war with

Spain, and he was now in the full career of conquest. The United Provinces saw with anxiety the progress of

his arms. That renowned federation had reached the height of power, prosperity, and glory. The Batavian

territory, conquered from the waves and defended against them by human art, was in extent little superior to

the principality of Wales. But all that narrow space was a busy and populous hive, in which new wealth was

every day created, and in which vast masses of old wealth were hoarded. The aspect of Holland, the rich

cultivation, the innumerable canals, the ever whirling mills, the endless fleets of barges, the quick succession

of great towns, the ports bristling with thousands of masts, the large and stately mansions, the trim villas, the

richly furnished apartments, the picture galleries, the summer rouses, the tulip beds, produced on English

travellers in that age an effect similar to the effect which the first sight of England now produces on a

Norwegian or a Canadian. The States General had been compelled to humble themselves before Cromwell.

But after the Restoration they had taken their revenge, had waged war with success against Charles, and had

concluded peace on honourable terms. Rich, however, as the Republic was, and highly considered in Europe,

she was no match for the power of Lewis. She apprehended, not without good cause, that his kingdom might

soon be extended to her frontiers; and she might well dread the immediate vicinity of a monarch so great, so

ambitious, and so unscrupulous. Yet it was not easy to devise any expedient which might avert the danger.

The Dutch alone could not turn the scale against France. On the side of the Rhine no help was to be expected.

Several German princes had been gained by Lewis; and the Emperor himself was embarrassed by the

discontents of Hungary. England was separated from the United Provinces by the recollection of cruel

injuries recently inflicted and endured; and her policy had, since the restoration, been so devoid of wisdom

and spirit, that it was scarcely possible to expect from her any valuable assistance

But the fate of Clarendon and the growing ill humour of the Parliament determined the advisers of Charles to

The English resident at Brussels, Sir William Temple, one of the most expert diplomatists and most pleasing

writers of that age, had already represented to this court that it was both desirable and practicable to enter into

engagements with the States General for the purpose of checking the progress of France. For a time his

suggestions had been slighted; but it was now thought expedient to act on them. He was commissioned to

negotiate with the States General. He proceeded to the Hague, and soon came to an understanding with John

De Witt, then the chief minister of Holland. Sweden, small as her resources were, had, forty years before,

been raised by the genius of Gustavus Adolphus to a high rank among European powers, and had not yet

descended to her natural position. She was induced to join on this occasion with England and the States. Thus

was formed that coalition known as the Triple Alliance. Lewis showed signs of vexation and resentment, but

did not think it politic to draw on himself the hostility of such a confederacy in addition to that of Spain. He

consented, therefore, to relinquish a large part of the territory which his armies had occupied. Peace was

restored to Europe; and the English government, lately an object of general contempt, was, during a few

months, regarded by foreign powers with respect scarcely less than that which the Protector had inspired.

At home the Triple Alliance was popular in the highest degree. It gratified alike national animosity and

national pride. It put a limit to the encroachments of a powerful and ambitious neighbour. It bound the

leading Protestant states together in close union. Cavaliers and Roundheads rejoiced in common: but the joy

of the Roundhead was even greater than that of the Cavalier. For England had now allied herself strictly with

a country republican in government and Presbyterian in religion, against a country ruled by an arbitrary

prince and attached to the Roman Catholic Church. The House of Commons loudly applauded the treaty; and

some uncourtly grumblers described it as the only good thing that had been done since the King came in.

The King, however, cared little for the approbation of his Parliament or of his people. The Triple Alliance he

regarded merely as a temporary expedient for quieting discontents which had seemed likely to become

serious. The independence, the safety, the dignity of the nation over which he presided were nothing to him.

He had begun to find constitutional restraints galling. Already had been formed in the Parliament a strong

connection known by the name of the Country Party. That party included all the public men who leaned

towards Puritanism and Republicanism, and many who, though attached to the Church and to hereditary

monarchy, had been driven into opposition by dread of Popery, by dread of France, and by disgust at the

extravagance, dissoluteness, and faithlessness of the court. The power of this band of politicians was

constantly growing. Every year some of those members who had been returned to Parliament during the loyal

excitement of 1661 had dropped off; and the vacant seats had generally been filled by persons less tractable.

Charles did not think himself a King while an assembly of subjects could call for his accounts before paying

his debts, and could insist on knowing which of his mistresses or boon companions had intercepted the

money destined for the equipping and manning of the fleet. Though not very studious of fame, he was galled

by the taunts which were sometimes uttered in the discussions of the Commons, and on one occasion

attempted to restrain the freedom of speech by disgraceful means. Sir John Coventry, a country gentleman,

had, in debate, sneered at the profligacy of the court. In any former reign he would probably have been called

before the Privy Council and committed to the Tower. A different course was now taken. A gang of bullies

was secretly sent to slit the nose of the offender. This ignoble revenge, instead of quelling the spirit of

opposition, raised such a tempest that the King was compelled to submit to the cruel humiliation of passing

an act which attainted the instruments of his revenge, and which took from him the power of pardoning them.

But, impatient as he was of constitutional restraints, how was he to emancipate himself from them? He could

make himself despotic only by the help of a great standing army; and such an army was not in existence. His

revenues did indeed enable him to keep up some regular troops: but those troops, though numerous enough to

excite great jealousy and apprehension in the House of Commons and in the country, were scarcely numerous

enough to protect Whitehall and the Tower against a rising of the mob of London. Such risings were, indeed

to be dreaded; for it was calculated that in the capital and its suburbs dwelt not less than twenty thousand of

Since the King was bent on emancipating himself from the control of Parliament, and since, in such an

enterprise, he could not hope for effectual aid at home, it followed that he must look for aid abroad. The

power and wealth of the King of France might be equal to the arduous task of establishing absolute monarchy

in England. Such an ally would undoubtedly expect substantial proofs of gratitude for such a service. Charles

must descend to the rank of a great vassal, and must make peace and war according to the directions of the

government which protected him. His relation to Lewis would closely resemble that in which the Rajah of

Nagpore and the King of Oude now stand to the British Government. Those princes are bound to aid the East

India Company in all hostilities, defensive and offensive, and to have no diplomatic relations but such as the

East India Company shall sanction. The Company in return guarantees them against insurrection. As long as

they faithfully discharge their obligations to the paramount power, they are permitted to dispose of large

revenues, to fill their palaces with beautiful women, to besot themselves in the company of their favourite

revellers, and to oppress with impunity any subject who may incur their displeasure.18 Such a life would be

insupportable to a man of high spirit and of powerful understanding. But to Charles, sensual, indolent,

unequal to any strong intellectual exertion, and destitute alike of all patriotism and of all sense of personal

That the Duke of York should have concurred in the design of degrading that crown which it was probable

that he would himself one day wear may seem more extraordinary. For his nature was haughty and

imperious; and, indeed, he continued to the very last to show, by occasional starts and struggles, his

impatience of the French yoke. But he was almost as much debased by superstition as his brother by

indolence and vice. James was now a Roman Catholic. Religious bigotry had become the dominant sentiment

of his narrow and stubborn mind, and had so mingled itself with his love of rule, that the two passions could

hardly be distinguished from each other. It seemed highly improbable that, without foreign aid, he would be

able to obtain ascendency, or even toleration, for his own faith: and he was in a temper to see nothing

A negotiation was opened which lasted during several months. The chief agent between the English and

French courts was the beautiful, graceful, and intelligent Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, sister of Charles,

sister in law of Lewis, and a favourite with both. The King of England offered to declare himself a Roman

Catholic, to dissolve the Triple Alliance, and to join with France against Holland, if France would engage to

lend him such military and pecuniary aid as might make him independent of his parliament. Lewis at first

affected to receive these propositions coolly, and at length agreed to them with the air of a man who is

conferring a great favour: but in truth, the course which he had resolved to take was one by which he might

It seems certain that he never seriously thought of establishing despotism and Popery in England by force of

arms. He must have been aware that such an enterprise would be in the highest degree arduous and

hazardous, that it would task to the utmost all the energies of France during many years, and that it would be

altogether incompatible with more promising schemes of aggrandisement, which were dear to his heart. He

would indeed willingly have acquired the merit and the glory of doing a great service on reasonable terms to

the Church of which he was a member. But he was little disposed to imitate his ancestors who, in the twelfth

and thirteenth centuries, had led the flower of French chivalry to die in Syria and Egypt: and he well knew

that a crusade against Protestantism in Great Britain would not be less perilous than the expeditions in which

the armies of Lewis the Seventh and of Lewis the Ninth had perished. He had no motive for wishing the

Stuarts to be absolute. He did not regard the English constitution with feelings at all resembling those which

have in later times induced princes to make war on the free institutions of neighbouring nations. At present a

great party zealous for popular government has ramifications in every civilised country. And important

advantage gained anywhere by that party is almost certain to be the signal for general commotion. It is not

wonderful that governments threatened by a common danger should combine for the purpose of mutual

insurance. But in the seventeenth century no such danger existed. Between the public mind of England and

the public mind of France, there was a great gulph. Our institutions and our factions were as little understood

at Paris as at Constantinople. It may be doubted whether any one of the forty members of the French

Academy had an English volume in his library, or knew Shakespeare, Jonson, or Spenser, even by name. A

few Huguenots, who had inherited the mutinous spirit of their ancestors, might perhaps have a fellow feeling

with their brethren in the faith, the English Roundheads: but the Huguenots had ceased to be formidable. The

French, as a people, attached to the Church of Rome, and proud of the greatness of their King and of their

own loyalty, looked on our struggles against Popery and arbitrary power, not only without admiration or

sympathy, but with strong disapprobation and disgust. It would therefore be a great error to ascribe the

conduct of Lewis to apprehensions at all resembling those which, in our age, induced the Holy Alliance to

Nevertheless, the propositions made by the court of Whitehall were most welcome to him. He already

meditated gigantic designs, which were destined to keep Europe in constant fermentation during more than

forty years. He wished to humble the United Provinces, and to annex Belgium, Franche Comte, and Loraine

to his dominions. Nor was this all. The King of Spain was a sickly child. It was likely that he would die

without issue. His eldest sister was Queen of France. A day would almost certainly come, and might come

very soon, when the House of Bourbon might lay claim to that vast empire on which the sun never set. The

union of two great monarchies under one head would doubtless be opposed by a continental coalition. But for

any continental coalition France singlehanded was a match. England could turn the scale. On the course

which, in such a crisis, England might pursue, the destinies of the world would depend; and it was notorious

that the English Parliament and nation were strongly attached to the policy which had dictated the Triple

Alliance. Nothing, therefore, could be more gratifying to Lewis than to learn that the princes of the House of

Stuart needed his help, and were willing to purchase that help by unbounded subserviency. He determined to

profit by the opportunity, and laid down for himself a plan to which, without deviation, he adhered, till the

Revolution of 1688 disconcerted all his politics. He professed himself desirous to promote the designs of the

English court. He promised large aid. He from time to time doled out such aid as might serve to keep hope

alive, and as he could without risk or inconvenience spare. In this way, at an expense very much less than that

which he incurred in building and decorating Versailles or Marli, he succeeded in making England, during

nearly twenty years, almost as insignificant a member of the political system of Europe as the republic of San

His object was not to destroy our constitution, but to keep the various elements of which it was composed in

a perpetual state of conflict, and to set irreconcilable enmity between those who had the power of the purse

and those who had the power of the sword. With this view he bribed and stimulated both parties in turn,

pensioned at once the ministers of the crown and the chiefs of the opposition, encouraged the court to

withstand the seditious encroachments of the Parliament, and conveyed to the Parliament intimations of the

One of the devices to which he resorted for the purpose of obtaining an ascendency in the English counsels

deserves especial notice. Charles, though incapable of love in the highest sense of the word, was the slave of

any woman whose person excited his desires, and whose airs and prattle amused his leisure. Indeed a husband

would be justly derided who should bear from a wife of exalted rank and spotless virtue half the insolence

which the King of England bore from concubines who, while they owed everything to his bounty, caressed

his courtiers almost before his face. He had patiently endured the termagant passions of Barbara Palmer and

the pert vivacity of Eleanor Gwynn. Lewis thought that the most useful envoy who could be sent to London,

would be a handsome, licentious, and crafty Frenchwoman. Such a woman was Louisa, a lady of the House

of Querouaille, whom our rude ancestors called Madam Carwell. She was soon triumphant over all her rivals,

was created Duchess of Portsmouth, was loaded with wealth, and obtained a dominion which ended only with

The most important conditions of the alliance between the crowns were digested into a secret treaty which

was signed at Dover in May, 1670, just ten years after the day on which Charles had landed at that very port

By this treaty Charles bound himself to make public profession of the Roman Catholic religion, to join his

arms to those of Lewis for the purpose of destroying the power of the United Provinces, and to employ the

whole strength of England, by land and sea, in support of the rights of the House of Bourbon to the vast

monarchy of Spain. Lewis, on the other hand, engaged to pay a large subsidy, and promised that, if any

insurrection should break out in England, he would send an army at his own charge to support his ally.

This compact was made with gloomy auspices. Six weeks after it had been signed and sealed, the charming

princess, whose influence over her brother and brother in law had been so pernicious to her country, was no

more. Her death gave rise to horrible suspicions which, for a moment, seemed likely to interrupt the newly

formed friendship between the Houses of Stuart and Bourbon: but in a short time fresh assurances of

The Duke of York, too dull to apprehend danger, or too fanatical to care about it, was impatient to see the

article touching the Roman Catholic religion carried into immediate execution: but Lewis had the wisdom to

perceive that, if this course were taken, there would be such an explosion in England as would probably

frustrate those parts of the plan which he had most at heart. It was therefore determined that Charles should

still call himself a Protestant, and should still, at high festivals, receive the sacrament according to the ritual

of the Church of England. His more scrupulous brother ceased to appear in the royal chapel.

About this time died the Duchess of York, daughter of the banished Earl of Clarendon. She had been, during

some years, a concealed Roman Catholic. She left two daughters, Mary and Anne, afterwards successively

Queens of Great Britain. They were bred Protestants by the positive command of the King, who knew that it

would be vain for him to profess himself a member of the Church of England, if children who seemed likely

to inherit his throne were, by his permission, brought up as members of the Church of Rome.

The principal servants of the crown at this time were men whose names have justly acquired an unenviable

notoriety. We must take heed, however, that we do not load their memory with infamy which of right belongs

to their master. For the treaty of Dover the King himself is chiefly answerable. He held conferences on it with

the French agents: he wrote many letters concerning it with his own hand: he was the person who first

suggested the most disgraceful articles which it contained; and he carefully concealed some of those articles

Few things in our history are more curious than the origin and growth of the power now possessed by the

Cabinet. From an early period the Kings of England had been assisted by a Privy Council to which the law

assigned many important functions and duties. During several centuries this body deliberated on the gravest

and most delicate affairs. But by degrees its character changed. It became too large for despatch and secrecy.

The rank of Privy Councillor was often bestowed as an honorary distinction on persons to whom nothing was

confided, and whose opinion was never asked. The sovereign, on the most important occasions, resorted for

advice to a small knot of leading ministers. The advantages and disadvantages of this course were early

pointed out by Bacon, with his usual judgment and sagacity: but it was not till after the Restoration that the

interior council began to attract general notice. During many years old fashioned politicians continued to

regard the Cabinet as an unconstitutional and dangerous board. Nevertheless, it constantly became more and

more important. It at length drew to itself the chief executive power, and has now been regarded, during

several generations as an essential part of our polity. Yet, strange to say, it still continues to be altogether

unknown to the law: the names of the noblemen and gentlemen who compose it are never officially

announced to the public: no record is kept of its meetings and resolutions; nor has its existence ever been

During some years the word Cabal was popularly used as synonymous with Cabinet. But it happened by a

whimsical coincidence that, in 1671, the Cabinet consisted of five persons the initial letters of whose names

made up the word Cabal; Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. These ministers were

therefore emphatically called the Cabal; and they soon made that appellation so infamous that it has never

Sir Thomas Clifford was a Commissioner of the Treasury, and had greatly distinguished himself in the House

of Commons. Of the members of the Cabal he was the most respectable. For, with a fiery and imperious

Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, then Secretary of State, had since he came to manhood, resided principally on

the Continent, and had learned that cosmopolitan indifference to constitutions and religions which is often

observable in persons whose life has been passed in vagrant diplomacy. If there was any form of government

which he liked it was that of France. If there was any Church for which he felt a preference, it was that of

Rome. He had some talent for conversation, and some talent also for transacting the ordinary business of

office. He had learned, during a life passed in travelling and negotiating, the art of accommodating his

language and deportment to the society in which he found himself. His vivacity in the closet amused the

King: his gravity in debates and conferences imposed on the public; and he had succeeded in attaching to

himself, partly by services and partly by hopes, a considerable number of personal retainers.

Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale were men in whom the immorality which was epidemic among the

politicians of that age appeared in its most malignant type, but variously modified by greet diversities of

temper and understanding. Buckingham was a sated man of pleasure, who had turned to ambition as to a

pastime. As he had tried to amuse himself with architecture and music, with writing farces and with seeking

for the philosopher's stone, so he now tried to amuse himself with a secret negotiation and a Dutch war. He

had already, rather from fickleness and love of novelty than from any deep design, been faithless to every

party. At one time he had ranked among the Cavaliers. At another time warrants had been out against him for

maintaining a treasonable correspondence with the remains of the Republican party in the city. He was now

again a courtier, and was eager to win the favour of the King by services from which the most illustrious of

those who had fought and suffered for the royal house would have recoiled with horror.

Ashley, with a far stronger head, and with a far fiercer and more earnest ambition, had been equally versatile.

But Ashley's versatility was the effect, not of levity, but of deliberate selfishness. He had served and betrayed

a succession of governments. But he had timed all his treacheries so well that through all revolutions, his

fortunes had constantly been rising. The multitude, struck with admiration by a prosperity which, while

everything else was constantly changing, remained unchangeable, attributed to him a prescience almost

miraculous, and likened him to the Hebrew statesman of whom it is written that his counsel was as if a man

Lauderdale, loud and coarse both in mirth and anger, was, perhaps, under the outward show of boisterous

frankness, the most dishonest man in the whole Cabal. He had made himself conspicuous among the Scotch

insurgents of 1638 by his zeal for the Covenant. He was accused of having been deeply concerned in the sale

of Charles the First to the English Parliament, and was therefore, in the estimation of good Cavaliers, a

traitor, if possible, of a worse description than those who had sate in the High Court of Justice. He often

talked with a noisy jocularity of the days when he was a canter and a rebel. He was now the chief instrument

employed by the court in the work of forcing episcopacy on his reluctant countrymen; nor did he in that cause

shrink from the unsparing use of the sword, the halter, and the boot. Yet those who knew him knew that thirty

years had made no change in his real sentiments, that he still hated the memory of Charles the First, and that

Unscrupulous as Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale were, it was not thought safe to intrust to them the

King's intention of declaring himself a Roman Catholic. A false treaty, in which the article concerning

religion was omitted, was shown to them. The names and seals of Clifford and Arlington are affixed to the

genuine treaty. Both these statesmen had a partiality for the old Church, a partiality which the brave and

vehement Clifford in no long time manfully avowed, but which the colder and meaner Arlington concealed,

till the near approach of death scared him into sincerity. The three other cabinet ministers, however, were not

men to be kept easily in the dark, and probably suspected more than was distinctly avowed to them. They

were certainly privy to all the political engagements contracted with France, and were not ashamed to receive

The first object of Charles was to obtain from the Commons supplies which might be employed in executing

the secret treaty. The Cabal, holding power at a time when our government was in a state of transition, united

in itself two different kinds of vices belonging to two different ages and to two different systems. As those

five evil counsellors were among the last English statesmen who seriously thought of destroying the

Parliament, so they were the first English statesmen who attempted extensively to corrupt it. We find in their

policy at once the latest trace of the Thorough of Strafford, and the earliest trace of that methodical bribery

which was afterwards practiced by Walpole. They soon perceived, however, that, though the House of

Commons was chiefly composed of Cavaliers, and though places and French gold had been lavished on the

members, there was no chance that even the least odious parts of the scheme arranged at Dover would be

supported by a majority. It was necessary to have recourse to fraud. The King professed great zeal for the

principles of the Triple Alliance, and pretended that, in order to hold the ambition of France in check, it

would be necessary to augment the fleet. The Commons fell into the snare, and voted a grant of eight hundred

thousand pounds. The Parliament was instantly prorogued; and the court, thus emancipated from control,

The financial difficulties however were serious. A war with Holland could be carried on only at enormous

cost. The ordinary revenue was not more than sufficient to support the government in time of peace. The

eight hundred thousand pounds out of which the Commons had just been tricked would not defray the naval

and military charge of a single year of hostilities. After the terrible lesson given by the Long Parliament, even

the Cabal did not venture to recommend benevolences or shipmoney. In this perplexity Ashley and Clifford

proposed a flagitious breach of public faith. The goldsmiths of London were then not only dealers in the

precious metals, but also bankers, and were in the habit of advancing large sums of money to the government.

In return for these advances they received assignments on the revenue, and were repaid with interest as the

taxes came in. About thirteen hundred thousand pounds had been in this way intrusted to the honour of the

state. On a sudden it was announced that it was not convenient to pay the principal, and that the lenders must

content themselves with interest. They were consequently unable to meet their own engagements. The

Exchange was in an uproar: several great mercantile houses broke; and dismay and distress spread through all

society. Meanwhile rapid strides were made towards despotism. Proclamations, dispensing with Acts of

Parliament, or enjoining what only Parliament could lawfully enjoin, appeared in rapid succession. Of these

edicts the most important was the Declaration of Indulgence. By this instrument the penal laws against

Roman Catholics were set aside; and, that the real object of the measure might not be perceived, the laws

A few days after the appearance of the Declaration of Indulgence, war was proclaimed against the United

Provinces. By sea the Dutch maintained the struggle with honour; but on land they were at first borne down

by irresistible force. A great French army passed the Rhine. Fortress after fortress opened its gates. Three of

the seven provinces of the federation were occupied by the invaders. The fires of the hostile camp were seen

from the top of the Stadthouse of Amsterdam. The Republic, thus fiercely assailed from without, was torn at

the same time by internal dissensions. The government was in the hands of a close oligarchy of powerful

burghers. There were numerous selfelected Town Councils, each of which exercised within its own sphere,

many of the rights of sovereignty. These councils sent delegates to the Provincial States, and the Provincial

States again sent delegates to the States General. A hereditary first magistrate was no essential part of this

polity. Nevertheless one family, singularly fertile of great men, had gradually obtained a large and somewhat

indefinite authority. William, first of the name, Prince of Orange Nassau, and Stadtholder of Holland, had

headed the memorable insurrection against Spain. His son Maurice had been Captain General and first

minister of the States, had, by eminent abilities and public services, and by some treacherous and cruel

actions, raised himself to almost kingly power, and had bequeathed a great part of that power to his family.

The influence of the Stadtholders was an object of extreme jealousy to the municipal oligarchy. But the army,

and that great body of citizens which was excluded from all share in the government, looked on the

Burgomasters and Deputies with a dislike resembling the dislike with which the legions and the common

people of Rome regarded the Senate, and were as zealous for the House of Orange as the legions and the

common people of Rome for the House of Caesar. The Stadtholder commanded the forces of the

commonwealth, disposed of all military commands, had a large share of the civil patronage, and was

Prince William the Second had been strongly opposed by the oligarchical party. His life had terminated in the

year 1650, amidst great civil troubles. He died childless: the adherents of his house were left for a short time

without a head; and the powers which he had exercised were divided among the Town Councils, the

But, a few days after William's death, his widow, Mary, daughter of Charles the first, King of Great Britain,

gave birth to a son, destined to raise the glory and authority of the House of Nassau to the highest point, to

save the United Provinces from slavery, to curb the power of France, and to establish the English constitution

This Prince, named William Henry, was from his birth an object of serious apprehension to the party now

supreme in Holland, and of loyal attachment to the old friends of his line. He enjoyed high consideration as

the possessor of a splendid fortune, as the chief of one of the most illustrious houses in Europe, as a Magnate

of the German empire, as a prince of the blood royal of England, and, above all, as the descendant of the

founders of Batavian liberty. But the high office which had once been considered as hereditary in his family

remained in abeyance; and the intention of the aristocratical party was that there should never be another

Stadtholder. The want of a first magistrate was, to a great extent, supplied by the Grand Pensionary of the

Province of Holland, John De Witt, whose abilities, firmness, and integrity had raised him to unrivalled

The French invasion produced a complete change. The suffering and terrified people raged fiercely against

the government. In their madness they attacked the bravest captains and the ablest statesmen of the distressed

commonwealth. De Ruyter was insulted by the rabble. De Witt was torn in pieces before the gate of the

palace of the States General at the Hague. The Prince of Orange, who had no share in the guilt of the murder,

but who, on this occasion, as on another lamentable occasion twenty years later, extended to crimes

perpetrated in his cause an indulgence which has left a stain on his glory, became chief of the government

without a rival. Young as he was, his ardent and unconquerable spirit, though disguised by a cold and sullen

manner, soon roused the courage of his dismayed countrymen. It was in vain that both his uncle and the

French King attempted by splendid offers to seduce him from the cause of the Republic. To the States

General he spoke a high and inspiriting language. He even ventured to suggest a scheme which has an aspect

of antique heroism, and which, if it had been accomplished, would have been the noblest subject for epic

song that is to be found in the whole compass of modern history. He told the deputies that, even if their natal

soil and the marvels with which human industry had covered it were buried under the ocean, all was not lost.

The Hollanders might survive Holland. Liberty and pure religion, driven by tyrants and bigots from Europe,

might take refuge in the farthest isles of Asia. The shipping in the ports of the republic would suffice to carry

two hundred thousand emigrants to the Indian Archipelago. There the Dutch commonwealth might

commence a new and more glorious existence, and might rear, under the Southern Cross, amidst the sugar

canes and nutmeg trees, the Exchange of a wealthier Amsterdam, and the schools of a more learned Leyden.

The national spirit swelled and rose high. The terms offered by the allies were firmly rejected. The dykes

were opened. The whole country was turned into one great lake from which the cities, with their ramparts and

steeples, rose like islands. The invaders were forced to save themselves from destruction by a precipitate

retreat. Lewis, who, though he sometimes thought it necessary to appear at the head of his troops, greatly

preferred a palace to a camp, had already returned to enjoy the adulation of poets and the smiles of ladies in

And now the tide turned fast. The event of the maritime war had been doubtful; by land the United Provinces

had obtained a respite; and a respite, though short, was of infinite importance. Alarmed by the vast designs of

Lewis, both the branches of the great House of Austria sprang to arms. Spain and Holland, divided by the

memory of ancient wrongs and humiliations, were reconciled by the nearness of the common danger. From

every part of Germany troops poured towards the Rhine. The English government had already expended all

the funds which had been obtained by pillaging the public creditor. No loan could be expected from the City.

An attempt to raise taxes by the royal authority would have at once produced a rebellion; and Lewis, who had

now to maintain a contest against half Europe, was in no condition to furnish the means of coercing the

In the spring of 1673, therefore, the Houses reassembled after a recess of near two years. Clifford, now a peer

and Lord Treasurer, and Ashley, now Earl of Shaftesbury and Lord Chancellor, were the persons on whom

the King principally relied as Parliamentary managers. The Country Party instantly began to attack the policy

of the Cabal. The attack was made, not in the way of storm. but by slow and scientific approaches. The

Commons at first held out hopes that they would give support to the king's foreign policy, but insisted that he

should purchase that support by abandoning his whole system of domestic policy. Their chief object was to

obtain the revocation of the Declaration of Indulgence. Of all the many unpopular steps taken by the

government the most unpopular was the publishing of this Declaration. The most opposite sentiments had

been shocked by an act so liberal, done in a manner so despotic. All the enemies of religious freedom, and all

the friends of civil freedom, found themselves on the same side; and these two classes made up nineteen

twentieths of the nation. The zealous churchman exclaimed against the favour which had been shown both to

the Papist and to the Puritan. The Puritan, though he might rejoice in the suspension of the persecution by

which he had been harassed, felt little gratitude for a toleration which he was to share with Antichrist. And all

Englishmen who valued liberty and law, saw with uneasiness the deep inroad which the prerogative had made

It must in candour be admitted that the constitutional question was then not quite free from obscurity. Our

ancient Kings had undoubtedly claimed and exercised the right of suspending the operation of penal laws.

The tribunals had recognised that right. Parliaments had suffered it to pass unchallenged. That some such

right was inherent in the crown, few even of the Country Party ventured, in the face of precedent and

authority, to deny. Yet it was clear that, if this prerogative were without limit, the English government could

scarcely be distinguished from a pure despotism. That there was a limit was fully admitted by the King and

his ministers. Whether the Declaration of Indulgence lay within or without the limit was the question; and

neither party could succeed in tracing any line which would bear examination. Some opponents of the

government complained that the Declaration suspended not less than forty statutes. But why not forty as well

as one? There was an orator who gave it as his opinion that the King might constitutionally dispense with bad

laws, but not with good laws. The absurdity of such a distinction it is needless to expose. The doctrine which

seems to have been generally received in the House of Commons was, that the dispensing power was

confined to secular matters, and did not extend to laws enacted for the security of the established religion.

Yet, as the King was supreme head of the Church, it should seem that, if he possessed the dispensing power

at all, he might well possess that power where the Church was concerned. When the courtiers on the other

side attempted to point out the bounds of this prerogative, they were not more successful than the opposition

The truth is that the dispensing power was a great anomaly in politics. It was utterly inconsistent in theory

with the principles of mixed government: but it had grown up in times when people troubled themselves little

about theories.19 It had not been very grossly abused in practice. It had therefore been tolerated, and had

gradually acquired a kind of prescription. At length it was employed, after a long interval, in an enlightened

age, and at an important conjuncture, to an extent never before known, and for a purpose generally abhorred.

It was instantly subjected to a severe scrutiny. Men did not, indeed, at first, venture to pronounce it altogether

unconstitutional. But they began to perceive that it was at direct variance with the spirit of the constitution,

and would, if left unchecked, turn the English government from a limited into an absolute monarchy.

Under the influence of such apprehensions, the Commons denied the King's right to dispense, not indeed with

all penal statutes, but with penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical, and gave him plainly to understand that,

unless he renounced that right, they would grant no supply for the Dutch war. He, for a moment, showed

some inclination to put everything to hazard; but he was strongly advised by Lewis to submit to necessity,

and to wait for better times, when the French armies, now employed in an arduous struggle on the Continent,

might be available for the purpose of suppressing discontent in England. In the Cabal itself the signs of

disunion and treachery began to appear. Shaftesbury, with his proverbial sagacity, saw that a violent reaction

was at hand, and that all things were tending towards a crisis resembling that of 1640. He was determined that

such a crisis should not find him in the situation of Strafford. He therefore turned suddenly round, and

acknowledged, in the House of Lords, that the Declaration was illegal. The King, thus deserted by his ally

and by his Chancellor, yielded, cancelled the Declaration, and solemnly promised that it should never be

Even this concession was insufficient. The Commons, not content with having forced their sovereign to annul

the Indulgence, next extorted his unwilling assent to a celebrated law, which continued in force down to the

reign of George the Fourth. This law, known as the Test Act, provided that all persons holding any office,

civil or military, should take the oath of supremacy, should subscribe a declaration against transubstantiation,

and should publicly receive the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. The preamble

expressed hostility only to the Papists: but the enacting clauses were scarcely more unfavourable to the

Papists than to the rigid Puritans. The Puritans, however, terrified at the evident leaning of the court towards

Popery, and encouraged by some churchmen to hope that, as soon as the Roman Catholics should have been

effectually disarmed, relief would be extended to Protestant Nonconformists, made little opposition; nor

could the King, who was in extreme want of money, venture to withhold his sanction. The act was passed;

and the Duke of York was consequently under the necessity of resigning the great place of Lord High

Hitherto the Commons had not declared against the Dutch war. But, when the King had, in return for money

cautiously doled out, relinquished his whole plan of domestic policy, they fell impetuously on his foreign

policy. They requested him to dismiss Buckingham and Lauderdale from his councils forever, and appointed

a committee to consider the propriety of impeaching Arlington. In a short time the Cabal was no more.

Clifford, who, alone of the five, had any claim to be regarded as an honest man, refused to take the new test,

laid down his white staff, and retired to his country seat. Arlington quitted the post of Secretary of State for a

quiet and dignified employment in the Royal household. Shaftesbury and Buckingham made their peace with

the opposition, and appeared at the head of the stormy democracy of the city. Lauderdale, however, still

continued to be minister for Scotch affairs, with which the English Parliament could not interfere.

And now the Commons urged the King to make peace with Holland, and expressly declared that no more

supplies should be granted for the war, unless it should appear that the enemy obstinately refused to consent

to reasonable terms. Charles found it necessary to postpone to a more convenient season all thought of

executing the treaty of Dover, and to cajole the nation by pretending to return to the policy of the Triple

Alliance. Temple, who, during the ascendency of the Cabal, had lived in seclusion among his books and

flower beds, was called forth from his hermitage. By his instrumentality a separate peace was concluded with

the United Provinces; and he again became ambassador at the Hague, where his presence was regarded as a

The chief direction of affairs was now intrusted to Sir Thomas Osborne, a Yorkshire baronet, who had, in the

House of Commons, shown eminent talents for business and debate. Osborne became Lord Treasurer, and

was soon created Earl of Danby. He was not a man whose character, if tried by any high standard of morality,

would appear to merit approbation. He was greedy of wealth and honours, corrupt himself, and a corrupter of

others. The Cabal had bequeathed to him the art of bribing Parliaments, an art still rude, and giving little

promise of the rare perfection to which it was brought in the following century. He improved greatly on the

plan of the first inventors. They had merely purchased orators: but every man who had a vote, might sell

himself to Danby. Yet the new minister must not be confounded with the negotiators of Dover. He was not

without the feelings of an Englishman and a Protestant; nor did he, in his solicitude for his own interests, ever

wholly forget the interests of his country and of his religion. He was desirous, indeed, to exalt the

prerogative: but the means by which he proposed to exalt it were widely different from those which had been

contemplated by Arlington and Clifford. The thought of establishing arbitrary power, by calling in the aid of

foreign arms, and by reducing the kingdom to the rank of a dependent principality, never entered into his

mind. His plan was to rally round the monarchy those classes which had been the firm allies of the monarchy

during the troubles of the preceding generation, and which had been disgusted by the recent crimes and errors

of the court. With the help of the old Cavalier interest, of the nobles, of the country gentlemen, of the clergy,

and of the Universities, it might, he conceived, be possible to make Charles, not indeed an absolute

Prompted by these feelings, Danby formed the design of securing to the Cavalier party the exclusive

possession of all political power both executive and legislative. In the year 1675, accordingly, a bill was

offered to the Lords which provided that no person should hold any office, or should sit in either House of

Parliament, without first declaring on oath that he considered resistance to the kingly power as in all cases

criminal, and that he would never endeavour to alter the government either in Church or State. During several

weeks the debates, divisions, and protests caused by this proposition kept the country in a state of excitement.

The opposition in the House of Lords, headed by two members of the Cabal who were desirous to make their

peace with the nation, Buckingham and Shaftesbury, was beyond all precedent vehement and pertinacious,

and at length proved successful. The bill was not indeed rejected, but was retarded, mutilated, and at length

So arbitrary and so exclusive was Danby's scheme of domestic policy. His opinions touching foreign policy

did him more honour. They were in truth directly opposed to those of the Cabal and differed little from those

of the Country Party. He bitterly lamented the degraded situation to which England was reduced, and

declared, with more energy than politeness, that his dearest wish was to cudgel the French into a proper

respect for her. So little did he disguise his feelings that, at a great banquet where the most illustrious

dignitaries of the State and of the Church were assembled, he not very decorously filled his glass to the

confusion of all who were against a war with France. He would indeed most gladly have seen his country

united with the powers which were then combined against Lewis, and was for that end bent on placing

Temple, the author of the Triple Alliance, at the head of the department which directed foreign affairs. But

the power of the prime minister was limited. In his most confidential letters he complained that the

infatuation of his master prevented England from taking her proper place among European nations. Charles

was insatiably greedy of French gold: he had by no means relinquished the hope that he might, at some future

day, be able to establish absolute monarchy by the help of the French arms; and for both reasons he wished to

Thus the sovereign leaned towards one system of foreign politics, and the minister towards a system

diametrically opposite. Neither the sovereign nor the minister, indeed, was of a temper to pursue any object

with undeviating constancy. Each occasionally yielded to the importunity of the other; and their jarring

inclinations and mutual concessions gave to the whole administration a strangely capricious character.

Charles sometimes, from levity and indolence, suffered Danby to take steps which Lewis resented as mortal

injuries. Danby, on the other hand, rather than relinquish his great place, sometimes stooped to compliances

which caused him bitter pain and shame. The King was brought to consent to a marriage between the Lady

Mary, eldest daughter and presumptive heiress of the Duke of York. and William of Orange, the deadly

enemy of France and the hereditary champion of the Reformation. Nay, the brave Earl of Ossory, son of

Ormond, was sent to assist the Dutch with some British troops, who, on the most bloody day of the whole

war, signally vindicated the national reputation for stubborn courage. The Treasurer, on the other hand, was

induced not only to connive at some scandalous pecuniary transactions which took place between his master

and the court of Versailles, but to become, unwillingly indeed and ungraciously, an agent in those

Meanwhile the Country Party was driven by two strong feelings in two opposite directions. The popular

leaders were afraid of the greatness of Lewis, who was not only making head against the whole strength of

the continental alliance, but was even gaining ground. Yet they were afraid to entrust their own King with the

means of curbing France, lest those means should he used to destroy the liberties of England. The conflict

between these apprehensions, both of which were perfectly legitimate, made the policy of the Opposition

seem as eccentric and fickle as that of the Court. The Commons called for a war with France, till the King,

pressed by Danby to comply with their wish, seemed disposed to yield, and began to raise an army. But, as

soon as they saw that the recruiting had commenced, their dread of Lewis gave place to a nearer dread. They

began to fear that the new levies might be employed on a service in which Charles took much more interest

than in the defence of Flanders. They therefore refused supplies, and clamoured for disbanding as loudly as

they had just before clamoured for arming. Those historians who have severely reprehended this

inconsistency do not appear to have made sufficient allowance for the embarrassing situation of subjects who

have reason to believe that their prince is conspiring with a foreign and hostile power against their liberties.

To refuse him military resources is to leave the state defenceless. Yet to give him military resources may be

only to arm him against the state. In such circumstances vacillation cannot be considered as a proof of

These jealousies were studiously fomented by the French King. He had long kept England passive by

promising to support the throne against the Parliament. He now, alarmed at finding that the patriotic counsels

of Danby seemed likely to prevail in the closet, began to inflame the Parliament against the throne. Between

Lewis and the Country Party there was one thing, and one only in common, profound distrust of Charles.

Could the Country Party have been certain that their sovereign meant only to make war on France, they

would have been eager to support him. Could Lewis have been certain that the new levies were intended only

to make war on the constitution of England, he would have made no attempt to stop them. But the

unsteadiness and faithlessness of Charles were such that the French Government and the English opposition,

agreeing in nothing else, agreed in disbelieving his protestations, and were equally desirous to keep him poor

and without an army. Communications were opened between Barillon, the Ambassador of Lewis, and those

English politicians who had always professed, and who indeed sincerely felt, the greatest dread and dislike of

the French ascendency. The most upright of the Country Party, William Lord Russell, son of the Earl of

Bedford, did not scruple to concert with a foreign mission schemes for embarrassing his own sovereign. This

was the whole extent of Russell's offence. His principles and his fortune alike raised him above all

temptations of a sordid kind: but there is too much reason to believe that some of his associates were less

scrupulous. It would be unjust to impute to them the extreme wickedness of taking bribes to injure their

country. On the contrary, they meant to serve her: but it is impossible to deny that they were mean and

indelicate enough to let a foreign prince pay them for serving her. Among those who cannot be acquitted of

this degrading charge was one man who is popularly considered as the personification of public spirit, and

who, in spite of some great moral and intellectual faults, has a just claim to be called a hero, a philosopher,

and a patriot. It is impossible to see without pain such a name in the list of the pensioners of France. Yet it is

some consolation to reflect that, in our time, a public man would be thought lost to all sense of duty and of

shame, who should not spurn from him a temptation which conquered the virtue and the pride of Algernon

The effect of these intrigues was that England, though she occasionally took a menacing attitude, remained

inactive till the continental war, having lasted near seven years, was terminated by the treaty of Nimeguen.

The United Provinces, which in 1672 had seemed to be on the verge of utter ruin, obtained honourable and

advantageous terms. This narrow escape was generally ascribed to the ability and courage of the young

Stadtholder. His fame was great throughout Europe, and especially among the English, who regarded him as

one of their own princes, and rejoiced to see him the husband of their future Queen. France retained many

important towns in the Low Countries and the great province of Franche Comte. Almost the whole loss was

A few months after the termination of hostilities on the Continent came a great crisis in English politics.

Towards such a crisis things had been tending during eighteen years. The whole stock of popularity, great as

it was, with which the King had commenced his administration, had long been expended. To loyal

enthusiasm had succeeded profound disaffection. The public mind had now measured back again the space

over which it had passed between 1640 and 1660, and was once more in the state in which it had been when

The prevailing discontent was compounded of many feelings. One of these was wounded national pride. That

generation had seen England, during a few years, allied on equal terms with France, victorious over Holland

and Spain, the mistress of the sea, the terror of Rome, the head of the Protestant interest. Her resources had

not diminished; and it might have been expected that she would have been at least as highly considered in

Europe under a legitimate King, strong in the affection and willing obedience of his subjects, as she had been

under an usurper whose utmost vigilance and energy were required to keep down a mutinous people. Yet she

had, in consequence of the imbecility and meanness of her rulers, sunk so low that any German or Italian

principality which brought five thousand men into the field was a more important member of the

With the sense of national humiliation was mingled anxiety for civil liberty. Rumours, indistinct indeed, but

perhaps the more alarming by reason of their indistinctness, imputed to the court a deliberate design against

all the constitutional rights of Englishmen. It had even been whispered that this design was to be carried into

effect by the intervention of foreign arms. The thought of Such intervention made the blood, even of the

Cavaliers, boil in their veins. Some who had always professed the doctrine of nonresistance in its full extent

were now heard to mutter that there was one limitation to that doctrine. If a foreign force were brought over

But neither national pride nor anxiety for public liberty had so great an influence on the popular mind as

hatred of the Roman Catholic religion. That hatred had become one of the ruling passions of the community,

and was as strong in the ignorant and profane as in those who were Protestants from conviction. The cruelties

of Mary's reign, cruelties which even in the most accurate and sober narrative excite just detestation, and

which were neither accurately nor soberly related in the popular martyrologies, the conspiracies against

Elizabeth, and above all the Gunpowder Plot, had left in the minds of the vulgar a deep and bitter feeling

which was kept up by annual commemorations, prayers, bonfires, and processions. It should be added that

those classes which were peculiarly distinguished by attachment to the throne, the clergy and the landed

gentry, had peculiar reasons for regarding the Church of Rome with aversion. The clergy trembled for their

benefices; the landed gentry for their abbeys and great tithes. While the memory of the reign of the Saints

was still recent, hatred of Popery had in some degree given place to hatred of Puritanism; but, during the

eighteen years which had elapsed since the Restoration, the hatred of Puritanism had abated, and the hatred of

Popery had increased. The stipulations of the treaty of Dover were accurately known to very few; but some

hints had got abroad. The general impression was that a great blow was about to be aimed at the Protestant

religion. The King was suspected by many of a leaning towards Rome. His brother and heir presumptive was

known to be a bigoted Roman Catholic. The first Duchess of York had died a Roman Catholic. James had

then, in defiance of the remonstrances of the House of Commons, taken to wife the Princess Mary of

Modena, another Roman Catholic. If there should be sons by this marriage, there was reason to fear that they

might be bred Roman Catholics, and that a long succession of princes, hostile to the established faith, might

sit on the English throne. The constitution had recently been violated for the purpose of protecting the Roman

Catholics from the penal laws. The ally by whom the policy of England had, during many years, been chiefly

governed, was not only a Roman Catholic, but a persecutor of the reformed Churches. Under such

circumstances it is not strange that the common people should have been inclined to apprehend a return of the

Thus the nation was in such a temper that the smallest spark might raise a flame. At this conjuncture fire was

set in two places at once to the vast mass of combustible matter; and in a moment the whole was in a blaze.

The French court, which knew Danby to be its mortal enemy, artfully contrived to ruin him by making him

pass for its friend. Lewis, by the instrumentality of Ralph Montague, a faithless and shameless man who had

resided in France as minister from England, laid before the House of Commons proofs that the Treasurer had

been concerned in an application made by the Court of Whitehall to the Court of Versailles for a sum of

money. This discovery produced its natural effect. The Treasurer was, in truth, exposed to the vengeance of

Parliament, not on account of his delinquencies, but on account of his merits; not because he had been an

accomplice in a criminal transaction, but because he had been a most unwilling and unserviceable

accomplice. But of the circumstances, which have, in the judgment of posterity, greatly extenuated his fault,

his contemporaries were ignorant. In their view he was the broker who had sold England to France. It seemed

clear that his greatness was at an end, and doubtful whether his head could be saved.

Yet was the ferment excited by this discovery slight, when compared with the commotion which arose when

it was noised abroad that a great Popish plot had been detected. One Titus Oates, a clergyman of the Church

of England, had, by his disorderly life and heterodox doctrine, drawn on himself the censure of his spiritual

superiors, had been compelled to quit his benefice, and had ever since led an infamous and vagrant life. He

had once professed himself a Roman Catholic, and had passed some time on the Continent in English

colleges of the order of Jesus. In those seminaries he had heard much wild talk about the best means of

bringing England back to the true Church. From hints thus furnished he constructed a hideous romance,

resembling rather the dream of a sick man than any transaction which ever took place in the real world. The

Pope, he said, had entrusted the government of England to the Jesuits. The Jesuits had, by commissions under

the seal of their society, appointed Roman Catholic clergymen, noblemen, and gentlemen, to all the highest

offices in Church and State. The Papists had burned down London once. They had tried to burn it down

again. They were at that moment planning a scheme for setting fire to all the shipping in the Thames. They

were to rise at a signal and massacre all their Protestant neighbours. A French army was at the same time to

land in Ireland. All the leading statesmen and divines of England were to be murdered. Three or four schemes

had been formed for assassinating the King. He was to be stabbed. He was to be poisoned in his medicine He

was to be shot with silver bullets. The public mind was so sore and excitable that these lies readily found

credit with the vulgar; and two events which speedily took place led even some reflecting men to suspect that

the tale, though evidently distorted and exaggerated, might have some foundation.

Edward Coleman, a very busy, and not very honest, Roman Catholic intriguer, had been among the persons

accused. Search was made for his papers. It was found that he had just destroyed the greater part of them. But

a few which had escaped contained some passages such as, to minds strongly prepossessed, might seem to

confirm the evidence of Oates. Those passages indeed, when candidly construed, appear to express little more

than the hopes which the posture of affairs, the predilections of Charles, the still stronger predilections of

James, and the relations existing between the French and English courts, might naturally excite in the mind of

a Roman Catholic strongly attached to the interests of his Church. But the country was not then inclined to

construe the letters of Papists candidly; and it was urged, with some show of reason, that, if papers which had

been passed over as unimportant were filled with matter so suspicious, some great mystery of iniquity must

have been contained in those documents which had been carefully committed to the flames.

A few days later it was known that Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, an eminent justice of the peace who had taken

the depositions of Oates against Coleman, had disappeared. Search was made; and Godfrey's corpse was

found in a field near London. It was clear that he had died by violence. It was equally clear that he had not

been set upon by robbers. His fate is to this day a secret. Some think that he perished by his own hand; some,

that he was slain by a private enemy. The most improbable supposition is that he was murdered by the party

hostile to the court, in order to give colour to the story of the plot. The most probable supposition seems, on

the whole, to be that some hotheaded Roman Catholic, driven to frenzy by the lies of Oates and by the insults

of the multitude, and not nicely distinguishing between the perjured accuser and the innocent magistrate, had

taken a revenge of which the history of persecuted sects furnishes but too many examples. If this were so, the

assassin must have afterwards bitterly execrated his own wickedness and folly. The capital and the whole

nation went mad with hatred and fear. The penal laws, which had begun to lose something of their edge, were

sharpened anew. Everywhere justices were busied in searching houses and seizing papers. All the gaols were

filled with Papists. London had the aspect of a city in a state of siege. The trainbands were under arms all

night. Preparations were made for barricading the great thoroughfares. Patrols marched up and down the

streets. Cannon were planted round Whitehall. No citizen thought himself safe unless he carried under his

coat a small flail loaded with lead to brain the Popish assassins. The corpse of the murdered magistrate was

exhibited during several days to the gaze of great multitudes, and was then committed to the grave with

strange and terrible ceremonies, which indicated rather fear and the thirst of vengeance shall sorrow or

religious hope. The Houses insisted that a guard should be placed in the vaults over which they sate, in order

to secure them against a second Gunpowder Plot. All their proceedings were of a piece with this demand.

Ever since the reign of Elizabeth the oath of supremacy had been exacted from members of the House of

Commons. Some Roman Catholics, however, had contrived so to interpret this oath that they could take it

without scruple. A more stringent test was now added: every member of Parliament was required to make the

Declaration against Transubstantiation; and thus the Roman Catholic Lords were for the first time excluded

from their seats. Strong resolutions were adopted against the Queen. The Commons threw one of the

Secretaries of State into prison for having countersigned commissions directed to gentlemen who were not

good Protestants. They impeached the Lord Treasurer of high treason. Nay, they so far forgot the doctrine

which, while the memory of the civil war was still recent, they had loudly professed, that they even attempted

to wrest the command of the militia out of the King's hands. To such a temper had eighteen years of

Yet it may seem strange that, even in that extremity, the King should have ventured to appeal to the people;

for the people were more excited than their representatives. The Lower House, discontented as it was,

contained a larger number of Cavaliers than were likely to find seats again. But it was thought that a

dissolution would put a stop to the prosecution of the Lord Treasurer, a prosecution which might probably

bring to light all the guilty mysteries of the French alliance, and might thus cause extreme personal

annoyance and embarrassment to Charles. Accordingly, in January, 1679, the Parliament, which had been in

existence ever since the beginning of the year 1661, was dissolved; and writs were issued for a general

During some weeks the contention over the whole country was fierce and obstinate beyond example.

Unprecedented sums were expended. New tactics were employed. It was remarked by the pamphleteers of

that time as something extraordinary that horses were hired at a great charge for the conveyance of electors.

The practice of splitting freeholds for the purpose of multiplying votes dates from this memorable struggle.

Dissenting preachers, who had long hidden themselves in quiet nooks from persecution, now emerged from

their retreats, and rode from village to village, for the purpose of rekindling the zeal of the scattered people of

God. The tide ran strong against the government. Most of the new members came up to Westminster in a

mood little differing from that of their predecessors who had sent Strafford and Laud to the Tower.

Meanwhile the courts of justice, which ought to be, in the midst of political commotions, sure places of

refuge for the innocent of every party, were disgraced by wilder passions and fouler corruptions than were to

be found even on the hustings. The tale of Oates, though it had sufficed to convulse the whole realm, would

not, unless confirmed by other evidence, suffice to destroy the humblest of those whom he had accused. For,

by the old law of England, two witnesses are necessary to establish a charge of treason. But the success of the

first impostor produced its natural consequences. In a few weeks he had been raised from penury and

obscurity to opulence, to power which made him the dread of princes and nobles, and to notoriety such as has

for low and bad minds all the attractions of glory. He was not long without coadjutors and rivals. A wretch

named Carstairs, who had earned a livelihood in Scotland by going disguised to conventicles and then

informing against the preachers, led the way. Bedloe, a noted swindler, followed; and soon from all the

brothels, gambling houses, and spunging houses of London, false witnesses poured forth to swear away the

lives of Roman Catholics. One came with a story about an army of thirty thousand men who were to muster

in the disguise of pilgrims at Corunna, and to sail thence to Wales. Another had been promised canonisation

and five hundred pounds to murder the King. A third had stepped into an eating house in Covent Garden, and

had there heard a great Roman Catholic banker vow, in the hearing of all the guests and drawers. to kill the

heretical tyrant. Oates, that he might not be eclipsed by his imitators, soon added a large supplement to his

original narrative. He had the portentous impudence to affirm, among other things, that he had once stood

behind a door which was ajar, and had there overheard the Queen declare that she had resolved to give her

consent to the assassination of her husband. The vulgar believed, and the highest magistrates pretended to

believe, even such fictions as these. The chief judges of the realm were corrupt, cruel, and timid. The leaders

of the Country Party encouraged the prevailing delusion. The most respectable among them, indeed, were

themselves so far deluded as to believe the greater part of the evidence of the plot to be true. Such men as

Shaftesbury and Buckingham doubtless perceived that the whole was a romance. But it was a romance which

served their turn; and to their seared consciences the death of an innocent man gave no more uneasiness than

the death of a partridge. The juries partook of the feelings then common throughout the nation, and were

encouraged by the bench to indulge those feelings without restraint. The multitude applauded Oates and his

confederates, hooted and pelted the witnesses who appeared on behalf of the accused, and shouted with joy

when the verdict of Guilty was pronounced. It was in vain that the sufferers appealed to the respectability of

their past lives: for the public mind was possessed with a belief that the more conscientious a Papist was, the

more likely he must be to plot against a Protestant government. It was in vain that, just before the cart passed

from under their feet, they resolutely affirmed their innocence: for the general opinion was that a good Papist

considered all lies which were serviceable to his Church as not only excusable but meritorious.

While innocent blood was shedding under the forms of justice, the new Parliament met; and such was the

violence of the predominant party that even men whose youth had been passed amidst revolutions men who

remembered the attainder of Strafford, the attempt on the five members, the abolition of the House of Lords,

the execution of the King, stood aghast at the aspect of public affairs. The impeachment of Danby was

resumed. He pleaded the royal pardon. But the Commons treated the plea with contempt, and insisted that the

trial should proceed. Danby, however, was not their chief object. They were convinced that the only effectual

way of securing the liberties and religion of the nation was to exclude the Duke of York from the throne.

The King was in great perplexity. He had insisted that his brother, the sight of whom inflamed the populace

to madness, should retire for a time to Brussels: but this concession did not seem to have produced any

favourable effect. The Roundhead party was now decidedly preponderant. Towards that party leaned millions

who had, at the time of the Restoration, leaned towards the side of prerogative. Of the old Cavaliers many

participated in the prevailing fear of Popery, and many, bitterly resenting the ingratitude of the prince for

whom they had sacrificed so much, looked on his distress as carelessly as he had looked on theirs. Even the

Anglican clergy, mortified and alarmed by the apostasy of the Duke of York, so far countenanced the

The King in this extremity had recourse to Sir William Temple. Of all the official men of that age Temple

had preserved the fairest character. The Triple Alliance had been his work. He had refused to take any part in

the politics of the Cabal, and had, while that administration directed affairs, lived in strict privacy. He had

quitted his retreat at the call of Danby, had made peace between England and Holland, and had borne a chief

part in bringing about the marriage of the Lady Mary to her cousin the Prince of Orange. Thus he had the

credit of every one of the few good things which had been done by the government since the Restoration. Of

the numerous crimes and blunders of the last eighteen years none could be imputed to him. His private life,

though not austere, was decorous: his manners were popular; and he was not to be corrupted either by titles or

by money. Something, however, was wanting to the character of this respectable statesman. The temperature

of his patriotism was lukewarm. He prized his ease and his personal dignity too much, and shrank from

responsibility with a pusillanimous fear. Nor indeed had his habits fitted him to bear a part in the conflicts of

our domestic factions. He had reached his fiftieth year without having sate in the English Parliament; and his

official experience had been almost entirely acquired at foreign courts. He was justly esteemed one of the

first diplomatists in Europe: but the talents and accomplishments of a diplomatist are widely different from

those which qualify a politician to lead the House of Commons in agitated times.

The scheme which he proposed showed considerable ingenuity. Though not a profound philosopher, he had

thought more than most busy men of the world on the general principles of government; and his mind had

been enlarged by historical studies and foreign travel. He seems to have discerned more clearly than most of

his contemporaries one cause of the difficulties by which the government was beset. The character of the

English polity was gradually changing. The Parliament was slowly, but constantly, gaining ground on the

prerogative. The line between the legislative and executive powers was in theory as strongly marked as ever,

but in practice was daily becoming fainter and fainter. The theory of the constitution was that the King might

name his own ministers. But the House of Commons had driven Clarendon, the Cabal, and Danby

successively from the direction of affairs. The theory of the constitution was that the King alone had the

power of making peace and war. But the House of Commons had forced him to make peace with Holland,

and had all but forced him to make war with France. The theory of the constitution was that the King was the

sole judge of the cases in which it might be proper to pardon offenders. Yet he was so much in dread of the

House of Commons that, at that moment, he could not venture to rescue from the gallows men whom he well

Temple, it should seem, was desirous to secure to the legislature its undoubted constitutional powers, and yet

to prevent it, if possible, from encroaching further on the province of the executive administration. With this

view he determined to interpose between the sovereign and the Parliament a body which might break the

shock of their collision. There was a body ancient, highly honourable, and recognised by the law, which, he

thought, might be so remodelled as to serve this purpose. He determined to give to the Privy Council a new

character and office in the government. The number of Councillors he fixed at thirty. Fifteen of them were to

be the chief ministers of state, of law, and of religion. The other fifteen were to be unplaced noblemen and

gentlemen of ample fortune and high character. There was to be no interior cabinet. All the thirty were to be

entrusted with every political secret, and summoned to every meeting; and the King was to declare that he

Temple seems to have thought that, by this contrivance, he could at once secure the nation against the tyranny

of the Crown, and the Crown against the encroachments of the Parliament. It was, on one hand, highly

improbable that schemes such as had been formed by the Cabal would be even propounded for discussion in

an assembly consisting of thirty eminent men, fifteen of whom were bound by no tie of interest to the court.

On the other hand, it might be hoped that the Commons, content with the guarantee against misgovernment

which such a Privy Council furnished, would confine themselves more than they had of late done to their

strictly legislative functions, and would no longer think it necessary to pry into every part of the executive

This plan, though in some respects not unworthy of the abilities of its author, was in principle vicious. The

new board was half a cabinet and half a Parliament, and, like almost every other contrivance, whether

mechanical or political, which is meant to serve two purposes altogether different, failed of accomplishing

either. It was too large and too divided to be a good administrative body. It was too closely connected with

the Crown to be a good checking body. It contained just enough of popular ingredients to make it a bad

council of state, unfit for the keeping of secrets, for the conducting of delicate negotiations, and for the

administration of war. Yet were these popular ingredients by no means sufficient to secure the nation against

misgovernment. The plan, therefore, even if it had been fairly tried, could scarcely have succeeded; and it

was not fairly tried. The King was fickle and perfidious: the Parliament was excited and unreasonable; and

the materials out of which the new Council was made, though perhaps the best which that age afforded, were

The commencement of the new system was, however, hailed with general delight; for the people were in a

temper to think any change an improvement. They were also pleased by some of the new nominations.

Shaftesbury, now their favourite, was appointed Lord President. Russell and some other distinguished

members of the Country Party were sworn of the Council. But a few days later all was again in confusion.

The inconveniences of having so numerous a cabinet were such that Temple himself consented to infringe

one of the fundamental rules which he had laid down, and to become one of a small knot which really

directed everything. With him were joined three other ministers, Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, George Savile,

Of the Earl of Essex, then First Commissioner of the Treasury, it is sufficient to say that he was a man of

solid, though not brilliant parts, and of grave and melancholy character, that he had been connected with the

Country Party, and that he was at this time honestly desirous to effect, on terms beneficial to the state, a

Among the statesmen of those times Halifax was, in genius, the first. His intellect was fertile, subtle, and

capacious. His polished, luminous, and animated eloquence, set off by the silver tones of his voice, was the

delight of the House of Lords. His conversation overflowed with thought, fancy, and wit. His political tracts

well deserve to be studied for their literary merit, and fully entitle him to a place among English classics. To

the weight derived from talents so great and various he united all the influence which belongs to rank and

ample possessions. Yet he was less successful in politics than many who enjoyed smaller advantages. Indeed,

those intellectual peculiarities which make his writings valuable frequently impeded him in the contests of

active life. For he always saw passing events, not in the point of view in which they commonly appear to one

who bears a part in them, but in the point of view in which, after the lapse of many years, they appear to the

philosophic historian. With such a turn of mind he could not long continue to act cordially with any body of

men. All the prejudices, all the exaggerations, of both the great parties in the state moved his scorn. He

despised the mean arts and unreasonable clamours of demagogues. He despised still more the doctrines of

divine right and passive obedience. He sneered impartially at the bigotry of the Churchman and at the bigotry

of the Puritan. He was equally unable to comprehend how any man should object to Saints' days and

surplices, and how any man should persecute any other man for objecting to them. In temper he was what, in

our time, is called a Conservative: in theory he was a Republican. Even when his dread of anarchy and his

disdain for vulgar delusions led him to side for a time with the defenders of arbitrary power, his intellect was

always with Locke and Milton. Indeed, his jests upon hereditary monarchy were sometimes such as would

have better become a member of the Calf's Head Club than a Privy Councillor of the Stuarts. In religion he

was so far from being a zealot that he was called by the uncharitable an atheist: but this imputation he

vehemently repelled; and in truth, though he sometimes gave scandal by the way in which he exerted his rare

powers both of reasoning and of ridicule on serious subjects, he seems to have been by no means

He was the chief of those politicians whom the two great parties contemptuously called Trimmers. Instead of

quarrelling with this nickname, he assumed it as a title of honour, and vindicated, with great vivacity, the

dignity of the appellation. Everything good, he said, trims between extremes. The temperate zone trims

between the climate in which men are roasted and the climate in which they are frozen. The English Church

trims between the Anabaptist madness and the Papist lethargy. The English constitution trims between

Turkish despotism and Polish anarchy. Virtue is nothing but a just temper between propensities any one of

which, if indulged to excess, becomes vice. Nay, the perfection of the Supreme Being himself consists in the

exact equilibrium of attributes, none of which could preponderate without disturbing the whole moral and

physical order of the world.20 Thus Halifax was a Trimmer on principle. He was also a Trimmer by the

constitution both of his head and of his heart. His understanding was keen, sceptical, inexhaustibly fertile in

distinctions and objections; his taste refined; his sense of the ludicrous exquisite; his temper placid and

forgiving, but fastidious, and by no means prone either to malevolence or to enthusiastic admiration. Such a

man could not long be constant to any band of political allies. He must not, however, be confounded with the

vulgar crowd of renegades. For though, like them, he passed from side to side, his transition was always in

the direction opposite to theirs. He had nothing in common with those who fly from extreme to extreme, and

who regard the party which they have deserted with all animosity far exceeding that of consistent enemies.

His place was on the debatable ground between the hostile divisions of the community, and he never

wandered far beyond the frontier of either. The party to which he at any moment belonged was the party

which, at that moment, he liked least, because it was the party of which at that moment he had the nearest

view. He was therefore always severe upon his violent associates, and was always in friendly relations with

his moderate opponents. Every faction in the day of its insolent and vindictive triumph incurred his censure;

and every faction, when vanquished and persecuted, found in him a protector. To his lasting honour it must

be mentioned that he attempted to save those victims whose fate has left the deepest stain both on the Whig

He had greatly distinguished himself in opposition, and had thus drawn on himself the royal displeasure,

which was indeed so strong that he was not admitted into the Council of Thirty without much difficulty and

long altercation. As soon, however, as he had obtained a footing at court, the charms of his manner and of his

conversation made him a favourite. He was seriously alarmed by the violence of the public discontent. He

thought that liberty was for the present safe, and that order and legitimate authority were in danger. He

therefore, as was his fashion, joined himself to the weaker side. Perhaps his conversion was not wholly

disinterested. For study and reflection, though they had emancipated him from many vulgar prejudices, had

left him a slave to vulgar desires. Money he did not want; and there is no evidence that he ever obtained it by

any means which, in that age, even severe censors considered as dishonourable; but rank and power had

strong attractions for him. He pretended, indeed, that he considered titles and great offices as baits which

could allure none but fools, that he hated business, pomp, and pageantry, and that his dearest wish was to

escape from the bustle and glitter of Whitehall to the quiet woods which surrounded his ancient mansion in

Nottinghamshire; but his conduct was not a little at variance with his professions. In truth he wished to

command the respect at once of courtiers and of philosophers, to be admired for attaining high dignities, and

Sunderland was Secretary of State. In this man the political immorality of his age was personified in the most

lively manner. Nature had given him a keen understanding, a restless and mischievous temper, a cold heart,

and an abject spirit. His mind had undergone a training by which all his vices had been nursed up to the

rankest maturity. At his entrance into public life, he had passed several years in diplomatic posts abroad, and

had been, during some time, minister in France. Every calling has its peculiar temptations. There is no

injustice in saying that diplomatists, as a class, have always been more distinguished by their address, by the

art with which they win the confidence of those with whom they have to deal, and by the ease with which

they catch the tone of every society into which they are admitted, than by generous enthusiasm or austere

rectitude; and the relations between Charles and Lewis were such that no English nobleman could long reside

in France as envoy, and retain any patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the bad

school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple, shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of

all principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but with the Cavaliers he had nothing in

common. They were zealous for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance. Yet they had sturdy

English hearts which would never have endured real despotism. He, on the contrary, had a languid

speculative liking for republican institutions which was compatible with perfect readiness to be in practice the

most servile instrument of arbitrary power. Like many other accomplished flatterers and negotiators, he was

far more skilful in the art of reading the characters and practising on the weaknesses of individuals, than in

the art of discerning the feelings of great masses, and of foreseeing the approach of great revolutions. He was

adroit in intrigue; and it was difficult even for shrewd and experienced men who had been amply forewarned

of his perfidy to withstand the fascination of his manner, and to refuse credit to his professions of attachment.

But he was so intent on observing and courting particular persons, that he often forgot to study the temper of

the nation. He therefore miscalculated grossly with respect to some of the most momentous events of his

time. More than one important movement and rebound of the public mind took him by surprise; and the

world, unable to understand how so clever a man could be blind to what was clearly discerned by the

politicians of the coffee houses, sometimes attributed to deep design what were in truth mere blunders.

It was only in private conference that his eminent abilities displayed themselves. In the royal closet, or in a

very small circle, he exercised great influence. But at the Council board he was taciturn; and in the House of

The four confidential advisers of the crown soon found that their position was embarrassing and invidious.

The other members of the Council murmured at a distinction inconsistent with the King's promises; and some

of them, with Shaftesbury at their head, again betook themselves to strenuous opposition in Parliament. The

agitation, which had been suspended by the late changes, speedily became more violent than ever. It was in

vain that Charles offered to grant to the Commons any security for the Protestant religion which they could

devise, provided only that they would not touch the order of succession. They would hear of no compromise.

They would have the Exclusion Bill, and nothing but the Exclusion Bill. The King, therefore, a few weeks

after he had publicly promised to take no step without the advice of his new Council, went down to the House

of Lords without mentioning his intention in Council, and prorogued the Parliament.

The day of that prorogation, the twentysixth of May, 1679, is a great era in our history. For on that day the

Habeas Corpus Act received the royal assent. From the time of the Great Charter the substantive law

respecting the personal liberty of Englishmen had been nearly the same as at present: but it had been

inefficacious for want of a stringent system of procedure. What was needed was not a new light, but a prompt

and searching remedy; and such a remedy the Habeas Corpus Act supplied. The King would gladly have

refused his consent to that measure: but he was about to appeal from his Parliament to his people on the

question of the succession, and he could not venture, at so critical a moment, to reject a bill which was in the

On the same day the press of England became for a short time free. In old times printers had been strictly

controlled by the Court of Star Chamber. The Long Parliament had abolished the Star Chamber, but had, in

spite of the philosophical and eloquent expostulation of Milton, established and maintained a censorship.

Soon after the Restoration, an Act had been passed which prohibited the printing of unlicensed books; and it

had been provided that this Act should continue in force till the end of the first session of the next Parliament.

That moment had now arrived; and the King, in the very act of dismissing the House, emancipated the Press.

Shortly after the prorogation came a dissolution and another general election. The zeal and strength of the

opposition were at the height. The cry for the Exclusion Bill was louder than ever, and with this cry was

mingled another cry, which fired the blood of the multitude, but which was heard with regret and alarm by all

judicious friends of freedom. Not only the rights of the Duke of York, an avowed Papist, but those of his two

daughters, sincere and zealous Protestants, were assailed. It was confidently affirmed that the eldest natural

Charles, while a wanderer on the Continent, had fallen in at the Hague with Lucy Walters, a Welsh girl of

great beauty, but of weak understanding and dissolute manners. She became his mistress, and presented him

with a son. A suspicious lover might have had his doubts; for the lady had several admirers, and was not

supposed to be cruel to any. Charles, however, readily took her word, and poured forth on little James Crofts,

as the boy was then called, an overflowing fondness, such as seemed hardly to belong to that cool and

careless nature. Soon after the restoration, the young favourite, who had learned in France the exercises then

considered necessary to a fine gentleman, made his appearance at Whitehall. He was lodged in the palace,

attended by pages, and permitted to enjoy several distinctions which had till then been confined to princes of

the blood royal. He was married, while still in tender youth, to Anne Scott, heiress of the noble house of

Buccleuch. He took her name, and received with her hand possession of her ample domains. The estate which

he had acquired by this match was popularly estimated at not less than ten thousand pounds a year. Titles, and

favours more substantial than titles, were lavished on him. He was made Duke of Monmouth in England,

Duke of Buccleuch in Scotland, a Knight of the Garter, Master of the Horse, Commander of the first troop of

Life Guards, Chief Justice of Eyre south of Trent, and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. Nor did he

appear to the public unworthy of his high fortunes. His countenance was eminently handsome and engaging,

his temper sweet, his manners polite and affable. Though a libertine, he won the hearts of the Puritans.

Though he was known to have been privy to the shameful attack on Sir John Coventry, he easily obtained the

forgiveness of the Country Party. Even austere moralists owned that, in such a court, strict conjugal fidelity

was scarcely to be expected from one who, while a child, had been married to another child. Even patriots

were willing to excuse a headstrong boy for visiting with immoderate vengeance an insult offered to his

father. And soon the stain left by loose amours and midnight brawls was effaced by honourable exploits.

When Charles and Lewis united their forces against Holland, Monmouth commanded the English auxiliaries

who were sent to the Continent, and approved himself a gallant soldier and a not unintelligent officer. On his

return he found himself the most popular man in the kingdom. Nothing was withheld from him but the

crown; nor did even the crown seem to be absolutely beyond his reach. The distinction which had most

injudiciously been made between him and the highest nobles had produced evil consequences. When a boy he

had been invited to put on his hat in the presence chamber, while Howards and Seymours stood uncovered

round him. When foreign princes died, he had mourned for them in the long purple cloak, which no other

subject, except the Duke of York and Prince Rupert, was permitted to wear. It was natural that these things

should lead him to regard himself as a legitimate prince of the House of Stuart. Charles, even at a ripe age,

was devoted to his pleasures and regardless of his dignity. It could hardly be thought incredible that he should

at twenty have secretly gone through the form of espousing a lady whose beauty had fascinated him. While

Monmouth was still a child, and while the Duke of York still passed for a Protestant, it was rumoured

throughout the country, and even in circles which ought to have been well informed, that the King had made

Lucy Walters his wife, and that, if every one had his right, her son would be Prince of Wales. Much was said

of a certain black box which, according to the vulgar belief, contained the contract of marriage. When

Monmouth had returned from the Low Countries with a high character for valour and conduct, and when the

Duke of York was known to be a member of a church detested by the great majority of the nation, this idle

story became important. For it there was not the slightest evidence. Against it there was the solemn

asseveration of the King, made before his Council, and by his order communicated to his people. But the

multitude, always fond of romantic adventures, drank in eagerly the tale of the secret espousals and the black

box. Some chiefs of the opposition acted on this occasion as they acted with respect to the more odious fables

of Oates, and countenanced a story which they must have despised. The interest which the populace took in

him whom they regarded as the champion of the true religion, and the rightful heir of the British throne, was

kept up by every artifice. When Monmouth arrived in London at midnight, the watchmen were ordered by the

magistrates to proclaim the joyful event through the streets of the City: the people left their beds: bonfires

were lighted: the windows were illuminated: the churches were opened; and a merry peal rose from all the

steeples. When he travelled, he was everywhere received with not less pomp, and with far more enthusiasm,

than had been displayed when Kings had made progresses through the realm. He was escorted from mansion

to mansion by long cavalcades of armed gentlemen and yeomen. Cities poured forth their whole population to

receive him. Electors thronged round him, to assure him that their votes were at his disposal. To such a height

were his pretensions carried, that he not only exhibited on his escutcheon the lions of England and the lilies

of France without the baton sinister under which, according to the law of heraldry, they should have been

debruised in token of his illegitimate birth, but ventured to touch for the king's evil. At the same time he

neglected no art of condescension by which the love of the multitude could be conciliated. He stood

godfather to the children of the peasantry, mingled in every rustic sport, wrestled, played at quarterstaff, and

It is a curious circumstance that, at two of the greatest conjunctures in our history, the chiefs of the Protestant

party should have committed the same error, and should by that error have greatly endangered their country

and their religion. At the death of Edward the Sixth they set up the Lady Jane, without any show of birthright,

in opposition, not only to their enemy Mary, but also to Elizabeth, the true hope of England and of the

Reformation. Thus the most respectable Protestants, with Elizabeth at their head, were forced to make

common cause with the Papists. In the same manner, a hundred and thirty years later, a part of the opposition,

by setting up Monmouth as a claimant of the crown, attacked the rights, not only of James, whom they justly

regarded as an implacable foe of their faith and their liberties, but also of the Prince and Princess of Orange,

who were eminently marked out, both by situation and by personal qualities, as the defenders of all free

The folly of this course speedily became manifest. At present the popularity of Monmouth constituted a great

part of the strength of the opposition. The elections went against the court: the day fixed for the meeting of

the Houses drew near; and it was necessary that the King should determine on some line of conduct. Those

who advised him discerned the first faint signs of a change of public feeling, and hoped that, by merely

postponing the conflict, he would be able to secure the victory. He therefore, without even asking the opinion

of the Council of the Thirty, resolved to prorogue the new Parliament before it entered on business. At the

same time the Duke of York, who had returned from Brussels, was ordered to retire to Scotland, and was

Temple's plan of government was now avowedly abandoned and very soon forgotten. The Privy Council

again became what it had been. Shaftesbury, and those who were connected with him in politics resigned

their seats. Temple himself, as was his wont in unquiet times, retired to his garden and his library. Essex

quitted the board of Treasury, and cast in his lot with the opposition. But Halifax, disgusted and alarmed by

the violence of his old associates, and Sunderland, who never quitted place while he could hold it, remained

In consequence of the resignations which took place at this conjuncture, the way to greatness was left clear to

a new set of aspirants. Two statesmen, who subsequently rose to the highest eminence which a British subject

can reach, soon began to attract a large share of the public attention. These were Lawrence Hyde and Sidney

Lawrence Hyde was the second son of the Chancellor Clarendon, and was brother of the first Duchess of

York. He had excellent parts, which had been improved by parliamentary and diplomatic experience; but the

infirmities of his temper detracted much from the effective strength of his abilities. Negotiator and courtier as

he was, he never learned the art of governing or of concealing his emotions. When prosperous, he was

insolent and boastful: when he sustained a check, his undisguised mortification doubled the triumph of his

enemies: very slight provocations sufficed to kindle his anger; and when he was angry he said bitter things

which he forgot as soon as he was pacified, but which others remembered many years. His quickness and

penetration would have made him a consummate man of business but for his selfsufficiency and impatience.

His writings proved that he had many of the qualities of an orator: but his irritability prevented him from

doing himself justice in debate; for nothing was easier than to goad him into a passion; and, from the moment

when he went into a passion, he was at the mercy of opponents far inferior to him in capacity.

Unlike most of the leading politicians of that generation he was a consistent, dogged, and rancorous party

man, a Cavalier of the old school, a zealous champion of the Crown and of the Church, and a hater of

Republicans and Nonconformists. He had consequently a great body of personal adherents. The clergy

especially looked on him as their own man, and extended to his foibles an indulgence of which, to say the

truth, he stood in some need: for he drank deep; and when he was in a rage,and he very often was in a

He now succeeded Essex at the treasury. It is to be observed that the place of First Lord of the Treasury had

not then the importance and dignity which now belong to it. When there was a Lord Treasurer, that great

officer was generally prime minister: but, when the white staff was in commission, the chief commissioner

hardly ranked so high as a Secretary of State. It was not till the time of Walpole that the First Lord of the

Treasury became, under a humbler name, all that the Lord High Treasurer had been.

Godolphin had been bred a page at Whitehall, and had early acquired all the flexibility and the selfpossession

of a veteran courtier. He was laborious, clearheaded, and profoundly versed in the details of finance. Every

government, therefore, found him an useful servant; and there was nothing in his opinions or in his character

which could prevent him from serving any government. "Sidney Godolphin," said Charles, "is never in the

way, and never out of the way." This pointed remark goes far to explain Godolphin's extraordinary success in

He acted at different times with both the great political parties: but he never shared in the passions of either.

Like most men of cautious tempers and prosperous fortunes, he had a strong disposition to support whatever

existed. He disliked revolutions; and, for the same reason for which he disliked revolutions, he disliked

counterrevolutions. His deportment was remarkably grave and reserved: but his personal tastes were low

and frivolous; and most of the time which he could save from public business was spent in racing,

cardplaying, and cockfighting. He now sate below Rochester at the Board of Treasury, and distinguished

Before the new Parliament was suffered to meet for the despatch of business a whole year elapsed, an

eventful year, which has left lasting traces in our manners and language. Never before had political

controversy been carried on with so much freedom. Never before had political clubs existed with so elaborate

an organisation or so formidable an influence. The one question of the Exclusion occupied the public mind.

All the presses and pulpits of the realm took part in the conflict. On one side it was maintained that the

constitution and religion of the state could never be secure under a Popish King; on the other, that the right of

James to wear the crown in his turn was derived from God, and could not be annulled, even by the consent of

all the branches of the legislature. Every county, every town, every family, was in agitation. The civilities and

hospitalities of neighbourhood were interrupted. The dearest ties of friendship and of blood were sundered.

Even schoolboys were divided into angry parties; and the Duke of York and the Earl of Shaftesbury had

zealous adherents on all the forms of Westminster and Eton. The theatres shook with the roar of the

contending factions. Pope Joan was brought on the stage by the zealous Protestants. Pensioned poets filled

their prologues and epilogues with eulogies on the King and the Duke. The malecontents besieged the throne

with petitions, demanding that Parliament might be forthwith convened. The royalists sent up addresses,

expressing the utmost abhorrence of all who presumed to dictate to the sovereign. The citizens of London

assembled by tens of thousands to burn the Pope in effigy. The government posted cavalry at Temple Bar,

and placed ordnance round Whitehall. In that year our tongue was enriched with two words, Mob and Sham,

remarkable memorials of a season of tumult and imposture.21 Opponents of the court were called

Birminghams, Petitioners, and Exclusionists. Those who took the King's side were Antibirminghams,

Abhorrers, and Tantivies. These appellations soon become obsolete: but at this time were first heard two

nicknames which, though originally given in insult, were soon assumed with pride, which are still in daily

use, which have spread as widely as the English race, and which will last as long as the English literature. It

is a curious circumstance that one of these nicknames was of Scotch, and the other of Irish, origin. Both in

Scotland and in Ireland, misgovernment had called into existence bands of desperate men whose ferocity was

heightened by religions enthusiasm. In Scotland some of the persecuted Covenanters, driven mad by

oppression, had lately murdered the Primate, had taken arms against the government, had obtained some

advantages against the King's forces, and had not been put down till Monmouth, at the head of some troops

from England, had routed them at Bothwell Bridge. These zealots were most numerous among the rustics of

the western lowlands, who were vulgarly called Whigs. Thus the appellation of Whig was fastened on the

Presbyterian zealots of Scotland, and was transferred to those English politicians who showed a disposition to

oppose the court, and to treat Protestant Nonconformists with indulgence. The bogs of Ireland, at the same

time, afforded a refuge to Popish outlaws, much resembling those who were afterwards known as Whiteboys.

These men were then called Tories. The name of Tory was therefore given to Englishmen who refused to

The rage of the hostile factions would have been sufficiently violent, if it had been left to itself. But it was

studiously exasperated by the common enemy of both. Lewis still continued to bribe and flatter both the court

and the opposition. He exhorted Charles to be firm: he exhorted James to raise a civil war in Scotland: he

exhorted the Whigs not to flinch, and to rely with confidence on the protection of France.

Through all this agitation a discerning eye might have perceived that the public opinion was gradually

changing. The persecution of the Roman Catholics went on; but convictions were no longer matters of

course. A new brood of false witnesses, among whom a villain named Dangerfield was the most conspicuous,

infested the courts: but the stories of these men, though better constructed than that of Oates, found less

credit. Juries were no longer so easy of belief as during the panic which had followed the murder of Godfrey;

and Judges, who, while the popular frenzy was at the height, had been its most obsequious instruments, now

At length, in October 1680, the Parliament met. The Whigs had so great a majority in the Commons that the

Exclusion Bill went through all its stages there without difficulty. The King scarcely knew on what members

of his own cabinet he could reckon. Hyde had been true to his Tory opinions, and had steadily supported the

cause of hereditary monarchy. But Godolphin, anxious for quiet, and believing that quiet could be restored

only by concession, wished the bill to pass. Sunderland, ever false, and ever shortsighted, unable to discern

the signs of approaching reaction, and anxious to conciliate the party which he believed to be irresistible,

determined to vote against the court. The Duchess of Portsmouth implored her royal lover not to rush

headlong to destruction. If there were any point on which he had a scruple of conscience or of honour, it was

the question of the succession; but during some days it seemed that he would submit. He wavered, asked

what sum the Commons would give him if he yielded, and suffered a negotiation to be opened with the

leading Whigs. But a deep mutual distrust which had been many years growing, and which had been carefully

nursed by the arts of France, made a treaty impossible. Neither side would place confidence in the other. The

whole nation now looked with breathless anxiety to the House of Lords. The assemblage of peers was large.

The King himself was present. The debate was long, earnest, and occasionally furious. Some hands were laid

on the pommels of swords in a manner which revived the recollection of the stormy Parliaments of Edward

the Third and Richard the Second. Shaftesbury and Essex were joined by the treacherous Sunderland. But the

genius of Halifax bore down all opposition. Deserted by his most important colleagues, and opposed to a

crowd of able antagonists, he defended the cause of the Duke of York, in a succession of speeches which,

many years later, were remembered as masterpieces of reasoning, of wit, and of eloquence. It is seldom that

oratory changes votes. Yet the attestation of contemporaries leaves no doubt that, on this occasion, votes were

changed by the oratory of Halifax. The Bishops, true to their doctrines, supported the principle of hereditary

The party which preponderated in the House of Commons, bitterly mortified by this defeat, found some

consolation in shedding the blood of Roman Catholics. William Howard, Viscount Stafford, one of the

unhappy men who had been accused of a share in the plot, was impeached; and on the testimony of Oates and

of two other false witnesses, Dugdale and Turberville, was found guilty of high treason, and suffered death.

But the circumstances of his trial and execution ought to have given an useful warning to the Whig leaders. A

large and respectable minority of the House of Lords pronounced the prisoner not guilty. The multitude,

which a few months before had received the dying declarations of Oates's victims with mockery and

execrations, now loudly expressed a belief that Stafford was a murdered man. When he with his last breath

protested his innocence, the cry was, "God bless you, my Lord! We believe you, my Lord." A judicious

observer might easily have predicted that the blood then shed would shortly have blood.

The King determined to try once more the experiment of a dissolution. A new Parliament was summoned to

meet at Oxford, in March, 1681. Since the days of the Plantagenets the Houses had constantly sat at

Westminster, except when the plague was raging in the capital: but so extraordinary a conjuncture seemed to

require extraordinary precautions. If the Parliament were held in its usual place of assembling, the House of

Commons might declare itself permanent, and might call for aid on the magistrates and citizens of London.

The trainbands might rise to defend Shaftesbury as they had risen forty years before to defend Pym and

Hampden. The Guards might be overpowered, the palace forced, the King a prisoner in the hands of his

mutinous subjects. At Oxford there was no such danger. The University was devoted to the crown; and the

gentry of the neighbourhood were generally Tories. Here, therefore, the opposition had more reason than the

The elections were sharply contested. The Whigs still composed a majority of the House of Commons: but it

was plain that the Tory spirit was fast rising throughout the country. It should seem that the sagacious and

versatile Shaftesbury ought to have foreseen the coming change, and to have consented to the compromise

which the court offered: but he appears to have forgotten his old tactics. Instead of making dispositions

which, in the worst event, would have secured his retreat, he took up a position in which it was necessary that

he should either conquer or perish. Perhaps his head, strong as it was, had been turned by popularity, by

success, and by the excitement of conflict. Perhaps he had spurred his party till he could no longer curb it,

The eventful day arrived. The meeting at Oxford resembled rather that of a Polish Diet than that of an English

Parliament. The Whig members were escorted by great numbers of their armed and mounted tenants and

serving men, who exchanged looks of defiance with the royal Guards. The slightest provocation might, under

such circumstances, have produced a civil war; but neither side dared to strike the first blow. The King again

offered to consent to anything but the Exclusion Bill. The Commons were determined to accept nothing but

The King had triumphed. The reaction, which had begun some months before the meeting of the House at

Oxford, now went rapidly on. The nation, indeed, was still hostile to Popery: but, when men reviewed the

whole history of the plot, they felt that their Protestant zeal had hurried them into folly and crime, and could

scarcely believe that they had been induced by nursery tales to clamour for the blood of fellow subjects and

fellow Christians. The most loyal, indeed, could not deny that the administration of Charles had often been

highly blamable. But men who had not the full information which we possess touching his dealings with

France, and who were disgusted by the violence of the Whigs, enumerated the large concessions which,

during the last few years he had made to his Parliaments, and the still larger concessions which he had

declared himself willing to make. He had consented to the laws which excluded Roman Catholics from the

House of Lords, from the Privy Council, and from all civil and military offices. He had passed the Habeas

Corpus Act. If securities yet stronger had not been provided against the dangers to which the constitution and

the Church might be exposed under a Roman Catholic sovereign, the fault lay, not with Charles who had

invited the Parliament to propose such securities, but with those Whigs who had refused to hear of any

substitute for the Exclusion Bill. One thing only had the King denied to his people. He had refused to take

away his brother's birthright. And was there not good reason to believe that this refusal was prompted by

laudable feelings? What selfish motive could faction itself impute to the royal mind? The Exclusion Bill did

not curtail the reigning King's prerogatives, or diminish his income. Indeed, by passing it, he might easily

have obtained an ample addition to his own revenue. And what was it to him who ruled after him? Nay, if he

had personal predilections, they were known to be rather in favour of the Duke of Monmouth than of the

Duke of York. The most natural explanation of the King's conduct seemed to be that, careless as was his

temper and loose as were his morals, he had, on this occasion, acted from a sense of duty and honour. And, if

so, would the nation compel him to do what he thought criminal and disgraceful? To apply, even by strictly

constitutional means, a violent pressure to his conscience, seemed to zealous royalists ungenerous and

undutiful. But strictly constitutional means were not the only means which the Whigs were disposed to

employ. Signs were already discernible which portended the approach of great troubles. Men, who, in the

time of the civil war and of the Commonwealth, had acquired an odious notoriety, had emerged from the

obscurity in which, after the Restoration, they had hidden themselves from the general hatred. showed their

confident and busy faces everywhere, and appeared to anticipate a second reign of the Saints. Another

Naseby, another High Court of Justice, another usurper on the throne, the Lords again ejected from their hall

by violence, the Universities again purged, the Church again robbed and persecuted, the Puritans again

dominant, to such results did the desperate policy of the opposition seem to tend.

Strongly moved by these apprehensions, the majority of the upper and middle classes hastened to rally round

the throne. The situation of the King bore, at this time, a great resemblance to that in which his father stood

just after the Remonstrance had been voted. But the reaction of 1641 had not been suffered to run its course.

Charles the First, at the very moment when his people, long estranged, were returning to him with hearts

disposed to reconciliation, had, by a perfidious violation of the fundamental laws of the realm, forfeited their

confidence for ever. Had Charles the Second taken a similar course, had he arrested the Whig leaders in an

irregular manner, had he impeached them of high treason before a tribunal which had no legal jurisdiction

over them, it is highly probable that they would speedily have regained the ascendancy which they had lost.

Fortunately for himself, he was induced, at this crisis, to adopt a policy singularly judicious. He determined

to conform to the law, but at the same time to make vigorous and unsparing use of the law against his

adversaries. He was not bound to convoke a Parliament till three years should have elapsed. He was not much

distressed for money. The produce of the taxes which had been settled on him for life exceeded the estimate.

He was at peace with all the world. He could retrench his expenses by giving up the costly and useless

settlement of Tangier; and he might hope for pecuniary aid from France. He had, therefore, ample time and

means for a systematic attack on the opposition under the forms of the constitution. The Judges were

removable at his pleasure: the juries were nominated by the Sheriffs; and, in almost all the counties of

England, the Sheriffs were nominated by himself. Witnesses, of the same class with those who had recently

The first victim was College, a noisy and violent demagogue of mean birth and education. He was by trade a

joiner, and was celebrated as the inventor of the Protestant flail.23 He had been at Oxford when the

Parliament sate there, and was accused of having planned a rising and an attack on the King's guards.

Evidence was given against him by Dugdale and Turberville, the same infamous men who had, a few months

earlier, borne false witness against Stafford. In the sight of a jury of country squires no Exclusionist was

likely to find favour. College was convicted. The crowd which filled the court house of Oxford received the

verdict with a roar of exultation, as barbarous as that which he and his friends had been in the habit of raising

when innocent Papists were doomed to the gallows. His execution was the beginning of a new judicial

The government, emboldened by this first victory, now aimed a blow at an enemy of a very different class. It

was resolved that Shaftesbury should be brought to trial for his life. Evidence was collected which, it was

thought, would support a charge of treason. But the facts which it was necessary to prove were alleged to

have been committed in London. The Sheriffs of London, chosen by the citizens, were zealous Whigs. They

named a Whig grand jury, which threw out the bill. This defeat, far from discouraging those who advised the

King, suggested to them a new and daring scheme. Since the charter of the capital was in their way, that

charter must be annulled. It was pretended, therefore, that the City had by some irregularities forfeited its

municipal privileges; and proceedings were instituted against the corporation in the Court of King's Bench.

At the same time those laws which had, soon after the Restoration, been enacted against Nonconformists, and

which had remained dormant during the ascendency of the Whigs, were enforced all over the kingdom with

Yet the spirit of the Whigs was not subdued. Though in evil plight, they were still a numerous and powerful

party; and. as they mustered strong in the large towns, and especially in the capital, they made a noise and a

show more than proportioned to their real force. Animated by the recollection of past triumphs, and by the

sense of present oppression, they overrated both their strength and their wrongs. It was not in their power to

make out that clear and overwhelming case which can alone justify so violent a remedy as resistance to an

established government. Whatever they might suspect, they could not prove that their sovereign had entered

into a treaty with France against the religion and liberties of England. What was apparent was not sufficient

to warrant an appeal to the sword. If the Lords had thrown out the Exclusion Bill, they had thrown it out in

the exercise of a right coeval with the constitution. If the King had dissolved the Oxford Parliament, he had

done so by virtue of a prerogative which had never been questioned. If he had, since the dissolution, done

some harsh things, still those things were in strict conformity with the letter of the law, and with the recent

practice of the malecontents themselves. If he had prosecuted his opponents, he had prosecuted them

according to the proper forms, and before the proper tribunals. The evidence now produced for the crown was

at least as worthy of credit as the evidence on which the noblest blood of England had lately been shed by the

opposition. The treatment which an accused Whig had now to expect from judges, advocates, sheriffs, juries

and spectators, was no worse than the treatment which had lately been thought by the Whigs good enough for

an accused Papist. If the privileges of the City of London were attacked, they were attacked, not by military

violence or by any disputable exercise of prerogative, but according to the regular practice of Westminster

Hall. No tax was imposed by royal authority. No law was suspended. The Habeas Corpus Act was respected.

Even the Test Act was enforced. The opposition, therefore, could not bring home to the King that species of

misgovernment which alone could justify insurrection. And, even had his misgovernment been more flagrant

than it was, insurrection would still have been criminal, because it was almost certain to be unsuccessful. The

situation of the Whigs in 1682 differed widely from that of the Roundheads forty years before. Those who

took up arms against Charles the First acted under the authority of a Parliament which had been legally

assembled, and which could not, without its own consent, be legally dissolved. The opponents of Charles the

Second were private men. Almost all the military and naval resources of the kingdom had been at the disposal

of those who resisted Charles the First. All the military and naval resources of the kingdom were at the

disposal of Charles the Second. The House of Commons had been supported by at least half the nation

against Charles the First. But those who were disposed to levy war against Charles the Second were certainly

a minority. It could hardly be doubted, therefore, that, if they attempted a rising, they would fail. Still less

could it be doubted that their failure would aggravate every evil of which they complained. The true policy of

the Whigs was to submit with patience to adversity which was the natural consequence and the just

punishment of their errors, to wait patiently for that turn of public feeling which must inevitably come, to

observe the law, and to avail themselves of the protection, imperfect indeed, but by no means nugatory,

which the law afforded to innocence. Unhappily they took a very different course. Unscrupulous and

hotheaded chiefs of the party formed and discussed schemes of resistance, and were heard, if not with

approbation, yet with the show of acquiescence, by much better men than themselves. It was proposed that

there should be simultaneous insurrections in London, in Cheshire, at Bristol, and at Newcastle.

Communications were opened with the discontented Presbyterians of Scotland, who were suffering under a

tyranny such as England, in the worst times, had never known. While the leaders of the opposition thus

revolved plans of open rebellion, but were still restrained by fears or scruples from taking any decisive step, a

design of a very different kind was meditated by some of their accomplices. To fierce spirits, unrestrained by

principle, or maddened by fanaticism, it seemed that to waylay and murder the King and his brother was the

shortest and surest way of vindicating the Protestant religion and the liberties of England. A place and a time

were named; and the details of the butchery were frequently discussed, if not definitely arranged. This

scheme was known but to few, and was concealed with especial care from the upright and humane Russell,

and from Monmouth, who, though not a man of delicate conscience, would have recoiled with horror from

the guilt of parricide. Thus there were two plots, one within the other. The object of the great Whig plot was

to raise the nation in arms against the government. The lesser plot, commonly called the Rye House Plot, in

which only a few desperate men were concerned, had for its object the assassination of the King and of the

Both plots were soon discovered. Cowardly traitors hastened to save themselves, by divulging all, and more

than all, that had passed in the deliberations of the party. That only a small minority of those who meditated

resistance had admitted into their minds the thought of assassination is fully established: but, as the two

conspiracies ran into each other, it was not difficult for the government to confound them together. The just

indignation excited by the Rye House Plot was extended for a time to the whole Whig body. The King was

now at liberty to exact full vengeance for years of restraint and humiliation. Shaftesbury, indeed, had escaped

the fate which his manifold perfidy had well deserved. He had seen that the ruin of his party was at hand, had

in vain endeavoured to make his peace with the royal brothers, had fled to Holland, and had died there, under

the generous protection of a government which he had cruelly wronged. Monmouth threw himself at his

father's feet and found mercy, but soon gave new offence, and thought it prudent to go into voluntary exile.

Essex perished by his own hand in the Tower. Russell, who appears to have been guilty of no offence falling

within the definition of high treason, and Sidney, of whose guilt no legal evidence could be produced, were

beheaded in defiance of law and justice. Russell died with the fortitude of a Christian, Sidney with the

fortitude of a Stoic. Some active politicians of meaner rank were sent to the gallows. Many quitted the

country. Numerous prosecutions for misprision of treason, for libel, and for conspiracy were instituted.

Convictions were obtained without difficulty from Tory juries, and rigorous punishments were inflicted by

courtly judges. With these criminal proceedings were joined civil proceedings scarcely less formidable.

Actions were brought against persons who had defamed the Duke of York and damages tantamount to a

sentence of perpetual imprisonment were demanded by the plaintiff, and without difficulty obtained. The

Court of King's Bench pronounced that the franchises of the City of London were forfeited to the Crown.

Flushed with this great victory, the government proceeded to attack the constitutions of other corporations

which were governed by Whig officers, and which had been in the habit of returning Whig members to

Parliament. Borough after borough was compelled to surrender its privileges; and new charters were granted

These proceedings, however reprehensible, had yet the semblance of legality. They were also accompanied

by an act intended to quiet the uneasiness with which many loyal men looked forward to the accession of a

Popish sovereign. The Lady Anne, younger daughter of the Duke of York by his first wife, was married to

George, a prince of the orthodox House of Denmark. The Tory gentry and clergy might now flatter

themselves that the Church of England had been effectually secured without any violation of the order of

succession. The King and the heir presumptive were nearly of the same age. Both were approaching the

decline of life. The King's health was good. It was therefore probable that James, if he came to the throne,

would have but a short reign. Beyond his reign there was the gratifying prospect of a long series of Protestant

The liberty of unlicensed printing was of little or no use to the vanquished party; for the temper of judges and

juries was such that no writer whom the government prosecuted for a libel had any chance of escaping. The

dread of punishment therefore did all that a censorship could have done. Meanwhile, the pulpits resounded

with harangues against the sin of rebellion. The treatises in which Filmer maintained that hereditary

despotism was the form of government ordained by God, and that limited monarchy was a pernicious

absurdity, had recently appeared, and had been favourably received by a large section of the Tory party. The

university of Oxford, on the very day on which Russell was put to death, adopted by a solemn public act

these strange doctrines, and ordered the political works of Buchanan, Milton, and Baxter to be publicly

Thus emboldened, the King at length ventured to overstep the bounds which he had during some years

observed, and to violate the plain letter of the law. The law was that not more than three years should pass

between the dissolving of one Parliament and the convoking of another. But, when three years had elapsed

after the dissolution of the Parliament which sate at Oxford, no writs were issued for an election. This

infraction of the constitution was the more reprehensible, because the King had little reason to fear a meeting

with a new House of Commons. The counties were generally on his side; and many boroughs in which the

Whigs had lately held sway had been so remodelled that they were certain to return none but courtiers

In a short time the law was again violated in order to gratify the Duke of York. That prince was, partly on

account of his religion, and partly on account of the sternness and harshness of his nature, so unpopular that it

had been thought necessary to keep him out of sight while the Exclusion Bill was before Parliament, lest his

appearance should give an advantage to the party which was struggling to deprive him of his birthright. He

had therefore been sent to govern Scotland, where the savage old tyrant Lauderdale was sinking into the

grave. Even Lauderdale was now outdone. The administration of James was marked by odious laws, by

barbarous punishments, and by judgments to the iniquity of which even that age furnished no parallel. The

Scottish Privy Council had power to put state prisoners to the question. But the sight was so dreadful that, as

soon as the boots appeared, even the most servile and hardhearted courtiers hastened out of the chamber. The

board was sometimes quite deserted: and it was at length found necessary to make an order that the members

should keep their seats on such occasions. The Duke of York, it was remarked, seemed to take pleasure in the

spectacle which some of the worst men then living were unable to contemplate without pity and horror. He

not only came to Council when the torture was to be inflicted, but watched the agonies of the sufferers with

that sort of interest and complacency with which men observe a curious experiment in science. Thus he

employed himself at Edinburgh, till the event of the conflict between the court and the Whigs was no longer

doubtful. He then returned to England: but he was still excluded by the Test Act from all public employment;

nor did the King at first think it safe to violate a statute which the great majority of his most loyal subjects

regarded as one of the chief securities of their religion and of their civil rights. When, however, it appeared,

from a succession of trials, that the nation had patience to endure almost anything that the government had

courage to do, Charles ventured to dispense with the law in his brother's favour. The Duke again took his seat

These breaches of the constitution excited, it is true, some murmurs among the moderate Tories, and were not

unanimously approved even by the King's ministers. Halifax in particular, now a Marquess and Lord Privy

Seal, had, from the very day on which the Tories had by his help gained the ascendant, begun to turn Whig.

As soon as the Exclusion Bill had been thrown out, he had pressed the House of Lords to make provision

against the danger to which, in the next reign, the liberties and religion of the nation might be exposed. He

now saw with alarm the violence of that reaction which was, in no small measure, his own work. He did not

try to conceal the scorn which he felt for the servile doctrines of the University of Oxford. He detested the

French alliance. He disapproved of the long intermission of Parliaments. He regretted the severity with which

the vanquished party was treated. He who, when the Whigs were predominant, had ventured to pronounce

Stafford not guilty, ventured, when they were vanquished and helpless, to intercede for Russell. At one of the

last Councils which Charles held a remarkable scene took place. The charter of Massachusetts had been

forfeited. A question arose how, for the future, the colony should be governed. The general opinion of the

board was that the whole power, legislative as well as executive, should abide in the crown. Halifax took the

opposite side, and argued with great energy against absolute monarchy, and in favour of representative

government. It was vain, he said, to think that a population, sprung from the English stock, and animated by

English feelings, would long bear to be deprived of English institutions. Life, he exclaimed, would not be

worth having in a country where liberty and property were at the mercy of one despotic master. The Duke of

York was greatly incensed by this language, and represented to his brother the danger of retaining in office a

man who appeared to be infected with all the worst notions of Marvell and Sidney.

Some modern writers have blamed Halifax for continuing in the ministry while he disapproved of the manner

in which both domestic and foreign affairs were conducted. But this censure is unjust. Indeed it is to be

remarked that the word ministry, in the sense in which we use it, was then unknown.24 The thing itself did

not exist; for it belongs to an age in which parliamentary government is fully established. At present the chief

servants of the crown form one body. They are understood to be on terms of friendly confidence with each

other, and to agree as to the main principles on which the executive administration ought to be conducted. If a

slight difference of opinion arises among them, it is easily compromised: but, if one of them differs from the

rest on a vital point, it is his duty to resign. While he retains his office, he is held responsible even for steps

which he has tried to dissuade his colleagues from taking. In the seventeenth century, the heads of the various

branches of the administration were bound together in no such partnership. Each of them was accountable for

his own acts, for the use which he made of his own official seal, for the documents which he signed, for the

counsel which he gave to the King. No statesman was held answerable for what he had not himself done, or

induced others to do. If he took care not to be the agent in what was wrong, and if, when consulted, he

recommended what was right, he was blameless. It would have been thought strange scrupulosity in him to

quit his post, because his advice as to matters not strictly within his own department was not taken by his

master; to leave the Board of Admiralty, for example, because the finances were in disorder, or the Board of

Treasury because the foreign relations of the kingdom were in an unsatisfactory state. It was, therefore, by no

means unusual to see in high office, at the same time, men who avowedly differed from one another as

The moderate and constitutional counsels of Halifax were timidly and feebly seconded by Francis North,

Lord Guildford who had lately been made Keeper of the Great Seal. The character of Guildford has been

drawn at full length by his brother Roger North, a most intolerant Tory, a most affected and pedantic writer,

but a vigilant observer of all those minute circumstances which throw light on the dispositions of men. It is

remarkable that the biographer, though he was under the influence of the strongest fraternal partiality, and

though he was evidently anxious to produce a flattering likeness, was unable to portray the Lord Keeper

otherwise than as the most ignoble of mankind. Yet the intellect of Guildford was clear, his industry great, his

proficiency in letters and science respectable, and his legal learning more than respectable. His faults were

selfishness, cowardice, and meanness. He was not insensible to the power of female beauty, nor averse from

excess in wine. Yet neither wine nor beauty could ever seduce the cautious and frugal libertine, even in his

earliest youth, into one fit of indiscreet generosity. Though of noble descent, he rose in his profession by

paying ignominious homage to all who possessed influence in the courts. He became Chief Justice of the

Common Pleas, and as such was party to some of the foulest judicial murders recorded in our history. He had

sense enough to perceive from the first that Oates and Bedloe were impostors: but the Parliament and the

country were greatly excited: the government had yielded to the pressure; and North was not a man to risk a

good place for the sake of justice and humanity. Accordingly, while he was in secret drawing up a refutation

of the whole romance of the Popish plot, he declared in public that the truth of the story was as plain as the

sun in heaven, and was not ashamed to browbeat, from the seat of judgment, the unfortunate Roman

Catholics who were arraigned before him for their lives. He had at length reached the highest post in the law.

But a lawyer, who, after many years devoted to professional labour, engages in politics for the first time at an

advanced period of life, seldom distinguishes himself as a statesman; and Guildford was no exception to the

general rule. He was indeed so sensible of his deficiencies that he never attended the meetings of his

colleagues on foreign affairs. Even on questions relating to his own profession his opinion had less weight at

the Council board than that of any man who has ever held the Great Seal. Such as his influence was, however,

The chief opponent of Halifax was Lawrence Hyde, who had recently been created Earl of Rochester. Of all

Tories, Rochester was the most intolerant and uncompromising. The moderate members of his party

complained that the whole patronage of the Treasury, while he was First Commissioner there, went to noisy

zealots, whose only claim to promotion was that they were always drinking confusion to Whiggery, and

lighting bonfires to burn the Exclusion Bill. The Duke of York, pleased with a spirit which so much

The attempts of the rival ministers to surmount and supplant each other kept the court in incessant agitation.

Halifax pressed the King to summon a Parliament, to grant a general amnesty, to deprive the Duke of York of

all share in the government, to recall Monmouth from banishment, to break with Lewis, and to form a close

union with Holland on the principles of the Triple Alliance. The Duke of York, on the other hand, dreaded

the meeting of a Parliament, regarded the vanquished Whigs with undiminished hatred, still flattered himself

that the design formed fourteen years before at Dover might be accomplished, daily represented to his brother

the impropriety of suffering one who was at heart a Republican to hold the Privy Seal, and strongly

While the two factions were struggling, Godolphin, cautious, silent, and laborious, observed a neutrality

between them. Sunderland, with his usual restless perfidy, intrigued against them both. He had been turned

out of office in disgrace for having voted in favour of the Exclusion Bill, but had made his peace by

employing the good offices of the Duchess of Portsmouth and by cringing to the Duke of York, and was once

Nor was Lewis negligent or inactive. Everything at that moment favoured his designs. He had nothing to

apprehend from the German empire, which was then contending against the Turks on the Danube. Holland

could not, unsupported venture to oppose him. He was therefore at liberty to indulge his ambition and

insolence without restraint. He seized Strasburg,, Courtray, Luxemburg. He exacted from the republic of

Genoa the most humiliating submissions. The power of France at that time reached a higher point than it ever

before or ever after attained, during the ten centuries which separated the reign of Charlemagne from the

reign of Napoleon. It was not easy to say where her acquisitions would stop, if only England could be kept in

a state of vassalage. The first object of the court of Versailles was therefore to prevent the calling of a

Parliament and the reconciliation of English parties. For this end bribes, promises, and menaces were

unsparingly employed. Charles was sometimes allured by the hope of a subsidy, and sometimes frightened by

being told that, if he convoked the Houses, the secret articles of the treaty of Dover should be published.

Several Privy Councillors were bought; and attempts were made to buy Halifax, but in vain. When he had

been found incorruptible, all the art and influence of the French embassy were employed to drive him from

office: but his polished wit and his various accomplishments had made him so agreeable to his master, that

Halifax was not content with standing on the defensive. He openly accused Rochester of malversation. An

inquiry took place. It appeared that forty thousand pounds had been lost to the public by the mismanagement

of the First Lord of the Treasury. In consequence of this discovery he was not only forced to relinquish his

hopes of the white staff, but was removed from the direction of the finances to the more dignified but less

lucrative and important post of Lord President. "I have seen people kicked down stairs," said Halifax; "but

my Lord Rochester is the first person that I ever saw kicked up stairs." Godolphin, now a peer, became First

Still, however, the contest continued. The event depended wholly on the will of Charles; and Charles could

not come to a decision. In his perplexity he promised everything to everybody. He would stand by France: he

would break with France: he would never meet another Parliament: he would order writs for a Parliament to

be issued without delay. He assured the Duke of York that Halifax should be dismissed from office, and

Halifax that the Duke should be sent to Scotland. In public he affected implacable resentment against

Monmouth, and in private conveyed to Monmouth assurances of unalterable affection. How long, if the

King's life had been protracted, his hesitation would have lasted, and what would have been his resolve, can

only be conjectured. Early in the year 1685, while hostile parties were anxiously awaiting his determination,

he died, and a new scene opened. In a few mouths the excesses of the government obliterated the impression

which had been made on the public mind by the excesses of the opposition. The violent reaction which had

laid the Whig party prostrate was followed by a still more violent reaction in the opposite direction; and signs

not to be mistaken indicated that the great conflict between the prerogatives of the Crown and the privileges

I INTEND, in this chapter, to give a description of the state in which England was at the time when the crown

passed from Charles the Second to his brother. Such a description, composed from scanty. and dispersed

materials, must necessarily be very imperfect. Yet it may perhaps correct some false notions which would

If we would study with profit the history of our ancestors, we must be constantly on our guard against that

delusion which the well known names of families, places, and offices naturally produce, and must never

forget that the country of which we read was a very different country from that in which we live. In every

experimental science there is a tendency towards perfection. In every human being there is a wish to

ameliorate his own condition. These two principles have often sufficed, even when counteracted by great

public calamities and by bad institutions, to carry civilisation rapidly forward. No ordinary misfortune, no

ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make a nation wretched, as the constant progress of physical

knowledge and the constant effort of every man to better himself will do to make a nation prosperous. It has

often been found that profuse expenditure, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals,

disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundations, have not been able to destroy capital so

fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it. It can easily be proved that, in our own

land, the national wealth has, during at least six centuries, been almost uninterruptedly increasing; that it was

greater under the Tudors than under the Plantagenets; that it was greater under the Stuarts than under the

Tudors; that, in spite of battles, sieges, and confiscations, it was greater on the day of the Restoration than on

the day when the Long Parliament met; that, in spite of maladministration, of extravagance, of public

bankruptcy, of two costly and unsuccessful wars, of the pestilence and of the fire, it was greater on the day of

the death of Charles the Second than on the day of his Restoration. This progress, having continued during

many ages, became at length, about the middle of the eighteenth century, portentously rapid, and has

proceeded, during the nineteenth, with accelerated velocity. In consequence partly of our geographical and

partly of our moral position, we have, during several generations, been exempt from evils which have

elsewhere impeded the efforts and destroyed the fruits of industry. While every part of the Continent, from

Moscow to Lisbon, has been the theatre of bloody and devastating wars, no hostile standard has been seen

here but as a trophy. While revolutions have taken place all around us, our government has never once been

subverted by violence. During more than a hundred years there has been in our island no tumult of sufficient

importance to be called an insurrection; nor has the law been once borne down either by popular fury or by

regal tyranny: public credit has been held sacred: the administration of justice has been pure: even in times

which might by Englishmen be justly called evil times, we have enjoyed what almost every other nation in

the world would have considered as an ample measure of civil and religious freedom. Every man has felt

entire confidence that the state would protect him in the possession of what had been earned by his diligence

and hoarded by his selfdenial. Under the benignant influence of peace and liberty, science has flourished, and

has been applied to practical purposes on a scale never before known. The consequence is that a change to

which the history of the old world furnishes no parallel has taken place in our country. Could the England of

1685 be, by some magical process, set before our eyes, we should not know one landscape in a hundred or

one building in ten thousand. The country gentleman would not recognise his own fields. The inhabitant of

the town would not recognise his own street. Everything has been changed, but the great features of nature,

and a few massive and durable works of human art. We might find out Snowdon and Windermere, the

Cheddar Cliffs and Beachy Head. We might find out here and there a Norman minster, or a castle which

witnessed the wars of the Roses. But, with such rare exceptions, everything would be strange to us. Many

thousands of square miles which are now rich corn land and meadow, intersected by green hedgerows and

dotted with villages and pleasant country seats, would appear as moors overgrown with furze, or fens

abandoned to wild ducks. We should see straggling huts built of wood and covered with thatch, where we

now see manufacturing towns and seaports renowned to the farthest ends of the world. The capital itself

would shrink to dimensions not much exceeding those of its present suburb on the south of the Thames. Not

less strange to us would be the garb and manners of the people, the furniture and the equipages, the interior of

the shops and dwellings. Such a change in the state of a nation seems to be at least as well entitled to the

One of the first objects of an inquirer, who wishes to form a correct notion of the state of a community at a

given time, must be to ascertain of how many persons that community then consisted. Unfortunately the

population of England in 1685, cannot be ascertained with perfect accuracy. For no great state had then

adopted the wise course of periodically numbering the people. All men were left to conjecture for themselves;

and, as they generally conjectured without examining facts, and under the influence of strong passions and

prejudices, their guesses were often ludicrously absurd. Even intelligent Londoners ordinarily talked of

London as containing several millions of souls. It was confidently asserted by many that, during the

thirtyfive years which had elapsed between the accession of Charles the First and the Restoration the

population of the City had increased by two millions.27 Even while the ravages of the plague and fire were

recent, it was the fashion to say that the capital still had a million and a half of inhabitants.28 Some persons,

disgusted by these exaggerations, ran violently into the opposite extreme. Thus Isaac Vossius, a man of

undoubted parts and learning, strenuously maintained that there were only two millions of human beings in

We are not, however, left without the means of correcting the wild blunders into which some minds were

hurried by national vanity and others by a morbid love of paradox. There are extant three computations which

seem to be entitled to peculiar attention. They are entirely independent of each other: they proceed on

One of these computations was made in the year 1696 by Gregory King, Lancaster herald, a political

arithmetician of great acuteness and judgment. The basis of his calculations was the number of houses

returned in 1690 by the officers who made the last collection of the hearth money. The conclusion at which

he arrived was that the population of England was nearly five millions and a half.30

About the same time King William the Third was desirous to ascertain the comparative strength of the

religious sects into which the community was divided. An inquiry was instituted; and reports were laid before

him from all the dioceses of the realm. According to these reports the number of his English subjects must

Lastly, in our own days, Mr. Finlaison, an actuary of eminent skill, subjected the ancient parochial registers

of baptisms, marriages, and burials, to all the tests which the modern improvements in statistical science

enabled him to apply. His opinion was, that, at the close of the seventeenth century, the population of

Of these three estimates, framed without concert by different persons from different sets of materials, the

highest, which is that of King, does not exceed the lowest, which is that of Finlaison, by one twelfth. We

may, therefore, with confidence pronounce that, when James the Second reigned, England contained between

five million and five million five hundred thousand inhabitants. On the very highest supposition she then had

less than one third of her present population, and less than three times the population which is now collected

The increase of the people has been great in every part of the kingdom, but generally much greater in the

northern than in the southern shires. In truth a large part of the country beyond Trent was, down to the

eighteenth century, in a state of barbarism. Physical and moral causes had concurred to prevent civilisation

from spreading to that region. The air was inclement; the soil was generally such as required skilful and

industrious cultivation; and there could be little skill or industry in a tract which was often the theatre of war,

and which, even when there was nominal peace, was constantly desolated by bands of Scottish marauders.

Before the union of the two British crowns, and long after that union, there was as great a difference between

Middlesex and Northumberland as there now is between Massachusetts and the settlements of those squatters

who, far to the west of the Mississippi, administer a rude justice with the rifle and the dagger. In the reign of

Charles the Second, the traces left by ages of slaughter and pillage were distinctly perceptible, many miles

south of the Tweed, in the face of the country and in the lawless manners of the people. There was still a

large class of mosstroopers, whose calling was to plunder dwellings and to drive away whole herds of cattle.

It was found necessary, soon after the Restoration, to enact laws of great severity for the prevention of these

outrages. The magistrates of Northumberland and Cumberland were authorised to raise bands of armed men

for the defence of property and order; and provision was made for meeting the expense of these levies by

local taxation.33 The parishes were required to keep bloodhounds for the purpose of hunting the freebooters.

Many old men who were living in the middle of the eighteenth century could well remember the time when

those ferocious dogs were common.34 Yet, even with such auxiliaries, it was often found impossible to track

the robbers to their retreats among the hills and morasses. For the geography of that wild country was very

imperfectly known. Even after the accession of George the Third, the path over the fells from Borrowdale to

Ravenglas was still a secret carefully kept by the dalesmen, some of whom had probably in their youth

escaped from the pursuit of justice by that road.35 The seats of the gentry and the larger farmhouses were

fortified. Oxen were penned at night beneath the overhanging battlements of the residence, which was known

by the name of the Peel. The inmates slept with arms at their sides. Huge stones and boiling water were in

readiness to crush and scald the plunderer who might venture to assail the little garrison. No traveller

ventured into that country without making his will. The Judges on circuit, with the whole body of barristers,

attorneys, clerks, and serving men, rode on horseback from Newcastle to Carlisle, armed and escorted by a

strong guard under the command of the Sheriffs. It was necessary to carry provisions; for the country was a

wilderness which afforded no supplies. The spot where the cavalcade halted to dine, under an immense oak,

is not yet forgotten. The irregular vigour with which criminal justice was administered shocked observers

whose lives had been passed in more tranquil districts. Juries, animated by hatred and by a sense of common

danger, convicted housebreakers and cattle stealers with the promptitude of a court martial in a mutiny; and

the convicts were hurried by scores to the gallows.36 Within the memory of some whom this generation has

seen, the sportsman who wandered in pursuit of game to the sources of the Tyne found the heaths round

Keeldar Castle peopled by a race scarcely less savage than the Indians of California, and heard with surprise

the half naked women chaunting a wild measure, while the men with brandished dirks danced a war dance.37

Slowly and with difficulty peace was established on the border. In the train of peace came industry and all the

arts of life. Meanwhile it was discovered that the regions north of the Trent possessed in their coal beds a

source of wealth far more precious than the gold mines of Peru. It was found that, in the neighbourhood of

these beds, almost every manufacture might be most profitably carried on. A constant stream of emigrants

began to roll northward. It appeared by the returns of 1841 that the ancient archiepiscopal province of York

contained twosevenths of the population of England. At the time of the Revolution that province was

believed to contain only one seventh of the population.38 In Lancashire the number of inhabitants appear to

have increased ninefold, while in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Northamptonshire it has hardly doubled.39

Of the taxation we can speak with more confidence and precision than of the population. The revenue of

England, when Charles the Second died, was small, when compared with the resources which she even then

possessed, or with the sums which were raised by the governments of the neighbouring countries. It had,

from the time of the Restoration, been almost constantly increasing. yet it was little more than three fourths of

the revenue of the United Provinces, and was hardly one fifth of the revenue of France.

The most important head of receipt was the excise, which, in the last year of the reign of Charles, produced

five hundred and eightyfive thousand pounds, clear of all deductions. The net proceeds of the customs

amounted in the same year to five hundred and thirty thousand pounds. These burdens did not lie very heavy

on the nation. The tax on chimneys, though less productive, call forth far louder murmurs. The discontent

excited by direct imposts is, indeed, almost always out of proportion to the quantity of money which they

bring into the Exchequer; and the tax on chimneys was, even among direct imposts, peculiarly odious: for it

could be levied only by means of domiciliary visits; and of such visits the English have always been

impatient to a degree which the people of other countries can but faintly conceive. The poorer householders

were frequently unable to pay their hearth money to the day. When this happened, their furniture was

distrained without mercy: for the tax was farmed; and a farmer of taxes is, of all creditors, proverbially the

most rapacious. The collectors were loudly accused of performing their unpopular duty with harshness and

insolence. It was said that, as soon as they appeared at the threshold of a cottage, the children began to wail,

and the old women ran to hide their earthenware. Nay, the single bed of a poor family had sometimes been

carried away and sold. The net annual receipt from this tax was two hundred thousand pounds.40

When to the three great sources of income which have been mentioned we add the royal domains, then far

more extensive than at present, the first fruits and tenths, which had not yet been surrendered to the Church,

the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, the forfeitures, and the fines, we shall find that the whole annual

revenue of the crown may be fairly estimated at about fourteen hundred thousand pounds. Of this revenue

part was hereditary; the rest had been granted to Charles for life; and he was at liberty to lay out the whole

exactly as he thought fit. Whatever he could save by retrenching from the expenditure of the public

departments was an addition to his privy purse. Of the Post Office more will hereafter be said. The profits of

The King's revenue was, or rather ought to have been, charged with the payment of about eighty thousand

pounds a year, the interest of the sum fraudulently destined in the Exchequer by the Cabal. While Danby was

at the head of the finances, the creditors had received dividends, though not with the strict punctuality of

modern times: but those who had succeeded him at the treasury had been less expert, or less solicitous to

maintain public faith. Since the victory won by the court over the Whigs, not a farthing had been paid; and no

redress was granted to the sufferers, till a new dynasty had been many years on the throne. There can be no

greater error than to imagine that the device of meeting the exigencies of the state by loans was imported into

our island by William the Third. What really dates from his reign is not the system of borrowing, but the

system of funding. From a period of immemorable antiquity it had been the practice of every English

government to contract debts. What the Revolution introduced was the practice of honestly paying them.41

By plundering the public creditor, it was possible to make an income of about fourteen hundred thousand

pounds, with some occasional help from Versailles, support the necessary charges of the government and the

wasteful expenditure of the court. For that load which pressed most heavily on the finances of the great

continental states was here scarcely felt. In France, Germany, and the Netherlands, armies, such as Henry the

Fourth and Philip the Second had never employed in time of war, were kept up in the midst of peace.

Bastions and raveling were everywhere rising, constructed on principles unknown to Parma and Spinola.

Stores of artillery and ammunition were accumulated, such as even Richelieu, whom the preceding

generation had regarded as a worker of prodigies, would have pronounced fabulous. No man could journey

many leagues in those countries without hearing the drums of a regiment on march, or being challenged by

the sentinels on the drawbridge of a fortress. In our island, on the contrary, it was possible to live long and to

travel far without being once reminded, by any martial sight or sound, that the defence of nations had become

a science and a calling. The majority of Englishmen who were under twentyfive years of age had probably

never seen a company of regular soldiers. Of the cities which, in the civil war, had valiantly repelled hostile

armies, scarcely one was now capable of sustaining a siege The gates stood open night and day. The ditches

were dry. The ramparts had been suffered to fall into decay, or were repaired only that the townsfolk might

have a pleasant walk on summer evenings. Of the old baronial keeps many had been shattered by the cannon

of Fairfax and Cromwell, and lay in heaps of ruin, overgrown with ivy. Those which remained had lost their

martial character, and were now rural palaces of the aristocracy. The moats were turned into preserves of carp

and pike. The mounds were planted with fragrant shrubs, through which spiral walks ran up to summer

houses adorned with mirrors and paintings.42 On the capes of the sea coast, and on many inland hills, were

still seen tall posts, surmounted by barrels. Once those barrels had been filled with pitch. Watchmen had been

set round them in seasons of danger; and, within a few hours after a Spanish sail had been discovered in the

Channel, or after a thousand Scottish mosstroopers had crossed the Tweed, the signal fires were blazing fifty

miles off, and whole counties were rising in arms. But many years had now elapsed since the beacons had

been lighted; and they were regarded rather as curious relics of ancient manners than as parts of a machinery

The only army which the law recognised was the militia. That force had been remodelled by two Acts of

Parliament, passed shortly after the Restoration. Every man who possessed five hundred pounds a year

derived from land, or six thousand pounds of personal estate, was bound to provide, equip, and pay, at his

own charge, one horseman. Every man who had fifty pounds a year derived from land, or six hundred pounds

of personal estate, was charged in like manner with one pikemen or musketeer. Smaller proprietors were

joined together in a kind of society, for which our language does not afford a special name, but which an

Athenian would have called a Synteleia; and each society was required to furnish, according to its means, a

horse soldier or a foot soldier. The whole number of cavalry and infantry thus maintained was popularly

The King was, by the ancient constitution of the realm, and by the recent and solemn acknowledgment of

both Houses of Parliament, the sole Captain General of this large force. The Lords Lieutenants and their

Deputies held the command under him, and appointed meetings for drilling and inspection. The time

occupied by such meetings, however, was not to exceed fourteen days in one year. The Justices of the Peace

were authorised to inflict severe penalties for breaches of discipline. Of the ordinary cost no part was paid by

the crown: but when the trainbands were called out against an enemy, their subsistence became a charge on

the general revenue of the state, and they were subject to the utmost rigour of martial law.

There were those who looked on the militia with no friendly eye. Men who had travelled much on the

Continent, who had marvelled at the stern precision with which every sentinel moved and spoke in the

citadels built by Vauban, who had seen the mighty armies which poured along all the roads of Germany to

chase the Ottoman from the Gates of Vienna, and who had been dazzled by the well ordered pomp of the

household troops of Lewis, sneered much at the way in which the peasants of Devonshire and Yorkshire

marched and wheeled, shouldered muskets and ported pikes. The enemies of the liberties and religion of

England looked with aversion on a force which could not, without extreme risk, be employed against those

liberties and that religion, and missed no opportunity of throwing ridicule on the rustic soldiery.45

Enlightened patriots, when they contrasted these rude levies with the battalions which, in time of war, a few

hours might bring to the coast of Kent or Sussex, were forced to acknowledge that, dangerous as it might be

to keep up a permanent military establishment, it might be more dangerous still to stake the honour and

independence of the country on the result of a contest between plowmen officered by Justices of the Peace,

and veteran warriors led by Marshals of France. In Parliament, however, it was necessary to express such

opinions with some reserve; for the militia was an institution eminently popular. Every reflection thrown on it

excited the indignation of both the great parties in the state, and especially of that party which was

distinguished by peculiar zeal for monarchy and for the Anglican Church. The array of the counties was

commanded almost exclusively by Tory noblemen and gentlemen. They were proud of their military rank,

and considered an insult offered to the service to which they belonged as offered to themselves. They were

also perfectly aware that whatever was said against a militia was said in favour of a standing army; and the

name of standing army was hateful to them. One such army had held dominion in England; and under that

dominion the King had been murdered, the nobility degraded, the landed gentry plundered, the Church

persecuted. There was scarcely a rural grandee who could not tell a story of wrongs and insults suffered by

himself, or by his father, at the hands of the parliamentary soldiers. One old Cavalier had seen half his manor

house blown up. The hereditary elms of another had been hewn down. A third could never go into his parish

church without being reminded by the defaced scutcheons and headless statues of his ancestry, that Oliver's

redcoats had once stabled their horses there. The consequence was that those very Royalists, who were most

ready to fight for the King themselves, were the last persons whom he could venture to ask for the means of

Charles, however, had, a few months after his restoration, begun to form a small standing army. He felt that,

without some better protection than that of the trainbands and beefeaters, his palace and person would hardly

be secure, in the vicinity of a great city swarming with warlike Fifth Monarchy men who had just been

disbanded. He therefore, careless and profuse as he was, contrived to spare from his pleasures a sum

sufficient to keep up a body of guards. With the increase of trade and of public wealth his revenues increased;

and he was thus enabled, in spite of the occasional murmurs of the Commons, to make gradual additions to

his regular forces. One considerable addition was made a few months before the close of his reign. The

costly, useless, and pestilential settlement of Tangier was abandoned to the barbarians who dwelt around it;

and the garrison, consisting of one regiment of horse and two regiments of foot, was brought to England.

The little army formed by Charles the Second was the germ of that great and renowned army which has, in

the present century, marched triumphant into Madrid and Paris, into Canton and Candahar. The Life Guards,

who now form two regiments, were then distributed into three troops, each of which consisted of two hundred

carabineers, exclusive of officers. This corps, to which the safety of the King and royal family was confided,

had a very peculiar character. Even the privates were designated as gentlemen of the Guard. Many of them

were of good families, and had held commissions in the civil war. Their pay was far higher than that of the

most favoured regiment of our time, and would in that age have been thought a respectable provision for the

younger son of a country squire. Their fine horses, their rich housings, their cuirasses, and their buff coats

adorned with ribands, velvet, and gold lace, made a splendid appearance in Saint James's Park. A small body

of grenadier dragoons, who came from a lower class and received lower pay, was attached to each troop.

Another body of household cavalry distinguished by blue coats and cloaks, and still called the Blues, was

generally quartered in the neighbourhood of the capital. Near the capital lay also the corps which is now

designated as the first regiment of dragoons, but which was then the only regiment of dragoons on the

English establishment. It had recently been formed out of the cavalry which had returned from Tangier. A

single troop of dragoons, which did not form part of any regiment, was stationed near Berwick, for the

purpose of keeping, the peace among the mosstroopers of the border. For this species of service the dragoon

was then thought to be peculiarly qualified. He has since become a mere horse soldier. But in the seventeenth

century he was accurately described by Montecuculi as a foot soldier who used a horse only in order to arrive

The household infantry consisted of two regiments, which were then, as now, called the first regiment of Foot

Guards, and the Coldstream Guards. They generally did duty near Whitehall and Saint James's Palace. As

there were then no barracks, and as, by the Petition of Right, it had been declared unlawful to quarter soldiers

on private families, the redcoats filled all the alehouses of Westminster and the Strand.

There were five other regiments of foot. One of these, called the Admiral's Regiment, was especially destined

to service on board of the fleet. The remaining four still rank as the first four regiments of the line. Two of

these represented two brigades which had long sustained on the Continent the fame of British valour. The

first, or Royal regiment, had, under the great Gustavus, borne a conspicuous part in the deliverance of

Germany. The third regiment, distinguished by fleshcoloured facings, from which it had derived the well

known name of the Buffs, had, under Maurice of Nassau, fought not less bravely for the deliverance of the

Netherlands. Both these gallant bands had at length, after many vicissitudes, been recalled from foreign

service by Charles the Second, and had been placed on the English establishment.

The regiments which now rank as the second and fourth of the line had, in 1685, just returned from Tangier,

bringing with them cruel and licentious habits contracted in a long course of warfare with the Moors. A few

companies of infantry which had not been regimented lay in garrison at Tilbury Fort, at Portsmouth, at

Since the beginning of the seventeenth century a great change had taken place in the arms of the infantry. The

pike had been gradually giving place to the musket; and, at the close of the reign of Charles the Second, most

of his foot were musketeers. Still, however, there was a large intermixture of pikemen. Each class of troops

was occasionally instructed in the use of the weapon which peculiarly belonged to the other class. Every foot

soldier had at his side a sword for close fight. The musketeer was generally provided with a weapon which

had, during many years, been gradually coming into use, and which the English then called a dagger, but

which, from the time of William the Third, has been known among us by the French name of bayonet. The

bayonet seems not to have been then so formidable an instrument of destruction as it has since become; for it

was inserted in the muzzle of the gun; and in action much time was lost while the soldier unfixed his bayonet

in order to fire, and fixed it again in order to charge. The dragoon, when dismounted, fought as a musketeer.

The regular army which was kept up in England at the beginning of the year 1685 consisted, all ranks

included, of about seven thousand foot, and about seventeen hundred cavalry and dragoons. The whole

charge amounted to about two hundred and ninety thousand pounds a year, less then a tenth part of what the

military establishment of France then cost in time of peace. The daily pay of a private in the Life Guards was

four shillings, in the Blues two shillings and sixpence, in the Dragoons eighteen pence, in the Foot Guards

tenpence, and in the line eightpence. The discipline was lax, and indeed could not be otherwise. The common

law of England knew nothing of courts martial, and made no distinction, in time of peace, between a soldier

and any other subject; nor could the government then venture to ask even the most loyal Parliament for a

Mutiny Bill. A soldier, therefore, by knocking down his colonel, incurred only the ordinary penalties of

assault and battery, and by refusing to obey orders, by sleeping on guard, or by deserting his colours, incurred

no legal penalty at all. Military punishments were doubtless inflicted during the reign of Charles the Second;

but they were inflicted very sparingly, and in such a manner as not to attract public notice, or to produce an

Such an army as has been described was not very likely to enslave five millions of Englishmen. It would

indeed have been unable to suppress an insurrection in London, if the trainbands of the City had joined the

insurgents. Nor could the King expect that, if a rising took place in England, he would obtain effectual help

from his other dominions. For, though both Scotland and Ireland supported separate military establishments,

those establishments were not more than sufficient to keep down the Puritan malecontents of the former

kingdom and the Popish malecontents of the latter. The government had, however, an important military

resource which must not be left unnoticed. There were in the pay of the United Provinces six fine regiments,

of which three had been raised in England and three in Scotland. Their native prince had reserved to himself

the power of recalling them, if he needed their help against a foreign or domestic enemy. In the meantime

they were maintained without any charge to him, and were kept under an excellent discipline to which he

If the jealousy of the Parliament and of the nation made it impossible for the King to maintain a formidable

standing army, no similar impediment prevented him from making England the first of maritime powers.

Both Whigs and Tories were ready to applaud every step tending to increase the efficiency of that force

which, while it was the best protection of the island against foreign enemies, was powerless against civil

liberty. All the greatest exploits achieved within the memory of that generation by English soldiers had been

achieved in war against English princes. The victories of our sailors had been won over foreign foes, and had

averted havoc and rapine from our own soil. By at least half the nation the battle of Naseby was remembered

with horror, and the battle of Dunbar with pride chequered by many painful feelings: but the defeat of the

Armada, and the encounters of Blake with the Hollanders and Spaniards were recollected with unmixed

exultation by all parties. Ever since the Restoration, the Commons, even when most discontented and most

parsimonious, had always been bountiful to profusion where the interest of the navy was concerned. It had

been represented to them, while Danby was minister, that many of the vessels in the royal fleet were old and

unfit for sea; and, although the House was, at that time, in no giving mood, an aid of near six hundred

But the liberality of the nation had been made fruitless by the vices of the government. The list of the King's

ships, it is true, looked well. There were nine first rates, fourteen second rates, thirtynine third rates, and

many smaller vessels. The first rates, indeed, were less than the third rates of our time; and the third rates

would not now rank as very large frigates. This force, however, if it had been efficient, would in those days

have been regarded by the greatest potentate as formidable. But it existed only on paper. When the reign of

Charles terminated, his navy had sunk into degradation and decay, such as would be almost incredible if it

were not certified to us by the independent and concurring evidence of witnesses whose authority is beyond

exception. Pepys, the ablest man in the English Admiralty, drew up, in the year 1684, a memorial on the state

of his department, for the information of Charles. A few months later Bonrepaux, the ablest man in the

French Admiralty, having visited England for the especial purpose of ascertaining her maritime strength, laid

the result of his inquiries before Lewis. The two reports are to the same effect. Bonrepaux declared that he

found everything in disorder and in miserable condition, that the superiority of the French marine was

acknowledged with shame and envy at Whitehall, and that the state of our shipping and dockyards was of

itself a sufficient guarantee that we should not meddle in the disputes of Europe.47 Pepys informed his

master that the naval administration was a prodigy of wastefulness, corruption, ignorance, and indolence, that

no estimate could be trusted, that no contract was performed, that no check was enforced. The vessels which

the recent liberality of Parliament had enabled the government to build, and which had never been out of

harbour, had been made of such wretched timber that they were more unfit to go to sea than the old hulls

which had been battered thirty years before by Dutch and Spanish broadsides. Some of the new men of war,

indeed, were so rotten that, unless speedily repaired, they would go down at their moorings. The sailors were

paid with so little punctuality that they were glad to find some usurer who would purchase their tickets at

forty per cent. discount. The commanders who had not powerful friends at court were even worse treated.

Some officers, to whom large arrears were due. after vainly importuning the government during many years,

Most of the ships which were afloat were commanded by men who had not been bred to the sea. This, it is

true, was not an abuse introduced by the government of Charles. No state, ancient or modern, had, before that

time, made a complete separation between the naval and military service. In the great civilised nations of

antiquity, Cimon and Lysander, Pompey and Agrippa, had fought battles by sea as well as by land. Nor had

the impulse which nautical science received at the close of the fifteenth century produced any new division of

labour. At Flodden the right wing of the victorious army was led by the Admiral of England. At Jarnac and

Moncontour the Huguenot ranks were marshalled by the Admiral of France. Neither John of Austria, the

conqueror of Lepanto, nor Lord Howard of Effingham, to whose direction the marine of England was

confided when the Spanish invaders were approaching our shores, had received the education of a sailor.

Raleigh, highly celebrated as a naval commander, had served during many years as a soldier in France, the

Netherlands, and Ireland. Blake had distinguished himself by his skilful and valiant defence of an inland town

before he humbled the pride of Holland and of Castile on the ocean. Since the Restoration the same system

had been followed. Great fleets had been entrusted to the direction of Rupert and Monk; Rupert, who was

renowned chiefly as a hot and daring cavalry officer, and Monk, who, when he wished his ship to change her

But about this time wise men began to perceive that the rapid improvement, both of the art of war and of the

art of navigation, made it necessary to draw a line between two professions which had hitherto been

confounded. Either the command of a regiment or the command of a ship was now a matter quite sufficient to

occupy the attention of a single mind. In the year 1672 the French government determined to educate young

men of good family from a very early age especially for the sea service. But the English government, instead

of following this excellent example, not only continued to distribute high naval commands among landsmen,

but selected for such commands landsmen who, even on land, could not safely have been put in any

important trust. Any lad of noble birth, any dissolute courtier for whom one of the King's mistresses would

speak a word, might hope that a ship of the line, and with it the honour of the country and the lives of

hundreds of brave men, would be committed to his care. It mattered not that he had never in his life taken a

voyage except on the Thames, that he could not keep his feet in a breeze, that he did not know the difference

between latitude and longitude. No previous training was thought necessary; or, at most, he was sent to make

a short trip in a man of war, where he was subjected to no discipline, where he was treated with marked

respect, and where he lived in a round of revels and amusements. If, in the intervals of feasting, drinking, and

gambling, he succeeded in learning the meaning of a few technical phrases and the names of the points of the

compass, he was thought fully qualified to take charge of a threedecker. This is no imaginary description. In

1666, John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, at seventeen years of age, volunteered to serve at sea against the

Dutch. He passed six weeks on board, diverting himself, as well as he could, in the society of some young

libertines of rank, and then returned home to take the command of a troop of horse. After this he was never

on the water till the year 1672, when he again joined the fleet, and was almost immediately appointed Captain

of a ship of eightyfour guns, reputed the finest in the navy. He was then twentythree years old, and had

not, in the whole course of his life, been three months afloat. As soon as he came back from sea he was made

Colonel of a regiment of foot. This is a specimen of the manner in which naval commands of the highest

importance were then given; and a very favourable specimen; for Mulgrave, though he wanted experience,

wanted neither parts nor courage. Others were promoted in the same way who not only were not good

officers, but who were intellectually and morally incapable of ever becoming good officers, and whose only

recommendation was that they had been ruined by folly and vice. The chief bait which allured these men into

the service was the profit of conveying bullion and other valuable commodities from port to port; for both the

Atlantic and the Mediterranean were then so much infested by pirates from Barbary that merchants were not

willing to trust precious cargoes to any custody but that of a man of war. A Captain might thus clear several

thousands of pounds by a short voyage; and for this lucrative business he too often neglected the interests of

his country and the honour of his flag, made mean submissions to foreign powers, disobeyed the most direct

injunctions of his superiors, lay in port when he was ordered to chase a Sallee rover, or ran with dollars to

Leghorn when his instructions directed him to repair to Lisbon. And all this he did with impunity. The same

interest which had placed him in a post for which he was unfit maintained him there. No Admiral, bearded by

these corrupt and dissolute minions of the palace, dared to do more than mutter something about a court

martial. If any officer showed a higher sense of duty than his fellows, he soon found out he lost money

without acquiring honor. One Captain, who, by strictly obeying the orders of the Admiralty, missed a cargo

which would have been worth four thousand pounds to him, was told by Charles, with ignoble levity, that he

The discipline of the navy was of a piece throughout. As the courtly Captain despised the Admiralty, he was

in turn despised by his crew. It could not be concealed that he was inferior in Seamanship to every foremast

man on board. It was idle to expect that old sailors, familiar with the hurricanes of the tropics and with the

icebergs of the Arctic Circle, would pay prompt and respectful obedience to a chief who knew no more of

winds and waves than could be learned in a gilded barge between Whitehall Stairs and Hampton Court. To

trust such a novice with the working of a ship was evidently impossible. The direction of the navigation was

therefore taken from the Captain and given to the Master; but this partition of authority produced

innumerable inconveniences. The line of demarcation was not, and perhaps could not be, drawn with

precision. There was therefore constant wrangling. The Captain, confident in proportion to his ignorance,

treated the Master with lordly contempt. The Master, well aware of the danger of disobliging the powerful,

too often, after a struggle, yielded against his better judgment; and it was well if the loss of ship and crew was

not the consequence. In general the least mischievous of the aristocratical Captains were those who

completely abandoned to others the direction of the vessels, and thought only of making money and spending

it. The way in which these men lived was so ostentatious and voluptuous that, greedy as they were of gain,

they seldom became rich. They dressed as if for a gala at Versailles, ate off plate, drank the richest wines, and

kept harems on board, while hunger and scurvy raged among the crews, and while corpses were daily flung

Such was the ordinary character of those who were then called gentlemen Captains. Mingled with them were

to be found, happily for our country, naval commanders of a very different description, men whose whole life

had been passed on the deep, and who had worked and fought their way from the lowest offices of the

forecastle to rank and distinction. One of the most eminent of these officers was Sir Christopher Mings, who

entered the service as a cabin boy, who fell fighting bravely against the Dutch, and whom his crew, weeping

and vowing vengeance, carried to the grave. From him sprang, by a singular kind of descent, a line of valiant

and expert sailors. His cabin boy was Sir John Narborough; and the cabin boy of Sir John Narborough was

Sir Cloudesley Shovel. To the strong natural sense and dauntless courage of this class of men England owes a

debt never to be forgotten. It was by such resolute hearts that, in spite of much maladministration, and in spite

of the blunders and treasons of more courtly admirals, our coasts were protected and the reputation of our flag

upheld during many gloomy and perilous years. But to a landsman these tarpaulins, as they were called,

seemed a strange and half savage race. All their knowledge was professional; and their professional

knowledge was practical rather than scientific. Off their own element they were as simple as children. Their

deportment was uncouth. There was roughness in their very good nature; and their talk, where it was not

made up of nautical phrases, was too commonly made up of oaths and curses. Such were the chiefs in whose

rude school were formed those sturdy warriors from whom Smollett, in the next age, drew Lieutenant

Bowling and Commodore Trunnion. But it does not appear that there was in the service of any of the Stuarts

a. single naval officer such as, according to the notions of our times, a naval officer ought to be, that is to say,

a man versed in the theory and practice of his calling, and steeled against all the dangers of battle and

tempest, yet of cultivated mind and polished manners. There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the

navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.

The English navy at that time might, according to the most exact estimates which have come down to us,

have been kept in an efficient state for three hundred and eighty thousand pounds a year. Four hundred

thousand pounds a year was the sum actually expended, but expended, as we have seen, to very little purpose.

The cost of the French marine was nearly the same the cost of the Dutch marine considerably more.48

The charge of the English ordnance in the seventeenth century was, as compared with other military and

naval charges, much smaller than at present. At most of the garrisons there were gunners: and here and there,

at an important post, an engineer was to be found. But there was no regiment of artillery, no brigade of

sappers and miners, no college in which young soldiers could learn the scientific part of the art of war. The

difficulty of moving field pieces was extreme. When, a few years later, William marched from Devonshire to

London, the apparatus which he brought with him, though such as had long been in constant use on the

Continent, and such as would now be regarded at Woolwich as rude and cumbrous, excited in our ancestors

an admiration resembling that which the Indians of America felt for the Castilian harquebusses. The stock of

gunpowder kept in the English forts and arsenals was boastfully mentioned by patriotic writers as something

which might well impress neighbouring nations with awe. It amounted to fourteen or fifteen thousand barrels,

about a twelfth of the quantity which it is now thought necessary to have in store. The expenditure under the

head of ordnance was on an average a little above sixty thousand pounds a year.49

The whole effective charge of the army, navy, and ordnance, was about seven hundred and fifty thousand

pounds. The noneffective charge, which is now a heavy part of our public burdens, can hardly be said to have

existed. A very small number of naval officers, who were not employed in the public service, drew half pay.

No Lieutenant was on the list, nor any Captain who had not commanded a ship of the first or second rate. As

the country then possessed only seventeen ships of the first and second rate that had ever been at sea, and as a

large proportion of the persons who had commanded such ships had good posts on shore, the expenditure

under this head must have been small indeed.50 In the army, half pay was given merely as a special and

temporary allowance to a small number of officers belonging to two regiments, which were peculiarly

situated.51 Greenwich Hospital had not been founded. Chelsea Hospital was building: but the cost of that

institution was defrayed partly by a deduction from the pay of the troops, and partly by private subscription.

The King promised to contribute only twenty thousand pounds for architectural expenses, and five thousand a

year for the maintenance of the invalids.52 It was no part of the plan that there should be outpensioners. The

whole noneffective charge, military and naval, can scarcely have exceeded ten thousand pounds a year. It

Of the expense of civil government only a small portion was defrayed by the crown. The great majority of the

functionaries whose business was to administer justice and preserve order either gave their services to the

public gratuitously, or were remunerated in a manner which caused no drain on the revenue of the state. The

Sheriffs, mayors, and aldermen of the towns, the country gentlemen who were in the commission of the

peace, the headboroughs, bailiffs, and petty constables, cost the King nothing. The superior courts of law

Our relations with foreign courts had been put on the most economical footing. The only diplomatic agent

who had the title of Ambassador resided at Constantinople, and was partly supported by the Turkish

Company. Even at the court of Versailles England had only an Envoy; and she had not even an Envoy at the

Spanish, Swedish, and Danish courts. The whole expense under this head cannot, in the last year of the reign

In this frugality there was nothing laudable. Charles was, as usual, niggardly in the wrong place, and

munificent in the wrong place. The public service was starved that courtiers might be pampered. The expense

of the navy, of the ordnance, of pensions to needy old officers, of missions to foreign courts, must seem small

indeed to the present generation. But the personal favourites of the sovereign, his ministers, and the creatures

of those ministers, were gorged with public money. Their salaries and pensions, when compared with the

incomes of the nobility, the gentry, the commercial and professional men of that age, will appear enormous.

The greatest estates in the kingdom then very little exceeded twenty thousand a year. The Duke of Ormond

had twentytwo thousand a year.54 The Duke of Buckingham, before his extravagance had impaired his

great property, had nineteen thousand six hundred a year.55 George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, who had

been rewarded for his eminent services with immense grants of crown land, and who had been notorious both

for covetousness and for parsimony, left fifteen thousand a year of real estate, and sixty thousand pounds in

money which probably yielded seven per cent.56 These three Dukes were supposed to be three of the very

richest subjects in England. The Archbishop of Canterbury can hardly have had five thousand a year.57 The

average income of a temporal peer was estimated, by the best informed persons, at about three thousand a

year, the average income of a baronet at nine hundred a year, the average income of a member of the House

of Commons at less than eight hundred a year.58 A thousand a year was thought a large revenue for a

barrister. Two thousand a year was hardly to be made in the Court of King's Bench, except by the crown

lawyers.59 It is evident, therefore, that an official man would have been well paid if he had received a fourth

or fifth part of what would now be an adequate stipend. In fact, however, the stipends of the higher class of

official men were as large as at present, and not seldom larger. The Lord Treasurer, for example, had eight

thousand a year, and, when the Treasury was in commission, the junior Lords had sixteen hundred a year

each. The Paymaster of the Forces had a poundage, amounting, in time of peace, to about five thousand a

year, on all the money which passed through his hands. The Groom of the Stole had five thousand a year, the

Commissioners of the Customs twelve hundred a year each, the Lords of the Bedchamber a thousand a year

each.60 The regular salary, however, was the smallest part of the gains of an official man at that age. From

the noblemen who held the white staff and the great seal, down to the humblest tidewaiter and gauger, what

would now be called gross corruption was practiced without disguise and without reproach. Titles, places,

commissions, pardons, were daily sold in market overt by the great dignitaries of the realm; and every clerk

During the last century no prime minister, however powerful, has become rich in office; and several prime

ministers have impaired their private fortune in sustaining their public character. In the seventeenth century, a

statesman who was at the head of affairs might easily, and without giving scandal, accumulate in no long

time an estate amply sufficient to support a dukedom. It is probable that the income of the prime minister,

during his tenure of power, far exceeded that of any other subject. The place of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland

was popularly reported to be worth forty thousand pounds a year.61 The gains of the Chancellor Clarendon,

of Arlington, of Lauderdale, and of Danby, were certainly enormous. The sumptuous palace to which the

populace of London gave the name of Dunkirk Mouse, the stately pavilions, the fishponds, the deer park and

the orangery of Euston, the more than Italian luxury of Ham, with its busts, fountains, and aviaries, were

among the many signs which indicated what was the shortest road to boundless wealth. This is the true

explanation of the unscrupulous violence with which the statesmen of that day struggled for office, of the

tenacity with which, in spite of vexations, humiliations and dangers, they clung to it, and of the scandalous

compliances to which they stooped in order to retain it. Even in our own age, formidable as is the power of

opinion, and high as is the standard of integrity, there would be great risk of a lamentable change in the

character of our public men, if the place of First Lord of the Treasury or Secretary of State were worth a

hundred thousand pounds a year. Happy for our country the emoluments of the highest class of functionaries

have not only not grown in proportion to the general growth of our opulence, but have positively diminished.

The fact that the sum raised in England by taxation has, in a time not exceeding two long lives, been

multiplied fortyfold, is strange, and may at first sight seem appalling. But those who are alarmed by the

increase of the public burdens may perhaps be reassured when they have considered the increase of the public

resources. In the year 1685, the value of the produce of the soil far exceeded the value of all the other fruits of

human industry. Yet agriculture was in what would now be considered as a very rude and imperfect state.

The arable land and pasture land were not supposed by the best political arithmeticians of that age to amount

to much more than half the area of the kingdom.62 The remainder was believed to consist of moor, forest,

and fen. These computations are strongly confirmed by the road books and maps of the seventeenth century.

From those books and maps it is clear that many routes which now pass through an endless succession of

orchards, cornfields, hayfields, and beanfields, then ran through nothing but heath, swamp, and warren.63 In

the drawings of English landscapes made in that age for the Grand Duke Cosmo, scarce a hedgerow is to be

seen, and numerous tracts; now rich with cultivation, appear as bare as Salisbury Plain.64 At Enfield, hardly

out of sight of the smoke of the capital, was a region of five and twenty miles in circumference, which

contained only three houses and scarcely any enclosed fields. Deer, as free as in an American forest,

wandered there by thousands.65 It is to be remarked, that wild animals of large size were then far more

numerous than at present. The last wild boars, indeed, which had been preserved for the royal diversion, and

had been allowed to ravage the cultivated land with their tusks, had been slaughtered by the exasperated

rustics during the license of the civil war. The last wolf that has roamed our island had been slain in Scotland

a short time before the close of the reign of Charles the Second. But many breeds, now extinct, or rare, both

of quadrupeds and birds, were still common. The fox, whose life is now, in many counties, held almost as

sacred as that of a human being, was then considered as a mere nuisance. Oliver Saint John told the Long

Parliament that Strafford was to be regarded, not as a stag or a hare, to whom some law was to be given, but

as a fox, who was to be snared by any means, and knocked on the head without pity. This illustration would

be by no means a happy one, if addressed to country gentlemen of our time: but in Saint John's days there

were not seldom great massacres of foxes to which the peasantry thronged with all the dogs that could be

mustered. Traps were set: nets were spread: no quarter was given; and to shoot a female with cub was

considered as a feat which merited the warmest gratitude of the neighbourhood. The red deer were then as

common in Gloucestershire and Hampshire, as they now are among the Grampian Hills. On one occasion

Queen Anne, travelling to Portsmouth, saw a herd of no less than five hundred. The wild bull with his white

mane was still to be found wandering in a few of the southern forests. The badger made his dark and tortuous

hole on the side of every hill where the copsewood grew thick. The wild cats were frequently heard by night

wailing round the lodges of the rangers of whittlebury and Needwood. The yellowbreasted martin was still

pursued in Cranbourne Chase for his fur, reputed inferior only to that of the sable. Fen eagles, measuring

more than nine feet between the extremities of the wings, preyed on fish along the coast of Norfolk. On all

the downs, from the British Channel to Yorkshire huge bustards strayed in troops of fifty or sixty, and were

often hunted with greyhounds. The marshes of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire were covered during some

months of every year by immense clouds of cranes. Some of these races the progress of cultivation has

extirpated. Of others the numbers are so much diminished that men crowd to gaze at a specimen as at a

The progress of this great change can nowhere be more clearly traced than in the Statute Book. The number

of enclosure acts passed since King George the Second came to the throne exceeds four thousand. The area

enclosed under the authority of those acts exceeds, on a moderate calculation, ten thousand square miles.

How many square miles, which were formerly uncultivated or ill cultivated, have, during the same period,

been fenced and carefully tilled by the proprietors without any application to the legislature, can only be

conjectured. But it seems highly probable that a fourth part of England has been, in the course of little more

Even in those parts of the kingdom which at the close of the reign of Charles the Second were the best

cultivated, the farming, though greatly improved since the civil war, was not such as would now be thought

skilful. To this day no effectual steps have been taken by public authority for the purpose of obtaining

accurate accounts of the produce of the English soil. The historian must therefore follow, with some

misgivings, the guidance of those writers on statistics whose reputation for diligence and fidelity stands

highest. At present an average crop of wheat, rye, barley, oats, and beans, is supposed considerably to exceed

thirty millions of quarters. The crop of wheat would be thought wretched if it did not exceed twelve millions

of quarters. According to the computation made in the year 1696 by Gregory King, the whole quantity of

wheat, rye, barley, oats, and beans, then annually grown in the kingdom, was somewhat less than ten millions

of quarters. The wheat, which was then cultivated only on the strongest clay, and consumed only by those

who were in easy circumstances, he estimated at less than two millions of quarters. Charles Davenant, an

acute and well informed though most unprincipled and rancorous politician, differed from King as to some of

The rotation of crops was very imperfectly understood. It was known, indeed, that some vegetables lately

introduced into our island, particularly the turnip, afforded excellent nutriment in winter to sheep and oxen:

but it was not yet the practice to feed cattle in this manner. It was therefore by no means easy to keep them

alive during the season when the grass is scanty. They were killed and salted in great numbers at the

beginning of the cold weather; and, during several months, even the gentry tasted scarcely any fresh animal

food, except game and river fish, which were consequently much more important articles in housekeeping

than at present. It appears from the Northumberland Household Book that, in the reign of Henry the Seventh,

fresh meat was never eaten even by the gentlemen attendant on a great Earl, except during the short interval

between Midsummer and Michaelmas. But in the course of two centuries an improvement had taken place;

and under Charles the Second it was not till the beginning of November that families laid in their stock of salt

The sheep and the ox of that time were diminutive when compared with the sheep and oxen which are now

driven to our markets.69 Our native horses, though serviceable, were held in small esteem, and fetched low

prices. They were valued, one with another, by the ablest of those who computed the national wealth, at not

more than fifty shillings each. Foreign breeds were greatly preferred. Spanish jennets were regarded as the

finest chargers, and were imported for purposes of pageantry and war. The coaches of the aristocracy were

drawn by grey Flemish mares, which trotted, as it was thought, with a peculiar grace, and endured better than

any cattle reared in our island the work of dragging a ponderous equipage over the rugged pavement of

London. Neither the modern dray horse nor the modern race horse was then known. At a much later period

the ancestors of the gigantic quadrupeds, which all foreigners now class among the chief wonders of London,

were brought from the marshes of Walcheren; the ancestors of Childers and Eclipse from the sands of Arabia.

Already, however, there was among our nobility and gentry a passion for the amusements of the turf. The

importance of improving our studs by an infusion of new blood was strongly felt; and with this view a

considerable number of barbs had lately been brought into the country. Two men whose authority on such

subjects was held in great esteem, the Duke of Newcastle and Sir John Fenwick, pronounced that the meanest

hack ever imported from Tangier would produce a diner progeny than could be expected from the best sire of

our native breed. They would not readily have believed that a time would come when the princes and nobles

of neighbouring lands would be as eager to obtain horses from England as ever the English had been to obtain

The increase of vegetable and animal produce, though great, seems small when compared with the increase of

our mineral wealth. In 1685 the tin of Cornwall, which had, more than two thousand years before, attracted

the Tyrian sails beyond the pillars of Hercules, was still one of the most valuable subterranean productions of

the island. The quantity annually extracted from the earth was found to be, some years later, sixteen hundred

tons, probably about a third of what it now is.71 But the veins of copper which lie in the same region were, in

the time of Charles the Second, altogether neglected, nor did any landowner take them into the account in

estimating the value of his property. Cornwall and Wales at present yield annually near fifteen thousand tons

of copper, worth near a million and a half sterling; that is to say, worth about twice as much as the annual

produce of all English mines of all descriptions in the seventeenth century.72 The first bed of rock salt had

been discovered in Cheshire not long after the Restoration, but does not appear to have been worked till much

later. The salt which was obtained by a rude process from brine pits was held in no high estimation. The pans

in which the manufacture was carried on exhaled a sulphurous stench; and, when the evaporation was

complete, the substance which was left was scarcely fit to be used with food. Physicians attributed the

scorbutic and pulmonary complaints which were common among the English to this unwholesome

condiment. It was therefore seldom used by the upper and middle classes; and there was a regular and

considerable importation from France. At present our springs and mines not only supply our own immense

demand, but send annually more than seven hundred millions of pounds of excellent salt to foreign

Far more important has been the improvement of our iron works. Such works had long existed in our island,

but had not prospered, and had been regarded with no favourable eye by the government and by the public. It

was not then the practice to employ coal for smelting the ore; and the rapid consumption of wood excited the

alarm of politicians. As early as the reign of Elizabeth, there had been loud complaints that whole forests

were cut down for the purpose of feeding the furnaces; and the Parliament had interfered to prohibit the

manufacturers from burning timber. The manufacture consequently languished. At the close of the reign of

Charles the Second, great part of the iron which was used in this country was imported from abroad; and the

whole quantity cast here annually seems not to have exceeded ten thousand tons. At present the trade is

thought to be in a depressed state if less than a million of tons are produced in a year.74

One mineral, perhaps more important than iron itself, remains to be mentioned. Coal, though very little used

in any species of manufacture, was already the ordinary fuel in some districts which were fortunate enough to

possess large beds, and in the capital, which could easily be supplied by water carriage, It seems reasonable

to believe that at least one half of the quantity then extracted from the pits was consumed in London. The

consumption of London seemed to the writers of that age enormous, and was often mentioned by them as a

proof of the greatness of the imperial city. They scarcely hoped to be believed when they affirmed that two

hundred and eighty thousand chaldrons that is to say, about three hundred and fifty thousand tons, were, in

the last year of the reign of Charles the Second, brought to the Thames. At present three millions and a half of

tons are required yearly by the metropolis; and the whole annual produce cannot, on the most moderate

While these great changes have been in progress, the rent of land has, as might be expected, been almost

constantly rising. In some districts it has multiplied more than tenfold. In some it has not more than doubled.

Of the rent, a large proportion was divided among the country gentlemen, a class of persons whose position

and character it is most important that we. should clearly understand; for by their influence and by their

passions the fate of the nation was, at several important conjunctures, determined.

We should be much mistaken if we pictured to ourselves the squires of the seventeenth century as men

bearing a close resemblance to their descendants, the county members and chairmen of quarter sessions with

whom we are familiar. The modern country gentleman generally receives a liberal education, passes from a

distinguished school to a distinguished college, and has ample opportunity to become an excellent scholar.

He has generally seen something of foreign countries. A considerable part of his life has generally been

passed in the capital; and the refinements of the capital follow him into the country. There is perhaps no class

of dwellings so pleasing as the rural seats of the English gentry. In the parks and pleasure grounds, nature,

dressed yet not disguised by art, wears her most alluring form. In the buildings, good sense and good taste

combine to produce a happy union of the comfortable and the graceful. The pictures, the musical instruments,

the library, would in any other country be considered as proving the owner to be an eminently polished and

accomplished man. A country gentleman who witnessed the Revolution was probably in receipt of about a

fourth part of the rent which his acres now yield to his posterity. He was, therefore, as compared with his

posterity, a poor man, and was generally under the necessity of residing, with little interruption, on his estate.

To travel on the Continent, to maintain an establishment in London, or even to visit London frequently, were

pleasures in which only the great proprietors could indulge. It may be confidently affirmed that of the squires

whose names were then in the Commissions of Peace and Lieutenancy not one in twenty went to town once

in five years, or had ever in his life wandered so far as Paris. Many lords of manors had received an education

differing little from that of their menial servants. The heir of an estate often passed his boyhood and youth at

the seat of his family with no better tutors than grooms and gamekeepers, and scarce attained learning enough

to sign his name to a Mittimus. If he went to school and to college, he generally returned before he was

twenty to the seclusion of the old hall, and there, unless his mind were very happily constituted by nature,

soon forgot his academical pursuits in rural business and pleasures. His chief serious employment was the

care of his property. He examined samples of grain, handled pigs, and, on market days, made bargains over a

tankard with drovers and hop merchants. His chief pleasures were commonly derived from field sports and

from an unrefined sensuality. His language and pronunciation were such as we should now expect to hear

only from the most ignorant clowns. His oaths, coarse jests, and scurrilous terms of abuse, were uttered with

the broadest accent of his province. It was easy to discern, from the first words which he spoke, whether he

came from Somersetshire or Yorkshire. He troubled himself little about decorating his abode, and, if he

attempted decoration, seldom produced anything but deformity. The litter of a farmyard gathered under the

windows of his bedchamber, and the cabbages and gooseberry bushes grew close to his hall door. His table

was loaded with coarse plenty; and guests were cordially welcomed to it. But, as the habit of drinking to

excess was general in the class to which he belonged, and as his fortune did not enable him to intoxicate large

assemblies daily with claret or canary, strong beer was the ordinary beverage. The quantity of beer consumed

in those days was indeed enormous. For beer then was to the middle and lower classes, not only all that beer

is, but all that wine, tea, and ardent spirits now are. It was only at great houses, or on great occasions, that

foreign drink was placed on the board. The ladies of the house, whose business it had commonly been to cook

the repast, retired as soon as the dishes had been devoured, and left the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco.

The coarse jollity of the afternoon was often prolonged till the revellers were laid under the table.

It was very seldom that the country gentleman caught glimpses of the great world; and what he saw of it

tended rather to confuse than to enlighten his understanding. His opinions respecting religion, government,

foreign countries and former times, having been derived, not from study, from observation, or from

conversation with enlightened companions, but from such traditions as were current in his own small circle,

were the opinions of a child. He adhered to them, however, with the obstinacy which is generally found in

ignorant men accustomed to be fed with flattery. His animosities were numerous and bitter. He hated

Frenchmen and Italians, Scotchmen and Irishmen, Papists and Presbyterians, Independents and Baptists,

Quakers and Jews. Towards London and Londoners he felt an aversion which more than once produced

important political effects. His wife and daughter were in tastes and acquirements below a housekeeper or a

stillroom maid of the present day. They stitched and spun, brewed gooseberry wine, cured marigolds, and

From this description it might be supposed that the English esquire of the seventeenth century did not

materially differ from a rustic miller or alehouse keeper of our time. There are, however, some important

parts of his character still to be noted, which will greatly modify this estimate. Unlettered as he was and

unpolished, he was still in some most important points a gentleman. He was a member of a proud and

powerful aristocracy, and was distinguished by many both of the good and of the bad qualities which belong

to aristocrats. His family pride was beyond that of a Talbot or a Howard. He knew the genealogies and coats

of arms of all his neighbours, and could tell which of them had assumed supporters without any right, and

which of them were so unfortunate as to be greatgrandsons of aldermen. He was a magistrate, and, as such,

administered gratuitously to those who dwelt around him a rude patriarchal justice, which, in spite of

innumerable blunders and of occasional acts of tyranny, was yet better than no justice at all. He was an

officer of the trainbands; and his military dignity, though it might move the mirth of gallants who had served

a campaign in Flanders, raised his character in his own eyes and in the eyes of his neighbours. Nor indeed

was his soldiership justly a subject of derision. In every county there were elderly gentlemen who had seen

service which was no child's play. One had been knighted by Charles the First, after the battle of Edgehill.

Another still wore a patch over the scar which he had received at Naseby. A third had defended his old house

till Fairfax had blown in the door with a petard. The presence of these old Cavaliers, with their old swords

and holsters, and with their old stories about Goring and Lunsford, gave to the musters of militia an earnest

and warlike aspect which would otherwise have been wanting. Even those country gentlemen who were too

young to have themselves exchanged blows with the cuirassiers of the Parliament had, from childhood, been

surrounded by the traces of recent war, and fed with stories of the martial exploits of their fathers and uncles.

Thus the character of the English esquire of the seventeenth century was compounded of two elements which

we seldom or never find united. His ignorance and uncouthness, his low tastes and gross phrases, would, in

our time, be considered as indicating a nature and a breeding thoroughly plebeian. Yet he was essentially a

patrician, and had, in large measure both the virtues and the vices which flourish among men set from their

birth in high place, and used to respect themselves and to be respected by others. It is not easy for a

generation accustomed to find chivalrous sentiments only in company with liberal Studies and polished

manners to image to itself a man with the deportment, the vocabulary, and the accent of a carter, yet

punctilious on matters of genealogy and precedence, and ready to risk his life rather than see a stain cast on

the honour of his house. It is however only by thus joining together things seldom or never found together in

our own experience, that we can form a just idea of that rustic aristocracy which constituted the main strength

of the armies of Charles the First, and which long supported, with strange fidelity, the interest of his

The gross, uneducated; untravelled country gentleman was commonly a Tory; but, though devotedly attached

to hereditary monarchy, he had no partiality for courtiers and ministers. He thought, not without reason, that

Whitehall was filled with the most corrupt of mankind, and that of the great sums which the House of

Commons had voted to the crown since the Restoration part had been embezzled by cunning politicians, and

part squandered on buffoons and foreign courtesans. His stout English heart swelled with indignation at the

thought that the government of his country should be subject to French dictation. Being himself generally an

old Cavalier, or the son of an old Cavalier, he reflected with bitter resentment on the ingratitude with which

the Stuarts had requited their best friends. Those who heard him grumble at the neglect with which he was

treated, and at the profusion with which wealth was lavished on the bastards of Nell Gwynn and Madam

Carwell, would have supposed him ripe for rebellion. But all this ill humour lasted only till the throne was

really in danger. It was precisely when those whom the sovereign had loaded with wealth and honours shrank

from his side that the country gentlemen, so surly and mutinous in the season of his prosperity, rallied round

him in a body. Thus, after murmuring twenty years at the misgovernment of Charles the Second, they came to

his rescue in his extremity, when his own Secretaries of State and the Lords of his own Treasury had deserted

him, and enabled him to gain a complete victory over the opposition; nor can there be any doubt that they

would have shown equal loyalty to his brother James, if James would, even at the last moment, have refrained

from outraging their strongest feeling. For there was one institution, and one only, which they prized even

more than hereditary monarchy; and that institution was the Church of England. Their love of the Church was

not, indeed, the effect of study or meditation. Few among them could have given any reason, drawn from

Scripture or ecclesiastical history, for adhering to her doctrines, her ritual, and her polity; nor were they, as a

class, by any means strict observers of that code of morality which is common to all Christian sects. But the

experience of many ages proves that men may be ready to fight to the death, and to persecute without pity,

for a religion whose creed they do not understand, and whose precepts they habitually disobey.76

The rural clergy were even more vehement in Toryism than the rural gentry, end were a class scarcely less

important. It is to be observed, however, that the individual clergyman, as compared with the individual

gentleman, then ranked much lower than in our days. The main support of the Church was derived from the

tithe; and the tithe bore to the rent a much smaller ratio than at present. King estimated the whole income of

the parochial and collegiate clergy at only four hundred and eighty thousand pounds a year; Davenant at only

five hundred and fortyfour thousand a year. It is certainly now more than seven times as great as the larger

of these two sums. The average rent of the land has not, according to any estimate, increased proportionally.

It follows that the rectors and vicars must have been, as compared with the neighbouring knights and squires,

The place of the clergyman in society had been completely changed by the Reformation. Before that event,

ecclesiastics had formed the majority of the House of Lords, had, in wealth and splendour, equalled, and

sometimes outshone, the greatest of the temporal barons, and had generally held the highest civil offices.

Many of the Treasurers, and almost all the Chancellors of the Plantagenets were Bishops. The Lord Keeper of

the Privy Seal and the Master of the Rolls were ordinarily churchmen. Churchmen transacted the most

important diplomatic business. Indeed all that large portion of the administration which rude and warlike

nobles were incompetent to conduct was considered as especially belonging to divines. Men, therefore, who

were averse to the life of camps, and who were, at the same time, desirous to rise in the state, commonly

received the tonsure. Among them were sons of all the most illustrious families, and near kinsmen of the

throne, Scroops and Nevilles, Bourchiers, Staffords and Poles. To the religious houses belonged the rents of

immense domains, and all that large portion of the tithe which is now in the hands of laymen. Down to the

middle of the reign of Henry the Eighth, therefore, no line of life was so attractive to ambitious and covetous

natures as the priesthood. Then came a violent revolution. The abolition of the monasteries deprived the

Church at once of the greater part of her wealth, and of her predominance in the Upper House of Parliament.

There was no longer an Abbot of Glastonbury or an Abbot of Reading, seated among the peers, and

possessed of revenues equal to those of a powerful Earl. The princely splendour of William of Wykeham and

of William of Waynflete had disappeared. The scarlet hat of the Cardinal, the silver cross of the Legate, were

no more. The clergy had also lost the ascendency which is the natural reward of superior mental cultivation.

Once the circumstance that a man could read had raised a presumption that he was in orders. But, in an age

which produced such laymen as William Cecil and Nicholas Bacon, Roger Ascham and Thomas Smith,

Walter Mildmay and Francis Walsingham, there was no reason for calling away prelates from their dioceses

to negotiate treaties, to superintend the finances, or to administer justice. The spiritual character not only

ceased to be a qualification for high civil office, but began to be regarded as a disqualification. Those worldly

motives, therefore, which had formerly induced so many able, aspiring, and high born youths to assume the

ecclesiastical habit, ceased to operate. Not one parish in two hundred then afforded what a man of family

considered as a maintenance. There were still indeed prizes in the Church: but they were few; and even the

highest were mean, when compared with the glory which had once surrounded the princes of the hierarchy.

The state kept by Parker and Grindal seemed beggarly to those who remembered the imperial pomp of

Wolsey, his palaces, which had become the favorite abodes of royalty, Whitehall and Hampton Court, the

three sumptuous tables daily spread in his refectory, the fortyfour gorgeous copes in his chapel, his running

footmen in rich liveries, and his body guards with gilded poleaxes. Thus the sacerdotal office lost its

attraction for the higher classes. During the century which followed the accession of Elizabeth, scarce a

single person of noble descent took orders. At the close of the reign of Charles the Second, two sons of peers

were Bishops; four or five sons of peers were priests, and held valuable preferment: but these rare exceptions

did not take away the reproach which lay on the body. The clergy were regarded as, on the whole, a plebeian

class.77 And, indeed, for one who made the figure of a gentleman, ten were mere menial servants. A large

proportion of those divines who had no benefices, or whose benefices were too small to afford a comfortable

revenue, lived in the houses of laymen. It had long been evident that this practice tended to degrade the

priestly character. Laud had exerted himself to effect a change; and Charles the First had repeatedly issued

positive orders that none but men of high rank should presume to keep domestic chaplains.78 But these

injunctions had become obsolete. Indeed during the domination of the Puritan, many of the ejected ministers

of the Church of England could obtain bread and shelter only by attaching themselves to the households of

royalist gentlemen; and the habits which had been formed in those times of trouble continued long after the

reestablishment of monarchy and episcopacy. In the mansions of men of liberal sentiments and cultivated

understandings, the chaplain was doubtless treated with urbanity and kindness. His conversation, his literary

assistance, his spiritual advice, were considered as an ample return for his food, his lodging, and his stipend.

But this was not the general feeling of the country gentlemen. The coarse and ignorant squire, who thought

that it belonged to his dignity to have grace said every day at his table by an ecclesiastic in full canonicals,

found means to reconcile dignity with economy. A young Levite such was the phrase then in usemight

be had for his board, a small garret, and ten pounds a year, and might not only perform his own professional

functions, might not only be the most patient of butts and of listeners, might not only be always ready in fine

weather for bowls, and in rainy weather for shovelboard, but might also save the expense of a gardener, or of

a groom. Sometimes the reverend man nailed up the apricots; and sometimes he curried the coach horses. He

cast up the farrier's bills. He walked ten miles with a message or a parcel. He was permitted to dine with the

family; but he was expected to content himself with the plainest fare. He might fill himself with the corned

beef and the carrots: but, as soon as the tarts and cheesecakes made their appearance, he quitted his seat, and

stood aloof till he was summoned to return thanks for the repast, from a great part of which he had been

Perhaps, after some years of service, he was presented to a living sufficient to support him; but he often found

it necessary to purchase his preferment by a species of Simony, which furnished an inexhaustible subject of

pleasantry to three or four generations of scoffers. With his cure he was expected to take a wife. The wife had

ordinarily been in the patron's service; and it was well if she was not suspected of standing too high in the

patron's favor. Indeed the nature of the matrimonial connections which the clergymen of that age were in the

habit of forming is the most certain indication of the place which the order held in the social system. An

Oxonian, writing a few months after the death of Charles the Second, complained bitterly, not only that the

country attorney and the country apothecary looked down with disdain on the country clergyman but that one

of the lessons most earnestly inculcated on every girl of honourable family was to give no encouragement to

a lover in orders, and that, if any young lady forgot this precept, she was almost as much disgraced as by an

illicit amour.80 Clarendon, who assuredly bore no ill will to the priesthood, mentions it as a sign of the

confusion of ranks which the great rebellion had produced, that some damsels of noble families had bestowed

themselves on divines.81 A waiting woman was generally considered as the most suitable helpmate for a

parson. Queen Elizabeth, as head of the Church, had given what seemed to be a formal sanction to this

prejudice, by issuing special orders that no clergyman should presume to espouse a servant girl, without the

consent of the master or mistress.82 During several generations accordingly the relation between divines and

handmaidens was a theme for endless jest; nor would it be easy to find, in the comedy of the seventeenth

century, a single instance of a clergyman who wins a spouse above the rank of cook.83 Even so late as the

time of George the Second, the keenest of all observers of life and manners, himself a priest, remarked that,

in a great household, the chaplain was the resource of a lady's maid whose character had been blown upon,

In general the divine who quitted his chaplainship for a benefice and a wife found that he had only exchanged

one class of vexations for another. Hardly one living in fifty enabled the incumbent to bring up a family

comfortably. As children multiplied end grew, the household of the priest became more and more beggarly.

Holes appeared more and more plainly in the thatch of his parsonage and in his single cassock. Often it was

only by toiling on his glebe, by feeding swine, and by loading dungcarts, that he could obtain daily bread; nor

did his utmost exertions always prevent the bailiffs from taking his concordance and his inkstand in

execution. It was a white day on which he was admitted into the kitchen of a great house, and regaled by the

servants with cold meat and ale. His children were brought up like the children of the neighbouring peasantry.

His boys followed the plough; and his girls went out to service.85 Study he found impossible: for the

advowson of his living would hardly have sold for a sum sufficient to purchase a good theological library;

and he might be considered as unusually lucky if he had ten or twelve dogeared volumes among the pots and

pans on his shelves. Even a keen and strong intellect might be expected to rust in so unfavourable a situation.

Assuredly there was at that time no lack in the English Church of ministers distinguished by abilities and

learning But it is to be observed that these ministers were not scattered among the rural population. They

were brought together at a few places where the means of acquiring knowledge were abundant, and where the

opportunities of vigorous intellectual exercise were frequent.86 At such places were to be found divines

qualified by parts, by eloquence, by wide knowledge of literature, of science, and of life, to defend their

Church victoriously against heretics and sceptics, to command the attention of frivolous and worldly

congregations, to guide the deliberations of senates, and to make religion respectable, even in the most

dissolute of courts. Some laboured to fathom the abysses of metaphysical theology: some were deeply versed

in biblical criticism; and some threw light on the darkest parts of ecclesiastical history. Some proved

themselves consummate masters of logic. Some cultivated rhetoric with such assiduity and success that their

discourses are still justly valued as models of style. These eminent men were to be found, with scarcely a

single exception, at the Universities, at the great Cathedrals, or in the capital. Barrow had lately died at

Cambridge; and Pearson had gone thence to the episcopal bench. Cudworth and Henry More were still living

there. South and Pococke, Jane and Aldrich, were at Oxford, Prideaux was in the close of Norwich, and

Whitby in the close of Salisbury. But it was chiefly by the London clergy, who were always spoken of as a

class apart, that the fame of their profession for learning and eloquence was upheld. The principal pulpits of

the metropolis were occupied about this time by a crowd of distinguished men, from among whom was

selected a large proportion of the rulers of the Church. Sherlock preached at the Temple, Tillotson at

Lincoln's Inn, Wake and Jeremy Collier at Gray's Inn, Burnet at the Rolls, Stillingfleet at Saint Paul's

Cathedral, Patrick at Saint Paul's in Covent Garden, Fowler at Saint Giles's, Cripplegate, Sharp at Saint

Giles's in the Fields, Tenison at Saint Martin's, Sprat at Saint Margaret's, Beveridge at Saint Peter's in

Cornhill. Of these twelve men, all of high note in ecclesiastical history, ten became Bishops, and four

Archbishops. Meanwhile almost the only important theological works which came forth from a rural

parsonage were those of George Bull, afterwards Bishop of Saint David's; and Bull never would have

produced those works, had he not inherited an estate, by the sale of which he was enabled to collect a library,

Thus the Anglican priesthood was divided into two sections, which, in acquirements, in manners, and in

social position, differed widely from each other. One section, trained for cities and courts, comprised men

familiar with all ancient and modern learning; men able to encounter Hobbes or Bossuet at all the weapons of

controversy; men who could, in their sermons, set forth the majesty and beauty of Christianity with such

justness of thought, and such energy of language, that the indolent Charles roused himself to listen and the

fastidious Buckingham forgot to sneer; men whose address, politeness, and knowledge of the world qualified

them to manage the consciences of the wealthy and noble; men with whom Halifax loved to discuss the

interests of empires, and from whom Dryden was not ashamed to own that he had learned to write.88 The

other section was destined to ruder and humbler service. It was dispersed over the country, and consisted

chiefly of persons not at all wealthier, and not much more refined, than small farmers or upper servants. Yet

it was in these rustic priests, who derived but a scanty subsistence from their tithe sheaves and tithe pigs, and

who had not the smallest chance of ever attaining high professional honours, that the professional spirit was

strongest. Among those divines who were the boast of the Universities and the delight of the capital, and who

had attained, or might reasonably expect to attain, opulence and lordly rank, a party, respectable in numbers,

and more respectable in character, leaned towards constitutional principles of government, lived on friendly

terms with Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, would gladly have seen a full toleration granted to all

Protestant sects, and would even have consented to make alterations in the Liturgy, for the purpose of

conciliating honest and candid Nonconformists. But such latitudinarianism was held in horror by the country

parson. He took, indeed, more pride in his ragged gown than his superiors in their lawn and their scarlet

hoods. The very consciousness that there was little in his worldly circumstances to distinguish him from the

villagers to whom he preached led him to hold immoderately high the dignity of that sacerdotal office which

was his single title to reverence. Having lived in seclusion, and having had little opportunity of correcting his

opinions by reading or conversation, he held and taught the doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right, of

passive obedience, and of nonresistance, in all their crude absurdity. Having been long engaged in a petty war

against the neighbouring dissenters, he too often hated them for the wrong which he had done them, and

found no fault with the Five Mile Act and the Conventicle Act, except that those odious laws had not a

sharper edge. Whatever influence his office gave him was exerted with passionate zeal on the Tory side; and

that influence was immense. It would be a great error to imagine, because the country rector was in general

not regarded as a gentleman, because he could not dare to aspire to the hand of one of the young ladies at the

manor house, because he was not asked into the parlours of the great, but was left to drink and smoke with

grooms and butlers, that the power of the clerical body was smaller than at present. The influence of a class is

by no means proportioned to the consideration which the members of that class enjoy in their individual

capacity. A Cardinal is a much more exalted personage than a begging friar: but it would he a grievous

mistake to suppose that the College of Cardinals has exercised greater dominion over the public mind of

Europe than the Order of Saint Francis. In Ireland, at present, a peer holds a far higher station in society than

a Roman Catholic priest: yet there are in Munster and Connaught few counties where a combination of priests

would not carry an election against a combination of peers. In the seventeenth century the pulpit was to a

large portion of the population what the periodical press now is. Scarce any of the clowns who came to the

parish church ever saw a Gazette or a political pamphlet. Ill informed as their spiritual pastor might be, he

was yet better informed than themselves: he had every week an opportunity of haranguing them; and his

harangues were never answered. At every important conjuncture, invectives against the Whigs and

exhortations to obey the Lord's anointed resounded at once from many thousands of pulpits; and the effect

was formidable indeed. Of all the causes which, after the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, produced the

violent reaction against the Exclusionists, the most potent seems to have been the oratory of the country

The power which the country gentleman and the country clergyman exercised in the rural districts was in

some measure counterbalanced by the power of the yeomanry, an eminently manly and truehearted race. The

petty proprietors who cultivated their own fields with their own hands, and enjoyed a modest competence,

without affecting to have scutcheons and crests, or aspiring to sit on the bench of justice, then formed a much

more important part of the nation than at present. If we may trust the best statistical writers of that age, not

less than a hundred and sixty thousand proprietors, who with their families must have made up more than a

seventh of the whole population, derived their subsistence from little freehold estates. The average income of

these small landholders, an income mace up of rent, profit, and wages, was estimated at between sixty and

seventy pounds a year. It was computed that the number of persons who tilled their own land was greater than

the number of those who farmed the land of others.89 A large portion of the yeomanry had, from the time of

the Reformation, leaned towards Puritanism, had, in the civil war, taken the side of the Parliament, had, after

the Restoration, persisted in hearing Presbyterian and Independent preachers, had, at elections, strenuously

supported the Exclusionists and had continued even after the discovery of the Rye House plot and the

proscription of the Whig leaders, to regard Popery and arbitrary power with unmitigated hostility.

Great as has been the change in the rural life of England since the Revolution, the change which has come to

pass in the cities is still more amazing. At present above a sixth part of the nation is crowded into provincial

towns of more than thirty thousand inhabitants. In the reign of Charles the second no provincial town in the

kingdom contained thirty thousand inhabitants; and only four provincial towns contained so many as ten

Next to the capital, but next at an immense distance, stood Bristol, then the first English seaport, and

Norwich, then the first English manufacturing town. Both have since that time been far outstripped by

younger rivals; yet both have made great positive advances. The population of Bristol has quadrupled. The

Pepys, who visited Bristol eight years after the Restoration, was struck by the splendour of the city. But his

standard was not high; for he noted down as a wonder the circumstance that, in Bristol, a man might look

round him and see nothing but houses. It seems that, in no other place with which he was acquainted, except

London, did the buildings completely shut out the woods and fields. Large as Bristol might then appear, it

occupied but a very small portion of the area on which it now stands. A few churches of eminent beauty rose

out of a labyrinth of narrow lanes built upon vaults of no great solidity. If a coach or a cart entered those

alleys, there was danger that it would be wedged between the houses, and danger also that it would break in

the cellars. Goods were therefore conveyed about the town almost exclusively in trucks drawn by dogs; and

the richest inhabitants exhibited their wealth, not by riding in gilded carriages, but by walking the streets with

trains of servants in rich liveries, and by keeping tables loaded with good cheer. The pomp of the christenings

and burials far exceeded what was seen at any other place in England. The hospitality of the city was widely

renowned, and especially the collations with which the sugar refiners regaled their visitors. The repast was

dressed in the furnace, and was accompanied by a rich beverage made of the best Spanish wine, and

celebrated over the whole kingdom as Bristol milk. This luxury was supported by a thriving trade with the

North American plantations and with the West Indies. The passion for colonial traffic was so strong that there

was scarcely a small shopkeeper in Bristol who had not a venture on board of some ship bound for Virginia

or the Antilles. Some of these ventures indeed were not of the most honourable kind. There was, in the

Transatlantic possessions of the crown, a great demand for labour; and this demand was partly supplied by a

system of crimping and kidnapping at the principal English seaports. Nowhere was this system in such active

and extensive operation as at Bristol. Even the first magistrates of that city were not ashamed to enrich

themselves by so odious a commerce. The number of houses appears, from the returns of the hearth money,

to have been in the year 1685, just five thousand three hundred. We can hardly suppose the number of

persons in a house to have been greater than in the city of London; and in the city of London we learn from

the best authority that there were then fiftyfive persons to ten houses. The population of Bristol must

Norwich was the capital of a large and fruitful province. It was the residence of a Bishop and of a Chapter. It

was the chief seat of the chief manufacture of the realm. Some men distinguished by learning and science had

recently dwelt there and no place in the kingdom, except the capital and the Universities, had more attractions

for the curious. The library, the museum, the aviary, and the botanical garden of Sir Thomas Browne, were

thought by Fellows of the Royal Society well worthy of a long pilgrimage. Norwich had also a court in

miniature. In the heart of the city stood an old palace of the Dukes of Norfolk, said to be the largest town

house in the kingdom out of London. In this mansion, to which were annexed a tennis court, a bowling green,

and a wilderness stretching along the banks of the Wansum, the noble family of Howard frequently resided,

and kept a state resembling that of petty sovereigns. Drink was served to guests in goblets of pure gold. The

very tongs and shovels were of silver. Pictures by Italian masters adorned the walls. The cabinets were filled

with a fine collection of gems purchased by that Earl of Arundel whose marbles are now among the

ornaments of Oxford. Here, in the year 1671, Charles and his court were sumptuously entertained. Here, too,

all comers were annually welcomed, from Christmas to Twelfth Night. Ale flowed in oceans for the

populace. Three coaches, one of which had been built at a cost of five hundred pounds to contain fourteen

persons, were sent every afternoon round the city to bring ladies to the festivities; and the dances were always

followed by a luxurious banquet. When the Duke of Norfolk came to Norwich, he was greeted like a King

returning to his capital. The bells of the Cathedral and of St. Peter Mancroft were rung: the guns of the castle

were fired; and the Mayor and Aldermen waited on their illustrious fellow citizen with complimentary

addresses. In the year 1693 the population of Norwich was found by actual enumeration, to be between

Far below Norwich, but still high in dignity and importance, were some other ancient capitals of shires. In

that age it was seldom that a country gentleman went up with his family to London. The county town was his

metropolis. He sometimes made it his residence during part of the year. At all events, he was often attracted

thither by business and pleasure, by assizes, quarter sessions, elections, musters of militia, festivals, and

races. There were the halls where the judges, robed in scarlet and escorted by javelins and trumpets, opened

the King's commission twice a year. There were the markets at which the corn, the cattle, the wool, and the

hops of the surrounding country were exposed to sale. There were the great fairs to which merchants came

clown from London, and where the rural dealer laid in his annual stores of sugar, stationery, cutlery, and

muslin. There were the shops at which the best families of the neighbourhood bought grocery and millinery.

Some of these places derived dignity from interesting historical recollections, from cathedrals decorated by

all the art and magnificence of the middle ages, from palaces where a long succession of prelates had dwelt,

from closes surrounded by the venerable abodes of deans and canons, and from castles which had in the old

time repelled the Nevilles or de Veres, and which bore more recent traces of the vengeance of Rupert or of

Conspicuous amongst these interesting cities were York, the capital of the north, and Exeter, the capital of the

west. Neither can have contained much more than ten thousand inhabitants. Worcester, the queen of the cider

land had but eight thousand; Nottingham probably as many. Gloucester, renowned for that resolute defence

which had been fatal to Charles the First, had certainly between four and five thousand; Derby not quite four

thousand. Shrewsbury was the chief place of an extensive and fertile district. The Court of the Marches of

Wales was held there. In the language of the gentry many miles round the Wrekin, to go to Shrewsbury was

to go to town. The provincial wits and beauties imitated, as well as they could, the fashions of Saint James's

Park, in the walks along the side of the Severn. The inhabitants were about seven thousand.92

The population of every one of these places has, since the Revolution, much more than doubled. The

population of some has multiplied sevenfold. The streets have been almost entirely rebuilt. Slate has

succeeded to thatch, and brick to timber. The pavements and the lamps, the display of wealth in the principal

shops, and the luxurious neatness of the dwellings occupied by the gentry would, in the seventeenth century,

have seemed miraculous. Yet is the relative importance of the old capitals of counties by no means what it

was. Younger towns, towns which are rarely or never mentioned in our early history and which sent no

representatives to our early Parliaments, have, within the memory of persons still living, grown to a greatness

which this generation contemplates with wonder and pride, not unaccompanied by awe and anxiety.

The most eminent of these towns were indeed known in the seventeenth century as respectable seats of

industry. Nay, their rapid progress and their vast opulence were then sometimes described in language which

seems ludicrous to a man who has seen their present grandeur. One of the most populous and prosperous

among them was Manchester. Manchester had been required by the Protector to send one representative to his

Parliament, and was mentioned by writers of the time of Charles the Second as a busy and opulent place.

Cotton had, during half a century, been brought thither from Cyprus and Smyrna; but the manufacture was in

its infancy. Whitney had not yet taught how the raw material might be furnished in quantities almost

fabulous. Arkwright had not yet taught how it might be worked up with a speed and precision which seem

magical. The whole annual import did not, at the end of the seventeenth century, amount to two millions of

pounds, a quantity which would now hardly supply the demand of fortyeight hours. That wonderful

emporium, which in population and wealth far surpassed capitals so much renowned as Berlin, Madrid, and

Lisbon, was then a mean and ill built market town containing under six thousand people. It then had not a

single press. It now supports a hundred printing establishments. It then had not a single coach. It now

Leeds was already the chief seat of the woollen manufactures of Yorkshire; but the elderly inhabitants could

still remember the time when the first brick house, then and long after called the Red House, was built. They

boasted loudly of their increasing wealth, and of the immense sales of cloth which took place in the open air

on the bridge. Hundreds, nay thousands of pounds, had been paid down in the course of one busy market day.

The rising importance of Leeds had attracted the notice of successive governments. Charles the First had

granted municipal privileges to the town. Oliver had invited it to send one member to the House of

Commons. But from the returns of the hearth money it seems certain that the whole population of the

borough, an extensive district which contains many hamlets, did not, in the reign of Charles the Second,

exceed seven thousand souls. In 1841 there were more than a hundred and fifty thousand.94

About a day's journey south of Leeds, on the verge of a wild moorland tract, lay an ancient manor, now rich

with cultivation, then barren and unenclosed, which was known by the name of Hallamshire. Iron abounded

there; and, from a very early period, the rude whittles fabricated there had been sold all over the kingdom.

They had indeed been mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer in one of his Canterbury Tales. But the manufacture

appears to have made little progress during the three centuries which followed his time. This languor may

perhaps be explained by the fact that the trade was, during almost the whole of this long period, subject to

such regulations as the lord and his court feet thought fit to impose. The more delicate kinds of cutlery were

either made in the capital or brought from the Continent. Indeed it was not till the reign of George the First

that the English surgeons ceased to import from France those exquisitely fine blades which are required for

operations on the human frame. Most of the Hallamshire forges were collected in a market town which had

sprung up near the castle of the proprietor, and which, in the reign of James the First, had been a singularly

miserable place, containing about two thousand inhabitants, of whom a third were half starved and half naked

beggars. It seems certain from the parochial registers that the population did not amount to four thousand at

the end of the reign of Charles the Second. The effects of a species of toil singularly unfavourable to the

health and vigour of the human frame were at once discerned by every traveller. A large proportion of the

people had distorted limbs. This is that Sheffield which now, with its dependencies, contains a hundred and

twenty thousand souls, and which sends forth its admirable knives, razors, and lancets to the farthest ends of

Birmingham had not been thought of sufficient importance to return a member to Oliver's Parliament. Yet the

manufacturers of Birmingham were already a busy and thriving race. They boasted that their hardware was

highly esteemed, not indeed as now, at Pekin and Lima, at Bokhara and Timbuctoo, but in London, and even

as far off as Ireland. They had acquired a less honourable renown as coiners of bad money. In allusion to their

spurious groats, some Tory wit had fixed on demagogues, who hypocritically affected zeal against Popery,

the nickname of Birminghams. Yet in 1685 the population, which is now little less than two hundred

thousand, did not amount to four thousand. Birmingham buttons were just beginning to he known: of

Birmingham guns nobody had yet heard; and the place whence, two generations later, the magnificent

editions of Baskerville went forth to astonish all the librarians of Europe, did not contain a single regular

shop where a Bible or an almanack could be bought. On Market days a bookseller named Michael Johnson,

the father of the great Samuel Johnson, came over from Lichfield, and opened stall during a few hours. This

These four chief seats of our great manufactures deserve especial mention. It would be tedious to enumerate

all the populous and opulent hives of industry which, a hundred and fifty years ago, were hamlets without

parish churches, or desolate moors, inhabited only by grouse and wild deer. Nor has the change been less

signal in those outlets by which the products of the English looms and forges are poured forth over the whole

world. At present Liverpool contains more than three hundred thousand inhabitants. The shipping registered

at her port amounts to between four and five hundred thousand tons. Into her custom house has been

repeatedly paid in one year a sum more than thrice as great as the whole income of the English crown in

1685. The receipts of her post office, even since the great reduction of the duty, exceed the sum which the

postage of the whole kingdom yielded to the Duke of York. Her endless docks, quays, and warehouses are

among the wonders of the world. Yet even those docks and quays and warehouses seem hardly to suffice for

the gigantic trade of the Mersey; and already a rival city is growing fast on the opposite shore. In the days of

Charles the Second Liverpool was described as a rising town which had recently made great advances, and

which maintained a profitable intercourse with Ireland and with the sugar colonies. The customs had

multiplied eightfold within sixteen years, and amounted to what was then considered as the immense sum of

fifteen thousand pounds annually. But the population can hardly have exceeded four thousand: the shipping

was about fourteen hundred tons, less than the tonnage of a single modern Indiaman of the first class, and the

whole number of seamen belonging to the port cannot be estimated at more than two hundred.97

Such has been the progress of those towns where wealth is created and accumulated. Not less rapid has been

the progress of towns of a very different kind, towns in which wealth, created and accumulated elsewhere, is

expended for purposes of health and recreation. Some of the most remarkable of these gay places have sprung

into existence since the time of the Stuarts. Cheltenham is now a greater city than any which the kingdom

contained in the seventeenth century, London alone excepted. But in the seventeenth century, and at the

beginning of the eighteenth, Cheltenham was mentioned by local historians merely as a rural parish lying

under the Cotswold Hills, and affording good ground both for tillage and pasture. Corn grew and cattle

browsed over the space now covered by that long succession of streets and villas.98 Brighton was described

as a place which had once been thriving, which had possessed many small fishing barks, and which had,

when at the height of prosperity, contained above two thousand inhabitants, but which was sinking fast into

decay. The sea was gradually gaining on the buildings, which at length almost entirely disappeared. Ninety

years ago the ruins of an old fort were to be seen lying among the pebbles and seaweed on the beach; and

ancient men could still point out the traces of foundations on a spot where a street of more than a hundred

huts had been swallowed up by the waves. So desolate was the place after this calamity, that the vicarage was

thought scarcely worth having. A few poor fishermen, however, still continued to dry their nets on those

cliffs, on which now a town, more than twice as large and populous as the Bristol of the Stuarts, presents,

England, however, was not, in the seventeenth century, destitute of watering places. The gentry of Derbyshire

and of the neighbouring counties repaired to Buxton, where they were lodged in low rooms under bare

rafters, and regaled with oatcake, and with a viand which the hosts called mutton, but which the guests

suspected to be dog. A single good house stood near the spring.100 Tunbridge Wells, lying within a day's

journey of the capital, and in one of the richest and most highly civilised parts of the kingdom, had much

greater attractions. At present we see there a town which would, a hundred and sixty years ago, have ranked,

in population, fourth or fifth among the towns of England. The brilliancy of the shops and the luxury of the

private dwellings far surpasses anything that England could then show. When the court, soon after the

Restoration, visited Tunbridge Wells, there was no town: but, within a mile of the spring, rustic cottages,

somewhat cleaner and neater than the ordinary cottages of that time, were scattered over the heath. Some of

these cabins were movable and were carried on sledges from one part of the common to another. To these

huts men of fashion, wearied with the din and smoke of London, sometimes came in the summer to breathe

fresh air, and to catch a glimpse of rural life. During the season a kind of fair was daily held near the fountain.

The wives and daughters of the Kentish farmers came from the neighbouring villages with cream, cherries,

wheatears, and quails. To chaffer with them, to flirt with them, to praise their straw hats and tight heels, was a

refreshing pastime to voluptuaries sick of the airs of actresses and maids of honour. Milliners, toymen, and

jewellers came down from London, and opened a bazaar under the trees. In one booth the politician might

find his coffee and the London Gazette; in another were gamblers playing deep at basset; and, on fine

evenings, the fiddles were in attendance. and there were morris dances on the elastic turf of the bowling

green. In 1685 a subscription had just been raised among those who frequented the wells for building a

church, which the Tories, who then domineered everywhere, insisted on dedicating to Saint Charles the

But at the head of the English watering places, without a rival. was Bath. The springs of that city had been

renowned from the days of the Romans. It had been, during many centuries, the seat of a Bishop. The sick

repaired thither from every part of the realm. The King sometimes held his court there. Nevertheless, Bath

was then a maze of only four or five hundred houses, crowded within an old wall in the vicinity of the Avon.

Pictures of what were considered as the finest of those houses are still extant, and greatly resemble the lowest

rag shops and pothouses of Ratcliffe Highway. Travellers indeed complained loudly of the narrowness and

meanness of the streets. That beautiful city which charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces of

Bramante and Palladio, and which the genius of Anstey and of Smollett, of Frances Burney and of Jane

Austen, has made classic ground, had not begun to exist. Milsom Street itself was an open field lying far

beyond the walls; and hedgerows intersected the space which is now covered by the Crescent and the Circus.

The poor patients to whom the waters had been recommended lay on straw in a place which, to use the

language of a contemporary physician, was a covert rather than a lodging. As to the comforts and luxuries

which were to be found in the interior of the houses of Bath by the fashionable visitors who resorted thither in

search of health or amusement, we possess information more complete and minute than can generally be

obtained on such subjects. A writer who published an account of that city about sixty years after the

Revolution has accurately described the changes which had taken place within his own recollection. He

assures us that, in his younger days, the gentlemen who visited the springs slept in rooms hardly as good as

the garrets which he lived to see occupied by footmen. The floors of the dining rooms were uncarpeted, and

were coloured brown with a wash made of soot and small beer, in order to hide the dirt. Not a wainscot was

painted. Not a hearth or a chimneypiece was of marble. A slab of common freestone and fire irons which

had cost from three to four shillings were thought sufficient for any fireplace. The bestapartments were

hung with coarse woollen stuff, and were furnished with rushbottomed chairs. Readers who take an interest in

the progress of civilisation and of the useful arts will be grateful to the humble topographer who has recorded

these facts, and will perhaps wish that historians of far higher pretensions had sometimes spared a few pages

from military evolutions and political intrigues, for the purpose of letting us know how the parlours and

The position of London, relatively to the other towns of the empire, was, in the time of Charles the Second,

far higher than at present. For at present the population of London is little more than six times the population

of Manchester or of Liverpool. In the days of Charles the Second the population of London was more than

seventeen times the population of Bristol or of Norwich. It may be doubted whether any other instance can be

mentioned of a great kingdom in which the first city was more than seventeen times as large as the second.

There is reason to believe that, in 1685, London had been, during about half a century, the most populous

capital in Europe. The inhabitants, who are now at least nineteen hundred thousand, were then probably little

more shall half a million.103 London had in the world only one commercial rival, now long ago outstripped,

the mighty and opulent Amsterdam. English writers boasted of the forest of masts and yardarms which

covered the river from the Bridge to the Tower, and of the stupendous sums which were collected at the

Custom House in Thames Street. There is, indeed, no doubt that the trade of the metropolis then bore a far

greater proportion than at present to the whole trade of the country; yet to our generation the honest vaunting

of our ancestors must appear almost ludicrous. The shipping which they thought incredibly great appears not

to have exceeded seventy thousand tons. This was, indeed, then more than a third of the whole tonnage of the

kingdom, but is now less than a fourth of the tonnage of Newcastle, and is nearly equalled by the tonnage of

The customs of London amounted, in 1685, to about three hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year. In our

Whoever examines the maps of London which were published towards the close of the reign of Charles the

Second will see that only the nucleus of the present capital then existed. The town did not, as now, fade by

imperceptible degrees into the country. No long avenues of villas, embowered in lilacs and laburnums,

extended from the great centre of wealth and civilisation almost to the boundaries of Middlesex and far into

the heart of Kent and Surrey. In the east, no part of the immense line of warehouses and artificial lakes which

now stretches from the Tower to Blackwall had even been projected. On the west, scarcely one of those

stately piles of building which are inhabited by the noble and wealthy was in existence; and Chelsea, which is

now peopled by more than forty thousand human beings, was a quiet country village with about a thousand

inhabitants.105 On the north, cattle fed, and sportsmen wandered with dogs and guns, over the site of the

borough of Marylebone, and over far the greater part of the space now covered by the boroughs of Finsbury

and of the Tower Hamlets. Islington was almost a solitude; and poets loved to contrast its silence and repose

with the din and turmoil of the monster London.106 On the south the capital is now connected with its suburb

by several bridges, not inferior in magnificence and solidity to the noblest works of the Caesars. In 1685, a

single line of irregular arches, overhung by piles of mean and crazy houses, and garnished, after a fashion

worthy of the naked barbarians of Dahomy, with scores of mouldering heads, impeded the navigation of the

Of the metropolis, the City, properly so called, was the most important division. At the time of the

Restoration it had been built, for the most part, of wood and plaster; the few bricks that were used were ill

baked; the booths where goods were exposed to sale projected far into the streets, and were overhung by the

upper stories. A few specimens of this architecture may still be seen in those districts which were not reached

by the great fire. That fire had, in a few days, covered a space of little less shall a square mile with the ruins

of eightynine churches and of thirteen thousand houses. But the City had risen again with a celerity which

had excited the admiration of neighbouring countries. Unfortunately, the old lines of the streets had been to a

great extent preserved; and those lines, originally traced in an age when even princesses performed their

journeys on horseback, were often too narrow to allow wheeled carriages to pass each other with ease, and

were therefore ill adapted for the residence of wealthy persons in an age when a coach and six was a

fashionable luxury. The style of building was, however, far superior to that of the City which had perished.

The ordinary material was brick, of much better quality than had formerly been used. On the sites of the

ancient parish churches had arisen a multitude of new domes, towers, and spires which bore the mark of the

fertile genius of Wren. In every place save one the traces of the great devastation had been completely

effaced. But the crowds of workmen, the scaffolds, and the masses of hewn stone were still to be seen where

the noblest of Protestant temples was slowly rising on the ruins of the Old Cathedral of Saint Paul.107

The whole character of the City has, since that time, undergone a complete change. At present the bankers,

the merchants, and the chief shopkeepers repair thither on six mornings of every week for the transaction of

business; but they reside in other quarters of the metropolis, or at suburban country seats surrounded by

shrubberies and flower gardens. This revolution in private habits has produced a political revolution of no

small importance. The City is no longer regarded by the wealthiest traders with that attachment which every

man naturally feels for his home. It is no longer associated in their minds with domestic affections and

endearments. The fireside, the nursery, the social table, the quiet bed are not there. Lombard Street and

Threadneedle Street are merely places where men toil and accumulate. They go elsewhere to enjoy and to

expend. On a Sunday, or in an evening after the hours of business, some courts and alleys, which a few hours

before had been alive with hurrying feet and anxious faces, are as silent as the glades of a forest. The chiefs

of the mercantile interest are no longer citizens. They avoid, they almost contemn, municipal honours and

duties. Those honours and duties are abandoned to men who, though useful and highly respectable, seldom

belong to the princely commercial houses of which the names are renowned throughout the world.

In the seventeenth century the City was the merchant's residence. Those mansions of the great old burghers

which still exist have been turned into counting houses and warehouses: but it is evident that they were

originally not inferior in magnificence to the dwellings which were then inhabited by the nobility. They

sometimes stand in retired and gloomy courts, and are accessible only by inconvenient passages: but their

dimensions are ample, and their aspect stately. The entrances are decorated with richly carved pillars and

canopies. The staircases and landing places are not wanting in grandeur. The floors are sometimes of wood

tessellated after the fashion of France. The palace of Sir Robert Clayton, in the Old Jewry, contained a superb

banqueting room wainscoted with cedar, and adorned with battles of gods and giants in fresco.108 Sir Dudley

North expended four thousand pounds, a sum which would then have been important to a Duke, on the rich

furniture of his reception rooms in Basinghall Street.109 In such abodes, under the last Stuarts, the heads of

the great firms lived splendidly and hospitably. To their dwelling place they were bound by the strongest ties

of interest and affection. There they had passed their youth, had made their friendships, had courted their

wives had seen their children grow up, had laid the remains of their parents in the earth, and expected that

their own remains would be laid. That intense patriotism which is peculiar to the members of societies

congregated within a narrow space was, in such circumstances, strongly developed. London was, to the

Londoner, what Athens was to the Athenian of the age of Pericles, what Florence was to the Florentine of the

fifteenth century. The citizen was proud of the grandeur of his city, punctilious about her claims to respect,

At the close of the reign of Charles the Second the pride of the Londoners was smarting from a cruel

mortification. The old charter had been taken away; and the magistracy had been remodelled. All the civic

functionaries were Tories: and the Whigs, though in numbers and in wealth superior to their opponents, found

themselves excluded from every local dignity. Nevertheless, the external splendour of the municipal

government was not diminished, nay, was rather increased by this change. For, under the administration of

some Puritans who had lately borne rule, the ancient fame of the City for good cheer had declined: but under

the new magistrates, who belonged to a more festive party, and at whose boards guests of rank and fashion

from beyond Temple Bar were often seen, the Guildhall and the halls of the great companies were enlivened

by many sumptuous banquets. During these repasts, odes composed by the poet laureate of the corporation, in

praise of the King, the Duke, and the Mayor, were sung to music. The drinking was deep and the shouting

loud. An observant Tory, who had often shared in these revels, has remarked that the practice of huzzaing

The magnificence displayed by the first civic magistrate was almost regal. The gilded coach, indeed, which is

now annually admired by the crowd, was not yet a part of his state. On great occasions he appeared on

horseback, attended by a long cavalcade inferior in magnificence only to that which, before a coronation,

escorted the sovereign from the Tower to Westminster. The Lord Mayor was never seen in public without his

rich robe, his hood of black velvet, his gold chain, his jewel, and a great attendance of harbingers and

guards.111 Nor did the world find anything ludicrous in the pomp which constantly surrounded him. For it

was not more than became the place which, as wielding the strength and representing the dignity of the City

of London, he was entitled to occupy in the State. That City, being then not only without equal in the country,

but without second, had, during five and forty years, exercised almost as great an influence on the politics of

England as Paris has, in our own time, exercised on the politics of France. In intelligence London was greatly

in advance of every other part of the kingdom. A government, supported and trusted by London, could in a

day obtain such pecuniary means as it would have taken months to collect from the rest of the island. Nor

were the military resources of the capital to be despised. The power which the Lord Lieutenants exercised in

other parts of the kingdom was in London entrusted to a Commission of eminent citizens. Under the order of

this Commission were twelve regiments of foot and two regiments of horse. An army of drapers' apprentices

and journeymen tailors, with common councilmen for captains and aldermen for colonels, might not indeed

have been able to stand its ground against regular troops; but there were then very few regular troops in the

kingdom. A town, therefore, which could send forth, at an hour's notice, thousands of men, abounding in

natural courage, provided with tolerable weapons, and not altogether untinctured with martial discipline,

could not but be a valuable ally and a formidable enemy. It was not forgotten that Hampden and Pym had

been protected from lawless tyranny by the London trainbands; that, in the great crisis of the civil war, the

London trainbands had marched to raise the siege of Gloucester; or that, in the movement against the military

tyrants which followed the downfall of Richard Cromwell, the London trainbands had borne a signal part. In

truth, it is no exaggeration to say that, but for the hostility of the City, Charles the First would never have

been vanquished, and that, without the help of the City, Charles the Second could scarcely have been

These considerations may serve to explain why, in spite of that attraction which had, during a long course of

years, gradually drawn the aristocracy westward, a few men of high rank had continued, till a very recent

period, to dwell in the vicinity of the Exchange and of the Guildhall. Shaftesbury and Buckingham, while

engaged in bitter and unscrupulous opposition to the government, had thought that they could nowhere carry

on their intrigues so conveniently or so securely as under the protection of the City magistrates and the City

militia. Shaftesbury had therefore lived in Aldersgate Street, at a house which may still be easily known by

pilasters and wreaths, the graceful work of Inigo. Buckingham had ordered his mansion near Charing Cross,

once the abode of the Archbishops of York, to be pulled down; and, while streets and alleys which are still

These, however, were rare exceptions. Almost all the noble families of England had long migrated beyond

the walls. The district where most of their town houses stood lies between the city and the regions which are

now considered as fashionable. A few great men still retained their hereditary hotels in the Strand. The stately

dwellings on the south and west of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Piazza of Covent Garden, Southampton Square,

which is now called Bloomsbury Square, and King's Square in Soho Fields, which is now called Soho

Square, were among the favourite spots. Foreign princes were carried to see Bloomsbury Square, as one of

the wonders of England.113 Soho Square, which had just been built, was to our ancestors a subject of pride

with which their posterity will hardly sympathise. Monmouth Square had been the name while the fortunes of

the Duke of Monmouth flourished; and on the southern side towered his mansion. The front, though

ungraceful, was lofty and richly adorned. The walls of the principal apartments were finely sculptured with

fruit, foliage, and armorial bearings, and were hung with embroidered satin.114 Every trace of this

magnificence has long disappeared; and no aristocratical mansion is to be found in that once aristocratical

quarter. A little way north from Holborn, and on the verge of the pastures and cornfields, rose two

celebrated palaces, each with an ample garden. One of them, then called Southampton House, and

subsequently Bedford House, was removed about fifty years ago to make room for a new city, which now

covers with its squares, streets, and churches, a vast area, renowned in the seventeenth century for peaches

and snipes. The other, Montague House, celebrated for its frescoes and furniture, was, a few months after the

death of Charles the Second, burned to the ground, and was speedily succeeded by a more magnificent

Montague House, which, having been long the repository of such various and precious treasures of art,

science, and learning as were scarcely ever before assembled under a single roof, has now given place to an

Nearer to the Court, on a space called St. James's Fields, had just been built St. James's Square and Jermyn

Street. St. James's Church had recently been opened for the accommodation of the inhabitants of this new

quarter.116 Golden Square, which was in the next generation inhabited by lords and ministers of state, had

not yet been begun. Indeed the only dwellings to be seen on the north of Piccadilly were three or four isolated

and almost rural mansions, of which the most celebrated was the costly pile erected by CIarendon, and

nicknamed Dunkirk House. It had been purchased after its founder's downfall by the Duke of Albemarle. The

He who then rambled to what is now the gayest and most crowded part of Regent Street found himself in a

solitude, and, was sometimes so fortunate as to have a shot at a W..117 On the north the Oxford road

ran between hedges. Three or four hundred yards to the south were the garden walls of a few great houses

which were considered as quite out of town. On the west was a meadow renowned for a spring from which,

long afterwards, Conduit Street was named. On the east was a field not to be passed without a shudder by any

Londoner of that age. There, as in a place far from the haunts of men, had been dug, twenty years before,

when the great plague was raging, a pit into which the dead carts had nightly shot corpses by scores. It was

popularly believed that the earth was deeply tainted with infection, and could not be disturbed without

imminent risk to human life. No foundations were laid there till two generations had passed without any

return of the pestilence, and till the ghastly spot had long been surrounded by buildings.118

We should greatly err if we were to suppose that any of the streets and squares then bore the same aspect as at

present. The great majority of the houses, indeed. have, since that time, been wholly, or in great part, rebuilt.

If the most fashionable parts of the capital could be placed before us such as they then were, we should be

disgusted by their squalid appearance, and poisoned by their noisome atmosphere.

In Covent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close to the dwellings of the great. Fruit women

screamed, carters fought, cabbage stalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of the

The centre of Lincoln's Inn Fields was an open space where the rabble congregated every evening, within a

few yards of Cardigan House and Winchester House, to hear mountebanks harangue, to see bears dance, and

to set dogs at oxen. Rubbish was shot in every part of the area. Horses were exercised there. The beggars

were as noisy and importunate as in the worst governed cities of the Continent. A Lincoln's Inn mumper was

a proverb. The whole fraternity knew the arms and liveries of every charitably disposed grandee in the

neighbourhood, and as soon as his lordship's coach and six appeared, came hopping and crawling in crowds

to persecute him. These disorders lasted, in spite of many accidents, and of some legal proceedings, till, in the

reign of George the Second, Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, was knocked down and nearly killed in

the middle of the Square. Then at length palisades were set up, and a pleasant garden laid out.120

Saint James's Square was a receptacle for all the offal and cinders, for all the dead cats and dead dogs of

Westminster. At one time a cudgel player kept the ring there. At another time an impudent squatter settled

himself there, and built a shed for rubbish under the windows of the gilded saloons in which the first

magnates of the realm, Norfolk, Ormond, Kent, and Pembroke, gave banquets and balls. It was not till these

nuisances had lasted through a whole generation, and till much had been written about them, that the

inhabitants applied to Parliament for permission to put up rails, and to plant trees.121

When such was the state of the region inhabited by the most luxurious portion of society, we may easily

believe that the great body of the population suffered what would now be considered as insupportable

grievances. The pavement was detestable: all foreigners cried shame upon it. The drainage was so bad that in

rainy weather the gutters soon became torrents. Several facetious poets have commemorated the fury with

which these black rivulets roared down Snow Hill and Ludgate Hill, bearing to Fleet Ditch a vast tribute of

animal and vegetable filth from the stalls of butchers and greengrocers. This flood was profusely thrown to

right and left by coaches and carts. To keep as far from the carriage road as possible was therefore the wish of

every pedestrian. The mild and timid gave the wall. The bold and athletic took it. If two roisterers met they

cocked their hats in each other's faces, and pushed each other about till the weaker was shoved towards the

kennel. If he was a mere bully he sneaked off, mattering that he should find a time. If he was pugnacious, the

The houses were not numbered. There would indeed have been little advantage in numbering them; for of the

coachmen, chairmen, porters, and errand boys of London, a very small proportion could read. It was

necessary to use marks which the most ignorant could understand. The shops were therefore distinguished by

painted or sculptured signs, which gave a gay and grotesque aspect to the streets. The walk from Charing

Cross to Whitechapel lay through an endless succession of Saracens' Heads, Royal Oaks, Blue Bears, and

Golden Lambs, which disappeared when they were no longer required for the direction of the common

When the evening closed in, the difficulty and danger of walking about London became serious indeed. The

garret windows were opened, and pails were emptied, with little regard to those who were passing below.

Falls, bruises and broken bones were of constant occurrence. For, till the last year of the reign of Charles the

Second, most of the streets were left in profound darkness. Thieves and robbers plied their trade with

impunity: yet they were hardly so terrible to peaceable citizens as another class of ruffians. It was a favourite

amusement of dissolute young gentlemen to swagger by night about the town, breaking windows, upsetting

sedans, beating quiet men, and offering rude caresses to pretty women. Several dynasties of these tyrants had,

since the Restoration, domineered over the streets. The Muns and Tityre Tus had given place to the Hectors,

and the Hectors had been recently succeeded by the Scourers. At a later period arose the Nicker, the

Hawcubite, and the yet more dreaded name of Mohawk.123 The machinery for keeping the peace was utterly

contemptible. There was an Act of Common Council which provided that more than a thousand watchmen

should be constantly on the alert in the city, from sunset to sunrise, and that every inhabitant should take his

turn of duty. But this Act was negligently executed. Few of those who were summoned left their homes; and

those few generally found it more agreeable to tipple in alehouses than to pace the streets.124

It ought to be noticed that, in the last year of the reign of Charles the Second, began a great change in the

police of London, a change which has perhaps added as much to the happiness of the body of the people as

revolutions of much greater fame. An ingenious projector, named Edward Heming, obtained letters patent

conveying to him, for a term of years, the exclusive right of lighting up London. He undertook, for a

moderate consideration, to place a light before every tenth door, on moonless nights, from Michaelmas to

Lady Day, and from six to twelve of the clock. Those who now see the capital all the year round, from dusk

to dawn, blazing with a splendour beside which the illuminations for La Hogue and Blenheim would have

looked pale, may perhaps smile to think of Heming's lanterns, which glimmered feebly before one house in

ten during a small part of one night in three. But such was not the feeling of his contemporaries. His scheme

was enthusiastically applauded, and furiously attacked. The friends of improvement extolled him as the

greatest of all the benefactors of his city. What, they asked, were the boasted inventions of Archimedes, when

compared with the achievement of the man who had turned the nocturnal shades into noonday? In spite of

these eloquent eulogies the cause of darkness was not left undefended. There were fools in that age who

opposed the introduction of what was called the new light as strenuously as fools in our age have opposed the

introduction of vaccination and railroads, as strenuously as the fools of an age anterior to the dawn of history

doubtless opposed the introduction of the plough and of alphabetical writing. Many years after the date of

We may easily imagine what, in such times, must have been the state of the quarters of London which were

peopled by the outcasts of society. Among those quarters one had attained a scandalous preeminence. On the

confines of the City and the Temple had been founded, in the thirteenth century, a House of Carmelite Friars,

distinguished by their white hoods. The precinct of this house had, before the Reformation, been a sanctuary

for criminals, and still retained the privilege of protecting debtors from arrest. Insolvents consequently were

to be found in every dwelling, from cellar to garret. Of these a large proportion were knaves and libertines,

and were followed to their asylum by women more abandoned than themselves. The civil power was unable

to keep order in a district swarming with such inhabitants; and thus Whitefriars became the favourite resort of

all who wished to be emancipated from the restraints of the law. Though the immunities legally belonging to

the place extended only to cases of debt, cheats, false witnesses, forgers, and highwaymen found refuge there.

For amidst a rabble so desperate no peace officer's life was in safety. At the cry of "Rescue," bullies with

swords and cudgels, and termagant hags with spits and broomsticks, poured forth by hundreds; and the

intruder was fortunate if he escaped back into Fleet Street, hustled, stripped, and pumped upon. Even the

warrant of the Chief Justice of England could not be executed without the help of a company of musketeers.

Such relics of the barbarism of the darkest ages were to be found within a short walk of the chambers where

Somers was studying history and law, of the chapel where Tillotson was preaching, of the coffee house where

Dryden was passing judgment on poems and plays, and of the hall where the Royal Society was examining

Each of the two cities which made up the capital of England had its own centre of attraction. In the

metropolis of commerce the point of convergence was the Exchange; in the metropolis of fashion the Palace.

But the Palace did not retain influence so long as the Exchange. The Revolution completely altered the

relations between the Court and the higher classes of society. It was by degrees discovered that the King, in

his individual capacity, had very little to give; that coronets and garters, bishoprics and embassies, lordships

of the Treasury and tellerships of the Exchequer, nay, even charges in the royal stud and bedchamber, were

really bestowed, not by him, but by his advisers. Every ambitious and covetous man perceived that he would

consult his own interest far better by acquiring the dominion of a Cornish borough, and by rendering good

service to the ministry during a critical session, than by becoming the companion, or even the minion, of his

prince. It was therefore in the antechambers, not of George the First and of George the Second, but of

Walpole and of Pelham, that the daily crowd of courtiers was to be found. It is also to be remarked that the

same Revolution, which made it impossible that our Kings should use the patronage of the state merely for

the purpose of gratifying their personal predilections, gave us several Kings unfitted by their education and

habits to be gracious and affable hosts. They had been born and bred on the Continent. They never felt

themselves at home in our island. If they spoke our language, they spoke it inelegantly and with effort. Our

national character they never fully understood. Our national manners they hardly attempted to acquire. The

most important part of their duty they performed better than any ruler who preceded them: for they governed

strictly according to law: but they could not be the first gentlemen of the realm, the heads of polite society. If

ever they unbent, it was in a very small circle where hardly an English face was to be seen; and they were

never so happy as when they could escape for a summer to their native land. They had indeed their days of

reception for our nobility and gentry; but the reception was a mere matter of form, and became at last as

Not such was the court of Charles the Second. Whitehall, when he dwelt there, was the focus of political

intrigue and of fashionable gaiety. Half the jobbing and half the flirting of the metropolis went on under his

roof. Whoever could make himself agreeable to the prince, or could secure the good offices of the mistress,

might hope to rise in the world without rendering any service to the government, without being even known

by sight to any minister of state. This courtier got a frigate, and that a company; a third, the pardon of a rich

offender; a fourth, a lease of crown land on easy terms. If the King notified his pleasure that a briefless

lawyer should be made a judge, or that a libertine baronet should be made a peer, the gravest counsellors,

after a little murmuring, submitted.127 Interest, therefore, drew a constant press of suitors to the gates of the

palace; and those gates always stood wide. The King kept open house every day, and all day long, for the

good society of London, the extreme Whigs only excepted. Hardly any gentleman had any difficulty in

making his way to the royal presence. The levee was exactly what the word imports. Some men of quality

came every morning to stand round their master, to chat with him while his wig was combed and his cravat

tied, and to accompany him in his early walk through the Park. All persons who had been properly introduced

might, without any special invitation, go to see him dine, sup, dance, and play at hazard, and might have the

pleasure of hearing him tell stories, which indeed he told remarkably well, about his flight from Worcester,

and about the misery which he had endured when he was a state prisoner in the hands of the canting meddling

preachers of Scotland. Bystanders whom His Majesty recognised often came in for a courteous word. This

proved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his father or grandfather had practiced. It was not easy

for the most austere republican of the school of Marvel to resist the, fascination of so much good humour and

affability; and many a veteran Cavalier, in whose heart the remembrance of unrequited sacrifices and services

had been festering during twenty years, was compensated in one moment for wounds and sequestrations by

Whitehall naturally became the chief staple of news. Whenever there was a rumour that anything important

had happened or was about to happen, people hastened thither to obtain intelligence from the fountain head.

The galleries presented the appearance of a modern club room at an anxious time. They were full of people

enquiring whether the Dutch mail was in, what tidings the express from France had brought, whether John

Sobiesky had beaten the Turks, whether the Doge of Genoa was really at Paris These were matters about

which it was safe to talk aloud. But there were subjects concerning which information was asked and given in

whispers. Had Halifax got the better of Rochester? Was there to be a Parliament? Was the Duke of York

really going to Scotland? Had Monmouth really been summoned from the Hague? Men tried to read the

countenance of every minister as he went through the throng to and from the royal closet. All sorts of

auguries were drawn from the tone in which His Majesty spoke to the Lord President, or from the laugh with

which His Majesty honoured a jest of the Lord Privy Seal; and in a few hours the hopes and fears inspired by

such slight indications had spread to all the coffee houses from Saint James's to the Tower.128

The coffee house must not be dismissed with a cursory mention. It might indeed at that time have been not

improperly called a most important political institution. No Parliament had sat for years The municipal

council of the City had ceased to speak the sense of the citizens. Public meetings, harangues, resolutions, and

the rest of the modern machinery of agitation had not yet come into fashion. Nothing resembling the modern

newspaper existed. In such circumstances the coffee houses were the chief organs through which the public

The first of these establishments had been set up by a Turkey merchant, who had acquired among the

Mahometans a taste for their favourite beverage. The convenience of being able to make appointments in any

part of the town, and of being able to pass evenings socially at a very small charge, was so great that the

fashion spread fast. Every man of the upper or middle class went daily to his coffee house to learn the news

and to discuss it. Every coffee house had one or more orators to whose eloquence the crowd listened with

admiration, and who soon became, what the journalists of our time have been called, a fourth Estate of the

realm. The Court had long seen with uneasiness the growth of this new power in the state. An attempt had

been made, during Danby's administration, to close the coffee houses. But men of all parties missed their

usual places of resort so much that there was an universal outcry. The government did not venture, in

opposition to a feeling so strong and general, to enforce a regulation of which the legality might well be

questioned. Since that time ten years had elapsed, and during those years the number and influence of the

coffee houses had been constantly increasing. Foreigners remarked that the coffee house was that which

especially distinguished London from all other cities; that the coffee house was the Londoner's home, and

that those who wished to find a gentleman commonly asked, not whether he lived in Fleet Street or Chancery

Lane, but whether he frequented the Grecian or the Rainbow. Nobody was excluded from these places who

laid down his penny at the bar. Yet every rank and profession, and every shade of religious and political

opinion, had its own headquarters. There were houses near Saint James's Park where fops congregated, their

heads and shoulders covered with black or flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which are now worn by the

Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House of Commons. The wig came from Paris and so did the rest of the

fine gentleman's ornaments, his embroidered coat, his fringed gloves, and the tassel which upheld his

pantaloons. The conversation was in that dialect which, long after it had ceased to be spoken in fashionable

circles, continued, in the mouth of Lord Foppington, to excite the mirth of theatres.129 The atmosphere was

like that of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in any other form than that of richly scented snuff was held in

abomination. If any clown, ignorant of the usages of the house, called for a pipe, the sneers of the whole

assembly and the short answers of the waiters soon convinced him that he had better go somewhere else. Nor,

indeed, would he have had far to go. For, in general the coffee rooms reeked with tobacco like a guardroom:

and strangers sometimes expressed their surprise that so many people should leave their own firesides to sit in

the midst of eternal fog and stench. Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will's. That celebrated

house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about

poetical justice and the unities of place and time. There was a faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction

for Boileau and the ancients. One group debated whether Paradise Lost ought not to have been in rhyme. To

another an envious poetaster demonstrated that Venice Preserved ought to have been hooted from the stage.

Under no roof was a greater variety of figures to be seen. There were Earls in stars and garters, clergymen in

cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from the Universities, translators and index makers in

ragged coats of frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where John Dryden sate. In winter that chair

was always in the warmest nook by the fire; in summer it stood in the balcony. To bow to the Laureate, and

to hear his opinion of Racine's last tragedy or of Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, was thought a privilege. A

pinch from his snuff box was an honour sufficient to turn the head of a young enthusaist. There were coffee

houses where the first medical men might be consulted. Doctor John Radcliffe, who, in the year 1685, rose to

the largest practice in London, came daily, at the hour when the Exchange was full, from his house in Bow

Street, then a fashionable part of the capital, to Garraway's, and was to be found, surrounded by surgeons and

apothecaries, at a particular table. There were Puritan coffee houses where no oath was heard, and where

lankhaired men discussed election and reprobation through their noses; Jew coffee houses where darkeyed

money changers from Venice and Amsterdam greeted each other; and Popish coffee houses where, as good

Protestants believed, Jesuits planned, over their cups, another great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the

These gregarious habits had no small share in forming the character of the Londoner of that age. He was,

indeed, a different being from the rustic Englishman. There was not then the intercourse which now exists

between the two classes. Only very great men were in the habit of dividing the year between town and

country. Few esquires came to the capital thrice in their lives. Nor was it yet the practice of all citizens in

easy circumstances to breathe the fresh air of the fields and woods during some weeks of every summer. A

cockney, in a rural village, was stared at as much as if he had intruded into a Kraal of Hottentots. On the other

hand, when the lord of a Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily

distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar. His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in

which he gazed at the shops, stumbled into the gutters, ran against the porters, and stood under the

waterspouts, marked him out as an excellent subject for the operations of swindlers and barterers. Bullies

jostled him into the kennel. Hackney coachmen splashed him from head to foot. Thieves explored with

perfect security the huge pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stood entranced by the splendour of the

Lord Mayor's show. Moneydroppers, sore from the cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to

him the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane

and Whetstone Park, passed themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked his way to

Saint James's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a

fit purchaser of everything that nobody else would buy, of secondhand embroidery, copper rings, and

watches that would not go. If he rambled into any fashionable coffee house, he became a mark for the

insolent derision of fops and the grave waggery of Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his

mansion, and there, in the homage of his tenants and the conversation of his boon companions, found

consolation for the vexatious and humiliations which he had undergone. There he was once more a great man,

and saw nothing above himself except when at the assizes he took his seat on the bench near the Judge, or

The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements of society so imperfect was the extreme

difficulty which our ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all inventions, the alphabet and the

printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilisation of

our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as

well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but

tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the branches of the great human

family. In the seventeenth century the inhabitants of London were, for almost every practical purpose, farther

from Reading than they now are from Edinburgh, and farther from Edinburgh than they now are from

The subjects of Charles the Second were not, it is true, quite unacquainted with that principle which has, in

our own time, produced an unprecedented revolution in human affairs, which has enabled navies to advance

in face of wind and tide, and brigades of troops, attended by all their baggage and artillery, to traverse

kingdoms at a pace equal to that of the fleetest race horse. The Marquess of Worcester had recently observed

the expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After many experiments he had succeeded in constructing a

rude steam engine, which he called a fire water work, and which he pronounced to be an admirable and most

forcible instrument of propulsion.131 But the Marquess was suspected to be a madman, and known to be a

Papist. His inventions, therefore found no favourable reception. His fire water work might, perhaps, furnish

matter for conversation at a meeting of the Royal Society, but was not applied to any practical purpose. There

were no railways, except a few made of timber, on which coals were carried from the mouths of the

Northumbrian pits to the banks of the Tyne.132 There was very little internal communication by water. A few

attempts had been made to deepen and embank the natural streams, but with slender success. Hardly a single

navigable canal had been even projected. The English of that day were in the habit of talking with mingled

admiration and despair of the immense trench by which Lewis the Fourteenth had made a junction between

the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. They little thought that their country would, in the course of a few

generations, be intersected, at the cost of private adventurers, by artificial rivers making up more than four

It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally passed from place to place; and those

highways appear to have been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of wealth and

civilisation which the nation had even then attained. On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep,

the descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the

unenclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thorseby, the antiquary, was in danger of losing his

way on the great North road, between Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between

Doncaster and York.133 Pepys and his wife, travelling in their own coach, lost their way between Newbury

and Reading. In the course of the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in danger of having

to pass the night on the plain.134 It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was available

for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the right and the left; and only a narrow track of firm ground

rose above the quagmire.135 At such times obstructions and quarrels were frequent, and the path was

sometimes blocked up during a long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the way. It happened,

almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until a team of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring

farm, to tug them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the traveller had to encounter inconveniences still

more serious. Thoresby, who was in the habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has recorded, in his

Diary, such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert

of Sahara. On one occasion he learned that the floods were out between Ware and London, that passengers

had to swim for their lives, and that a higgler had perished in the attempt to cross. In consequence of these

tidings he turned out of the high road, and was conducted across some meadows, where it was necessary for

him to ride to the saddle skirts in water.136 In the course of another journey he narrowly escaped being swept

away by an inundation of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford four days, on account of the

state of the roads, and then ventured to proceed only because fourteen members of the House of Commons,

who were going up in a body to Parliament with guides and numerous attendants, took him into their

company.137 On the roads of Derbyshire, travellers were in constant fear for their necks, and were frequently

compelled to alight and lead their beasts.138 The great route through Wales to Holyhead was in such a state

that, in 1685, a viceroy, going to Ireland, was five hours in travelling fourteen miles, from Saint Asaph to

Conway. Between Conway and Beaumaris he was forced to walk a great part of the way; and his lady was

carried in a litter. His coach was, with much difficulty, and by the help of many hands, brought after him

entire. In general, carriages were taken to pieces at Conway, and borne, on the shoulders of stout Welsh

peasants, to the Menai Straits.139 In some parts of Kent and Sussex, none but the strongest horses could, in

winter, get through the bog, in which, at every step, they sank deep. The markets were often inaccessible

during several months. It is said that the fruits of the earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while

in another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far short of the demand. The wheeled carriages

were, in this district, generally pulled by oxen.140 When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately

mansion of Petworth in wet weather, he was six hours in going nine miles; and it was necessary that a body

of sturdy hinds should be on each side of his coach, in order to prop it. Of the carriages which conveyed his

retinue several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party has been preserved, in which the

unfortunate courtier complains that, during fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when his coach

One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have been the defective state of the law. Every parish

was bound to repair the highways which passed through it. The peasantry were forced to give their gratuitous

labour six days in the year. If this was not sufficient, hired labour was employed, and the expense was met by

a parochial rate. That a route connecting two great towns, which have a large and thriving trade with each

other, should be maintained at the cost of the rural population scattered between them is obviously unjust;

and this injustice was peculiarly glaring in the case of the great North road, which traversed very poor and

thinly inhabited districts, and joined very rich and populous districts. Indeed it was not in the power of the

parishes of Huntingdonshire to mend a highway worn by the constant traffic between the West Riding of

Yorkshire and London. Soon after the Restoration this grievance attracted the notice of Parliament; and an

act, the first of our many turnpike acts, was passed imposing a small toll on travellers and goods, for the

purpose of keeping some parts of this important line of communication in good repair.142 This innovation,

however, excited many murmurs; and the other great avenues to the capital were long left under the old

system. A change was at length effected, but not without much difficulty. For unjust and absurd taxation to

which men are accustomed is often borne far more willingly than the most reasonable impost which is new. It

was not till many toll bars had been violently pulled down, till the troops had in many districts been forced to

act against the people, and till much blood had been shed, that a good system was introduced.143 By slow

degrees reason triumphed over prejudice; and our island is now crossed in every direction by near thirty

On the best highways heavy articles were, in the time of Charles the Second, generally conveyed from place

to place by stage waggons. In the straw of these vehicles nestled a crowd of passengers, who could not afford

to travel by coach or on horseback, and who were prevented by infirmity, or by the weight of their luggage,

from going on foot. The expense of transmitting heavy goods in this way was enormous. From London to

Birmingham the charge was seven pounds a ton; from London to Exeter twelve pounds a ton.144 This was

about fifteen pence a ton for every mile, more by a third than was afterwards charged on turnpike roads, and

fifteen times what is now demanded by railway companies. The cost of conveyance amounted to a

prohibitory tax on many useful articles. Coal in particular was never seen except in the districts where it was

produced, or in the districts to which it could be carried by sea, and was indeed always known in the south of

On byroads, and generally throughout the country north of York and west of Exeter, goods were carried by

long trains of packhorses. These strong and patient beasts, the breed of which is now extinct, were attended

by a class of men who seem to have borne much resemblance to the Spanish muleteers. A traveller of humble

condition often found it convenient to perform a journey mounted on a packsaddle between two baskets,

under the care of these hardy guides. The expense of this mode of conveyance was small. But the caravan

The rich commonly travelled in their own carriages, with at least four horses. Cotton, the facetious poet,

attempted to go from London to the Peak with a single pair, but found at Saint Albans that the journey would

be insupportably tedious, and altered his Plan.146 A coach and six is in our time never seen, except as part of

some pageant. The frequent mention therefore of such equipages in old books is likely to mislead us. We

attribute to magnificence what was really the effect of a very disagreeable necessity. People, in the time of

Charles the Second, travelled with six horses, because with a smaller number there was great danger of

sticking fast in the mire. Nor were even six horses always sufficient. Vanbrugh, in the succeeding generation,

described with great humour the way in which a country gentleman, newly chosen a member of Parliament,

went up to London. On that occasion all the exertions of six beasts, two of which had been taken from the

Public carriages had recently been much improved. During the years which immediately followed the

Restoration, a diligence ran between London and Oxford in two days. The passengers slept at Beaconsfield.

At length, in the spring of 1669, a great and daring innovation was attempted. It was announced that a

vehicle, described as the Flying Coach, would perform the whole journey between sunrise and sunset. This

spirited undertaking was solemnly considered and sanctioned by the Heads of the University, and appears to

have excited the same sort of interest which is excited in our own time by the opening of a new railway. The

Vicechancellor, by a notice affixed in all public places, prescribed the hour and place of departure. The

success of the experiment was complete. At six in the morning the carriage began to move from before the

ancient front of All Souls College; and at seven in the evening the adventurous gentlemen who had run the

first risk were safely deposited at their inn in London.147 The emulation of the sister University was moved;

and soon a diligence was set up which in one day carried passengers from Cambridge to the capital. At the

close of the reign of Charles the Second flying carriages ran thrice a week from London to the chief towns.

But no stage coach, indeed no stage waggon, appears to have proceeded further north than York, or further

west than Exeter. The ordinary day's journey of a flying coach was about fifty miles in the summer; but in

winter, when the ways were bad and the nights long, little more than thirty. The Chester coach, the York

coach, and the Exeter coach generally reached London in four days during the fine season, but at Christmas

not till the sixth day. The passengers, six in number, were all seated in the carriage. For accidents were so

frequent that it would have been most perilous to mount the roof. The ordinary fare was about twopence

This mode of travelling, which by Englishmen of the present day would be regarded as insufferably slow,

seemed to our ancestors wonderfully and indeed alarmingly rapid. In a work published a few months before

the death of Charles the Second, the flying coaches are extolled as far superior to any similar vehicles ever

known in the world. Their velocity is the subject of special commendation, and is triumphantly contrasted

with the sluggish pace of the continental posts. But with boasts like these was mingled the sound of

complaint and invective. The interests of large classes had been unfavourably affected by the establishment

of the new diligences; and, as usual, many persons were, from mere stupidity and obstinacy, disposed to

clamour against the innovation, simply because it was an innovation. It was vehemently argued that this

mode of conveyance would be fatal to the breed of horses and to the noble art of horsemanship; that the

Thames, which had long been an important nursery of seamen, would cease to be the chief thoroughfare from

London up to Windsor and down to Gravesend; that saddlers and spurriers would be ruined by hundreds; that

numerous inns, at which mounted travellers had been in the habit of stopping, would be deserted, and would

no longer pay any rent; that the new carriages were too hot in summer and too cold in winter; that the

passengers were grievously annoyed by invalids and crying children; that the coach sometimes reached the

inn so late that it was impossible to get supper, and sometimes started so early that it was impossible to get

breakfast. On these grounds it was gravely recommended that no public coach should be permitted to have

more than four horses, to start oftener than once a week, or to go more than thirty miles a day. It was hoped

that, if this regulation were adopted, all except the sick and the lame would return to the old mode of

travelling. Petitions embodying such opinions as these were presented to the King in council from several

companies of the City of London, from several provincial towns, and from the justices of several counties.

We Smile at these things. It is not impossible that our descendants, when they read the history of the

opposition offered by cupidity and prejudice to the improvements of the nineteenth century, may smile in

In spite of the attractions of the flying coaches, it was still usual for men who enjoyed health and vigour, and

who were not encumbered by much baggage, to perform long journeys on horseback. If the traveller wished

to move expeditiously he rode post. Fresh saddle horses and guides were to be procured at convenient

distances along all the great lines of road. The charge was threepence a mile for each horse, and fourpence a

stage for the guide. In this manner, when the ways were good, it was possible to travel, for a considerable

time, as rapidly as by any conveyance known in England, till vehicles were propelled by steam. There were

as yet no post chaises; nor could those who rode in their own coaches ordinarily procure a change of horses.

The King, however, and the great officers of state were able to command relays. Thus Charles commonly

went in one day from Whitehall to Newmarket, a distance of about fiftyfive miles through a level country;

and this was thought by his subjects a proof of great activity. Evelyn performed the same journey in company

with the Lord Treasurer Clifford. The coach was drawn by six horses, which were changed at Bishop

Stortford and again at Chesterford. The travellers reached Newmarket at night. Such a mode of conveyance

seems to have been considered as a rare luxury confined to princes and ministers.150

Whatever might be the way in which a journey was performed, the travellers, unless they were numerous and

well armed, ran considerable risk of being stopped and plundered. The mounted highwayman, a marauder

known to our generation only from books, was to be found on every main road. The waste tracts which lay on

the great routes near London were especially haunted by plunderers of this class. Hounslow Heath, on the

Great Western Road, and Finchley Common, on the Great Northern Road, were perhaps the most celebrated

of these spots. The Cambridge scholars trembled when they approached Epping Forest, even in broad

daylight. Seamen who had just been paid off at Chatham were often compelled to deliver their purses on

Gadshill, celebrated near a hundred years earlier by the greatest of poets as the scene of the depredations of

Falstaff. The public authorities seem to have been often at a loss how to deal with the plunderers. At one time

it was announced in the Gazette, that several persons, who were strongly suspected of being highwaymen, but

against whom there was not sufficient evidence, would be paraded at Newgate in riding dresses: their horses

would also be shown; and all gentlemen who had been robbed were invited to inspect this singular exhibition.

On another occasion a pardon was publicly offered to a robber if he would give up some rough diamonds, of

immense value, which he had taken when he stopped the Harwich mail. A short time after appeared another

proclamation, warning the innkeepers that the eye of the government was upon them. Their criminal

connivance, it was affirmed, enabled banditti to infest the roads with impunity. That these suspicions were

not without foundation, is proved by the dying speeches of some penitent robbers of that age, who appear to

have received from the innkeepers services much resembling those which Farquhar's Boniface rendered to

It was necessary to the success and even to the safety of the highwayman that he should be a bold and skilful

rider, and that his manners and appearance should be such as suited the master of a fine horse. He therefore

held an aristocratical position in the community of thieves, appeared at fashionable coffee houses and gaming

houses, and betted with men of quality on the race ground.152 Sometimes, indeed, he was a man of good

family and education. A romantic interest therefore attached, and perhaps still attaches, to the names of

freebooters of this class. The vulgar eagerly drank in tales of their ferocity and audacity, of their occasional

acts of generosity and good nature, of their amours, of their miraculous escapes, of their desperate struggles,

and of their manly bearing at the bar and in the cart. Thus it was related of William Nevison, the great robber

of Yorkshire, that he levied a quarterly tribute on all the northern drovers, and, in return, not only spared them

himself, but protected them against all other thieves; that he demanded purses in the most courteous manner;

that he gave largely to the poor what he had taken from the rich; that his life was once spared by the royal

clemency, but that he again tempted his fate, and at length died, in 1685, on the gallows of York.153 It was

related how Claude Duval, the French page of the Duke of Richmond, took to the road, became captain of a

formidable gang, and had the honour to be named first in a royal proclamation against notorious offenders;

how at the head of his troop he stopped a lady's coach, in which there was a booty of four hundred pounds;

how he took only one hundred, and suffered the fair owner to ransom the rest by dancing a coranto with him

on the heath; how his vivacious gallantry stole away the hearts of all women; how his dexterity at sword and

pistol made him a terror to all men; how, at length, in the year 1670, he was seized when overcome by wine;

how dames of high rank visited him in prison, and with tears interceded for his life; how the King would have

granted a pardon, but for the interference of Judge Morton, the terror of highwaymen, who threatened to

resign his office unless the law were carried into full effect; and how, after the execution, the corpse lay in

state with all the pomp of scutcheons, wax lights, black hangings and mutes, till the same cruel Judge, who

had intercepted the mercy of the crown, sent officers to disturb the obsequies.154 In these anecdotes there is

doubtless a large mixture of fable; but they are not on that account unworthy of being recorded; for it is both

an authentic and an important fact that such tales, whether false or true, were heard by our ancestors with

All the various dangers by which the traveller was beset were greatly increased by darkness. He was therefore

commonly desirous of having the shelter of a roof during the night; and such shelter it was not difficult to

obtain. From a very early period the inns of England had been renowned. Our first great poet had described

the excellent accommodation which they afforded to the pilgrims of the fourteenth century. Nine and twenty

persons, with their horses, found room in the wide chambers and stables of the Tabard in Southwark. The

food was of the best, and the wines such as drew the company on to drink largely. Two hundred years later,

under the reign of Elizabeth, William Harrison gave a lively description of the plenty and comfort of the great

hostelries. The Continent of Europe, he said, could show nothing like them. There were some in which two or

three hundred people, with their horses, could without difficulty be lodged and fed. The bedding, the tapestry,

above all, the abundance of clean and fine linen was matter of wonder. Valuable plate was often set on the

tables. Nay, there were signs which had cost thirty or forty pounds. In the seventeenth century England

abounded with excellent inns of every rank. The traveller sometimes, in a small village, lighted on a public

house such as Walton has described, where the brick floor was swept clean, where the walls were stuck round

with ballads, where the sheets smelt of lavender, and where a blazing fire, a cup of good ale, and a dish of

trouts fresh from the neighbouring brook, were to be procured at small charge. At the larger houses of

entertainment were to be found beds hung with silk, choice cookery, and claret equal to the best which was

drunk in London.155 The innkeepers too, it was said. were not like other innkeepers. On the Continent the

landlord was the tyrant of those who crossed the threshold. In England he was a servant. Never was an

Englishman more at home than when he took his ease in his inn. Even men of fortune, who might in their

own mansions have enjoyed every luxury, were often in the habit of passing their evenings in the parlour of

some neighbouring house of public entertainment. They seem to have thought that comfort and freedom

could in no other place be enjoyed with equal perfection. This feeling continued during many generations to

be a national peculiarity. The liberty and jollity of inns long furnished matter to our novelists and dramatists.

Johnson declared that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity; and Shenstone gently complained that

no private roof, however friendly, gave the wanderer so warm a welcome as that which was to be found at an

Many conveniences, which were unknown at Hampton Court and Whitehall in the seventeenth century, are in

all modern hotels. Yet on the whole it is certain that the improvement of our houses of public entertainment

has by no means kept pace with the improvement of our roads and of our conveyances. Nor is this strange;

for it is evident that, all other circumstances being supposed equal, the inns will be best where the means of

locomotion are worst. The quicker the rate of travelling, the less important is it that there should be numerous

agreeable resting places for the traveller. A hundred and sixty years ago a person who came up to the capital

from a remote county generally required, by the way, twelve or fifteen meals, and lodging for five or six

nights. If he were a great man, he expected the meals and lodging to be comfortable, and even luxurious. At

present we fly from York or Exeter to London by the light of a single winter's day. At present, therefore, a

traveller seldom interrupts his journey merely for the sake of rest and refreshment. The consequence is that

hundreds of excellent inns have fallen into utter decay. In a short time no good houses of that description will

be found, except at places where strangers are likely to be detained by business or pleasure.

The mode in which correspondence was carried on between distant places may excite the scorn of the present

generation; yet it was such as might have moved the admiration and envy of the polished nations of antiquity,

or of the contemporaries of Raleigh and Cecil. A rude and imperfect establishment of posts for the

conveyance of letters had been set up by Charles the First, and had been swept away by the civil war. Under

the Commonwealth the design was resumed. At the Restoration the proceeds of the Post Office, after all

expenses had been paid, were settled on the Duke of York. On most lines of road the mails went out and

came in only on the alternate days. In Cornwall, in the fens of Lincolnshire, and among the hills and lakes of

Cumberland, letters were received only once a week. During a royal progress a daily post was despatched

from the capital to the place where the court sojourned. There was also daily communication between London

and the Downs; and the same privilege was sometimes extended to Tunbridge Wells and Bath at the seasons

when those places were crowded by the great. The bags were carried on horseback day and night at the rate of

The revenue of this establishment was not derived solely from the charge for the transmission of letters. The

Post Office alone was entitled to furnish post horses; and, from the care with which this monopoly was

guarded, we may infer that it was found profitable.157 If, indeed, a traveller had waited half an hour without

To facilitate correspondence between one part of London and another was not originally one of the objects of

the Post Office. But, in the reign of Charles the Second, an enterprising citizen of London, William

Dockwray, set up, at great expense, a penny post, which delivered letters and parcels six or eight times a day

in the busy and crowded streets near the Exchange, and four times a day in the outskirts of the capital. This

improvement was, as usual, strenuously resisted. The porters complained that their interests were attacked,

and tore down the placards in which the scheme was announced to the public. The excitement caused by

Godfrey's death, and by the discovery of Coleman's papers, was then at the height. A cry was therefore raised

that the penny post was a Popish contrivance. The great Doctor Oates, it was affirmed, had hinted a suspicion

that the Jesuits were at the bottom of the scheme, and that the bags, if examined, would be found full of

treason.158 The utility of the enterprise was, however, so great and obvious that all opposition proved

fruitless. As soon as it became clear that the speculation would be lucrative, the Duke of York complained of

it as an infraction of his monopoly; and the courts of law decided in his favour.159

The revenue of the Post Office was from the first constantly increasing. In the year of the Restoration a

committee of the House of Commons, after strict enquiry, had estimated the net receipt at about twenty

thousand pounds. At the close of the reign of Charles the Second, the net receipt was little short of fifty

thousand pounds; and this was then thought a stupendous sum. The gross receipt was about seventy thousand

pounds. The charge for conveying a single letter was twopence for eighty miles, and threepence for a longer

distance. The postage increased in proportion to the weight of the packet.160 At present a single letter is

carried to the extremity of Scotland or of Ireland for a penny; and the monopoly of post horses has long

ceased to exist. Yet the gross annual receipts of the department amount to more than eighteen hundred

thousand pounds, and the net receipts to more than seven hundred thousand pounds. It is, therefore, scarcely

possible to doubt that the number of letters now conveyed by mail is seventy times the number which was so

No part of the load which the old mails carried out was more important than the newsletters. In 1685 nothing

like the London daily paper of our time existed, or could exist. Neither the necessary capital nor the necessary

skill was to be found. Freedom too was wanting, a want as fatal as that of either capital or skill. The press was

not indeed at that moment under a general censorship. The licensing act, which had been passed soon after

the Restoration, had expired in 1679. Any person might therefore print, at his own risk, a history, a sermon,

or a poem, without the previous approbation of any officer; but the Judges were unanimously of opinion that

this liberty did not extend to Gazettes, and that, by the common law of England, no man, not authorised by

the crown, had a right to publish political news.162 While the Whig party was still formidable, the

government thought it expedient occasionally to connive at the violation of this rule. During the great battle

of the Exclusion Bill, many newspapers were suffered to appear, the Protestant Intelligence, the Current

Intelligence, the Domestic Intelligence, the True News, the London Mercury.163 None of these was

published oftener than twice a week. None exceeded in size a single small leaf. The quantity of matter which

one of them contained in a year was not more than is often found in two numbers of the Times. After the

defeat of the Whigs it was no longer necessary for the King to be sparing in the use of that which all his

Judges had pronounced to be his undoubted prerogative. At the close of his reign no newspaper was suffered

to appear without his. allowance: and his allowance was given exclusively to the London Gazette. The

London Gazette came out only on Mondays and Thursdays. The contents generally were a royal

proclamation, two or three Tory addresses, notices of two or three promotions, an account of a skirmish

between the imperial troops and the Janissaries on the Danube, a description of a highwayman, an

announcement of a grand cockfight between two persons of honour, and an advertisement offering a reward

for a strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size. Whatever was communicated respecting

matters of the highest moment was communicated in the most meagre and formal style. Sometimes, indeed,

when the government was disposed to gratify the public curiosity respecting an important transaction, a

broadside was put forth giving fuller details than could be found in the Gazette: but neither the Gazette nor

any supplementary broadside printed by authority ever contained any intelligence which it did not suit the

purposes of the Court to publish. The most important parliamentary debates, the most important state trials

recorded in our history, were passed over in profound silence.164 In the capital the coffee houses supplied in

some measure the place of a journal. Thither the Londoners flocked, as the Athenians of old flocked to the

market place, to hear whether there was any news. There men might learn how brutally a Whig, had been

treated the day before in Westminster Hall, what horrible accounts the letters from Edinburgh gave of the

torturing of Covenanters, how grossly the Navy Board had cheated the crown in the Victualling of the fleet,

and what grave charges the Lord Privy Seal had brought against the Treasury in the matter of the hearth

money. But people who lived at a distance from the great theatre of political contention could be kept

regularly informed of what was passing there only by means of newsletters. To prepare such letters became a

calling in London, as it now is among the natives of India. The newswriter rambled from coffee room to

coffee room, collecting reports, squeezed himself into the Sessions House at the Old Bailey if there was an

interesting trial, nay perhaps obtained admission to the gallery of Whitehall, and noticed how the King and

Duke looked. In this way he gathered materials for weekly epistles destined to enlighten some county town or

some bench of rustic magistrates. Such were the sources from which the inhabitants of the largest provincial

cities, and the great body of the gentry and clergy, learned almost all that they knew of the history of their

own time. We must suppose that at Cambridge there were as many persons curious to know what was passing

in the world as at almost any place in the kingdom, out of London. Yet at Cambridge, during a great part of

the reign of Charles the Second, the Doctors of Laws and the Masters of Arts had no regular supply of news

except through the London Gazette. At length the services of one of the collectors of intelligence in the

capital were employed. That was a memorable day on which the first newsletter from London was laid on the

table of the only coffee room in Cambridge.165 At the seat of a man of fortune in the country the newsletter

was impatiently expected. Within a week after it had arrived it had been thumbed by twenty families. It

furnished the neighboring squires with matter for talk over their October, and the neighboring rectors with

topics for sharp sermons against Whiggery or Popery. Many of these curious journals might doubtless still be

detected by a diligent search in the archives of old families. Some are to be found in our public libraries; and

one series, which is not the least valuable part of the literary treasures collected by Sir James Mackintosh,

It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no provincial newspapers. Indeed, except in the capital and

at the two Universities, there was scarcely a printer in the kingdom. The only press in England north of Trent

It was not only by means of the London Gazette that the government undertook to furnish political instruction

to the people. That journal contained a scanty supply of news without comment. Another journal, published

under the patronage of the court, consisted of comment without news. This paper, called the Observator, was

edited by an old Tory pamphleteer named Roger Lestrange. Lestrange was by no means deficient in readiness

and shrewdness; and his diction, though coarse, and disfigured by a mean and flippant jargon which then

passed for wit in the green room and the tavern, was not without keenness and vigour. But his nature, at once

ferocious and ignoble, showed itself in every line that he penned. When the first Observators appeared there

was some excuse for his acrimony. The Whigs were then powerful; and he had to contend against numerous

adversaries, whose unscrupulous violence might seem to justify unsparing retaliation. But in 1685 all the

opposition had been crushed. A generous spirit would have disdained to insult a party which could not reply,

and to aggravate the misery of prisoners, of exiles, of bereaved families: but; from the malice of Lestrange

the grave was no hiding place, and the house of mourning no sanctuary. In the last month of the reign of

Charles the Second, William Jenkyn, an aged dissenting pastor of great note, who had been cruelly

persecuted for no crime but that of worshipping God according to the fashion generally followed throughout

protestant Europe, died of hardships and privations at Newgate. The outbreak of popular sympathy could not

be repressed. The corpse was followed to the grave by a train of a hundred and fifty coaches. Even courtiers

looked sad. Even the unthinking King showed some signs of concern. Lestrange alone set up a howl of

savage exultation, laughed at the weak compassion of the Trimmers, proclaimed that the blasphemous old

impostor had met with a most righteous punishment, and vowed to wage war, not only to the death, but after

death, with all the mock saints and martyrs.168 Such was the spirit of the paper which was at this time the

Literature which could be carried by the post bag then formed the greater part of the intellectual nutriment

ruminated by the country divines and country justices. The difficulty and expense of conveying large packets

from place to place was so great, that an extensive work was longer in making its way from Paternoster Row

to Devonshire or Lancashire than it now is in reaching Kentucky. How scantily a rural parsonage was then

furnished, even with books the most necessary to a theologian, has already been remarked. The houses of the

gentry were not more plentifully supplied. Few knights of the shire had libraries so good as may now

perpetually be found in a servants' hall or in the back parlour of a small shopkeeper. An esquire passed

among his neighbours for a great scholar, if Hudibras and Baker's Chronicle, Tarlton's Jests and the Seven

Champions of Christendom, lay in his hall window among the fishing rods and fowling pieces. No circulating

library, no book society, then existed even in the capital: but in the capital those students who could not

afford to purchase largely had a resource. The shops of the great booksellers, near Saint Paul's Churchyard,

were crowded every day and all day long with readers; and a known customer was often permitted to carry a

volume home. In the country there was no such accommodation; and every man was under the necessity of

As to the lady of the manor and her daughters, their literary stores generally consisted of a prayer book and

receipt book. But in truth they lost little by living in rural seclusion. For, even in the highest ranks, and in

those situations which afforded the greatest facilities for mental improvement, the English women of that

generation were decidedly worse educated than they have been at any other time since the revival of learning.

At an early period they had studied the masterpieces of ancient genius. In the present day they seldom bestow

much attention on the dead languages; but they are familiar with the tongue of Pascal and Moliere, with the

tongue of Dante and Tasso, with the tongue of Goethe and Schiller; nor is there any purer or more graceful

English than that which accomplished women now speak and write. But, during the latter part of the

seventeenth century, the culture of the female mind seems to have been almost entirely neglected. If a damsel

had the least smattering of literature she was regarded as a prodigy. Ladies highly born, highly bred, and

naturally quick witted, were unable to write a line in their mother tongue without solecisms and faults of

The explanation may easily be found. Extravagant licentiousness, the natural effect of extravagant austerity,

was now the mode; and licentiousness had produced its ordinary effect, the moral and intellectual degradation

of women. To their personal beauty, it was the fashion to pay rude and impudent homage. But the admiration

and desire which they inspired were seldom mingled with respect, with affection, or with any chivalrous

sentiment. The qualities which fit them to be companions, advisers, confidential friends, rather repelled than

attracted the libertines of Whitehall. In that court a maid of honour, who dressed in such a manner as to do

full justice to a white bosom, who ogled significantly, who danced voluptuously, who excelled in pert

repartee, who was not ashamed to romp with Lords of the Bedchamber and Captains of the Guards, to sing

sly verses with sly expression, or to put on a page's dress for a frolic, was more likely to be followed and

admired, more likely to be honoured with royal attentions, more likely to win a rich and noble husband than

Jane Grey or Lucy Hutchinson would have been. In such circumstances the standard of female attainments

was necessarily low; and it was more dangerous to be above that standard than to be beneath it. Extreme

ignorance and frivolity were thought less unbecoming in a lady than the slightest tincture of pedantry. Of the

too celebrated women whose faces we still admire on the walls of Hampton Court, few indeed were in the

habit of reading anything more valuable than acrostics, lampoons, and translations of the Clelia and the

The literary acquirements, even of the accomplished gentlemen of that generation, seem to have been

somewhat less solid and profound than at an earlier or a later period. Greek learning, at least, did not flourish

among us in the days of Charles the Second, as it had flourished before the civil war, or as it again flourished

long after the Revolution. There were undoubtedly scholars to whom the whole Greek literature, from Homer

to Photius, was familiar: but such scholars were to be found almost exclusively among the clergy resident at

the Universities, and even at the Universities were few, and were not fully appreciated. At Cambridge it was

not thought by any means necessary that a divine should be able to read the Gospels in the original.171 Nor

was the standard at Oxford higher. When, in the reign of William the Third, Christ Church rose up as one

man to defend the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris, that great college, then considered as the first seat

of philology in the kingdom, could not muster such a stock of Attic learning as is now possessed by several

youths at every great public school. It may easily be supposed that a dead language, neglected at the

Universities, was not much studied by men of the world. In a former age the poetry and eloquence of Greece

had been the delight of Raleigh and Falkland. In a later age the poetry and eloquence of Greece were the

delight of Pitt and Fox, of Windham and Grenville. But during the latter part of the seventeenth century there

was in England scarcely one eminent statesman who could read with enjoyment a page of Sophocles or Plato.

Good Latin scholars were numerous. The language of Rome, indeed, had not altogether lost its imperial

prerogatives, and was still, in many parts of Europe, almost indispensable to a traveller or a negotiator. To

speak it well was therefore a much more common accomplishment shall in our time; and neither Oxford nor

Cambridge wanted poets who, on a great occasion, could lay at the foot of the throne happy imitations of the

Yet even the Latin was giving way to a younger rival. France united at that time almost every species of

ascendency. Her military glory was at the height. She had vanquished mighty coalitions. She had dictated

treaties. She had subjugated great cities and provinces. She had forced the Castilian pride to yield her the

precedence. She had summoned Italian princes to prostrate themselves at her footstool. Her authority was

supreme in all matters of good breeding, from a duel to a minuet. She determined how a gentleman's coat

must be cut, how long his peruke must be, whether his heels must be high or low, and whether the lace on his

hat must be broad or narrow. In literature she gave law to the world. The fame of her great writers filled

Europe. No other country could produce a tragic poet equal to Racine, a comic poet equal to Moliere, a trifler

so agreeable as La Fontaine, a rhetorician so skilful as Bossuet. The literary glory of Italy and of Spain had

set; that of Germany had not yet dawned. The genius, therefore, of the eminent men who adorned Paris shone

forth with a splendour which was set off to full advantage by contrast. France, indeed, had at that time an

empire over mankind, such as even the Roman Republic never attained. For, when Rome was politically

dominant, she was in arts and letters the humble pupil of Greece. France had, over the surrounding countries,

at once the ascendency which Rome had over Greece, and the ascendency which Greece had over Rome.

French was fast becoming the universal language, the language of fashionable society, the language of

diplomacy. At several courts princes and nobles spoke it more accurately and politely than their mother

tongue. In our island there was less of this servility than on the Continent. Neither our good nor our bad

qualities were those of imitators. Yet even here homage was paid, awkwardly indeed and sullenly, to the

literary supremacy of our neighbours. The melodious Tuscan, so familiar to the gallants and ladies of the

court of Elizabeth, sank into contempt. A gentleman who quoted Horace or Terence was considered in good

company as a pompous pedant. But to garnish his conversation with scraps of French was the best proof

which he could give of his parts and attainments.172 New canons of criticism, new models of style came into

fashion. The quaint ingenuity which had deformed the verses of Donne, and had been a blemish on those of

Cowley, disappeared from our poetry. Our prose became less majestic, less artfully involved, less variously

musical than that of an earlier age, but more lucid, more easy, and better fitted for controversy and narrative.

In these changes it is impossible not to recognise the influence of French precept and of French example.

Great masters of our language, in their most dignified compositions, affected to use French words, when

English words, quite as expressive and sonorous, were at hand:173 and from France was imported the tragedy

It would have been well if our writers had also copied the decorum which their great French contemporaries,

with few exceptions, preserved; for the profligacy of the English plays, satires, songs, and novels of that age

is a deep blot on our national fame. The evil may easily be traced to its source. The wits and the Puritans had

never been on friendly terms. There was no sympathy between the two classes. They looked on the whole

system of human life from different points and in different lights. The earnest of each was the jest of the

other. The pleasures of each were the torments of the other. To the stern precisian even the innocent sport of

the fancy seemed a crime. To light and festive natures the solemnity of the zealous brethren furnished

copious matter of ridicule. From the Reformation to the civil war, almost every writer, gifted with a fine

sense of the ludicrous, had taken some opportunity of assailing the straighthaired, snuffling, whining saints,

who christened their children out of the Book of Nehemiah, who groaned in spirit at the sight of Jack in the

Green, and who thought it impious to taste plum porridge on Christmas day. At length a time came when the

laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid, ungainly zealots, after having furnished much good

sport during two generations, rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down under their

feet the whole crowd of mockers. The wounds inflicted by gay and petulant malice were retaliated with the

gloomy and implacable malice peculiar to bigots who mistake their own rancour for virtue. The theatres were

closed. The players were flogged. The press was put under the guardianship of austere licensers. The Muses

were banished from their own favourite haunts, Cambridge and Oxford. Cowly, Crashaw, and Cleveland

were ejected from their fellowships. The young candidate for academical honours was no longer required to

write Ovidian epistles or Virgilian pastorals, but was strictly interrogated by a synod of lowering

Supralapsarians as to the day and hour when he experienced the new birth. Such a system was of course

fruitful of hypocrites. Under sober clothing and under visages composed to the expression of austerity lay hid

during several years the intense desire of license and of revenge. At length that desire was gratified. The

Restoration emancipated thousands of minds from a yoke which had become insupportable. The old fight

recommenced, but with an animosity altogether new. It was now not a sportive combat, but a war to the

death. The Roundhead had no better quarter to expect from those whom he had persecuted than a cruel

slavedriver can expect from insurgent slaves still bearing the marks of his collars and his scourges.

The war between wit and Puritanism soon became a war between wit and morality. The hostility excited by a

grotesque caricature of virtue did not spare virtue herself. Whatever the canting Roundhead had regarded

with reverence was insulted. Whatever he had proscribed was favoured. Because he had been scrupulous

about trifles, all scruples were treated with derision. Because he had covered his failings with the mask of

devotion, men were encouraged to obtrude with Cynic impudence all their most scandalous vices on the

public eye. Because he had punished illicit love with barbarous severity, virgin purity and conjugal fidelity

were made a jest. To that sanctimonious jargon which was his Shibboleth, was opposed another jargon not

less absurd and much more odious. As he never opened his mouth except in scriptural phrase, the new breed

of wits and fine gentlemen never opened their mouths without uttering ribaldry of which a porter would now

be ashamed, and without calling on their Maker to curse them, sink them, confound them, blast them, and

It is not strange, therefore, that our polite literature, when it revived with the revival of the old civil and

ecclesiastical polity, should have been profoundly immoral. A few eminent men, who belonged to an earlier

and better age, were exempt from the general contagion. The verse of Waller still breathed the sentiments

which had animated a more chivalrous generation. Cowley, distinguished as a loyalist and as a man of letters,

raised his voice courageously against the immorality which disgraced both letters and loyalty. A mightier

poet, tried at once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, and blindness, meditates, undisturbed by the obscene

tumult which raged all around him, a song so sublime and so holy that it would not have misbecome the lips

of those ethereal Virtues whom he saw, with that inner eye which no calamity could darken, flinging down on

the jasper pavement their crowns of amaranth and gold. The vigourous and fertile genius of Butler, if it did

not altogether escape the prevailing infection, took the disease in a mild form. But these were men whose

minds had been trained in a world which had passed away. They gave place in no long time to a younger

generation of wits; and of that generation, from Dryden down to Durfey, the common characteristic was

hardhearted, shameless, swaggering licentiousness, at once inelegant and inhuman. The influence of these

writers was doubtless noxious, yet less noxious than it would have been had they been less depraved. The

poison which they administered was so strong that it was, in no long time, rejected with nausea. None of

them understood the dangerous art of associating images of unlawful pleasure with all that is endearing and

ennobling. None of them was aware that a certain decorum is essential even to voluptuousness, that drapery

may be more alluring than exposure, and that the imagination may be far more powerfully moved by delicate

hints which impel it to exert itself, than by gross descriptions which it takes in passively.

The spirit of the Antipuritan reaction pervades almost the whole polite literature of the reign of Charles the

Second. But the very quintessence of that spirit will be found in the comic drama. The playhouses, shut by

the meddling fanatic in the day of his power, were again crowded. To their old attractions new and more

powerful attractions had been added. Scenery, dresses, and decorations, such as would now be thought mean

or absurd, but such as would have been esteemed incredibly magnificent by those who, early in the

seventeenth century, sate on the filthy benches of the Hope, or under the thatched roof of the Rose, dazzled

the eyes of the multitude. The fascination of sex was called in to aid the fascination of art: and the young

spectator saw, with emotions unknown to the contemporaries of Shakspeare and Johnson, tender and

sprightly heroines personated by lovely women. From the day on which the theatres were reopened they

became seminaries of vice; and the evil propagated itself. The profligacy of the representations soon drove

away sober people. The frivolous and dissolute who remained required every year stronger and stronger

stimulants. Thus the artists corrupted the spectators, and the spectators the artists, till the turpitude of the

drama became such as must astonish all who are not aware that extreme relaxation is the natural effect of

extreme restraint, and that an age of hypocrisy is, in the regular course of things, followed by all age of

Nothing is more characteristic of the times than the care with which the poets contrived to put all their loosest

verses into the mouths of women. The compositions in which the greatest license was taken were the

epilogues. They were almost always recited by favourite actresses; and nothing charmed the depraved

audience so much as to hear lines grossly indecent repeated by a beautiful girl, who was supposed to have not

Our theatre was indebted in that age for many plots and characters to Spain, to France, and to the old English

masters: but whatever our dramatists touched they tainted. In their imitations the houses of Calderon's stately

and highspirited Castilian gentlemen became sties of vice, Shakspeare's Viola a procuress, Moliere's

Misanthrope a ravisher, Moliere's Agnes an adulteress. Nothing could be so pure or so heroic but that it

Such was the state of the drama; and the drama was the department of polite literature in which a poet had the

best chance of obtaining a subsistence by his pen. The sale of books was so small that a man of the greatest

name could hardly expect more than a pittance for the copyright of the best performance. There cannot be a

stronger instance than the fate of Dryden's last production, the Fables. That volume was published when he

was universally admitted to be the chief of living English poets. It contains about twelve thousand lines. The

versification is admirable, the narratives and descriptions full of life. To this day Palamon and Arcite, Cymon

and Iphigenia, Theodore and Honoria, are the delight both of critics and of schoolboys. The collection

includes Alexander's Feast, the noblest ode in our language. For the copyright Dryden received two hundred

and fifty pounds, less than in our days has sometimes been paid for two articles in a review.175 Nor does the

bargain seem to have been a hard one. For the book went off slowly; and the second edition was not required

till the author had been ten years in his grave. By writing for the theatre it was possible to earn a much larger

sum with much less trouble. Southern made seven hundred pounds by one play.176 Otway was raised from

beggary to temporary affluence by the success of his Don Carlos.177 Shadwell cleared a hundred and thirty

pounds by a single representation of the Squire of Alsatia.178 The consequence was that every man who had

to live by his wit wrote plays, whether he had any internal vocation to write plays or not. It was thus with

Dryden. As a satirist he has rivalled Juvenal. As a didactic poet he perhaps might, with care and meditation,

have rivalled Lucretius. Of lyric poets he is, if not the most sublime, the most brilliant and spiritstirring. But

nature, profuse to him of many rare gifts, had withheld from him the dramatic faculty. Nevertheless all the

energies of his best years were wasted on dramatic composition. He had too much judgment not to be aware

that in the power of exhibiting character by means of dialogue he was deficient. That deficiency he did his

best to conceal, sometimes by surprising and amusing incidents, sometimes by stately declamation,

sometimes by harmonious numbers, sometimes by ribaldry but too well suited to the taste of a profane and

licentious pit. Yet he never obtained any theatrical success equal to that which rewarded the exertions of

some men far inferior to him in general powers. He thought himself fortunate if he cleared a hundred guineas

by a play; a scanty remuneration, yet apparently larger than he could have earned in any other way by the

The recompense which the wits of that age could obtain from the public was so small, that they were under

the necessity of eking out their incomes by levying contributions on the great. Every rich and goodnatured

lord was pestered by authors with a mendicancy so importunate, and a flattery so abject, as may in our time

seem incredible. The patron to whom a work was inscribed was expected to reward the writer with a purse of

gold. The fee paid for the dedication of a book was often much larger than the sum which any publisher

would give for the copyright. Books were therefore frequently printed merely that they might be dedicated.

This traffic in praise produced the effect which might have been expected. Adulation pushed to the verge,

sometimes of nonsense, and sometimes of impiety, was not thought to disgrace a poet. Independence,

veracity, selfrespect, were things not required by the world from him. In truth, he was in morals something

To the other vices which degraded the literary character was added, towards the close of the reign of Charles

the Second, the most savage intemperance of party spirit. The wits, as a class, had been impelled by their old

hatred of Puritanism to take the side of the court, and had been found useful allies. Dryden, in particular, had

done good service to the government. His Absalom and Achitophel, the greatest satire of modern times had

amazed the town, had made its way with unprecedented rapidity even into rural districts, and had, wherever it

appeared bitterly annoyed the Exclusionists. and raised the courage of the Tories. But we must not, in the

admiration which we naturally feel for noble diction and versification, forget the great distinctions of good

and evil. The spirit by which Dryden and several of his compeers were at this time animated against the

Whigs deserves to he called fiendish. The servile Judges and Sheriffs of those evil days could not shed blood

as fast as the poets cried out for it. Calls for more victims, hideous jests on hanging, bitter taunts on those

who, having stood by the King in the hour of danger, now advised him to deal mercifully and generously by

his vanquished enemies, were publicly recited on the stage, and, that nothing might he wanting to the guilt

and the shame, were recited by women, who, having long been taught to discard all modesty, were now

It is a remarkable fact that, while the lighter literature of England was thus becoming a nuisance and a

national disgrace, the English genius was effecting in science a revolution which will, to the end of time, be

reckoned among the highest achievements of the human intellect. Bacon had sown the good seed in a

sluggish soil and an ungenial season. He had not expected an early crop, and in his last testament had

solemnly bequeathed his fame to the next age. During a whole generation his philosophy had, amidst tumults

wars, and proscriptions, been slowly ripening in a few well constituted minds. While factions were struggling

for dominion over each other, a small body of sages had turned away with benevolent disdain from the

conflict, and had devoted themselves to the nobler work of extending the dominion of man over matter. As

soon as tranquillity was restored, these teachers easily found attentive audience. For the discipline through

which the nation had passed had brought the public mind to a temper well fitted for the reception of the

Verulamian doctrine. The civil troubles had stimulated the faculties of the educated classes, and had called

forth a restless activity and an insatiable curiosity, such as had not before been known among us. Yet the

effect of those troubles was that schemes of political and religious reform were generally regarded with

suspicion and contempt. During twenty years the chief employment of busy and ingenious men had been to

frame constitutions with first magistrates, without first magistrates, with hereditary senates, with senates

appointed by lot, with annual senates, with perpetual senates. In these plans nothing was omitted. All the

detail, all the nomenclature, all the ceremonial of the imaginary government was fully set forth, Polemarchs

and Phylarchs, Tribes and Galaxies, the Lord Archon and the Lord Strategus. Which ballot boxes were to be

green and which red, which balls were to be of gold and which of silver, which magistrates were to wear hats

and which black velvet caps with peaks, how the mace was to be carried and when the heralds were to

uncover, these, and a hundred more such trifles, were gravely considered and arranged by men of no common

capacity and learning.181 But the time for these visions had gone by; and, if any steadfast republican still

continued to amuse himself with them, fear of public derision and of a criminal information generally

induced him to keep his fancies to himself. It was now unpopular and unsafe to mutter a word against the

fundamental laws of the monarchy: but daring and ingenious men might indemnify themselves by treating

with disdain what had lately been considered as the fundamental laws of nature. The torrent which had been

dammed up in one channel rushed violently into another. The revolutionary spirit, ceasing to operate in

politics, began to exert itself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in every department of physics. The

year 1660, the era of the restoration of the old constitution, is also the era from which dates the ascendency of

the new philosophy. In that year the Royal Society, destined to be a chief agent in a long series of glorious

and salutary reforms, began to exist.182 In a few months experimental science became all the mode. The

transfusion of blood, the ponderation of air, the fixation of mercury, succeeded to that place in the public

mind which had been lately occupied by the controversies of the Rota. Dreams of perfect forms of

government made way for dreams of wings with which men were to fly from the Tower to the Abbey, and of

doublekeeled ships which were never to founder in the fiercest storm. All classes were hurried along by the

prevailing sentiment. Cavalier and Roundhead, Churchman and Puritan, were for once allied. Divines, jurists,

statesmen, nobles, princes, swelled the triumph of the Baconian philosophy. Poets sang with emulous fervour

the approach of the golden age. Cowley, in lines weighty with thought and resplendent with wit, urged the

chosen seed to take possession of the promised land flowing with milk and honey, that land which their great

deliverer and lawgiver had seen, as from the summit of Pisgah, but had not been permitted to enter.183

Dryden, with more zeal than knowledge, joined voice to the general acclamation to enter, and foretold things

which neither he nor anybody else understood. The Royal Society, he predicted, would soon lead us to the

extreme verge of the globe, and there delight us with a better view of the moon.184 Two able and aspiring

prelates, Ward, Bishop of Salisbury, and Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, were conspicuous among the leaders of

the movement. Its history was eloquently written by a younger divine, who was rising to high distinction in

his profession, Thomas Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. Both Chief Justice Hale and Lord Keeper

Guildford stole some hours from the business of their courts to write on hydrostatics. Indeed it was under the

immediate direction of Guildford that the first barometers ever exposed to sale in London were

constructed.185 Chemistry divided, for a time, with wine and love, with the stage and the gaming table, with

the intrigues of a courtier and the intrigues of a demagogue, the attention of the fickle Buckingham. Rupert

has the credit of having invented mezzotinto; from him is named that curious bubble of glass which has long

amused children and puzzled philosophers. Charles himself had a laboratory at Whitehall, and was far more

active and attentive there than at the council board. It was almost necessary to the character of a fine

gentleman to have something to say about air pumps and telescopes; and even fine ladies, now and then,

thought it becoming to affect a taste for science, went in coaches and six to visit the Gresham curiosities, and

broke forth into cries of delight at finding that a magnet really attracted a needle, and that a microscope really

In this, as in every great stir of the human mind, there was doubtless something which might well move a

smile. It is the universal law that whatever pursuit, whatever doctrine, becomes fashionable, shall lose a

portion of that dignity which it had possessed while it was confined to a small but earnest minority, and was

loved for its own sake alone. It is true that the follies of some persons who, without any real aptitude for

science, professed a passion for it, furnished matter of contemptuous mirth to a few malignant satirists who

belonged to the preceding generation, and were not disposed to unlearn the lore of their youth.187 But it is

not less true that the great work of interpreting nature was performed by the English of that age as it had

never before been performed in any age by any nation. The spirit of Francis Bacon was abroad, a spirit

admirably compounded of audacity and sobriety. There was a strong persuasion that the whole world was full

of secrets of high moment to the happiness of man, and that man had, by his Maker, been entrusted with the

key which, rightly used, would give access to them. There was at the same time a conviction that in physics it

was impossible to arrive at the knowledge of general laws except by the careful observation of particular

facts. Deeply impressed with these great truths, the professors of the new philosophy applied themselves to

their task, and, before a quarter of a century had expired, they had given ample earnest of what has since been

achieved. Already a reform of agriculture had been commenced. New vegetables were cultivated. New

implements of husbandry were employed. New manures were applied to the soil.188 Evelyn had, under the

formal sanction of the Royal Society, given instruction to his countrymen in planting. Temple, in his intervals

of leisure, had tried many experiments in horticulture, and had proved that many delicate fruits, the natives of

more favoured climates, might, with the help of art, be grown on English ground. Medicine, which in France

was still in abject bondage, and afforded an inexhaustible subject of just ridicule to Moliere, had in England

become an experimental and progressive science, and every day made some new advance in defiance of

Hippocrates and Galen. The attention of speculative men had been, for the first time, directed to the important

subject of sanitary police. The great plague of 1665 induced them to consider with care the defective

architecture, draining, and ventilation of the capital. The great fire of 1666 afforded an opportunity for

effecting extensive improvements. The whole matter was diligently examined by the Royal Society; and to

the suggestions of that body must be partly attributed the changes which, though far short of what the public

welfare required, yet made a wide difference between the new and the old London, and probably put a final

close to the ravages of pestilence in our country.189 At the same time one of the founders of the Society, Sir

William Petty, created the science of political arithmetic, the humble but indispensable handmaid of political

philosophy. No kingdom of nature was left unexplored. To that period belong the chemical discoveries of

Boyle, and the earliest botanical researches of Sloane. It was then that Ray made a new classification of birds

and fishes, and that the attention of Woodward was first drawn towards fossils and shells. One after another

phantoms which had haunted the world through ages of darkness fled before the light. Astrology and alchymy

became jests. Soon there was scarcely a county in which some of the Quorum did not smile contemptuously

when an old woman was brought before them for riding on broomsticks or giving cattle the murrain. But it

was in those noblest and most arduous departments of knowledge in which induction and mathematical

demonstration cooperate for the discovery of truth, that the English genius won in that age the most

memorable triumphs. John Wallis placed the whole system of statics on a new foundation. Edmund Halley

investigated the properties of the atmosphere, the ebb and flow of the sea, the laws of magnetism, and the

course of the comets; nor did he shrink from toil, peril and exile in the cause of science. While he, on the rock

of Saint Helena, mapped the constellations of the southern hemisphere, our national observatory was rising at

Greenwich: and John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, was commencing that long series of

observations which is never mentioned without respect and gratitude in any part of the globe. But the glory of

these men, eminent as they were, is cast into the shade by the transcendent lustre of one immortal name. In

Isaac Newton two kinds of intellectual power, which have little in common, and which are not often found

together in a very high degree of vigour, but which nevertheless are equally necessary in the most sublime

departments of physics, were united as they have never been united before or since. There may have been

minds as happily constituted as his for the cultivation of pure mathematical science: there may have been

minds as happily constituted for the cultivation of science purely experimental; but in no other mind have the

demonstrative faculty and the inductive faculty coexisted in such supreme excellence and perfect harmony.

Perhaps in the days of Scotists and Thomists even his intellect might have run to waste, as many intellects ran

to waste which were inferior only to his. Happily the spirit of the age on which his lot was cast, gave the right

direction to his mind; and his mind reacted with tenfold force on the spirit of the age. In the year 1685 his

fame, though splendid, was only dawning; but his genius was in the meridian. His great work, that work

which effected a revolution in the most important provinces of natural philosophy, had been completed, but

was not yet published, and was just about to be submitted to the consideration of the Royal Society.

It is not very easy to explain why the nation which was so far before its neighbours in science should in art

have been far behind them. Yet such was the fact. It is true that in architecture, an art which is half a science,

an art in which none but a geometrician can excel, an art which has no standard of grace but what is directly

or indirectly dependent on utility, an art of which the creations derive a part, at least, of their majesty from

mere bulk, our country could boast of one truly great man, Christopher Wren; and the fire which laid London

in ruins had given him an opportunity, unprecedented in modern history, of displaying his powers. The

austere beauty of the Athenian portico, the gloomy sublimity of the Gothic arcade, he was like almost all his

contemporaries, incapable of emulating, and perhaps incapable of appreciating; but no man born on our side

of the Alps, has imitated with so much success the magnificence of the palacelike churches of Italy. Even the

superb Lewis has left to posterity no work which can bear a comparison with Saint Paul's. But at the close of

the reign of Charles the Second there was not a single English painter or statuary whose name is now

remembered. This sterility is somewhat mysterious; for painters and statuaries were by no means a despised

or an ill paid class. Their social position was at least as high as at present. Their gains, when compared with

the wealth of the nation and with the remuneration of other descriptions of intellectual labour, were even

larger than at present. Indeed the munificent patronage which was extended to artists drew them to our shores

in multitudes. Lely, who has preserved to us the rich curls, the full lips, and the languishing eyes of the frail

beauties celebrated by Hamilton, was a Westphalian. He had died in 1680, having long lived splendidly,

having received the honour of knighthood, and having accumulated a good estate out of the fruits of his skill.

His noble collection of drawings and pictures was, after his decease, exhibited by the royal permission in the

Banqueting House at Whitehall, and was sold by auction for the almost incredible sum of twentysix

thousand pounds, a sum which bore a greater proportion to the fortunes of the rich men of that day than a

hundred thousand pounds would bear to the fortunes of the rich men of our time.190 Lely was succeeded by

his countryman Godfrey Kneller, who was made first a knight and then a baronet, and who, after keeping up

a sumptuous establishment, and after losing much money by unlucky speculations, was still able to bequeath

a large fortune to his family. The two Vandeveldes, natives of Holland, had been tempted by English

liberality to settle here, and had produced for the King and his nobles some of the finest sea pieces in the

world. Another Dutchman, Simon Varelst, painted glorious sunflowers and tulips for prices such as had never

before been known. Verrio, a Neapolitan, covered ceilings and staircases with Gorgons and Muses, Nymphs

and Satyrs, Virtues and Vices, Gods quaffing nectar, and laurelled princes riding in triumph. The income

which he derived from his performances enabled him to keep one of the most expensive tables in England.

For his pieces at Windsor alone he received seven thousand pounds, a sum then sufficient to make a

gentleman of moderate wishes perfectly easy for life, a sum greatly exceeding all that Dryden, during a

literary life of forty years, obtained from the booksellers.191 Verrio's assistant and successor, Lewis

Laguerre, came from France. The two most celebrated sculptors of that day were also foreigners. Cibber,

whose pathetic emblems of Fury and Melancholy still adorn Bedlam, was a Dane. Gibbons, to whose graceful

fancy and delicate touch many of our palaces, colleges, and churches owe their finest decorations, was a

Dutchman. Even the designs for the coin were made by French artists. Indeed, it was not till the reign of

George the Second that our country could glory in a great painter; and George the Third was on the throne

It is time that this description of the England which Charles the Second governed should draw to a close. Yet

one subject of the highest moment still remains untouched. Nothing has yet been said of the great body of the

people, of those who held the ploughs, who tended the oxen, who toiled at the looms of Norwich, and squared

the Portland stone for Saint Paul's. Nor can very much be said. The most numerous class is precisely the class

respecting which we have the most meagre information. In those times philanthropists did not yet regard it as

a sacred duty, nor had demagogues yet found it a lucrative trade, to talk and write about the distress of the

labourer. History was too much occupied with courts and camps to spare a line for the hut of the peasant or

the garret of the mechanic. The press now often sends forth in a day a greater quantity of discussion and

declamation about the condition of the working man than was published during the twentyeight years which

elapsed between the Restoration and the Revolution. But it would be a great error to infer from the increase

The great criterion of the state of the common people is the amount of their wages; and as fourfifths of the

common people were, in the seventeenth century, employed in agriculture, it is especially important to

ascertain what were then the wages of agricultural industry. On this subject we have the means of arriving at

Sir William Petty, whose mere assertion carries great weight, informs us that a labourer was by no means in

the lowest state who received for a day's work fourpence with food, or eightpence without food. Four

shillings a week therefore were, according to Petty's calculation, fair agricultural wages.192

That this calculation was not remote from the truth we have abundant proof. About the beginning of the year

1685 the justices of Warwickshire, in the exercise of a power entrusted to them by an Act of Elizabeth, fixed,

at their quarter sessions, a scale of wages for the county, and notified that every employer who gave more

than the authorised sum, and every working man who received more, would be liable to punishment. The

wages of the common agricultural labourer, from March to September, were fixed at the precise amount

mentioned by Petty, namely four shillings a week without food. From September to March the wages were to

But in that age, as in ours, the earnings of the peasant were very different in different parts of the kingdom.

The wages of Warwickshire were probably about the average, and those of the counties near the Scottish

border below it: but there were more favoured districts. In the same year, 1685, a gentleman of Devonshire,

named Richard Dunning, published a small tract, in which he described the condition of the poor of that

county. That he understood his subject well it is impossible to doubt; for a few months later his work was

reprinted, and was, by the magistrates assembled in quarter sessions at Exeter, strongly recommended to the

attention of all parochial officers. According to him, the wages of the Devonshire peasant were, without food,

Still better was the condition of the labourer in the neighbourhood of Bury Saint Edmund's. The magistrates

of Suffolk met there in the spring of 1682 to fix a rate of wages, and resolved that, where the labourer was not

In 1661 the justices at Chelmsford had fixed the wages of the Essex labourer, who was not boarded, at six

shillings in winter and seven in summer. This seems to have been the highest remuneration given in the

kingdom for agricultural labour between the Restoration and the Revolution; and it is to be observed that, in

the year in which this order was made, the necessaries of life were immoderately dear. Wheat was at seventy

shillings the quarter, which would even now be considered as almost a famine price.196

These facts are in perfect accordance with another fact which seems to deserve consideration. It is evident

that, in a country where no man can be compelled to become a soldier, the ranks of an army cannot be filled

if the government offers much less than the wages of common rustic labour. At present the pay and beer

money of a private in a regiment of the line amount to seven shillings and sevenpence a week. This stipend,

coupled with the hope of a pension, does not attract the English youth in sufficient numbers; and it is found

necessary to supply the deficiency by enlisting largely from among the poorer population of Munster and

Connaught. The pay of the private foot soldier in 1685 was only four shillings and eightpence a week; yet it

is certain that the government in that year found no difficulty in obtaining many thousands of English recruits

at very short notice. The pay of the private foot soldier in the army of the Commonwealth had been seven

shillings a week, that is to say, as much as a corporal received under Charles the Second;197 and seven

shillings a week had been found sufficient to fill the ranks with men decidedly superior to the generality of

the people. On the whole, therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that, in the reign of Charles the Second,

the ordinary wages of the peasant did not exceed four shillings a week; but that, in some parts of the

kingdom, five shillings, six shillings, and, during the summer months, even seven shillings were paid. At

present a district where a labouring man earns only seven shillings a week is thought to be in a state shocking

to humanity. The average is very much higher; and in prosperous counties, the weekly wages of husbandmen

amount to twelve, fourteen, and even sixteen shillings. The remuneration of workmen employed in

manufactures has always been higher than that of the tillers of the soil. In the year 1680, a member of the

House of Commons remarked that the high wages paid in this country made it impossible for our textures to

maintain a competition with the produce of the Indian looms. An English mechanic, he said, instead of

slaving like a native of Bengal for a piece of copper, exacted a shilling a day.198 Other evidence is extant,

which proves that a shilling a day was the pay to which the English manufacturer then thought himself

entitled, but that he was often forced to work for less. The common people of that age were not in the habit of

meeting for public discussion, of haranguing, or of petitioning Parliament. No newspaper pleaded their cause.

It was in rude rhyme that their love and hatred, their exultation and their distress, found utterance. A great

part of their history is to be learned only from their ballads. One of the most remarkable of the popular lays

chaunted about the streets of Norwich and Leeds in the time of Charles the Second may still be read on the

original broadside. It is the vehement and bitter cry of labour against capital. It describes the good old times

when every artisan employed in the woollen manufacture lived as well as a farmer. But those times were past.

Sixpence a day was now all that could be earned by hard labour at the loom. If the poor complained that they

could not live on such a pittance, they were told that they were free to take it or leave it. For so miserable a

recompense were the producers of wealth compelled to toil rising early and lying down late, while the master

clothier, eating, sleeping, and idling, became rich by their exertions. A shilling a day, the poet declares, is

what the weaver would have if justice were done.199 We may therefore conclude that, in the generation

which preceded the Revolution, a workman employed in the great staple manufacture of England thought

It may here be noticed that the practice of setting children prematurely to work, a practice which the state, the

legitimate protector of those who cannot protect themselves, has, in our time, wisely and humanely

interdicted, prevailed in the seventeenth century to an extent which, when compared with the extent of the

manufacturing system, seems almost incredible. At Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, a little

creature of six years old was thought fit for labour. Several writers of that time, and among them some who

were considered as eminently benevolent, mention, with exultation, the fact that, in that single city, boys and

girls of very tender age created wealth exceeding what was necessary for their own subsistence by twelve

thousand pounds a year.200 The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we

find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the

evils are, with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence which discerns and the

When we pass from the weavers of cloth to a different class of artisans, our enquiries will still lead us to

nearly the same conclusions. During several generations, the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital have

kept a register of the wages paid to different classes of workmen who have been employed in the repairs of

the building. From this valuable record it appears that, in the course of a hundred and twenty years, the daily

earnings of the bricklayer have risen from half a crown to four and tenpence, those of the mason from half a

crown to five and threepence, those of the carpenter from half a crown to five and fivepence, and those of the

It seems clear, therefore, that the wages of labour, estimated in money, were, in 1685, not more than half of

what they now are; and there were few articles important to the working man of which the price was not, in

1685, more than half of what it now is. Beer was undoubtedly much cheaper in that age than at present. Meat

was also cheaper, but was still so dear that hundreds of thousands of families scarcely knew the taste of it.201

In the cost of wheat there has been very little change. The average price of the quarter, during the last twelve

years of Charles the Second, was fifty shillings. Bread, therefore, such as is now given to the inmates of a

workhouse, was then seldom seen, even on the trencher of a yeoman or of a shopkeeper. The great majority

The produce of tropical countries, the produce of the mines, the produce of machinery, was positively dearer

than at present. Among the commodities for which the labourer would have had to pay higher in 1685 than

his posterity now pay were sugar, salt, coals, candles, soap, shoes, stockings, and generally all articles of

clothing and all articles of bedding. It may be added, that the old coats and blankets would have been, not

It must be remembered that those labourers who were able to maintain themselves and their families by

means of wages were not the most necessitous members of the community. Beneath them lay a large class

which could not subsist without some aid from the parish. There can hardly be a more important test of the

condition of the common people than the ratio which this class bears to the whole society. At present, the

men, women, and children who receive relief appear from the official returns to be, in bad years, one tenth of

the inhabitants of England, and, in good years, one thirteenth. Gregory King estimated them in his time at

about a fourth; and this estimate, which all our respect for his authority will scarcely prevent us from calling

We are not quite without the means of forming an estimate for ourselves. The poor rate was undoubtedly the

heaviest tax borne by our ancestors in those days. It was computed, in the reign of Charles the Second, at near

seven hundred thousand pounds a year, much more than the produce either of the excise or of the customs,

and little less than half the entire revenue of the crown. The poor rate went on increasing rapidly, and appears

to have risen in a short time to between eight and nine hundred thousand a year, that is to say, to one sixth of

what it now is. The population was then less than a third of what it now is. The minimum of wages, estimated

in money, was half of what it now is; and we can therefore hardly suppose that the average allowance made

to a pauper can have been more than half of what it now is. It seems to follow that the proportion of the

English people which received parochial relief then must have been larger than the proportion which receives

relief now. It is good to speak on such questions with diffidence: but it has certainly never yet been proved

that pauperism was a less heavy burden or a less serious social evil during the last quarter of the seventeenth

In one respect it must be admitted that the progress of civilization has diminished the physical comforts of a

portion of the poorest class. It has already been mentioned that, before the Revolution, many thousands of

square miles, now enclosed and cultivated, were marsh, forest, and heath. Of this wild land much was, by

law, common, and much of what was not common by law was worth so little that the proprietors suffered it to

be common in fact. In such a tract, squatters and trespassers were tolerated to an extent now unknown. The

peasant who dwelt there could, at little or no charge, procure occasionally some palatable addition to his hard

fare, and provide himself with fuel for the winter. He kept a flock of geese on what is now an orchard rich

with apple blossoms. He snared wild fowl on the fell which has long since been drained and divided into

cornfields and turnip fields. He cut turf among the furze bushes on the moor which is now a meadow bright

with clover and renowned for butter and cheese. The progress of agriculture and the increase of population

necessarily deprived him of these privileges. But against this disadvantage a long list of advantages is to be

set off. Of the blessings which civilisation and philosophy bring with them a large proportion is common to

all ranks, and would, if withdrawn, be missed as painfully by the labourer as by the peer. The marketplace

which the rustic can now reach with his cart in an hour was, a hundred and sixty years ago, a day's journey

from him. The street which now affords to the artisan, during the whole night, a secure, a convenient, and a

brilliantly lighted walk was, a hundred and sixty years ago, so dark after sunset that he would not have been

able to see his hand, so ill paved that he would have run constant risk of breaking his neck, and so ill watched

that he would have been in imminent danger of being knocked down and plundered of his small earnings.

Every bricklayer who falls from a scaffold, every sweeper of a crossing who is run over by a carriage, may

now have his wounds dressed and his limbs set with a skill such as, a hundred and sixty years ago, all the

wealth of a great lord like Ormond, or of a merchant prince like Clayton, could not have purchased. Some

frightful diseases have been extirpated by science; and some have been banished by police. The term of

human life has been lengthened over the whole kingdom, and especially in the towns. The year 1685 was not

accounted sickly; yet in the year 1685 more than one in twentythree of the inhabitants of the capital

died.203 At present only one inhabitant of the capital in forty dies annually. The difference in salubrity

between the London of the nineteenth century and the London of the seventeenth century is very far greater

than the difference between London in an ordinary year and London in a year of cholera.

Still more important is the benefit which all orders of society, and especially the lower orders, have derived

from the mollifying influence of civilisation on the national character. The groundwork of that character has

indeed been the same through many generations, in the sense in which the groundwork of the character of an

individual may be said to be the same when he is a rude and thoughtless schoolboy and when he is a refined

and accomplished man. It is pleasing to reflect that the public mind of England has softened while it has

ripened, and that we have, in the course of ages, become, not only a wiser, but also a kinder people. There is

scarcely a page of the history or lighter literature of the seventeenth century which does not contain some

proof that our ancestors were less humane than their posterity. The discipline of workshops, of schools, of

private families, though not more efficient than at present, was infinitely harsher. Masters, well born and

bred, were in the habit of beating their servants. Pedagogues knew no way of imparting knowledge but by

beating their pupils. Husbands, of decent station, were not ashamed to beat their wives. The implacability of

hostile factions was such as we can scarcely conceive. Whigs were disposed to murmur because Stafford was

suffered to die without seeing his bowels burned before his face. Tories reviled and insulted Russell as his

coach passed from the Tower to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields.204 As little mercy was shown by the

populace to sufferers of a humbler rank. If an offender was put into the pillory, it was well if he escaped with

life from the shower of brickbats and paving stones.205 If he was tied to the cart's tail, the crowd pressed

round him, imploring the hangman to give it the fellow well, and make him howl.206 Gentlemen arranged

parties of pleasure to Bridewell on court days for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp

there whipped.207 A man pressed to death for refusing to plead, a woman burned for coining, excited less

sympathy than is now felt for a galled horse or an overdriven ox. Fights compared with which a boxing match

is a refined and humane spectacle were among the favourite diversions of a large part of the town. Multitudes

assembled to see gladiators hack each other to pieces with deadly weapons, and shouted with delight when

one of the combatants lost a finger or an eye. The prisons were hells on earth, seminaries of every crime and

of every disease. At the assizes the lean and yellow culprits brought with them from their cells to the dock an

atmosphere of stench and pestilence which sometimes avenged them signally on bench, bar, and jury. But on

all this misery society looked with profound indifference. Nowhere could be found that sensitive and restless

compassion which has, in our time, extended a powerful protection to the factory child, to the Hindoo widow,

to the negro slave, which pries into the stores and watercasks of every emigrant ship, which winces at every

lash laid on the back of a drunken soldier, which will not suffer the thief in the hulks to be ill fed or

overworked, and which has repeatedly endeavoured to save the life even of the murderer. It is true that

compassion ought, like all other feelings, to be under the government of reason, and has, for want of such

government, produced some ridiculous and some deplorable effects. But the more we study the annals of the

past, the more shall we rejoice that we live in a merciful age, in an age in which cruelty is abhorred, and in

which pain, even when deserved, is inflicted reluctantly and from a sense of duty. Every class doubtless has

gained largely by this great moral change: but the class which has gained most is the poorest, the most

The general effect of the evidence which has been submitted to the reader seems hardly to admit of doubt.

Yet, in spite of evidence, many will still image to themselves the England of the Stuarts as a more pleasant

country than the England in which we live. It may at first sight seem strange that society, while constantly

moving forward with eager speed, should be constantly looking backward with tender regret. But these two

propensities, inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be resolved into the same principle. Both spring

from our impatience of the state in which we actually are. That impatience, while it stimulates us to surpass

preceding generations, disposes us to overrate their happiness. It is, in some sense, unreasonable and

ungrateful in us to be constantly discontented with a condition which is constantly improving. But, in truth,

there is constant improvement precisely because there is constant discontent. If we were perfectly satisfied

with the present, we should cease to contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to the future. And it is

natural that, being dissatisfied with the present, we should form a too favourable estimate of the past.

In truth we are under a deception similar to that which misleads the traveller in the Arabian desert. Beneath

the caravan all is dry and bare: but far in advance, and far in the rear, is the semblance of refreshing waters.

The pilgrims hasten forward and find nothing but sand where an hour before they had seen a lake. They turn

their eyes and see a lake where, an hour before, they were toiling through sand. A similar illusion seems to

haunt nations through every stage of the long progress from poverty and barbarism to the highest degrees of

opulence and civilisation. But if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shall find it recede before us

into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It is now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when

noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman, when

farmers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot in a modern

workhouse, when to have a clean shirt once a week was a privilege reserved for the higher class of gentry,

when men died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes of our towns,

and when men died faster in the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana. We too shall, in

our turn, be outstripped, and in our turn be envied. It may well be, in the twentieth century, that the peasant of

Dorsetshire may think himself miserably paid with twenty shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich

may receive ten shillings a day; that labouring men may be as little used to dine without meat as they now are

to eat rye bread; that sanitary police and medical discoveries may have added several more years to the

average length of human life; that numerous comforts and luxuries which are now unknown, or confined to a

few, may be within the reach of every diligent and thrifty working man. And yet it may then be the mode to

assert that the increase of wealth and the progress of science have benefited the few at the expense of the

many, and to talk of the reign of Queen Victoria as the time when England was truly merry England, when all

classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and

THE death of King Charles the Second took the nation by surprise. His frame was naturally strong, and did

not appear to have suffered from excess. He had always been mindful of his health even in his pleasures; and

his habits were such as promise a long life and a robust old age. Indolent as he was on all occasions which

required tension of the mind, he was active and persevering in bodily exercise. He had, when young, been

renowned as a tennis player,208 and was, even in the decline of life, an indefatigable walker. His ordinary

pace was such that those who were admitted to the honour of his society found it difficult to keep up with

him. He rose early, and generally passed three or four hours a day in the open air. He might be seen, before

the dew was off the grass in St. James's Park, striding among the trees, playing with his spaniels, and flinging

corn to his ducks; and these exhibitions endeared him to the common people, who always love to See the

At length, towards the close of the year 1684, he was prevented, by a slight attack of what was supposed to be

gout, from rambling as usual. He now spent his mornings in his laboratory, where he amused himself with

experiments on the properties of mercury. His temper seemed to have suffered from confinement. He had no

apparent cause for disquiet. His kingdom was tranquil: he was not in pressing want of money: his power was

greater than it had ever been: the party which had long thwarted him had been beaten down; but the

cheerfulness which had supported him against adverse fortune had vanished in this season of prosperity. A

trifle now sufficed to depress those elastic spirits which had borne up against defeat, exile, and penury. His

irritation frequently showed itself by looks and words such as could hardly have been expected from a man so

eminently distinguished by good humour and good breeding. It was not supposed however that his

His palace had seldom presented a gayer or a more scandalous appearance than on the evening of Sunday the

first of February 1685.211 Some grave persons who had gone thither, after the fashion of that age, to pay

their duty to their sovereign, and who had expected that, on such a day, his court would wear a decent aspect,

were struck with astonishment and horror. The great gallery of Whitehall, an admirable relic of the

magnificence of the Tudors, was crowded with revellers and gamblers. The king sate there chatting and

toying with three women, whose charms were the boast, and whose vices were the disgrace, of three nations.

Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, was there, no longer young, but still retaining some traces of that

superb and voluptuous loveliness which twenty years before overcame the hearts of all men. There too was

the Duchess of Portsmouth, whose soft and infantine features were lighted up with the vivacity of France.

Hortensia Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin, and niece of the great Cardinal, completed the group. She had been

early removed from her native Italy to the court where her uncle was supreme. His power and her own

attractions had drawn a crowd of illustrious suitors round her. Charles himself, during his exile, had sought

her hand in vain. No gift of nature or of fortune seemed to be wanting to her. Her face was beautiful with the

rich beauty of the South, her understanding quick, her manners graceful, her rank exalted, her possessions

immense; but her ungovernable passions had turned all these blessings into curses. She had found the misery

of an ill assorted marriage intolerable, had fled from her husband, had abandoned her vast wealth, and, after

having astonished Rome and Piedmont by her adventures, had fixed her abode in England. Her house was the

favourite resort of men of wit and pleasure, who, for the sake of her smiles and her table, endured her

frequent fits of insolence and ill humour. Rochester and Godolphin sometimes forgot the cares of state in her

company. Barillon and Saint Evremond found in her drawing room consolation for their long banishment

from Paris. The learning of Vossius, the wit of Waller, were daily employed to flatter and amuse her. But her

diseased mind required stronger stimulants, and sought them in gallantry, in basset, and in usquebaugh.212

While Charles. flirted with his three sultanas, Hortensia's French page, a handsome boy, whose vocal

performances were the delight of Whitehall, and were rewarded by numerous presents of rich clothes, ponies,

and guineas, warbled some amorous verses.213 A party of twenty courtiers was seated at cards round a large

table on which gold was heaped in mountains.214 Even then the King had complained that he did not feel

quite well. He had no appetite for his supper: his rest that night was broken; but on the following morning he

To that morning the contending factions in his council had, during some days, looked forward with anxiety.

The struggle between Halifax and Rochester seemed to be approaching a decisive crisis. Halifax, not content

with having already driven his rival from the Board of Treasury, had undertaken to prove him guilty of such

dishonesty or neglect in the conduct of the finances as ought to be punished by dismission from the public

service. It was even whispered that the Lord President would probably be sent to the Tower. The King had

promised to enquire into the matter. The second of February had been fixed for the investigation; and several

officers of the revenue had been ordered to attend with their books on that day.215 But a great turn of fortune

Scarcely had Charles risen from his bed when his attendants perceived that his utterance was indistinct, and

that his thoughts seemed to be wandering. Several men of rank had, as usual, assembled to see their sovereign

shaved and dressed. He made an effort to converse with them in his usual gay style; but his ghastly look

surprised and alarmed them. Soon his face grew black; his eyes turned in his head; he uttered a cry,

staggered, and fell into the arms of one of his lords. A physician who had charge of the royal retorts and

crucibles happened to be present. He had no lances; but he opened a vein with a penknife. The blood flowed

He was laid on his bed, where, during a short time, the Duchess of Portsmouth hung over him with the

familiarity of a wife. But the alarm had been given. The Queen and the Duchess of York were hastening to

the room. The favourite concubine was forced to retire to her own apartments. Those apartments had been

thrice pulled down and thrice rebuilt by her lover to gratify her caprice. The very furniture of the chimney

was massy silver. Several fine paintings, which properly belonged to the Queen, had been transferred to the

dwelling of the mistress. The sideboards were piled with richly wrought plate. In the niches stood cabinets,

the masterpieces of Japanese art. On the hangings, fresh from the looms of Paris, were depicted, in tints

which no English tapestry could rival, birds of gorgeous plumage, landscapes, hunting matches, the lordly

terrace of Saint Germains, the statues and fountains of Versailles.216 In the midst of this splendour,

purchased by guilt and shame, the unhappy woman gave herself up to an agony of grief, which, to do her

And now the gates of Whitehall, which ordinarily stood open to all comers, were closed. But persons whose

faces were known were still permitted to enter. The antechambers and galleries were soon filled to

overflowing; and even the sick room was crowded with peers, privy councillors, and foreign ministers. All

the medical men of note in London were summoned. So high did political animosities run that the presence of

some Whig physicians was regarded as an extraordinary circumstance.217 One Roman Catholic, whose skill

was then widely renowned, Doctor Thomas Short, was in attendance. Several of the prescriptions have been

preserved. One of them is signed by fourteen Doctors. The patient was bled largely. Hot iron was applied to

his head. A loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced into his mouth. He recovered his

The Queen was for a time assiduous in her attendance. The Duke of York scarcely left his brother's bedside.

The Primate and four other bishops were then in London. They remained at Whitehall all day, and took it by

turns to sit up at night in the King's room. The news of his illness filled the capital with sorrow and dismay.

For his easy temper and affable manners had won the affection of a large part of the nation; and those who

most disliked him preferred his unprincipled levity to the stern and earnest bigotry of his brother.

On the morning of Thursday the fifth of February, the London Gazette announced that His Majesty was going

on well, and was thought by the physicians to be out of danger. The bells of all the churches rang merrily; and

preparations for bonfires were made in the streets. But in the evening it was known that a relapse had taken

place, and that the medical attendants had given up all hope. The public mind was greatly disturbed; but there

was no disposition to tumult. The Duke of York, who had already taken on himself to give orders, ascertained

that the City was perfectly quiet, and that he might without difficulty be proclaimed as soon as his brother

The King was in great pain, and complained that he felt as if a fire was burning within him. Yet he bore up

against his sufferings with a fortitude which did not seem to belong to his soft and luxurious nature. The sight

of his misery affected his wife so much that she fainted, and was carried senseless to her chamber. The

prelates who were in waiting had from the first exhorted him to prepare for his end. They now thought it their

duty to address him in a still more urgent manner. William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, an honest

and pious, though narrowminded, man, used great freedom. "It is time,' he said, "to speak out; for, Sir, you

are about to appear before a Judge who is no respecter of persons." The King answered not a word.

Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, then tried his powers of persuasion. He was a man of parts and

learning, of quick sensibility and stainless virtue. His elaborate works have long been forgotten; but his

morning and evening hymns are still repeated daily in thousands of dwellings. Though, like most of his order,

zealous for monarchy, he was no sycophant. Before he became a Bishop, he had maintained the honour of his

gown by refusing, when the court was at Winchester, to let Eleanor Gwynn lodge in the house which he

occupied there as a prebendary.218 The King had sense enough to respect so manly a spirit. Of all the

prelates he liked Ken the best. It was to no purpose, however, that the good Bishop now put forth all his

eloquence. His solemn and pathetic exhortation awed and melted the bystanders to such a degree that some

among them believed him to be filled with the same spirit which, in the old time, had, by the mouths of

Nathan and Elias, called sinful princes to repentance. Charles however was unmoved. He made no objection

indeed when the service for the visitation of the sick was read. In reply to the pressing questions of the

divines, he said that he was sorry for what he had done amiss; and he suffered the absolution to be

pronounced over him according to the forms of the Church of England: but, when he was urged to declare

that he died in the communion of that Church, he seemed not to hear what was said; and nothing could induce

him to take the Eucharist from the hands of the Bishops. A table with bread and wine was brought to his

bedside, but in vain. Sometimes he said that there was no hurry, and sometimes that he was too weak.

Many attributed this apathy to contempt for divine things, and many to the stupor which often precedes death.

But there were in the palace a few persons who knew better. Charles had never been a sincere member of the

Established Church. His mind had long oscillated between Hobbism and Popery. When his health was good

and his spirits high he was a scoffer. In his few serious moments he was a Roman Catholic. The Duke of

York was aware of this, but was entirely occupied with the care of his own interests. He had ordered the

outports to be closed. He had posted detachments of the Guards in different parts of the city. He had also

procured the feeble signature of the dying King to an instrument by which some duties, granted only till the

demise of the Crown, were let to farm for a term of three years. These things occupied the attention of James

to such a degree that, though, on ordinary occasions, he was indiscreetly and unseasonably eager to bring

over proselytes to his Church, he never reflected that his brother was in danger of dying without the last

sacraments. This neglect was the more extraordinary because the Duchess of York had, at the request of the

Queen, suggested, on the morning on which the King was taken ill, the propriety of procuring spiritual

assistance. For such assistance Charles was at last indebted to an agency very different from that of his pious

wife and sisterinlaw. A life of frivolty and vice had not extinguished in the Duchess of Portsmouth all

sentiments of religion, or all that kindness which is the glory of her sex. The French ambassador Barillon,

who had come to the palace to enquire after the King, paid her a visit. He found her in an agony of sorrow.

She took him into a secret room, and poured out her whole heart to him. "I have," she said, "a thing of great

moment to tell you. If it were known, my head would be in danger. The King is really and truly a Catholic;

but he will die without being reconciled to the Church. His bedchamber is full of Protestant clergymen. I

cannot enter it without giving scandal. The Duke is thinking only of himself. Speak to him. Remind him that

there is a soul at stake. He is master now. He can clear the room. Go this instant, or it will be too late."

Barillon hastened to the bedchamber, took the Duke aside, and delivered the message of the mistress. The

conscience of James smote him. He started as if roused from sleep, and declared that nothing should prevent

him from discharging the sacred duty which had been too long delayed. Several schemes were discussed and

rejected. At last the Duke commanded the crowd to stand aloof, went to the bed, stooped down, and

whispered something which none of the spectators could hear, but which they supposed to be some question

about affairs of state. Charles answered in an audible voice, "Yes, yes, with all my heart." None of the

bystanders, except the French Ambassador, guessed that the King was declaring his wish to be admitted into

"Shall I bring a priest?" said the Duke. "Do, brother," replied the Sick man. "For God's sake do, and lose no

time. But no; you will get into trouble." "If it costs me my life," said the Duke, "I will fetch a priest."

To find a priest, however, for such a purpose, at a moment's notice, was not easy. For, as the law then stood,

the person who admitted a proselyte into the Roman Catholic Church was guilty of a capital crime. The

Count of Castel Melhor, a Portuguese nobleman, who, driven by political troubles from his native land, had

been hospitably received at the English court, undertook to procure a confessor. He had recourse to his

countrymen who belonged to the Queen's household; but he found that none of her chaplains knew English or

French enough to shrive the King. The Duke and Barillon were about to send to the Venetian Minister for a

clergyman when they heard that a Benedictine monk, named John Huddleston, happened to be at Whitehall.

This man had, with great risk to himself, saved the King's life after the battle of Worcester, and had, on that

account, been, ever since the Restoration, a privileged person. In the sharpest proclamations which had been

put forth against Popish priests, when false witnesses had inflamed the nation to fury, Huddleston had been

excepted by name.219 He readily consented to put his life a second time in peril for his prince; but there was

still a difficulty. The honest monk was so illiterate that he did not know what he ought to say on an occasion

of such importance. He however obtained some hints, through the intervention of Castel Melhor, from a

Portuguese ecclesiastic, and, thus instructed, was brought up the back stairs by Chiffinch, a confidential

servant, who, if the satires of that age are to be credited, had often introduced visitors of a very different

description by the same entrance. The Duke then, in the King's name, commanded all who were present to

quit the room, except Lewis Duras, Earl of Feversham, and John Granville, Earl of Bath. Both these Lords

professed the Protestant religion; but James conceived that he could count on their fidelity. Feversham, a

Frenchman of noble birth, and nephew of the great Turenne, held high rank in the English army, and was

The Duke's orders were obeyed; and even the physicians withdrew. The back door was then opened; and

Father Huddleston entered. A cloak had been thrown over his sacred vestments; and his shaven crown was

concealed by a flowing wig. "Sir," said the Duke, "this good man once saved your life. He now comes to save

your soul." Charles faintly answered, "He is welcome." Huddleston went through his part better than had

been expected. He knelt by the bed, listened to the confession, pronounced the absolution, and administered

extreme unction. He asked if the King wished to receive the Lord's supper. "Surely," said Charles, "if I am

not unworthy." The host was brought in. Charles feebly strove to rise and kneel before it. The priest made

him lie still, and assured him that God would accept the humiliation of the soul, and would not require the

humiliation of the body. The King found so much difficulty in swallowing the bread that it was necessary to

open the door and procure a glass of water. This rite ended, the monk held up a crucifix before the penitent,

charged him to fix his last thoughts on the sufferings of the Redeemer, and withdrew. The whole ceremony

had occupied about three quarters of an hour; and, during that time, the courtiers who filled the outer room

had communicated their suspicions to each other by whispers and significant glances. The door was at length

It was now late in the evening. The King seemed much relieved by what had passed. His natural children

were brought to his bedside, the Dukes of Grafton, Southampton, and Northumberland, sons of the Duchess

of Cleveland, the Duke of Saint Albans, son of Eleanor Gwynn, and the Duke of Richmond, son of the

Duchess of Portsmouth. Charles blessed them all, but spoke with peculiar tenderness to Richmond. One face

which should have been there was wanting. The eldest and best loved child was an exile and a wanderer. His

During the night Charles earnestly recommended the Duchess of Portsmouth and her boy to the care of

James; "And do not," he goodnaturedly added, "let poor Nelly starve." The Queen sent excuses for her

absence by Halifax. She said that she was too much disordered to resume her post by the couch, and implored

pardon for any offence which she might unwittingly have given. "She ask my pardon, poor woman!" cried

The morning light began to peep through the windows of Whitehall; and Charles desired the attendants to

pull aside the curtains, that he might have one more look at the day. He remarked that it was time to wind up

a clock which stood near his bed. These little circumstances were long remembered because they proved

beyond dispute that, when he declared himself a Roman Catholic, he was in full possession of his faculties.

He apologised to those who had stood round him all night for the trouble which he had caused. He had been,

he said. a most unconscionable time dying; but he hoped that they would excuse it. This was the last glimpse

of the exquisite urbanity, so often found potent to charm away the resentment of a justly incensed nation.

Soon after dawn the speech of the dying man failed. Before ten his senses were gone. Great numbers had

repaired to the churches at the hour of morning service. When the prayer for the King was read, loud groans

and sobs showed how deeply his people felt for him. At noon on Friday, the sixth of February, he passed

At that time the common people throughout Europe, and nowhere more than in England, were in the habit of

attributing the death of princes, especially when the prince was popular and the death unexpected, to the

foulest and darkest kind of assassination. Thus James the First had been accused of poisoning Prince Henry.

Thus Charles the First had been accused of poisoning James the First. Thus when, in the time of the

Commonwealth, the Princess Elizabeth died at Carisbrook, it was loudly asserted that Cromwell had stooped

to the senseless and dastardly wickedness of mixing noxious drugs with the food of a young girl whom he

had no conceivable motive to injure.221 A few years later, the rapid decomposition of Cromwell's own

corpse was ascribed by many to a deadly potion administered in his medicine. The death of Charles the

Second could scarcely fail to occasion similar rumours. The public ear had been repeatedly abused by stories

of Popish plots against his life. There was, therefore, in many minds, a strong predisposition to suspicion; and

there were some unlucky circumstances which, to minds so predisposed, might seem to indicate that a crime

had been perpetrated. The fourteen Doctors who deliberated on the King's case contradicted each other and

themselves. Some of them thought that his fit was epileptic, and that he should be suffered to have his doze

out. The majority pronounced him apoplectic, and tortured him during some hours like an Indian at a stake.

Then it was determined to call his complaint a fever, and to administer doses of bark. One physician,

however, protested against this course, and assured the Queen that his brethren would kill the King among

them. Nothing better than dissension and vacillation could be expected from such a multitude of advisers. But

many of the vulgar not unnaturally concluded, from the perplexity of the great masters of the healing art, that

the malady had some extraordinary origin. There is reason to believe that a horrible suspicion did actually

cross the mind of Short, who, though skilful in his profession, seems to have been a nervous and fanciful

man, and whose perceptions were probably confused by dread of the odious imputations to which he, as a

Roman Catholic, was peculiarly exposed. We cannot, therefore, wonder that wild stories without number

were repeated and believed by the common people. His Majesty's tongue had swelled to the size of a neat's

tongue. A cake of deleterious powder had been found in his brain. There were blue spots on his breast, There

were black spots on his shoulder. Something had been, put in his snuffbox. Something had been put into his

broth. Something had been put into his favourite dish of eggs and ambergrease. The Duchess of Portsmouth

had poisoned him in a cup of chocolate. The Queen had poisoned him in a jar of dried pears. Such tales ought

to be preserved; for they furnish us with a measure of the intelligence and virtue of the generation which

eagerly devoured them. That no rumour of the same kind has ever, in the present age, found credit among us,

even when lives on which great interest depended have been terminated by unforeseen attacks of disease, is

to be attributed partly to the progress of medical and chemical science, but partly also, it may be hoped, to the

When all was over, James retired from the bedside to his closet, where, during a quarter of an hour, he

remained alone. Meanwhile the Privy Councillors who were in the palace assembled. The new King came

forth, and took his place at the head of the board. He commenced his administration, according to usage, by a

speech to the Council. He expressed his regret for the loss which he had just sustained, and he promised to

imitate the singular lenity which had distinguished the late reign. He was aware, he said, that he had been

accused of a fondness for arbitrary power. But that was not the only falsehood which had been told of him.

He was resolved to maintain the established government both in Church and State. The Church of England he

knew to be eminently loyal. It should therefore always be his care to support and defend her. The laws of

England, he also knew, were sufficient to make him as great a King as he could wish to be. He would not

relinquish his own rights; but he would respect the rights of others. He had formerly risked his life in defense

of his country; and he would still go as far as any man in support of her just liberties.

This speech was not, like modern speeches on similar occasions, carefully prepared by the advisers of the

sovereign. It was the extemporaneous expression of the new King's feelings at a moment of great excitement.

The members of the Council broke forth into clamours of delight and gratitude. The Lord President,

Rochester, in the name of his brethren, expressed a hope that His Majesty's most welcome declaration would

be made public. The Solicitor General, Heneage Finch, offered to act as clerk. He was a zealous churchman,

and, as such, was naturally desirous that there should be some permanent record of the gracious promises

which had just been uttered. "Those promises," he said, "have made so deep an impression on me that I can

repeat them word for word." He soon produced his report. James read it, approved of it, and ordered it to be

published. At a later period he said that he had taken this step without due consideration, that his

unpremeditated expressions touching the Church of England were too strong, and that Finch had, with a

The King had been exhausted by long watching and by many violent emotions. He now retired to rest. The

Privy Councillors, having respectfully accompanied him to his bedchamber, returned to their seats, and issued

orders for the ceremony of proclamation. The Guards were under arms; the heralds appeared in their

gorgeous coats; and the pageant proceeded without any obstruction. Casks of wine were broken up in the

streets, and all who passed were invited to drink to the health of the new sovereign. But, though an occasional

shout was raised, the people were not in a joyous mood. Tears were seen in many eyes; and it was remarked

that there was scarcely a housemaid in London who had not contrived to procure some fragment of black

The funeral called forth much censure. It would, indeed, hardly have been accounted worthy of a noble and

opulent subject. The Tories gently blamed the new King's parsimony: the Whigs sneered at his want of

natural affection; and the fiery Covenanters of Scotland exultingly proclaimed that the curse denounced of

old against wicked princes had been signally fulfilled, and that the departed tyrant had been buried with the

burial of an ass.225 Yet James commenced his administration with a large measure of public good will. His

speech to the Council appeared in print, and the impression which it produced was highly favourable to him.

This, then, was the prince whom a faction had driven into exile and had tried to rob of his birthright, on the

ground that he was a deadly enemy to the religion and laws of England. He had triumphed: he was on the

throne; and his first act was to declare that he would defend the Church, and would strictly respect the rights

of his people. The estimate which all parties had formed of his character, added weight to every word that fell

from him. The Whigs called him haughty, implacable, obstinate, regardless of public opinion. The Tories,

while they extolled his princely virtues, had often lamented his neglect of the arts which conciliate popularity.

Satire itself had never represented him as a man likely to court public favour by professing what he did not

feel, and by promising what he had no intention of performing. On the Sunday which followed his accession,

his speech was quoted in many pulpits. "We have now for our Church," cried one loyal preacher, "the word

of a King, and of a King who was never worse than his word." This pointed sentence was fast circulated

through town and country, and was soon the watchword of the whole Tory party.226

The great offices of state had become vacant by the demise of the crown and it was necessary for James to

determine how they should be filled. Few of the members of the late cabinet had any reason to expect his

favour. Sunderland, who was Secretary of State, and Godolphin, who was First Lord of the Treasury, had

supported the Exclusion Bill. Halifax, who held the Privy Seal, had opposed that bill with unrivalled powers

of argument and eloquence. But Halifax was the mortal enemy of despotism and of Popery. He saw with

dread the progress of the French arms on the Continent and the influence of French gold in the counsels of

England. Had his advice been followed, the laws would have been strictly observed: clemency would have

been extended to the vanquished Whigs: the Parliament would have been convoked in due season: an attempt

would have been made to reconcile our domestic factions; and the principles of the Triple Alliance would

again have guided our foreign policy. He had therefore incurred the bitter animosity of James. The Lord

Keeper Guildford could hardly be said to belong to either of the parties into which the court was divided. He

could by no means be called a friend of liberty; and yet he had so great a reverence for the letter of the law

that he was not a serviceable tool of arbitrary power. He was accordingly designated by the vehement Tories

as a Trimmer, and was to James an object of aversion with which contempt was largely mingled. Ormond,

who was Lord Steward of the Household and Viceroy of Ireland, then resided at Dublin. His claims on the

royal gratitude were superior to those of any other subject. He had fought bravely for Charles the First: he

had shared the exile of Charles the Second; and, since the Restoration, he had, in spite of many provocations,

kept his loyalty unstained. Though he had been disgraced during the predominance of the Cabal, he had never

gone into factious opposition, and had, in the days of the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill, been foremost

among the supporters of the throne. He was now old, and had been recently tried by the most cruel of all

calamities. He had followed to the grave a son who should have been his own chief mourner, the gallant

Ossory. The eminent services, the venerable age, and the domestic misfortunes of Ormond made him an

object of general interest to the nation. The Cavaliers regarded him as, both by right of seniority and by right

of merit, their head; and the Whigs knew that, faithful as he had always been to the cause of monarchy, he

was no friend either to Popery or to arbitrary power. But, high as he stood in the public estimation, he had

little favor to expect from his new master. James, indeed, while still a subject, had urged his brother to make

a complete change in the Irish administration. Charles had assented; and it had been arranged that, in a few

Rochester was the only member of the cabinet who stood high in the favour of the King. The general

expectation was that he would be immediately placed at the head of affairs, and that all the other great

officers of the state would be changed. This expectation proved to be well founded in part only. Rochester

was declared Lord Treasurer, and thus became prime minister. Neither a Lord High Admiral nor a Board of

Admiralty was appointed. The new King, who loved the details of naval business, and would have made a

respectable clerk in a dockyard at Chatham, determined to be his own minister of marine. Under him the

management of that important department was confided to Samuel Pepys, whose library and diary have kept

his name fresh to our time. No servant of the late sovereign was publicly disgraced. Sunderland exerted so

much art and address, employed so many intercessors, and was in possession of so many secrets, that he was

suffered to retain his seals. Godolphin's obsequiousness, industry, experience and taciturnity, could ill be

spared. As he was no longer wanted at the Treasury, he was made Chamberlain to the Queen. With these

three Lords the King took counsel on all important questions. As to Halifax, Ormond, and Guildford, he

Halifax was told that he must give up the Privy seal and accept the Presidency of the Council. He submitted

with extreme reluctance. For, though the President of the Council had always taken precedence of the Lord

Privy Seal, the Lord Privy Seal was, in that age a much more important officer than the Lord President.

Rochester had not forgotten the jest which had been made a few months before on his own removal from the

Treasury, and enjoyed in his turn the pleasure of kicking his rival up stairs. The Privy Seal was delivered to

To Barillon James expressed the strongest dislike of Halifax. "I know him well, I never can trust him. He

shall have no share in the management of public business. As to the place which I have given him, it will just

serve to show how little influence he has." But to Halifax it was thought convenient to hold a very different

language. "All the past is forgotten," said the King, "except the service which you did me in the debate on the

Exclusion Bill." This speech has often been cited to prove that James was not so vindictive as he had been

called by his enemies. It seems rather to prove that he by no means deserved the praises which have been

Ormond was politely informed that his services were no longer needed in Ireland, and was invited to repair to

Whitehall, and to perform the functions of Lord Steward. He dutifully submitted, but did not affect to deny

that the new arrangement wounded his feelings deeply. On the eve of his departure he gave a magnificent

banquet at Kilmainham Hospital, then just completed, to the officers of the garrison of Dublin. After dinner

he rose, filled a goblet to the brim with wine, and, holding it up, asked whether he had spilt one drop. "No,

gentlemen; whatever the courtiers may say, I am not yet sunk into dotage. My hand does not fail me yet: and

my hand is not steadier than my heart. To the health of King James!" Such was the last farewell of Ormond to

Ireland. He left the administration in the hands of Lords Justices, and repaired to London, where he was

received with unusual marks of public respect. Many persons of rank went forth to meet him on the road. A

long train of eguipages followed him into Saint James's Square, where his mansion stood; and the Square was

The Great Seal was left in Guildford's custody; but a marked indignity was at the same time offered to him. It

was determined that another lawyer of more vigour and audacity should be called to assist in the

administration. The person selected was Sir George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. The

depravity of this man has passed into a proverb. Both the great English parties have attacked his memory with

emulous violence: for the Whigs considered him as their most barbarous enemy; and the Tories found it

convenient to throw on him the blame of all the crimes which had sullied their triumph. A diligent and candid

enquiry will show that some frightful stories which have been told concerning him are false or exaggerated.

Yet the dispassionate historian will be able to make very little deduction from the vast mass of infamy with

He was a man of quick and vigorous parts, but constitutionally prone to insolence and to the angry passions.

When just emerging from boyhood he had risen into practice at the Old Bailey bar, a bar where advocates

have always used a license of tongue unknown in Westminster Hall. Here, during many years his chief

business was to examine and crossexamine the most hardened miscreants of a great capital. Daily conflicts

with prostitutes and thieves called out and exercised his powers so effectually that he became the most

consummate bully ever known in his profession. Tenderness for others and respect for himself were feelings

alike unknown to him. He acquired a boundless command of the rhetoric in which the vulgar express hatred

and contempt. The profusion of maledictions and vituperative epithets which composed his vocabulary could

hardly have been rivalled in the fishmarket or the beargarden. His countenance and his voice must always

have been unamiable. But these natural advantages,for such he seems to have thought them,he had

improved to such a degree that there were few who, in his paroxysms of rage, could see or hear him without

emotion. Impudence and ferocity sate upon his brow. The glare of his eyes had a fascination for the unhappy

victim on whom they were fixed. Yet his brow and his eye were less terrible than the savage lines of his

mouth. His yell of fury, as was said by one who had often heard it, sounded like the thunder of the judgment

day. These qualifications he carried, while still a young man, from the bar to the bench. He early became

Common Serjeant, and then Recorder of London. As a judge at the City sessions he exhibited the same

propensities which afterwards, in a higher post, gained for him an unenviable immortality. Already might be

remarked in him the most odious vice which is incident to human nature, a delight in misery merely as

misery. There was a fiendish exultation in the way in which he pronounced sentence on offenders. Their

weeping and imploring seemed to titillate him voluptuously; and he loved to scare them into fits by dilating

with luxuriant amplification on all the details of what they were to suffer. Thus, when he had an opportunity

of ordering an unlucky adventuress to be whipped at the cart's tail, "Hangman," he would exclaim, "I charge

you to pay particular attention to this lady! Scourge her soundly man! Scourge her till the blood runs down! It

is Christmas, a cold time for Madam to strip in! See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly!"230 He was

hardly less facetious when he passed judgment on poor Lodowick Muggleton, the drunken tailor who fancied

himself a prophet. "Impudent rogue!" roared Jeffreys, "thou shalt have an easy, easy, easy punishment!" One

part of this easy punishment was the pillory, in which the wretched fanatic was almost killed with

By this time the heart of Jeffreys had been hardened to that temper which tyrants require in their worst

implements. He had hitherto looked for professional advancement to the corporation of London. He had

therefore professed himself a Roundhead, and had always appeared to be in a higher state of exhilaration

when he explained to Popish priests that they were to be cut down alive, and were to see their own bowels

burned, than when he passed ordinary sentences of death. But, as soon as he had got all that the city could

give, he made haste to sell his forehead of brass and his tongue of venom to the Court. Chiffinch, who was

accustomed to act as broker in infamous contracts of more than one kind, lent his aid. He had conducted

many amorous and many political intrigues; but he assuredly never rendered a more scandalous service to his

masters than when he introduced Jeffreys to Whitehall. The renegade soon found a patron in the obdurate and

revengeful James, but was always regarded with scorn and disgust by Charles, whose faults, great as they

were, had no affinity with insolence and cruelty. "That man," said the King, "has no learning, no sense, no

manners, and more impudence than ten carted streetwalkers."232 Work was to be done, however, which

could be trusted to no man who reverenced law or was sensible of shame; and thus Jeffreys, at an age at

which a barrister thinks himself fortunate if he is employed to conduct an important cause, was made Chief

His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the qualities of a great judge. His legal knowledge,

indeed, was merely such as he had picked up in practice of no very high kind. But he had one of those

happily constituted intellects which, across labyrinths of sophistry, and through masses of immaterial facts,

go straight to the true point. Of his intellect, however, he seldom had the full use. Even in civil causes his

malevolent and despotic temper perpetually disordered his judgment. To enter his court was to enter the den

of a wild beast, which none could tame, and which was as likely to be roused to rage by caresses as by

attacks. He frequently poured forth on plaintiffs and defendants, barristers and attorneys, witnesses and

jurymen, torrents of frantic abuse, intermixed with oaths and curses. His looks and tones had inspired terror

when he was merely a young advocate struggling into practice. Now that he was at the head of the most

formidable tribunal in the realm, there were few indeed who did not tremble before him. Even when he was

sober, his violence was sufficiently frightful. But in general his reason was overclouded and his evil passions

stimulated by the fumes of intoxication. His evenings were ordinarily given to revelry. People who saw him

only over his bottle would have supposed him to be a man gross indeed, sottish, and addicted to low company

and low merriment, but social and goodhumoured. He was constantly surrounded on such occasions by

buffoons selected, for the most part, from among the vilest pettifoggers who practiced before him. These men

bantered and abused each other for his entertainment. He joined in their ribald talk, sang catches with them,

and, when his head grew hot, hugged and kissed them in an ecstasy of drunken fondness. But though wine at

first seemed to soften his heart, the effect a few hours later was very different. He often came to the judgment

seat, having kept the court waiting long, and yet having but half slept off his debauch, his cheeks on fire, his

eyes staring like those of a maniac. When he was in this state, his boon companions of the preceding night, if

they were wise, kept out of his way: for the recollection of the familiarity to which he had admitted them

inflamed his malignity; and he was sure to take every opportunity of overwhelming them with execration and

invective. Not the least odious of his many odious peculiarities was the pleasure which he took in publicly

browbeating and mortifying those whom, in his fits of maudlin tenderness, he had encouraged to presume on

The services which the government had expected from him were performed, not merely without flinching,

but eagerly and triumphantly. His first exploit was the judicial murder of Algernon Sidney. What followed

was in perfect harmony with this beginning. Respectable Tories lamented the disgrace which the barbarity

and indecency of so great a functionary brought upon the administration of justice. But the excesses which

filled such men with horror were titles to the esteem of James. Jeffreys, therefore, very soon after the death of

Charles, obtained a seat in the cabinet and a peerage. This last honour was a signal mark of royal approbation.

For, since the judicial system of the realm had been remodelled in the thirteenth century, no Chief Justice had

Guildford now found himself superseded in all his political functions, and restricted to his business as a judge

in equity. At Council he was treated by Jeffreys with marked incivility. The whole legal patronage was in the

hands of the Chief Justice; and it was well known by the bar that the surest way to propitiate the Chief Justice

James had not been many hours King when a dispute arose between the two heads of the law. The customs

had been settled on Charles for life only, and could not therefore be legally exacted by the new sovereign.

Some weeks must elapse before a House of Commons could be chosen. If, in the meantime, the duties were

suspended, the revenue would suffer; the regular course of trade would be interrupted; the consumer would

derive no benefit, and the only gainers would be those fortunate speculators whose cargoes might happen to

arrive during the interval between the demise of the crown and the meeting of the Parliament. The Treasury

was besieged by merchants whose warehouses were filled with goods on which duty had been paid, and who

were in grievous apprehension of being undersold and ruined. Impartial men must admit that this was one of

those cases in which a government may be justified in deviating from the strictly constitutional course. But

when it is necessary to deviate from the strictly constitutional course, the deviation clearly ought to be no

greater than the necessity requires. Guildford felt this, and gave advice which did him honour. He proposed

that the duties should be levied, but should be kept in the Exchequer apart from other sums till the Parliament

should meet. In this way the King, while violating the letter of the laws, would show that he wished to

conform to their spirit, Jeffreys gave very different counsel. He advised James to put forth an edict declaring

it to be His Majesty's will and pleasure that the customs should continue to be paid. This advice was well

suited to the King's temper. The judicious proposition of the Lord Keeper was rejected as worthy only of a

Whig, or of what was still worse, a Trimmer. A proclamation, such as the Chief Justice had suggested,

appeared. Some people had expected that a violent outbreak of public indignation would be the consequence;

but they were deceived. The spirit of opposition had not yet revived; and the court might safely venture to

take steps which, five years before, would have produced a rebellion. In the City of London, lately so

The proclamation, which announced that the customs would still be levied, announced also that a Parliament

would shortly meet. It was not without many misgivings that James had determined to call the Estates of his

realm together. The moment was, indeed. most auspicious for a general election. Never since the accession of

the House of Stuart had the constituent bodies been so favourably disposed towards the Court. But the new

sovereign's mind was haunted by an apprehension not to be mentioned even at this distance of time, without

shame and indignation. He was afraid that by summoning his Parliament he might incur the displeasure of the

To the King of France it mattered little which of the two English factions triumphed at the elections: for all

the Parliaments which had met since the Restoration, whatever might have been their temper as to domestic

politics, had been jealous of the growing power of the House of Bourbon. On this subject there was little

difference between the Whigs and the sturdy country gentlemen who formed the main strength of the Tory

party. Lewis had therefore spared neither bribes nor menaces to prevent Charles from convoking the Houses;

and James, who had from the first been in the secret of his brother's foreign politics, had, in becoming King

Rochester, Godolphin, and Sunderland, who now formed the interior cabinet, were perfectly aware that their

late master had been in the habit of receiving money from the court of Versailles. They were consulted by

James as to the expediency of convoking the legislature. They acknowledged the importance of keeping

Lewis in good humour: but it seemed to them that the calling of a Parliament was not a matter of choice.

Patient as the nation appeared to be, there were limits to its patience. The principle, that the money of the

subject could not be lawfully taken by the King without the assent of the Commons, was firmly rooted in the

public mind; and though, on all extraordinary emergency even Whigs might be willing to pay, during a few

weeks, duties not imposed by statute, it was certain that even Tories would become refractory if such

irregular taxation should continue longer than the special circumstances which alone justified it. The Houses

then must meet; and since it was so, the sooner they were summoned the better. Even the short delay which

would be occasioned by a reference to Versailles might produce irreparable mischief. Discontent and

suspicion would spread fast through society. Halifax would complain that the fundamental principles of the

constitution were violated. The Lord Keeper, like a cowardly pedantic special pleader as he was, would take

the same side. What might have been done with a good grace would at last be done with a bad grace. Those

very ministers whom His Majesty most wished to lower in the public estimation would gain popularity at his

expense. The ill temper of the nation might seriously affect the result of the elections. These arguments were

unanswerable. The King therefore notified to the country his intention of holding a Parliament. But he was

painfully anxious to exculpate himself from the guilt of having acted undutifully and disrespectfully towards

France. He led Barillon into a private room, and there apologised for having dared to take so important a step

without the previous sanction of Lewis. "Assure your master," said James, "of my gratitude and attachment. I

know that without his protection I can do nothing. I know what troubles my brother brought on himself by

not adhering steadily to France. I will take good care not to let the Houses meddle with foreign affairs. If I see

in them any disposition to make mischief, I will send them about their business. Explain this to my good

brother. I hope that he will not take it amiss that I have acted without consulting him. He has a right to be

consulted; and it is my wish to consult him about everything. But in this case the delay even of a week might

These ignominious excuses were, on the following morning, repeated by Rochester. Barillon received them

civilly. Rochester, grown bolder, proceeded to ask for money. "It will be well laid out," he said: "your master

cannot employ his revenues better. Represent to him strongly how important it is that the King of England

should be dependent, not on his own people, but on the friendship of France alone."235

Barillon hastened to communicate to Lewis the wishes of the English government; but Lewis had already

anticipated them. His first act, after he was apprised of the death of Charles, was to collect bills of exchange

on England to the amount of five hundred thousand livres, a sum equivalent to about thirtyseven thousand

five hundred pounds sterling Such bills were not then to be easily procured in Paris at day's notice. In a few

hours, however, the purchase was effected, and a courier started for London.236 As soon as Barillon received

the remittance, he flew to Whitehall, and communicated the welcome news. James was not ashamed to shed,

or pretend to shed, tears of delight and gratitude. "Nobody but your King," he said, "does such kind, such

noble things. I never can be grateful enough. Assure him that my attachment will last to the end of my days."

Rochester, Sunderland, and Godolphin came, one after another, to embrace the ambassador, and to whisper to

But though James and his three advisers were pleased with the promptitude which Lewis had shown, they

were by no means satisfied with the amount of the donation. As they were afraid, however, that they might

give offence by importunate mendicancy, they merely hinted their wishes. They declared that they had no

intention of haggling with so generous a benefactor as the French King, and that they were willing to trust

entirely to his munificence. They, at the same time, attempted to propitiate him by a large sacrifice of national

honour. It was well known that one chief end of his politics was to add the Belgian provinces to his

dominions. England was bound by a treaty which had been concluded with Spain when Danby was Lord

Treasurer, to resist any attempt which France might make on those provinces. The three ministers informed

Barillon that their master considered that treaty as no longer obligatory. It had been made, they said, by

Charles: it might, perhaps, have been binding on him; but his brother did not think himself bound by it. The

most Christian King might, therefore, without any fear of opposition from England, proceed to annex Brabant

It was at the same time resolved that an extraordinary embassy should be sent to assure Lewis of the gratitude

and affection of James. For this mission was selected a man who did not as yet occupy a very eminent

position, but whose renown, strangely made up of infamy and glory, filled at a later period the whole

Soon after the Restoration, in the gay and dissolute times which have been celebrated by the lively pen of

Hamilton, James, young and ardent in the pursuit of pleasure, had been attracted to Arabella Churchill, one of

the maids of honour who waited on his first wife. The young lady was plain: but the taste of James was not

nice: and she became his avowed mistress. She was the daughter of a poor Cavalier knight who haunted

Whitehall, and made himself ridiculous by publishing a dull and affected folio, long forgotten, in praise of

monarchy and monarchs. The necessities of the Churchills were pressing: their loyalty was ardent: and their

only feeling about Arabella's seduction seems to have been joyful surprise that so homely a girl should have

Her interest was indeed of great use to her relations: but none of them was so fortunate as her eldest brother

John, a fine youth, who carried a pair of colours in the foot guards. He rose fast in the court and in the army,

and was early distinguished as a man of fashion and of pleasure. His stature was commanding, his face

handsome, his address singularly winning, yet of such dignity that the most impertinent fops never ventured

to take any liberty with him; his temper, even in the most vexatious and irritating circumstances, always

under perfect command. His education had been so much neglected that he could not spell the most common

words of his own language: but his acute and vigorous understanding amply supplied the place of book

learning. He was not talkative: but when he was forced to speak in public, his natural eloquence moved the

envy of practiced rhetoricians.239 His courage was singularly cool and imperturbable. During many years of

anxiety and peril, he never, in any emergency, lost even for a moment, the perfect use of his admirable

In his twentythird year he was sent with his regiment to join the French forces, then engaged in operations

against Holland. His serene intrepidity distinguished him among thousands of brave soldiers. His professional

skill commanded the respect of veteran officers. He was publicly thanked at the head of the army, and

received many marks of esteem and confidence from Turenne, who was then at the height of military glory.

Unhappily the splendid qualities of John Churchill were mingled with alloy of the most sordid kind. Some

propensities, which in youth are singularly ungraceful, began very early to show themselves in him. He was

thrifty in his very vices, and levied ample contributions on ladies enriched by the spoils of more liberal

lovers. He was, during a short time, the object of the violent but fickle fondness of the Duchess of Cleveland.

On one occasion he was caught with her by the King, and was forced to leap out of the window. She

rewarded this hazardous feat of gallantry with a present of five thousand pounds. With this sum the prudent

young hero instantly bought an annuity of five hundred a year, well secured on landed property.240 Already

his private drawer contained a hoard of broad pieces which, fifty years later, when he was a Duke, a Prince of

After the close of the war he was attached to the household of the Duke of York, accompanied his patron to

the Low Countries and to Edinburgh, and was rewarded for his services with a Scotch peerage and with the

command of the only regiment of dragoons which was then on the English establishment.242 His wife had a

Lord Churchill was now sent as ambassador extraordinary to Versailles. He had it in charge to express the

warm gratitude of the English government for the money which had been so generously bestowed. It had

been originally intended that he should at the same time ask Lewis for a much larger sum; but, on full

consideration, it was apprehended that such indelicate greediness might disgust the benefactor whose

spontaneous liberality had been so signally displayed. Churchill was therefore directed to confine himself to

But James and his ministers, even while protesting that they did not mean to be importunate, contrived to

hint, very intelligibly, what they wished and expected. In the French ambassador they had a dexterous, a

zealous, and perhaps, not a disinterested intercessor. Lewis made some difficulties, probably with the design

of enhancing the value of his gifts. In a very few weeks, however, Barillon received from Versailles fifteen

hundred thousand livres more. This sum, equivalent to about a hundred and twelve thousand pounds sterling,

he was instructed to dole out cautiously. He was authorised to furnish the English government with thirty

thousand pounds, for the purpose of corrupting members of the New House of Commons. The rest he was

directed to keep in reserve for some extraordinary emergency, such as a dissolution or an insurrection.244

The turpitude of these transactions is universally acknowledged: but their real nature seems to be often

misunderstood: for though the foreign policy of the last two Kings of the House of Stuart has never, since the

correspondence of Barillon was exposed to the public eye, found an apologist among us, there is still a party

which labours to excuse their domestic policy. Yet it is certain that between their domestic policy and their

foreign policy there was a necessary and indissoluble connection. If they had upheld, during a single year, the

honour of the country abroad, they would have been compelled to change the whole system of their

administration at home. To praise them for refusing to govern in conformity with the sense of Parliament, and

yet to blame them for submitting to the dictation of Lewis, is inconsistent. For they had only one choice, to be

James, to do him justice, would gladly have found out a third way: but there was none. He became the slave

of France: but it would be incorrect to represent him as a contented slave. He had spirit enough to be at times

angry with himself for submitting to such thraldom, and impatient to break loose from it; and this disposition

His accession had excited hopes and fears in every continental court: and the commencement of his

administration was watched by strangers with interest scarcely less deep than that which was felt by his own

subjects. One government alone wished that the troubles which had, during three generations, distracted

England, might be eternal. All other governments, whether republican or monarchical, whether Protestant or

The nature of the long contest between the Stuarts and their Parliaments was indeed very imperfectly

apprehended by foreign statesmen: but no statesman could fail to perceive the effect which that contest had

produced on the balance of power in Europe. In ordinary circumstances, the sympathies of the courts of

Vienna and Madrid would doubtless have been with a prince struggling against subjects, and especially with

a Roman Catholic prince struggling against heretical subjects: but all such sympathies were now

overpowered by a stronger feeling. The fear and hatred inspired by the greatness, the injustice, and the

arrogance of the French King were at the height. His neighbours might well doubt whether it were more

dangerous to be at war or at peace with him. For in peace he continued to plunder and to outrage them; and

they had tried the chances of war against him in vain. In this perplexity they looked with intense anxiety

towards England. Would she act on the principles of the Triple Alliance or on the principles of the treaty of

Dover? On that issue depended the fate of all her neighbours. With her help Lewis might yet be withstood:

but no help could be expected from her till she was at unity with herself. Before the strife between the throne

and the Parliament began, she had been a power of the first rank: on the day on which that strife terminated

she became a power of the first rank again: but while the dispute remained undecided, she was condemned to

inaction and to vassalage. She had been great under the Plantagenets and Tudors: she was again great under

the princes who reigned after the Revolution: but, under the Kings of the House of Stuart, she was a blank in

the map of Europe. She had lost one class of energies, and had not yet acquired another. That species of

force, which, in the fourteenth century had enabled her to humble France and Spain, had ceased to exist. That

species of force, which, in the eighteenth century, humbled France and Spain once more, had not yet been

called into action. The government was no longer a limited monarchy after the fashion of the middle ages. It

had not yet become a limited monarchy after the modern fashion. With the vices of two different systems it

had the strength of neither. The elements of our polity, instead of combining in harmony, counteracted and

neutralised each other All was transition, conflict, and disorder. The chief business of the sovereign was to

infringe the privileges of the legislature. The chief business of the legislature was to encroach on the

prerogatives of the sovereign. The King readily accepted foreign aid, which relieved him from the misery of

being dependent on a mutinous Parliament. The Parliament refused to the King the means of supporting the

national honor abroad, from an apprehension, too well founded, that those means might be employed in order

to establish despotism at home. The effect of these jealousies was that our country, with all her vast

resources, was of as little weight in Christendom as the duchy of Savoy or the duchy of Lorraine, and

France was deeply interested in prolonging this state of things.245 All other powers were deeply interested in

bringing it to a close. The general wish of Europe was that James would govern in conformity with law and

with public opinion. From the Escurial itself came letters, expressing an earnest hope that the new King of

England would be on good terms with his Parliament and his people.246 From the Vatican itself came

cautions against immoderate zeal for the Roman Catholic faith. Benedict Odescalchi, who filled the papal

chair under the name of Innocent the Eleventh, felt, in his character of temporal sovereign, all those

apprehensions with which other princes watched the progress of the French power. He had also grounds of

uneasiness which were peculiar to himself. It was a happy circumstance for the Protestant religion that, at the

moment when the last Roman Catholic King of England mounted the throne, the Roman Catholic Church

was torn by dissension, and threatened with a new schism. A quarrel similar to that which had raged in the

eleventh century between the Emperors and the Supreme Pontiffs had arisen between Lewis and Innocent.

Lewis, zealous even to bigotry for the doctrines of the Church of Rome, but tenacious of his regal authority,

accused the Pope of encroaching on the secular rights of the French Crown, and was in turn accused by the

Pope of encroaching on the spiritual power of the keys. The King, haughty as he was, encountered a spirit

even more determined than his own. Innocent was, in all private relations, the meekest and gentlest of men:

but when he spoke officially from the chair of St. Peter, he spoke in the tones of Gregory the Seventh and of

Sixtus the Fifth. The dispute became serious. Agents of the King were excommunicated. Adherents of the

Pope were banished. The King made the champions of his authority Bishops. The Pope refused them

institution. They took possession of the Episcopal palaces and revenues: but they were incompetent to

perform the Episcopal functions. Before the struggle terminated, there were in France thirty prelates who

Had any prince then living, except Lewis, been engaged in such a dispute with the Vatican, he would have

had all Protestant governments on his side. But the fear and resentment which the ambition and insolence of

the French King had inspired were such that whoever had the courage manfully to oppose him was sure of

public sympathy. Even Lutherans and Calvinists, who had always detested the Pope, could not refrain from

wishing him success against a tyrant who aimed at universal monarchy. It was thus that, in the present

century, many who regarded Pius the Seventh as Antichrist were well pleased to see Antichrist confront the

The resentment which Innocent felt towards France disposed him to take a mild and liberal view of the affairs

of England. The return of the English people to the fold of which he was the shepherd would undoubtedly

have rejoiced his soul. But he was too wise a man to believe that a nation so bold and stubborn, could be

brought back to the Church of Rome by the violent and unconstitutional exercise of royal authority. It was

not difficult to foresee that, if James attempted to promote the interests of his religion by illegal and

unpopular means, the attempt would fail; the hatred with which the heretical islanders regarded the true faith

would become fiercer and stronger than ever; and an indissoluble association would be created in their minds

between Protestantism and civil freedom, between Popery and arbitrary power. In the meantime the King

would be an object of aversion and suspicion to his people. England would still be, as she had been under

James the First, under Charles the First, and under Charles the Second, a power of the third rank; and France

would domineer unchecked beyond the Alps and the Rhine. On the other hand, it was probable that James, by

acting with prudence and moderation, by strictly observing the laws and by exerting himself to win the

confidence of his Parliament, might be able to obtain, for the professors of his religion, a large measure of

relief. Penal statutes would go first. Statutes imposing civil incapacities would soon follow. In the meantime,

the English King and the English nation united might head the European coalition, and might oppose an

Innocent was confirmed in his judgment by the principal Englishmen who resided at his court. Of these the

most illustrious was Philip Howard, sprung from the noblest houses of Britain, grandson, on one side, of an

Earl of Arundel, on the other, of a Duke of Lennox. Philip had long been a member of the sacred college: he

was commonly designated as the Cardinal of England; and he was the chief counsellor of the Holy See in

matters relating to his country. He had been driven into exile by the outcry of Protestant bigots; and a

member of his family, the unfortunate Stafford, had fallen a victim to their rage. But neither the Cardinal's

own wrongs, nor those of his house, had so heated his mind as to make him a rash adviser. Every letter,

therefore, which went from the Vatican to Whitehall, recommended patience, moderation, and respect for the

In the mind of James there was a great conflict. We should do him injustice if we supposed that a state of

vassalage was agreeable to his temper. He loved authority and business. He had a high sense of his own

personal dignity. Nay, he was not altogether destitute of a sentiment which bore some affinity to patriotism. It

galled his soul to think that the kingdom which he ruled was of far less account in the world than many states

which possessed smaller natural advantages; and he listened eagerly to foreign ministers when they urged

him to assert the dignity of his rank, to place himself at the head of a great confederacy, to become the

protector of injured nations, and to tame the pride of that power which held the Continent in awe. Such

exhortations made his heart swell with emotions unknown to his careless and effeminate brother. But those

emotions were soon subdued by a stronger feeling. A vigorous foreign policy necessarily implied a

conciliatory domestic policy. It was impossible at once to confront the might of France and to trample on the

liberties of England. The executive government could undertake nothing great without the support of the

Commons, and could obtain their support only by acting in conformity with their opinion. Thus James found

that the two things which he most desired could not be enjoyed together. His second wish was to be feared

and respected abroad. But his first wish was to be absolute master at home. Between the incompatible objects

on which his heart was set he, for a time, went irresolutely to and fro. The conflict in his own breast gave to

his public acts a strange appearance of indecision and insincerity. Those who, without the clue, attempted to

explore the maze of his politics were unable to understand how the same man could be, in the same week, so

haughty and so mean. Even Lewis was perplexed by the vagaries of an ally who passed, in a few hours, from

homage to defiance, and from defiance to homage. Yet, now that the whole conduct of James is before us,

At the moment of his accession he was in doubt whether the kingdom would peaceably submit to his

authority. The Exclusionists, lately so powerful, might rise in arms against him. He might be in great need of

French money and French troops. He was therefore, during some days, content to be a sycophant and a

mendicant. He humbly apologised for daring to call his Parliament together without the consent of the French

government. He begged hard for a French subsidy. He wept with joy over the French bills of exchange. He

sent to Versailles a special embassy charged with assurances of his gratitude, attachment, and submission.

But scarcely had the embassy departed when his feelings underwent a change. He had been everywhere

proclaimed without one riot, without one seditions outcry. From all corners of the island he received

intelligence that his subjects were tranquil and obedient. His spirit rose. The degrading relation in which he

stood to a foreign power seemed intolerable. He became proud, punctilious, boastful, quarrelsome. He held

such high language about the dignity of his crown and the balance of power that his whole court fully

expected a complete revolution in the foreign politics of the realm. He commanded Churchill to send home a

minute report of the ceremonial of Versailles, in order that the honours with which the English embassy was

received there might be repaid, and not more than repaid, to the representative of France at Whitehall. The

news of this change was received with delight at Madrid, Vienna, and the Hague.249 Lewis was at first

merely diverted. "My good ally talks big," he said; "but he is as fond of my pistoles as ever his brother was."

Soon, however, the altered demeanour of James, and the hopes with which that demeanour inspired both the

branches of the House of Austria, began to call for more serious notice. A remarkable letter is still extant, in

which the French King intimated a strong suspicion that he had been duped, and that the very money which

By this time England had recovered from the sadness and anxiety caused by the death of the goodnatured

Charles. The Tories were loud in professions of attachment to their new master. The hatred of the Whigs was

kept down by fear. That great mass which is not steadily Whig or Tory, but which inclines alternately to

Whiggism and to Toryism, was still on the Tory side. The reaction which had followed the dissolution of the

The King early put the loyalty of his Protestant friends to the proof. While he was a subject, he had been in

the habit of hearing mass with closed doors in a small oratory which had been fitted up for his wife. He now

ordered the doors to be thrown open, in order that all who came to pay their duty to him might see the

ceremony. When the host was elevated there was a strange confusion in the antechamber. The Roman

Catholics fell on their knees: the Protestants hurried out of the room. Soon a new pulpit was erected in the

palace; and, during Lent, a series of sermons was preached there by Popish divines, to the great discomposure

A more serious innovation followed. Passion week came; and the King determined to hear mass with the

same pomp with which his predecessors had been surrounded when they repaired to the temples of the

established religion. He announced his intention to the three members of the interior cabinet, and requested

them to attend him. Sunderland, to whom all religions were the same, readily consented. Godolphin, as

Chamberlain of the Queen, had already been in the habit of giving her his hand when she repaired to her

oratory, and felt no scruple about bowing himself officially in the house of Rimmon. But Rochester was

greatly disturbed. His influence in the country arose chiefly from the opinion entertained by the clergy and by

the Tory gentry, that he was a zealous and uncompromising friend of the Church. His orthodoxy had been

considered as fully atoning for faults which would otherwise have made him the most unpopular man in the

kingdom, for boundless arrogance, for extreme violence of temper, and for manners almost brutal.252 He

feared that, by complying with the royal wishes, he should greatly lower himself in the estimation of his

party. After some altercation he obtained permission to pass the holidays out of town. All the other great civil

dignitaries were ordered to be at their posts on Easter Sunday. The rites of the Church of Rome were once

more, after an interval of a hundred and twentyseven years, performed at Westminster with regal splendour.

The Guards were drawn out. The Knights of the Garter wore their collars. The Duke of Somerset, second in

rank among the temporal nobles of the realm, carried the sword of state. A long train of great lords

accompanied the King to his seat. But it was remarked that Ormond and Halifax remained in the

antechamber. A few years before they had gallantly defended the cause of James against some of those who

now pressed past them. Ormond had borne no share in the slaughter of Roman Catholics. Halifax had

courageously pronounced Stafford not guilty. As the timeservers who had pretended to shudder at the thought

of a Popish king, and who had shed without pity the innocent blood of a Popish peer, now elbowed each other

to get near a Popish altar, the accomplished Trimmer might, with some justice, indulge his solitary pride in

Within a week after this ceremony James made a far greater sacrifice of his own religious prejudices than he

had yet called on any of his Protestant subjects to make. He was crowned on the twentythird of April, the

feast of the patron saint of the realm. The Abbey and the Hall were splendidly decorated. The presence of the

Queen and of the peeresses gave to the solemnity a charm which had been wanting to the magnificent

inauguration of the late King. Yet those who remembered that inauguration pronounced that there was a great

falling off. The ancient usage was that, before a coronation, the sovereign, with all his heralds, judges,

councillors, lords, and great dignitaries, should ride in state from the Tower of Westminster. Of these

cavalcades the last and the most glorious was that which passed through the capital while the feelings excited

by the Restoration were still in full vigour. Arches of triumph overhung the road. All Cornhill, Cheapside,

Saint Paul's Church Yard, Fleet Street, and the Strand, were lined with scaffolding. The whole city had thus

been admitted to gaze on royalty in the most splendid and solemn form that royalty could wear. James

ordered an estimate to be made of the cost of such a procession, and found that it would amount to about half

as much as he proposed to expend in covering his wife with trinkets. He accordingly determined to be profuse

where he ought to have been frugal, and niggardly where he might pardonably have been profuse. More than

a hundred thousand pounds were laid out in dressing the Queen, and the procession from the Tower was

omitted. The folly of this course is obvious. If pageantry be of any use in politics, it is of use as a means of

striking the imagination of the multitude. It is surely the height of absurdity to shut out the populace from a

show of which the main object is to make an impression on the populace. James would have shown a more

judicious munificence and a more judicious parsimony, if he had traversed London from east to west with the

accustomed pomp, and had ordered the robes of his wife to be somewhat less thickly set with pearls and

diamonds. His example was, however, long followed by his successors; and sums, which, well employed,

would have afforded exquisite gratification to a large part of the nation, were squandered on an exhibition to

which only three or four thousand privileged persons were admitted. At length the old practice was partially

revived. On the day of the coronation of Queen Victoria there was a procession in which many deficiencies

might be noted, but which was seen with interest and delight by half a million of her subjects, and which

undoubtedly gave far greater pleasure, and called forth far greater enthusiasm, than the more costly display

James had ordered Sancroft to abridge the ritual. The reason publicly assigned was that the day was too short

for all that was to be done. But whoever examines the changes which were made will see that the real object

was to remove some things highly offensive to the religious feelings of a zealous Roman Catholic. The

Communion Service was not read. The ceremony of presenting the sovereign with a richly bound copy of the

English Bible, and of exhorting him to prize above all earthly treasures a volume which he had been taught to

regard as adulterated with false doctrine, was omitted. What remained, however, after all this curtailment,

might well have raised scruples in the mind of a man who sincerely believed the Church of England to be a

heretical society, within the pale of which salvation was not to be found. The King made an oblation on the

altar. He appeared to join in the petitions of the Litany which was chaunted by the Bishops. He received from

those false prophets the unction typical of a divine influence, and knelt with the semblance of devotion, while

they called down upon him that Holy Spirit of which they were, in his estimation, the malignant and obdurate

foes. Such are the inconsistencies of human nature that this man, who, from a fanatical zeal for his religion,

threw away three kingdoms, yet chose to commit what was little short of an act of apostasy, rather than

forego the childish pleasure of being invested with the gewgaws symbolical of kingly power.254

Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, preached. He was one of those writers who still affected the obsolete style of

Archbishop Williams and Bishop Andrews. The sermon was made up of quaint conceits, such as seventy

years earlier might have been admired, but such as moved the scorn of a generation accustomed to the purer

eloquence of Sprat, of South, and of Tillotson. King Solomon was King James. Adonijah was Monmouth.

Joab was a Rye House conspirator; Shimei, a Whig libeller; Abiathar, an honest but misguided old Cavalier.

One phrase in the Book of Chronicles was construed to mean that the King was above the Parliament; and

another was cited to prove that he alone ought to command the militia. Towards the close of the discourse the

orator very timidly alluded to the new and embarrassing position in which the Church stood with reference to

the sovereign, and reminded his hearers that the Emperor Constantius Chlorus, though not himself a

Christian, had held in honour those Christians who remained true to their religion, and had treated with scorn

those who sought to earn his favour by apostasy. The service in the Abbey was followed by a stately banquet

in the Hall, the banquet by brilliant fireworks, and the fireworks by much bad poetry.255

This may be fixed upon as the moment at which the enthusiasm of the Tory party reached the zenith. Ever

since the accession of the new King, addresses had been pouring in which expressed profound veneration for

his person and office, and bitter detestation of the vanquished Whigs. The magistrates of Middlesex thanked

God for having confounded the designs of those regicides and exclusionists who, not content with having

murdered one blessed monarch, were bent on destroying the foundations of monarchy. The city of Gloucester

execrated the bloodthirsty villains who had tried to deprive His Majesty of his just inheritance. The burgesses

of Wigan assured their sovereign that they would defend him against all plotting Achitophels and rebellions

Absaloms. The grand jury of Suffolk expressed a hope that the Parliament would proscribe all the

exclusionists. Many corporations pledged themselves never to return to the House of Commons any person

who had voted for taking away the birthright of James. Even the capital was profoundly obsequious. The

lawyers and the traders vied with each other in servility. Inns of Court and Inns of Chancery sent up fervent

professions of attachment and submission. All the great commercial societies, the East India Company, the

African Company, the Turkey Company, the Muscovy Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Maryland

Merchants, the Jamaica Merchants, the Merchant Adventurers, declared that they most cheerfully complied

with the royal edict which required them still to pay custom. Bristol, the second city of the island, echoed the

voice of London. But nowhere was the spirit of loyalty stronger than in the two Universities. Oxford declared

that she would never swerve from those religious principles which bound her to obey the King without any

restrictions or limitations. Cambridge condemned, in severe terms, the violence and treachery of those

turbulent men who had maliciously endeavoured to turn the stream of succession out of the ancient

Such addresses as these filled, during a considerable time, every number of the London Gazette. But it was

not only by addressing that the Tories showed their zeal. The writs for the new Parliament had gone forth,

and the country was agitated by the tumult of a general election. No election had ever taken place under

circumstances so favourable to the Court. Hundreds of thousands whom the Popish plot had scared into

Whiggism had been scared back by the Rye House plot into Toryism. In the counties the government could

depend on an overwhelming majority of the gentlemen of three hundred a year and upwards, and on the

clergy almost to a man. Those boroughs which had once been the citadels of Whiggism had recently been

deprived of their charters by legal sentence, or had prevented the sentence by voluntary surrender. They had

now been reconstituted in such a manner that they were certain to return members devoted to the crown.

Where the townsmen could not be trusted, the freedom had been bestowed on the neighbouring squires. In

some of the small western corporations, the constituent bodies were in great part composed of Captains and

Lieutenants of the Guards. The returning officers were almost everywhere in the interest of the court. In every

shire the Lord Lieutenant and his deputies formed a powerful, active, and vigilant committee, for the purpose

of cajoling and intimidating the freeholders. The people were solemnly warned from thousands of pulpits not

to vote for any Whig candidate, as they should answer it to Him who had ordained the powers that be, and

who had pronounced rebellion a sin not less deadly than witchcraft. All these advantages the predominant

party not only used to the utmost, but abused in so shameless a manner that grave and reflecting men, who

had been true to the monarchy in peril, and who bore no love to republicans and schismatics, stood aghast,

Yet the Whigs, though suffering the just punishment of their errors, though defeated, disheartened, and

disorganized, did not yield without an effort. They were still numerous among the traders and artisans of the

towns, and among the yeomanry and peasantry of the open country. In some districts, in Dorsetshire for

example, and in Somersetshire, they were the great majority of the population. In the remodelled boroughs

they could do nothing: but, in every county where they had a chance, they struggled desperately. In

Bedfordshire, which had lately been represented by the virtuous and unfortunate Russell, they were victorious

on the show of hands, but were beaten at the poll.258 In Essex they polled thirteen hundred votes to eighteen

hundred.259 At the election for Northamptonshire the common people were so violent in their hostility to the

court candidate that a body of troops was drawn out in the marketplace of the county town, and was ordered

to load with ball.260 The history of the contest for Buckinghamshire is still more remarkable. The whig

candidate, Thomas Wharton, eldest son of Philip Lord Wharton, was a man distinguished alike by dexterity

and by audacity, and destined to play a conspicuous, though not always a respectable, part in the politics of

several reigns. He had been one of those members of the House of Commons who had carried up the

Exclusion Bill to the bar of the Lords. The court was therefore bent on throwing him out by fair or foul

means. The Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys himself came down into Buckinghamshire, for the purpose of

assisting a gentleman named Hacket, who stood on the high Tory interest. A stratagem was devised which, it

was thought, could not fail of success. It was given out that the polling would take place at Ailesbury; and

Wharton, whose skill in all the arts of electioneering was unrivalled, made his arrangements on that

supposition. At a moment's warning the Sheriff adjourned the poll to Newport Pagnell. Wharton and his

friends hurried thither, and found that Hacket, who was in the secret, had already secured every inn and

lodging. The Whig freeholders were compelled to tie their horses to the hedges, and to sleep under the open

sky in the meadows which surround the little town. It was with the greatest difficulty that refreshments could

be procured at such short notice for so large a number of men and beasts, though Wharton, who was utterly

regardless of money when his ambition and party spirit were roused, disbursed fifteen hundred pounds in one

day, an immense outlay for those times. Injustice seems, however, to have animated the courage of the

stouthearted yeomen of Bucks, the sons of the constituents of John Hampden. Not only was Wharton at the

head of the poll; but he was able to spare his second votes to a man of moderate opinions, and to throw out

In Cheshire the contest lasted six days. The Whigs polled about seventeen hundred votes, the Tories about

two thousand. The common people were vehement on the Whig side, raised the cry of "Down with the

Bishops," insulted the clergy in the streets of Chester, knocked down one gentleman of the Tory party, broke

the windows and beat the constables. The militia was called out to quell the riot, and was kept assembled, in

order to protect the festivities of the conquerors. When the poll closed, a salute of five great guns from the

castle proclaimed the triumph of the Church and the Crown to the surrounding country. The bells rang. The

newly elected members went in state to the City Cross, accompanied by a band of music, and by a long train

of knights and squires. The procession, as it marched, sang "Joy to Great Caesar," a loyal ode, which had

lately been written by Durfey, and which, though like all Durfey's writings, utterly contemptible, was, at that

time, almost as popular as Lillibullero became a few years later.262 Round the Cross the trainbands were

drawn up in order: a bonfire was lighted: the Exclusion Bill was burned: and the health of King James was

drunk with loud acclamations. The following day was Sunday. In the morning the militia lined the streets

leading to the Cathedral. The two knights of the shire were escorted with great pomp to their choir by the

magistracy of the city, heard the Dean preach a sermon, probably on the duty of passive obedience, and were

In Northumberland the triumph of Sir John Fenwick, a courtier whose name afterwards obtained a

melancholy celebrity, was attended by circumstances which excited interest in London, and which were

thought not unworthy of being mentioned in the despatches of foreign ministers. Newcastle was lighted up

with great piles of coal. The steeples sent forth a joyous peal. A copy of the Exclusion Bill, and a black box,

resembling that which, according to the popular fable, contained the contract between Charles the Second and

The general result of the elections exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the court. James found with

delight that it would be unnecessary for him to expend a farthing in buying votes. He Said that, with the

exception of about forty members, the House of Commons was just such as he should himself have

named.265 And this House of Commons it was in his power, as the law then stood, to keep to the end of his

Secure of parliamentary support, be might now indulge in the luxury of revenge. His nature was not placable;

and, while still a subject, he had suffered some injuries and indignities which might move even a placable

nature to fierce and lasting resentment. One set of men in particular had, with a baseness and cruelty beyond

all example and all description, attacked his honour and his life, the witnesses of the plot. He may well be

excused for hating them; since, even at this day, the mention of their names excites the disgust and horror of

Some of these wretches were already beyond the reach of human justice. Bedloe had died in his wickedness,

without one sign of remorse or shame.266 Dugdale had followed, driven mad, men said, by the Furies of an

evil conscience, and with loud shrieks imploring those who stood round his bed to take away Lord

Stafford.267 Carstairs, too, was gone. His end had been all horror and despair; and, with his last breath, he

had told his attendants to throw him into a ditch like a dog, for that he was not fit to sleep in a Christian burial

ground.268 But Oates and Dangerfield were still within the reach of the stern prince whom they had

wronged. James, a short time before his accession, had instituted a civil suit against Oates for defamatory

words; and a jury had given damages to the enormous amount of a hundred thousand pounds.269 The

defendant had been taken in execution, and was lying in prison as a debtor, without hope of release. Two bills

of indictment against him for perjury had been found by the grand jury of Middlesex, a few weeks before the

Among the upper and middle classes Oates had few friends left. The most respectable Whigs were now

convinced that, even if his narrative had some foundation in fact, he had erected on that foundation a vast

superstructure of romance. A considerable number of low fanatics, however, still regarded him as a public

benefactor. These people well knew that, if he were convicted, his sentence would be one of extreme severity,

and were therefore indefatigable in their endeavours to manage an escape. Though he was as yet in

confinement only for debt, he was put into irons by the authorities of the King's Bench prison; and even so he

was with difficulty kept in safe custody. The mastiff that guarded his door was poisoned; and, on the very

On the day in which Titus was brought to the bar, Westminster Hall was crowded with spectators, among

whom were many Roman Catholics, eager to see the misery and humiliation of their persecutor.270 A few

years earlier his short neck, his legs uneven, the vulgar said, as those of a badger, his forehead low as that of a

baboon, his purple cheeks, and his monstrous length of chin, had been familiar to all who frequented the

courts of law. He had then been the idol of the nation. Wherever he had appeared, men had uncovered their

heads to him. The lives and estates of the magnates of the realm had been at his mercy. Times had now

changed; and many, who had formerly regarded him as the deliverer of his country, shuddered at the sight of

those hideous features on which villany seemed to be written by the hand of God.271

It was proved, beyond all possibility of doubt, that this man had by false testimony deliberately murdered

several guiltless persons. He called in vain on the most eminent members of the Parliaments which had

rewarded and extolled him to give evidence in his favour. Some of those whom he had summoned absented

themselves. None of them said anything tending to his vindication. One of them, the Earl of Huntingdon,

bitterly reproached him with having deceived the Houses and drawn on them the guilt of shedding innocent

blood. The Judges browbeat and reviled the prisoner with an intemperance which, even in the most atrocious

cases, ill becomes the judicial character. He betrayed, however, no sign of fear or of shame, and faced the

storm of invective which burst upon him from bar, bench, and witness box, with the insolence of despair. He

was convicted on both indictments. His offence, though, in a moral light, murder of the most aggravated kind,

was, in the eye of the law, merely a misdemeanour. The tribunal, however, was desirous to make his

punishment more severe than that of felons or traitors, and not merely to put him to death, but to put him to

death by frightful torments. He was sentenced to be stripped of his clerical habit, to be pilloried in Palace

Yard, to be led round Westminster Hall with an inscription declaring his infamy over his head, to be pilloried

again in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and, after an interval of two

days, to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. If, against all probability, he should happen to survive this

horrible infliction, he was to be kept close prisoner during life. Five times every year he was to be brought

forth from his dungeon and exposed on the pillory in different parts of the capital.272 This rigorous sentence

was rigorously executed. On the day on which Oates was pilloried in Palace Yard he was mercilessly pelted

and ran some risk of being pulled in pieces.273 But in the City his partisans mustered in great force, raised a

riot, and upset the pillory.274 They were, however, unable to rescue their favourite. It was supposed that he

would try to escape the horrible doom which awaited him by swallowing poison. All that he ate and drank

was therefore carefully inspected. On the following morning he was brought forth to undergo his first

flogging. At an early hour an innumerable multitude filled all the streets from Aldgate to the Old Bailey. The

hangman laid on the lash with such unusual severity as showed that he had received special instructions. The

blood ran down in rivulets. For a time the criminal showed a strange constancy: but at last his stubborn

fortitude gave way. His bellowings were frightful to hear. He swooned several times; but the scourge still

continued to descend. When he was unbound, it seemed that he had borne as much as the human frame can

bear without dissolution. James was entreated to remit the second flogging. His answer was short and clear:

"He shall go through with it, if he has breath in his body." An attempt was made to obtain the Queen's

intercession; but she indignantly refused to say a word in favour of such a wretch. After an interval of only

fortyeight hours, Oates was again brought out of his dungeon. He was unable to stand, and it was necessary

to drag him to Tyburn on a sledge. He seemed quite insensible; and the Tories reported that he had stupified

himself with strong drink. A person who counted the stripes on the second day said that they were seventeen

hundred. The bad man escaped with life, but so narrowly that his ignorant and bigoted admirers thought his

recovery miraculous, and appealed to it as a proof of his innocence. The doors of the prison closed upon him.

During many months he remained ironed in the darkest hole of Newgate. It was said that in his cell he gave

himself up to melancholy, and sate whole days uttering deep groans, his arms folded, and his hat pulled over

his eyes. It was not in England alone that these events excited strong interest. Millions of Roman Catholics,

who knew nothing of our institutions or of our factions. had heard that a persecution of singular barbarity had

raged in our island against the professors of the true faith, that many pious men had suffered martyrdom, and

that Titus Oates had been the chief murderer. There was, therefore, great joy in distant countries when it was

known that the divine justice had overtaken him. Engravings of him, looking out from the pillory, and

writhing at the cart's tail, were circulated all over Europe; and epigrammatists, in many languages, made

merry with the doctoral title which he pretended to have received from the University of Salamanca, and

remarked that, since his forehead could not be made to blush, it was but reasonable that his back should do

Horrible as were the sufferings of Oates, they did not equal his crimes. The old law of England, which had

been suffered to become obsolete, treated the false witness, who had caused death by means of perjury, as a

murderer.276 This was wise and righteous; for such a witness is, in truth, the worst of murderers. To the guilt

of shedding innocent blood he has added the guilt of violating the most solemn engagement into which man

can enter with his fellow men, and of making institutions, to which it is desirable that the public should look

with respect and confidence, instruments of frightful wrong and objects of general distrust. The pain

produced by ordinary murder bears no proportion to the pain produced by murder of which the courts of

justice are made the agents. The mere extinction of life is a very small part of what makes an execution

horrible. The prolonged mental agony of the sufferer, the shame and misery of all connected with him, the

stain abiding even to the third and fourth generation, are things far more dreadful than death itself. In general

it may be safely affirmed that the father of a large family would rather be bereaved of all his children by

accident or by disease than lose one of them by the hands of the hangman. Murder by false testimony is

therefore the most aggravated species of murder; and Oates had been guilty of many such murders.

Nevertheless the punishment which was inflicted upon him cannot be justified. In sentencing him to be

stripped of his ecclesiastical habit and imprisoned for life, the judges exceeded their legal power. They were

undoubtedly competent to inflict whipping; nor had the law assigned a limit to the number of stripes. But the

spirit of the law clearly was that no misdemeanour should be punished more severely than the most atrocious

felonies. The worst felon could only be hanged. The judges, as they believed, sentenced Oates to be scourged

to death. That the law was defective is not a sufficient excuse: for defective laws should be altered by the

legislature, and not strained by the tribunals; and least of all should the law be strained for the purpose of

inflicting torture and destroying life. That Oates was a bad man is not a sufficient excuse; for the guilty are

almost always the first to suffer those hardships which are afterwards used as precedents against the innocent.

Thus it was in the present case. Merciless flogging soon became an ordinary punishment for political

misdemeanours of no very aggravated kind. Men were sentenced, for words spoken against the government,

to pains so excruciating that they, with unfeigned earnestness, begged to be brought to trial on capital

charges, and sent to the gallows. Happily the progress of this great evil was speedily stopped by the

Revolution, and by that article of the Bill of Rights which condemns all cruel and unusual punishments.

The villany of Dangerfield had not, like that of Oates, destroyed many innocent victims; for Dangerfield had

not taken up the trade of a witness till the plot had been blown upon and till juries had become

incredulous.277 He was brought to trial, not for perjury, but for the less heinous offense of libel. He had,

during the agitation caused by the Exclusion Bill, put forth a narrative containing some false and odious

imputations on the late and on the present King. For this publication he was now, after the lapse of five years,

suddenly taken up, brought before the Privy Council, committed, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be

whipped from Aldgate to Newgate and from Newgate to Tyburn. The wretched man behaved with great

effrontery during the trial; but, when he heard his doom, he went into agonies of despair, gave himself up for

dead, and chose a text for his funeral sermon. His forebodings were just. He was not, indeed, scourged quite

so severely as Oates had been; but he had not Oates's iron strength of body and mind. After the execution

Dangerfield was put into a hackney coach and was taken back to prison. As he passed the corner of Hatton

Garden, a Tory gentleman of Gray's Inn, named Francis, stopped the carriage, and cried out with brutal levity,

"Well, friend, have you had your heat this morning?" The bleeding prisoner, maddened by this insult,

answered with a curse. Francis instantly struck him in the face with a cane which injured the eye. Dangerfield

was carried dying into Newgate. This dastardly outrage roused the indignation of the bystanders. They seized

Francis, and were with difficulty restrained from tearing him to pieces. The appearance of Dangerfield's

body, which had been frightfully lacerated by the whip, inclined many to believe that his death was chiefly, if

not wholly, caused by the stripes which he had received. The government and the Chief Justice thought it

convenient to lay the whole blame on Francis, who; though he seems to have been at worst guilty only of

aggravated manslaughter, was tried and executed for murder. His dying speech is one of the most curious

monuments of that age. The savage spirit which had brought him to the gallows remained with him to the

last. Boasts of his loyalty and abuse of the Whigs were mingled with the parting ejaculations in which he

commended his soul to the divine mercy. An idle rumour had been circulated that his wife was in love with

Dangerfield, who was eminently handsome and renowned for gallantry. The fatal blow, it was said, had been

prompted by jealousy. The dying husband, with an earnestness, half ridiculous, half pathetic, vindicated the

lady's character. She was, he said, a virtuous woman: she came of a loyal stock, and, if she had been inclined

to break her marriage vow, would at least have selected a Tory and a churchman for her paramour.278

About the same time a culprit, who bore very little resemblance to Oates or Dangerfield, appeared on the

floor of the Court of King's Bench. No eminent chief of a party has ever passed through many years of civil

and religious dissension with more innocence than Richard Baxter. He belonged to the mildest and most

temperate section of the Puritan body. He was a young man when the civil war broke out. He thought that the

right was on the side of the Houses; and he had no scruple about acting as chaplain to a regiment in the

parliamentary army: but his clear and somewhat sceptical understanding, and his strong sense of justice,

preserved him from all excesses. He exerted himself to check the fanatical violence of the soldiery. He

condemned the proceedings of the High Court of Justice. In the days of the Commonwealth he had the

boldness to express, on many occasions, and once even in Cromwell's presence, love and reverence for the

ancient institutions of the country. While the royal family was in exile, Baxter's life was chiefly passed at

Kidderminster in the assiduous discharge of parochial duties. He heartily concurred in the Restoration, and

was sincerely desirous to bring about an union between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. For, with a liberty

rare in his time, he considered questions of ecclesiastical polity as of small account when compared with the

great principles of Christianity, and had never, even when prelacy was most odious to the ruling powers,

joined in the outcry against Bishops. The attempt to reconcile the contending factions failed. Baxter cast in

his lot with his proscribed friends, refused the mitre of Hereford, quitted the parsonage of Kidderminster, and

gave himself up almost wholly to study. His theological writings, though too moderate to be pleasing to the

bigots of any party, had an immense reputation. Zealous Churchmen called him a Roundhead; and many

Nonconformists accused him of Erastianism and Arminianism. But the integrity of his heart, the purity of his

life, the vigour of his faculties, and the extent of his attainments were acknowledged by the best and wisest

men of every persuasion. His political opinions, in spite of the oppression which he and his brethren had

suffered, were moderate. He was friendly to that small party which was hated by both Whigs and Tories. He

could not, he said, join in cursing the Trimmers, when he remembered who it was that had blessed the

In a Commentary on the New Testament he had complained, with some bitterness, of the persecution which

the Dissenters suffered. That men who, for not using the Prayer Book, had been driven from their homes,

stripped of their property, and locked up in dungeons, should dare to utter a murmur, was then thought a high

crime against the State and the Church. Roger Lestrange, the champion of the government and the oracle of

the clergy, sounded the note of war in the Observator. An information was filed. Baxter begged that he might

be allowed some time to prepare for his defence. It was on the day on which Oates was pilloried in Palace

Yard that the illustrious chief of the Puritans, oppressed by age and infirmities, came to Westminster Hall to

make this request. Jeffreys burst into a storm of rage. "Not a minute," he cried, "to save his life. I can deal

with saints as well as with sinners. There stands Oates on one side of the pillory; and, if Baxter stood on the

When the trial came on at Guildhall, a crowd of those who loved and honoured Baxter filled the court. At his

side stood Doctor William Bates, one of the most eminent of the Nonconformist divines. Two Whig barristers

of great note, Pollexfen and Wallop, appeared for the defendant. Pollexfen had scarcely begun his address to

the jury, when the Chief Justice broke forth: "Pollexfen, I know you well. I will set a mark on you. You are

the patron of the faction. This is an old rogue, a schismatical knave, a hypocritical villain. He hates the

Liturgy. He would have nothing but longwinded cant without book;" and then his Lordship turned up his

eyes, clasped his hands, and began to sing through his nose, in imitation of what he supposed to be Baxter's

style of praying "Lord, we are thy people, thy peculiar people, thy dear people." Pollexfen gently reminded

the court that his late Majesty had thought Baxter deserving of a bishopric. "And what ailed the old

blockhead then," cried Jeffreys, "that he did not take it?" His fury now rose almost to madness. He called

Baxter a dog, and swore that it would be no more than justice to whip such a villain through the whole City.

Wallop interposed, but fared no better than his leader. "You are in all these dirty causes, Mr. Wallop," said

the Judge. "Gentlemen of the long robe ought to be ashamed to assist such factious knaves." The advocate

made another attempt to obtain a hearing, but to no purpose. "If you do not know your duty," said Jeffreys, "I

Wallop sate down; and Baxter himself attempted to put in a word. But the Chief Justice drowned all

expostulation in a torrent of ribaldry and invective, mingled with scraps of Hudibras. "My Lord," said the old

man, "I have been much blamed by Dissenters for speaking respectfully of Bishops." "Baxter for Bishops!"

cried the Judge, "that's a merry conceit indeed. I know what you mean by Bishops, rascals like yourself,

Kidderminster Bishops, factious snivelling Presbyterians!" Again Baxter essayed to speak, and again Jeffreys

bellowed "Richard, Richard, dost thou think we will let thee poison the court? Richard, thou art an old knave.

Thou hast written books enough to load a cart, and every book as full of sedition as an egg is full of meat. By

the grace of God, I'll look after thee. I see a great many of your brotherhood waiting to know what will befall

their mighty Don. And there," he continued, fixing his savage eye on Bates, "there is a Doctor of the party at

Baxter held his peace. But one of the junior counsel for the defence made a last effort, and undertook to show

that the words of which complaint was made would not bear the construction put on them by the information.

With this view he began to read the context. In a moment he was roared down. "You sha'n't turn the court into

a conventicle." The noise of weeping was heard from some of those who surrounded Baxter. "Snivelling

Witnesses to character were in attendance, and among them were several clergymen of the Established

Church. But the Chief Justice would hear nothing. "Does your Lordship think," said Baxter, "that any jury

will convict a man on such a trial as this?" "I warrant you, Mr. Baxter," said Jeffreys: "don't trouble yourself

about that." Jeffreys was right. The Sheriffs were the tools of the government. The jurymen, selected by the

Sheriffs from among the fiercest zealots of the Tory party, conferred for a moment, and returned a verdict of

Guilty. "My Lord," said Baxter, as he left the court, "there was once a Chief Justice who would have treated

me very differently." He alluded to his learned and virtuous friend Sir Matthew Hale. "There is not an honest

The sentence was, for those times. a lenient one. What passed in conference among the judges cannot be

certainly known. It was believed among the Nonconformists, and is highly probable, that the Chief Justice

was overruled by his three brethren. He proposed, it is said, that Baxter should be whipped through London at

the cart's tail. The majority thought that an eminent divine, who, a quarter of a century before, had been

offered a mitre, and who was now in his seventieth year, would be sufficiently punished for a few sharp

The manner in which Baxter was treated by a judge, who was a member of the cabinet and a favourite of the

Sovereign, indicated, in a manner not to be mistaken, the feeling with which the government at this time

regarded the Protestant Nonconformists. But already that feeling had been indicated by still stronger and

more terrible signs. The Parliament of Scotland had met. James had purposely hastened the session of this

body, and had postponed the session of the English Houses, in the hope that the example set at Edinburgh

would produce a good effect at Westminster. For the legislature of his northern kingdom was as obsequious

as those provincial Estates which Lewis the Fourteenth still suffered to play at some of their ancient functions

in Britanny and Burgundy. None but an Episcopalian could sit in the Scottish Parliament, or could even vote

for a member, and in Scotland an Episcopalian was always a Tory or a timeserver. From an assembly thus

constituted, little opposition to the royal wishes was to he apprehended; and even the assembly thus

constituted could pass no law which had not been previously approved by a committee of courtiers.

All that the government asked was readily granted. In a financial point of view, indeed, the liberality of the

Scottish Estates was of little consequence. They gave, however, what their scanty means permitted. They

annexed in perpetuity to the crown the duties which had been granted to the late King, and which in his time

had been estimated at forty thousand pounds sterling a year. They also settled on James for life an additional

annual income of two hundred and sixteen thousand pounds Scots, equivalent to eighteen thousand pounds

sterling. The whole Sum which they were able to bestow was about sixty thousand a year, little more than

Having little money to give, the Estates supplied the defect by loyal professions and barbarous statutes. The

King, in a letter which was read to them at the opening of their session, called on them in vehement language

to provide new penal laws against the refractory Presbyterians, and expressed his regret that business made it

impossible for him to propose such laws in person from the throne. His commands were obeyed. A statute

framed by his ministers was promptly passed, a statute which stands forth even among the statutes of that

unhappy country at that unhappy period, preeminent in atrocity. It was enacted, in few but emphatic words,

that whoever should preach in a conventicle under a roof, or should attend, either as preacher or as hearer, a

conventicle in the open air, should be punished with death and confiscation of property.283

This law, passed at the King's instance by an assembly devoted to his will, deserves especial notice. For he

has been frequently represented by ignorant writers as a prince rash, indeed, and injudicious in his choice of

means, but intent on one of the noblest ends which a ruler can pursue, the establishment of entire religious

liberty. Nor can it be denied that some portions of his life, when detached from the rest and superficially

While a subject he had been, during many years, a persecuted man; and persecution had produced its usual

effect on him. His mind, dull and narrow as it was, had profited under that sharp discipline. While he was

excluded from the Court, from the Admiralty, and from the Council, and was in danger of being also

excluded from the throne, only because he could not help believing in transubstantiation and in the authority

of the see of Rome, he made such rapid progress in the doctrines of toleration that he left Milton and Locke

behind. What, he often said, could be more unjust, than to visit speculations with penalties which ought to be

reserved for acts? What more impolitic than to reject the services of good soldiers, seamen, lawyers,

diplomatists, financiers, because they hold unsound opinions about the number of the sacraments or the

pluripresence of saints? He learned by rote those commonplaces which all sects repeat so fluently when they

are enduring oppression, and forget so easily when they are able to retaliate it. Indeed he rehearsed his lesson

so well, that those who chanced to hear him on this subject gave him credit for much more sense and much

readier elocution than he really possessed. His professions imposed on some charitable persons, and perhaps

imposed on himself. But his zeal for the rights of conscience ended with the predominance of the Whig party.

When fortune changed, when he was no longer afraid that others would persecute him, when he had it in his

power to persecute others, his real propensities began to show themselves. He hated the Puritan sects with a

manifold hatred, theological and political, hereditary and personal. He regarded them as the foes of Heaven,

as the foes of all legitimate authority in Church and State, as his greatgrandmother's foes and his

grandfather's, his father's and his mother's, his brother's and his own. He, who had complained so fondly of

the laws against Papists, now declared himself unable to conceive how men could have the impudence to

propose the repeal of the laws against Puritans.284 He, whose favourite theme had been the injustice of

requiring civil functionaries to take religious tests, established in Scotland, when he resided there as Viceroy,

the most rigorous religious test that has ever been known in the empire.285 He, who had expressed just

indignation when the priests of his own faith were hanged and quartered, amused himself with hearing

Covenanters shriek and seeing them writhe while their knees were beaten flat in the boots.286 In this mood

he became King; and he immediately demanded and obtained from the obsequious Estates of Scotland as the

surest pledge of their loyalty, the most sanguinary law that has ever in our island been enacted against

With this law the whole spirit of his administration was in perfect harmony. The fiery persecution, which had

raged when he ruled Scotland as vicegerent, waxed hotter than ever from the day on which he became

sovereign. Those shires in which the Covenanters were most numerous were given up to the license of the

army. With the army was mingled a militia, composed of the most violent and profligate of those who called

themselves Episcopalians. Preeminent among the bands which oppressed and wasted these unhappy districts

were the dragoons commanded by John Graham of Claverhouse. The story ran that these wicked men used in

their revels to play at the torments of hell, and to call each other by the names of devils and damned souls.287

The chief of this Tophet, a soldier of distinguished courage and professional skill, but rapacious and profane,

of violent temper and of obdurate heart, has left a name which, wherever the Scottish race is settled on the

face of the globe, is mentioned with a peculiar energy of hatred. To recapitulate all the crimes, by which this

man, and men like him, goaded the peasantry of the Western Lowlands into madness, would be an endless

task. A few instances must suffice; and all those instances shall be taken from the history of a single fortnight,

that very fortnight in which the Scottish Parliament, at the urgent request of James, enacted a new law of

John Brown, a poor carrier of Lanarkshire, was, for his singular piety, commonly called the Christian carrier.

Many years later, when Scotland enjoyed rest, prosperity, and religious freedom, old men who remembered

the evil days described him as one versed in divine things, blameless in life, and so peaceable that the tyrants

could find no offence in him except that he absented himself from the public worship of the Episcopalians.

On the first of May he was cutting turf, when he was seized by Claverhouse's dragoons, rapidly examined,

convicted of nonconformity, and sentenced to death. It is said that, even among the soldiers, it was not easy to

find an executioner. For the wife of the poor man was present; she led one little child by the hand: it was easy

to see that she was about to give birth to another; and even those wild and hardhearted men, who nicknamed

one another Beelzebub and Apollyon, shrank from the great wickedness of butchering her husband before her

face. The prisoner, meanwhile, raised above himself by the near prospect of eternity, prayed loud and

fervently as one inspired, till Claverhouse, in a fury, shot him dead. It was reported by credible witnesses that

the widow cried out in her agony, "Well, sir, well; the day of reckoning will come;" and that the murderer

replied, "To man I can answer for what I have done; and as for God, I will take him into mine own hand." Yet

it was rumoured that even on his seared conscience and adamantine heart the dying ejaculations of his victim

On the fifth of May two artisans, Peter Gillies and John Bryce, were tried in Ayrshire by a military tribunal

consisting of fifteen soldiers. The indictment is still extant. The prisoners were charged, not with any act of

rebellion, but with holding the same pernicious doctrines which had impelled others to rebel, and with

wanting only opportunity to act upon those doctrines. The proceeding was summary. In a few hours the two

culprits were convicted, hanged, and flung together into a hole under the gallows.289

The eleventh of May was made remarkable by more than one great crime. Some rigid Calvinists had from the

doctrine of reprobation drawn the consequence that to pray for any person who had been predestined to

perdition was an act of mutiny against the eternal decrees of the Supreme Being. Three poor labouring men,

deeply imbued with this unamiable divinity, were stopped by an officer in the neighbourhood of Glasgow.

They were asked whether they would pray for King James the Seventh. They refused to do so except under

the condition that he was one of the elect. A file of musketeers was drawn out. The prisoners knelt down;

they were blindfolded; and within an hour after they had been arrested, their blood was lapped up by the

While this was done in Clydesdale, an act not less horrible was perpetrated in Eskdale. One of the proscribed

Covenanters, overcome by sickness, had found shelter in the house of a respectable widow, and had died

there. The corpse was discovered by the Laird of Westerhall, a petty tyrant who had, in the days of the

Covenant, professed inordinate zeal for the Presbyterian Church, who had, since the Restoration, purchased

the favour of the government by apostasy, and who felt towards the party which he had deserted the

implacable hatred of an apostate. This man pulled down the house of the poor woman, carried away her

furniture, and, leaving her and her younger children to wander in the fields, dragged her son Andrew, who

was still a lad, before Claverhouse, who happened to be marching through that part of the country.

Claverhouse was just then strangely lenient. Some thought that he had not been quite himself since the death

of the Christian carrier, ten days before. But Westerhall was eager to signalise his loyalty, and extorted a

sullen consent. The guns were loaded, and the youth was told to pull his bonnet over his face. He refused, and

stood confronting his murderers with the Bible in his hand. "I can look you in the face," he said; "I have done

nothing of which I need be ashamed. But how will you look in that day when you shall be judged by what is

On the same day two women, Margaret Maclachlin and Margaret Wilson, the former an aged widow, the

latter a maiden of eighteen, suffered death for their religion in Wigtonshire. They were offered their lives if

they would consent to abjure the cause of the insurgent Covenanters, and to attend the Episcopal worship.

They refused; and they were sentenced to be drowned. They were carried to a spot which the Solway

overflows twice a day, and were fastened to stakes fixed in the sand between high and low water mark. The

elder sufferer was placed near to the advancing flood, in the hope that her last agonies might terrify the

younger into submission. The sight was dreadful. But the courage of the survivor was sustained by an

enthusiasm as lofty as any that is recorded in martyrology. She saw the sea draw nearer and nearer, but gave

no sign of alarm. She prayed and sang verses of psalms till the waves choked her voice. After she had tasted

the bitterness of death, she was, by a cruel mercy unbound and restored to life. When she came to herself,

pitying friends and neighbours implored her to yield. "Dear Margaret, only say, God save the King!" The

poor girl, true to her stern theology, gasped out, "May God save him, if it be God's will!" Her friends

crowded round the presiding officer. "She has said it; indeed, sir, she has said it." "Will she take the

abjuration?" he demanded. "Never!" she exclaimed. "I am Christ's: let me go!" And the waters closed over

Thus was Scotland governed by that prince whom ignorant men have represented as a friend of religious

liberty, whose misfortune it was to be too wise and too good for the age in which he lived. Nay, even those

laws which authorised him to govern thus were in his judgment reprehensibly lenient. While his officers were

committing the murders which have just been related, he was urging the Scottish Parliament to pass a new

In England his authority, though great, was circumscribed by ancient and noble laws which even the Tories

would not patiently have seen him infringe. Here he could not hurry Dissenters before military tribunals, or

enjoy at Council the luxury of seeing them swoon in the boots. Here he could not drown young girls for

refusing to take the abjuration, or shoot poor countrymen for doubting whether he was one of the elect. Yet

even in England he continued to persecute the Puritans as far as his power extended, till events which will

hereafter be related induced him to form the design of uniting Puritans and Papists in a coalition for the

One sect of Protestant Dissenters indeed he, even at this early period of his reign, regarded with some

tenderness, the Society of Friends. His partiality for that singular fraternity cannot be attributed to religious

sympathy; for, of all who acknowledge the divine mission of Jesus, the Roman Catholic and the Quaker differ

most widely. It may seem paradoxical to say that this very circumstance constituted a tie between the Roman

Catholic and the Quaker; yet such was really the case. For they deviated in opposite directions so far from

what the great body of the nation regarded as right, that even liberal men generally considered them both as

lying beyond the pale of the largest toleration. Thus the two extreme sects, precisely because they were

extreme sects, had a common interest distinct from the interest of the intermediate sects. The Quakers were

also guiltless of all offence against James and his House. They had not been in existence as a community till

the war between his father and the Long Parliament was drawing towards a close. They had been cruelly

persecuted by some of the revolutionary governments. They had, since the Restoration, in spite of much ill

usage, submitted themselves meekly to the royal authority. For they had, though reasoning on premises which

the Anglican divines regarded as heterodox, arrived, like the Anglican divines, at the conclusion, that no

excess of tyranny on the part of a prince can justify active resistance on the part of a subject. No libel on the

government had ever been traced to a Quaker.293 In no conspiracy against the government had a Quaker

been implicated. The society had not joined in the clamour for the Exclusion Bill, and had solemnly

condemned the Rye House plot as a hellish design and a work of the devil.294 Indeed, the friends then took

very little part in civil contentions; for they were not, as now, congregated in large towns, but were generally

engaged in agriculture, a pursuit from which they have been gradually driven by the vexations consequent on

their strange scruple about paying tithe. They were, therefore, far removed from the scene of political strife.

They also, even in domestic privacy, avoided on principle all political conversation. For such conversation

was, in their opinion, unfavourable to their spirituality of mind, and tended to disturb the austere composure

of their deportment. The yearly meetings of that age repeatedly admonished the brethren not to hold discourse

touching affairs of state.295 Even within the memory of persons now living those grave elders who retained

the habits of an earlier generation systematically discouraged such worldly talk.296 It was natural that James

should make a wide distinction between these harmless people and those fierce and reckless sects which

considered resistance to tyranny as a Christian duty which had, in Germany, France, and Holland, made war

on legitimate princes, and which had, during four generations, borne peculiar enmity to the House of Stuart.

It happened, moreover, that it was possible to grant large relief to the Roman Catholic and to the Quaker

without mitigating the sufferings of the Puritan sects. A law was in force which imposed severe penalties on

every person who refused to take the oath of supremacy when required to do so. This law did not affect

Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists; for they were all ready to call God to witness that they renounced all

spiritual connection with foreign prelates and potentates. But the Roman Catholic would not swear that the

Pope had no jurisdiction in England, and the Quaker would not swear to anything. On the other hand, neither

the Roman Catholic nor the Quaker was touched by the Five Mile Act, which, of all the laws in the Statute

The Quakers had a powerful and zealous advocate at court. Though, as a class, they mixed little with the

world, and shunned politics as a pursuit dangerous to their spiritual interests, one of them, widely

distinguished from the rest by station and fortune, lived in the highest circles, and had constant access to the

royal ear. This was the celebrated William Penn. His father had held great naval commands, had been a

Commissioner of the Admiralty, had sate in Parliament, had received the honour of knighthood, and had been

encouraged to expect a peerage. The son had been liberally educated, and had been designed for the

profession of arms, but had, while still young, injured his prospects and disgusted his friends by joining what

was then generally considered as a gang of crazy heretics. He had been sent sometimes to the Tower, and

sometimes to Newgate. He had been tried at the Old Bailey for preaching in defiance of the law. After a time,

however, he had been reconciled to his family, and had succeeded in obtaining such powerful protection that,

while all the gaols of England were filled with his brethren, he was permitted, during many years, to profess

his opinions without molestation. Towards the close of the late reign he had obtained, in satisfaction of an old

debt due to him from the crown, the grant of an immense region in North America. In this tract, then peopled

only by Indian hunters, he had invited his persecuted friends to settle. His colony was still in its infancy when

Between James and Penn there had long been a familiar acquaintance. The Quaker now became a courtier,

and almost a favourite. He was every day summoned from the gallery into the closet, and sometimes had long

audiences while peers were kept waiting in the antechambers. It was noised abroad that he had more real

power to help and hurt than many nobles who filled high offices. He was soon surrounded by flatterers and

suppliants. His house at Kensington was sometimes thronged, at his hour of rising, by more than two hundred

suitors.298 He paid dear, however, for this seeming prosperity. Even his own sect looked coldly on him, and

requited his services with obloquy. He was loudly accused of being a Papist, nay, a Jesuit. Some affirmed that

he had been educated at St. Omers, and others that he had been ordained at Rome. These calumnies, indeed,

could find credit only with the undiscerning multitude; but with these calumnies were mingled accusations

To speak the whole truth concerning Penn is a task which requires some courage; for he is rather a mythical

than a historical person. Rival nations and hostile sects have agreed in canonising him. England is proud of

his name. A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic regards him with a reverence similar to that which the

Athenians felt for Theseus, and the Romans for Quirinus. The respectable society of which he was a member

honours him as an apostle. By pious men of other persuasions he is generally regarded as a bright pattern of

Christian virtue. Meanwhile admirers of a very different sort have sounded his praises. The French

philosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned what they regarded as his superstitious fancies in

consideration of his contempt for priests, and of his cosmopolitan benevolence, impartially extended to all

races and to all creeds. His name has thus become, throughout all civilised countries, a synonyme for probity

Nor is this high reputation altogether unmerited. Penn was without doubt a man of eminent virtues. He had a

strong sense of religious duty and a fervent desire to promote the happiness of mankind. On one or two points

of high importance, he had notions more correct than were, in his day, common even among men of enlarged

minds: and as the proprietor and legislator of a province which, being almost uninhabited when it came into

his possession, afforded a clear field for moral experiments, he had the rare good fortune of being able to

carry his theories into practice without any compromise, and yet without any shock to existing institutions.

He will always be mentioned with honour as a founder of a colony, who did not, in his dealings with a savage

people, abuse the strength derived from civilisation, and as a lawgiver who, in an age of persecution, made

religious liberty the cornerstone of a polity. But his writings and his life furnish abundant proofs that he was

not a man of strong sense. He had no skill in reading the characters of others. His confidence in persons less

virtuous than himself led him into great errors and misfortunes. His enthusiasm for one great principle

sometimes impelled him to violate other great principles which he ought to have held sacred. Nor was his

rectitude altogether proof against the temptations to which it was exposed in that splendid and polite, but

deeply corrupted society, with which he now mingled. The whole court was in a ferment with intrigues of

gallantry and intrigues of ambition. The traffic in honours, places, and pardons was incessant. It was natural

that a man who was daily seen at the palace, and who was known to have free access to majesty, should be

frequently importuned to use his influence for purposes which a rigid morality must condemn. The integrity

of Penn had stood firm against obloquy and persecution. But now, attacked by royal smiles, by female

blandishments, by the insinuating eloquence and delicate flattery of veteran diplomatists and courtiers, his

resolution began to give way. Titles and phrases against which he had often borne his testimony dropped

occasionally from his lips and his pen. It would be well if he had been guilty of nothing worse than such

compliances with the fashions of the world. Unhappily it cannot be concealed that he bore a chief part in

some transactions condemned, not merely by the rigid code of the society to which he belonged, but by the

general sense of all honest men. He afterwards solemnly protested that his hands were pure from illicit gain,

and that he had never received any gratuity from those whom he had obliged, though he might easily, while

his influence at court lasted, have made a hundred and twenty thousand pounds.299 To this assertion full

credit is due. But bribes may be offered to vanity as well as to cupidity; and it is impossible to deny that Penn

was cajoled into bearing a part in some unjustifiable transactions of which others enjoyed the profits.

The first use which he made of his credit was highly commendable. He strongly represented the sufferings of

his brethren to the new King, who saw with pleasure that it was possible to grant indulgence to these quiet

sectaries and to the Roman Catholics, without showing similar favour to other classes which were then under

persecution. A list was framed of prisoners against whom proceedings had been instituted for not taking the

oaths, or for not going to church, and of whose loyalty certificates had been produced to the government.

These persons were discharged, and orders were given that no similar proceeding should be instituted till the

royal pleasure should be further signified. In this way about fifteen hundred Quakers, and a still greater

And now the time had arrived when the English Parliament was to meet. The members of the House of

Commons who had repaired to the capital were so numerous that there was much doubt whether their

chamber, as it was then fitted up, would afford sufficient accommodation for them. They employed the days

which immediately preceded the opening of the session in talking over public affairs with each other and with

the agents of the government. A great meeting of the loyal party was held at the Fountain Tavern in the

Strand; and Roger Lestrange, who had recently been knighted by the King, and returned to Parliament by the

It soon appeared that a large portion of the Commons had views which did not altogether agree with those of

the Court. The Tory country gentlemen were, with scarcely one exception, desirous to maintain the Test Act

and the Habeas Corpus Act; and some among them talked of voting the revenue only for a term of years. But

they were perfectly ready to enact severe laws against the Whigs, and would gladly have seen all the

supporters of the Exclusion Bill made incapable of holding office. The King, on the other hand, desired to

obtain from the Parliament a revenue for life, the admission of Roman Catholics to office, and the repeal of

the Habeas Corpus Act. On these three objects his heart was set; and he was by no means disposed to accept

as a substitute for them a penal law against Exclusionists. Such a law, indeed, would have been positively

unpleasing to him; for one class of Exclusionists stood high in his favour, that class of which Sunderland was

the representative, that class which had joined the Whigs in the days of the plot, merely because the Whigs

were predominant, and which had changed with the change of fortune. James justly regarded these renegades

as the most serviceable tools that he could employ. It was not from the stouthearted Cavaliers, who had been

true to him in his adversity, that he could expect abject and unscrupulous obedience in his prosperity. The

men who, impelled, not by zeal for liberty or for religion, but merely by selfish cupidity and selfish fear, had

assisted to oppress him when he was weak, were the very men who, impelled by the same cupidity and the

same fear, would assist him to oppress his people now that he was strong.302 Though vindictive, he was not

indiscriminately vindictive. Not a single instance can be mentioned in which he showed a generous

compassion to those who had opposed him honestly and on public grounds. But he frequently spared and

promoted those whom some vile motive had induced to injure him. For that meanness which marked them

out as fit implements of tyranny was so precious in his estimation that he regarded it with some indulgence

The King's wishes were communicated through several channels to the Tory members of the Lower House.

The majority was easily persuaded to forego all thoughts of a penal law against the Exclusionists, and to

consent that His Majesty should have the revenue for life. But about the Test Act and the Habeas Corpus Act

On the nineteenth of May the session was opened. The benches of the Commons presented a singular

spectacle. That great party, which, in the last three Parliaments, had been predominant, had now dwindled to

a pitiable minority, and was indeed little more than a fifteenth part of the House. Of the five hundred and

thirteen knights and burgesses only a hundred and thirtyfive had ever sate in that place before. It is evident

that a body of men so raw and inexperienced must have been, in some important qualities, far below the

The management of the House was confided by James to two peers of the kingdom of Scotland. One of them,

Charles Middleton, Earl of Middleton, after holding high office at Edinburgh, had, shortly before the death of

the late King, been sworn of the English Privy Council, and appointed one of the Secretaries of State. With

him was joined Richard Graham, Viscount Preston, who had long held the post of Envoy at Versailles.

The first business of the Commons was to elect a Speaker. Who should be the man, was a question which had

been much debated in the cabinet. Guildford had recommended Sir Thomas Meres, who, like himself, ranked

among the Trimmers. Jeffreys, who missed no opportunity of crossing the Lord Keeper, had pressed the

claims of Sir John Trevor. Trevor had been bred half a pettifogger and half a gambler, had brought to political

life sentiments and principles worthy of both his callings, had become a parasite of the Chief Justice, and

could, on occasion, imitate, not unsuccessfully, the vituperative style of his patron. The minion of Jeffreys

was, as might have been expected, preferred by James, was proposed by Middleton, and was chosen without

Thus far all went smoothly. But an adversary of no common prowess was watching his time. This was

Edward Seymour of Berry Pomeroy Castle, member for the city of Exeter. Seymour's birth put him on a level

with the noblest subjects in Europe. He was the right heir male of the body of that Duke of Somerset who had

been brotherinlaw of King Henry the Eighth, and Protector of the realm of England. In the limitation of the

dukedom of Somerset, the elder Son of the Protector had been postponed to the younger son. From the

younger son the Dukes of Somerset were descended. From the elder son was descended the family which

dwelt at Berry Pomeroy. Seymour's fortune was large, and his influence in the West of England extensive.

Nor was the importance derived from descent and wealth the only importance which belonged to him. He

was one of the most skilful debaters and men of business in the kingdom. He had sate many years in the

House of Commons, had studied all its rules and usages, and thoroughly understood its peculiar temper. He

had been elected speaker in the late reign under circumstances which made that distinction peculiarly

honourable. During several generations none but lawyers had been called to the chair; and he was the first

country gentleman whose abilities and acquirements had enabled him to break that long prescription. He had

subsequently held high political office, and had sate in the Cabinet. But his haughty and unaccommodating

temper had given so much disgust that he had been forced to retire. He was a Tory and a Churchman: he had

strenuously opposed the Exclusion Bill: he had been persecuted by the Whigs in the day of their prosperity;

and he could therefore safely venture to hold language for which any person suspected of republicanism

would have been sent to the Tower. He had long been at the head of a strong parliamentary connection, which

was called the Western Alliance, and which included many gentlemen of Devonshire, Somersetshire, and

In every House of Commons, a member who unites eloquence, knowledge, and habits of business, to

opulence and illustrious descent, must be highly considered. But in a House of Commons from which many

of the most eminent orators and parliamentary tacticians of the age were excluded, and which was crowded

with people who had never heard a debate, the influence of such a man was peculiarly formidable. Weight of

moral character was indeed wanting to Edward Seymour. He was licentious, profane, corrupt, too proud to

behave with common politeness, yet not too proud to pocket illicit gain. But he was so useful an ally, and so

mischievous an enemy that he was frequently courted even by those who most detested him.307

He was now in bad humour with the government. His interest had been weakened in some places by the

remodelling of the western boroughs: his pride had been wounded by the elevation of Trevor to the chair; and

On the twentysecond of May the Commons were summoned to the bar of the Lords; and the King, seated on

his throne, made a speech to both Houses. He declared himself resolved to maintain the established

government in Church and State. But he weakened the effect of this declaration by addressing an

extraordinary admonition to the Commons. He was apprehensive, he said, that they might be inclined to dole

out money to him from time to time, in the hope that they should thus force him to call them frequently

together. But he must warn them that he was not to be so dealt with, and that, if they wished him to meet

them often they must use him well. As it was evident that without money the government could not be carried

on, these expressions plainly implied that, if they did not give him as much money as he wished, he would

take it. Strange to say, this harangue was received with loud cheers by the Tory gentlemen at the bar. Such

acclamations were then usual. It has now been, during many years, the grave and decorous usage of

Parliaments to hear, in respectful silence, all expressions, acceptable or unacceptable, which are uttered from

It was then the custom that, after the King had concisely explained his reasons for calling Parliament

together, the minister who held the Great Seal should, at more length, explain to the Houses the state of

public affairs. Guildford, in imitation of his predecessors, Clarendon, Bridgeman, Shaftesbury, and

Nottingham, had prepared an elaborate oration, but found, to his great mortification, that his services were

As soon as the Commons had returned to their own chamber, it was proposed that they should resolve

Then Seymour stood up. How he stood, looking like what he was, the chief of a dissolute and high spirited

gentry, with the artificial ringlets clustering in fashionable profusion round his shoulders, and a mingled

expression of voluptuousness and disdain in his eye and on his lip, the likenesses of him which still remain

enable us to imagine. It was not, the haughty Cavalier said, his wish that the Parliament should withhold from

the crown the means of carrying on the government. But was there indeed a Parliament? Were there not on

the benches many men who had, as all the world knew, no right to sit there, many men whose elections were

tainted by corruption, many men forced by intimidation on reluctant voters, and many men returned by

corporations which had no legal existence? Had not constituent bodies been remodelled, in defiance of royal

charters and of immemorial prescription? Had not returning officers been everywhere the unscrupulous

agents of the Court? Seeing that the very principle of representation had been thus systematically attacked, he

knew not how to call the throng of gentlemen which he saw around him by the honourable name of a House

of Commons. Yet never was there a time when it more concerned the public weal that the character of

Parliament should stand high. Great dangers impended over the ecclesiastical and civil constitution of the

realm. It was matter of vulgar notoriety, it was matter which required no proof, that the Test Act, the rampart

of religion, and the Habeas Corpus Act, the rampart of liberty, were marked out for destruction. "Before we

proceed to legislate on questions so momentous, let us at least ascertain whether we really are a legislature.

Let our first proceeding be to enquire into the manner in which the elections have been conducted. And let us

look to it that the enquiry be impartial. For, if the nation shall find that no redress is to be obtained by

peaceful methods, we may perhaps ere long suffer the justice which we refuse to do." He concluded by

moving that, before any supply was granted, the House would take into consideration petitions against

returns, and that no member whose right to sit was disputed should be allowed to vote.

Not a cheer was heard. Not a member ventured to second the motion. Indeed, Seymour had said much that no

other man could have said with impunity. The proposition fell to the ground, and was not even entered on the

journals. But a mighty effect had been produced. Barillon informed his master that many who had not dared

to applaud that remarkable speech had cordially approved of it, that it was the universal subject of

conversation throughout London, and that the impression made on the public mind seemed likely to be

The Commons went into committee without delay, and voted to the King, for life, the whole revenue enjoyed

The zealous churchmen who formed the majority of the House seem to have been of opinion that the

promptitude with which they had met the wish of James, touching the revenue, entitled them to expect some

concession on his part. They said that much had been done to gratify him, and that they must now do

something to gratify the nation. The House, therefore, resolved itself into a Grand Committee of Religion, in

order to consider the best means of providing for the security of the ecclesiastical establishment. In that

Committee two resolutions were unanimously adopted. The first expressed fervent attachment to the Church

of England. The second called on the King to put in execution the penal laws against all persons who were

The Whigs would doubtless have wished to see the Protestant dissenters tolerated, and the Roman Catholics

alone persecuted. But the Whigs were a small and a disheartened minority. They therefore kept themselves as

much as possible out of sight, dropped their party name, abstained from obtruding their peculiar opinions on

a hostile audience, and steadily supported every proposition tending to disturb the harmony which as yet

When the proceedings of the Committee of Religion were known at Whitehall, the King's anger was great.

Nor can we justly blame him for resenting the conduct of the Tories If they were disposed to require the

rigorous execution of the penal code, they clearly ought to have supported the Exclusion Bill. For to place a

Papist on the throne, and then to insist on his persecuting to the death the teachers of that faith in which

alone, on his principles, salvation could be found, was monstrous. In mitigating by a lenient administration

the severity of the bloody laws of Elizabeth, the King violated no constitutional principle. He only exerted a

power which has always belonged to the crown. Nay, he only did what was afterwards done by a succession

of sovereigns zealous for Protestantism, by William, by Anne, and by the princes of the House of Brunswick.

Had he suffered Roman Catholic priests, whose lives he could save without infringing any law, to be hanged,

drawn, and quartered for discharging what he considered as their first duty, he would have drawn on himself

the hatred and contempt even of those to whose prejudices he had made so shameful a concession, and, had

he contented himself with granting to the members of his own Church a practical toleration by a large

exercise of his unquestioned prerogative of mercy, posterity would have unanimously applauded him.

The Commons probably felt on reflection that they had acted absurdly. They were also disturbed by learning

that the King, to whom they looked up with superstitious reverence, was greatly provoked. They made haste,

therefore, to atone for their offence. In the House, they unanimously reversed the decision which, in the

Committee, they had unanimously adopted. and passed a resolution importing that they relied with entire

confidence on His Majesty's gracious promise to protect that religion which was dearer to them than life

Three days later the King informed the House that his brother had left some debts, and that the stores of the

navy and ordnance were nearly exhausted. It was promptly resolved that new taxes should be imposed. The

person on whom devolved the task of devising ways and means was Sir Dudley North, younger brother of the

Lord Keeper. Dudley North was one of the ablest men of his time. He had early in life been sent to the

Levant, and had there been long engaged in mercantile pursuits. Most men would, in such a situation, have

allowed their faculties to rust. For at Smyrna and Constantinople there were few books and few intelligent

companions. But the young factor had one of those vigorous understandings which are independent of

external aids. In his solitude he meditated deeply on the philosophy of trade, and thought out by degrees a

complete and admirable theory, substantially the same with that which, a century later, was expounded by

Adam Smith. After an exile of many years, Dudley North returned to England with a large fortune, and

commenced business as a Turkey merchant in the City of London. His profound knowledge, both speculative

and practical, of commercial matters, and the perspicuity and liveliness with which he explained his views,

speedily introduced him to the notice of statesmen. The government found in him at once an enlightened

adviser and an unscrupulous slave. For with his rare mental endowments were joined lax principles and an

unfeeling heart. When the Tory reaction was in full progress, he had consented to be made Sheriff for the

express purpose of assisting the vengeance of the court. His juries had never failed to find verdicts of Guilty;

and, on a day of judicial butchery, carts, loaded with the legs and arms of quartered Whigs, were, to the great

discomposure of his lady, driven to his fine house in Basinghall Street for orders. His services had been

rewarded with the honour of knighthood, with an Alderman's gown, and with the office of Commissioner of

the Customs. He had been brought into Parliament for Banbury, and though a new member, was the person

on whom the Lord Treasurer chiefly relied for the conduct of financial business in the Lower House.314

Though the Commons were unanimous in their resolution to grant a further supply to the crown, they were by

no means agreed as to the sources from which that supply should be drawn. It was speedily determined that

part of the sum which was required should be raised by laying an additional impost, for a term of eight years,

on wine and vinegar: but something more than this was needed. Several absurd schemes were suggested.

Many country gentlemen were disposed to put a heavy tax on all new buildings in the capital. Such a tax, it

was hoped, would check the growth of a city which had long been regarded with jealousy and aversion by the

rural aristocracy. Dudley North's plan was that additional duties should be imposed, for a term of eight years,

on sugar and tobacco. A great clamour was raised Colonial merchants, grocers, sugar bakers and

tobacconists, petitioned the House and besieged the public offices. The people of Bristol, who were deeply

interested in the trade with Virginia and Jamaica, sent up a deputation which was heard at the bar of the

Commons. Rochester was for a moment staggered; but North's ready wit and perfect knowledge of trade

prevailed, both in the Treasury and in the Parliament, against all opposition. The old members were amazed

at seeing a man who had not been a fortnight in the House, and whose life had been chiefly passed in foreign

countries, assume with confidence, and discharge with ability, all the functions of a Chancellor of the

His plan was adopted; and thus the Crown was in possession of a clear income of about nineteen hundred

thousand pounds, derived from England alone. Such an income was then more than sufficient for the support

The Lords had, in the meantime, discussed several important questions. The Tory party had always been

strong among the peers. It included the whole bench of Bishops, and had been reinforced during the four

years which had elapsed since the last dissolution, by several fresh creations. Of the new nobles, the most

conspicuous were the Lord Treasurer Rochester, the Lord Keeper Guildford. the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys,

the Lord Godolphin, and the Lord Churchill, who, after his return from Versailles, had been made a Baron of

The peers early took into consideration the case of four members of their body who had been impeached in

the late reign, but had never been brought to trial, and had, after a long confinement, been admitted to bail by

the Court of King's Bench. Three of the noblemen who were thus under recognisances were Roman

Catholics. The fourth was a Protestant of great note and influence, the Earl of Danby. Since he had fallen

from power and had been accused of treason by the Commons, four Parliaments had been dissolved; but he

had been neither acquitted nor condemned. In 1679 the Lords had considered, with reference to his situation,

the question whether an impeachment was or was not terminated by a dissolution. They had resolved, after

long debate and full examination of precedents, that the impeachment was still pending. That resolution they

now rescinded. A few Whig nobles protested against this step, but to little purpose. The Commons silently

acquiesced in the decision of the Upper House. Danby again took his seat among his peers, and became an

The constitutional question on which the Lords thus, in the short space of six years, pronounced two

diametrically opposite decisions, slept during more than a century, and was at length revived by the

dissolution which took place during the long trial of Warren Hastings. It was then necessary to determine

whether the rule laid down in 1679, or the opposite rule laid down in 1685, was to be accounted the law of

the land. The point was long debated in both houses; and the best legal and parliamentary abilities which an

age preeminently fertile both in legal and in parliamentary ability could supply were employed in the

discussion. The lawyers were not unequally divided. Thurlow, Kenyon, Scott, and Erskine maintained that

the dissolution had put an end to the impeachment. The contrary doctrine was held by Mansfield, Camden,

Loughborough, and Grant. But among those statesmen who grounded their arguments, not on precedents and

technical analogies, but on deep and broad constitutional principles, there was little difference of opinion. Pitt

and Grenville, as well as Burke and Fox, held that the impeachment was still pending Both Houses by great

majorities set aside the decision of 1685, and pronounced the decision of 1679 to be in conformity with the

Of the national crimes which had been committed during the panic excited by the fictions of Oates, the most

signal had been the judicial murder of Stafford. The sentence of that unhappy nobleman was now regarded by

all impartial persons as unjust. The principal witness for the prosecution had been convicted of a series of

foul perjuries. It was the duty of the legislature, in such circumstances, to do justice to the memory of a

guiltless sufferer, and to efface an unmerited stain from a name long illustrious in our annals. A bill for

reversing the attainder of Stafford was passed by the Upper House, in spite of the murmurs of a few peers

who were unwilling to admit that they had shed innocent blood. The Commons read the bill twice without a

division, and ordered it to be committed. But, on the day appointed for the committee, arrived news that a

formidable rebellion had broken out in the West of England. It was consequently necessary to postpone much

important business. The amends due to the memory of Stafford were deferred, as was supposed, only for a

short time. But the misgovernment of James in a few months completely turned the tide of public feeling.

During several generations the Roman Catholics were in no condition to demand reparation for injustice, and

accounted themselves happy if they were permitted to live unmolested in obscurity and silence. At length, in

the reign of King George the Fourth, more than a hundred and forty years after the day on which the blood of

Stafford was shed on Tower Hill, the tardy expiation was accomplished. A law annulling the attainder and

restoring the injured family to its ancient dignities was presented to Parliament by the ministers of the crown,

was eagerly welcomed by public men of all parties, and was passed without one dissentient voice.318

It is now necessary that I should trace the origin and progress of that rebellion by which the deliberations of

TOWARDS the close of the reign of Charles the Second, some Whigs who had been deeply implicated in the

plot so fatal to their party, and who knew themselves to be marked out for destruction, had sought an asylum

These refugees were in general men of fiery temper and weak judgment. They were also under the influence

of that peculiar illusion which seems to belong to their situation. A politician driven into banishment by a

hostile faction generally sees the society which he has quitted through a false medium. Every object is

distorted and discoloured by his regrets, his longings, and his resentments. Every little discontent appears to

him to portend a revolution. Every riot is a rebellion. He cannot be convinced that his country does not pine

for him as much as he pines for his country. He imagines that all his old associates, who still dwell at their

homes and enjoy their estates, are tormented by the same feelings which make life a burden to himself. The

longer his expatriation, the greater does this hallucination become. The lapse of time, which cools the ardour

of the friends whom he has left behind, inflames his. Every month his impatience to revisit his native land

increases; and every month his native land remembers and misses him less. This delusion becomes almost a

madness when many exiles who suffer in the same cause herd together in a foreign country. Their chief

employment is to talk of what they once were, and of what they may yet be, to goad each other into animosity

against the common enemy, to feed each other with extravagant hopes of victory and revenge. Thus they

become ripe for enterprises which would at once be pronounced hopeless by any man whose passions had not

In this mood were many of the outlaws who had assembled on the Continent. The correspondence which they

kept up with England was, for the most part, such as tended to excite their feelings and to mislead their

judgment. Their information concerning the temper of the public mind was chiefly derived from the worst

members of the Whig party, from men who were plotters and libellers by profession, who were pursued by

the officers of justice, who were forced to skulk in disguise through back streets, and who sometimes lay hid

for weeks together in cocklofts and cellars. The statesmen who had formerly been the ornaments of the

Country Party, the statesmen who afterwards guided the councils of the Convention, would have given advice

very different from that which was given by such men as John Wildman and Henry Danvers.

Wildman had served forty years before in the parliamentary army, but had been more distinguished there as

an agitator than as a soldier, and had early quitted the profession of arms for pursuits better suited to his

temper. His hatred of monarchy had induced him to engage in a long series of conspiracies, first against the

Protector, and then against the Stuarts. But with Wildman's fanaticism was joined a tender care for his own

safety. He had a wonderful skill in grazing the edge of treason. No man understood better how to instigate

others to desperate enterprises by words which, when repeated to a jury, might seem innocent, or, at worst,

ambiguous. Such was his cunning that, though always plotting, though always known to be plotting, and

though long malignantly watched by a vindictive government, he eluded every danger, and died in his bed,

after having seen two generations of his accomplices die on the gallows.319 Danvers was a man of the same

class, hotheaded, but fainthearted, constantly urged to the brink of danger by enthusiasm, and constantly

stopped on that brink by cowardice. He had considerable influence among a portion of the Baptists, had

written largely in defence of their peculiar opinions, and had drawn down on himself the severe censure of

the most respectable Puritans by attempting to palliate the crimes of Matthias and John of Leyden. It is

probable that, had he possessed a little courage, he would have trodden in the footsteps of the wretches whom

he defended. He was, at this time, concealing himself from the officers of justice; for warrants were out

against him on account of a grossly calumnious paper of which the government had discovered him to be the

It is easy to imagine what kind of intelligence and counsel men, such as have been described, were likely to

send to the outlaws in the Netherlands. Of the general character of those outlaws an estimate may be formed

One of the most conspicuous among them was John Ayloffe, a lawyer connected by affinity with the Hydes,

and through the Hydes, with James. Ayloffe had early made himself remarkable by offering a whimsical

insult to the government. At a time when the ascendancy of the court of Versailles had excited general

uneasiness, he had contrived to put a wooden shoe, the established type, among the English, of French

tyranny, into the chair of the House of Commons. He had subsequently been concerned in the Whig plot; but

there is no reason to believe that he was a party to the design of assassinating the royal brothers. He was a

man of parts and courage; but his moral character did not stand high. The Puritan divines whispered that he

was a careless Gallio or something worse, and that, whatever zeal he might profess for civil liberty, the Saints

Nathaniel Wade was, like Ayloffe, a lawyer. He had long resided at Bristol, and had been celebrated in his

own neighbourhood as a vehement republican. At one time he had formed a project of emigrating to New

Jersey, where he expected to find institutions better suited to his taste than those of England. His activity in

electioneering had introduced him to the notice of some Whig nobles. They had employed him

professionally, and had, at length, admitted him to their most secret counsels. He had been deeply concerned

in the scheme of insurrection, and had undertaken to head a rising in his own city. He had also been privy to

the more odious plot against the lives of Charles and James. But he always declared that, though privy to it,

he had abhorred it, and had attempted to dissuade his associates from carrying their design into effect. For a

man bred to civil pursuits, Wade seems to have had, in an unusual degree, that sort of ability and that sort of

nerve which make a good soldier. Unhappily his principles and his courage proved to be not of sufficient

force to support him when the fight was over, and when in a prison, he had to choose between death and

Another fugitive was Richard Goodenough, who had formerly been Under Sheriff of London. On this man

his party had long relied for services of no honourable kind, and especially for the selection of jurymen not

likely to be troubled with scruples in political cases. He had been deeply concerned in those dark and

atrocious parts of the Whig plot which had been carefully concealed from the most respectable Whigs. Nor is

it possible to plead, in extenuation of his guilt, that he was misled by inordinate zeal for the public good. For

it will be seen that after having disgraced a noble cause by his crimes, he betrayed it in order to escape from

Very different was the character of Richard Rumbold. He had held a commission in Cromwell's own

regiment, had guarded the scaffold before the Banqueting House on the day of the great execution, had fought

at Dunbar and Worcester, and had always shown in the highest degree the qualities which distinguished the

invincible army in which he served, courage of the truest temper, fiery enthusiasm, both political and

religious, and with that enthusiasm, all the power of selfgovernment which is characteristic of men trained in

well disciplined camps to command and to obey. When the Republican troops were disbanded, Rumbold

became a maltster, and carried on his trade near Hoddesdon, in that building from which the Rye House plot

derives its name. It had been suggested, though not absolutely determined, in the conferences of the most

violent and unscrupulous of the malecontents, that armed men should be stationed in the Rye House to attack

the Guards who were to escort Charles and James from Newmarket to London. In these conferences Rumbold

had borne a part from which he would have shrunk with horror, if his clear understanding had not been

A more important exile was Ford Grey, Lord Grey of Wark. He had been a zealous Exclusionist, had

concurred in the design of insurrection, and had been committed to the Tower, but had succeeded in making

his keepers drunk, and in effecting his escape to the Continent. His parliamentary abilities were great, and his

manners pleasing: but his life had been sullied by a great domestic crime. His wife was a daughter of the

noble house of Berkeley. Her sister, the Lady Henrietta Berkeley, was allowed to associate and correspond

with him as with a brother by blood. A fatal attachment sprang up. The high spirit and strong passions of

Lady Henrietta broke through all restraints of virtue and decorum. A scandalous elopement disclosed to the

whole kingdom the shame of two illustrious families. Grey and some of the agents who had served him in his

amour were brought to trial on a charge of conspiracy. A scene unparalleled in our legal history was exhibited

in the Court of King's Bench. The seducer appeared with dauntless front, accompanied by his paramour. Nor

did the great Whig lords flinch from their friend's side even in that extremity. Those whom he had wronged

stood over against him, and were moved to transports of rage by the sight of him. The old Earl of Berkeley

poured forth reproaches and curses on the wretched Henrietta. The Countess gave evidence broken by many

sobs, and at length fell down in a swoon. The jury found a verdict of Guilty. When the court rose Lord

Berkeley called on all his friends to help him to seize his daughter. The partisans of Grey rallied round her.

Swords were drawn on both sides; a skirmish took place in Westminster Hall; and it was with difficulty that

the Judges and tipstaves parted the combatants. In our time such a trial would be fatal to the character of a

public man; but in that age the standard of morality among the great was so low, and party spirit was so

violent, that Grey still continued to have considerable influence, though the Puritans, who formed a strong

One part of the character, or rather, it may be, of the fortune, of Grey deserves notice. It was admitted that

everywhere, except on the field of battle, he showed a high degree of courage. More than once, in

embarrassing circumstances, when his life and liberty were at stake, the dignity of his deportment and his

perfect command of all his faculties extorted praise from those who neither loved nor esteemed him. But as a

soldier he incurred, less perhaps by his fault than by mischance, the degrading imputation of personal

In this respect he differed widely from his friend the Duke of Monmouth. Ardent and intrepid on the field of

battle, Monmouth was everywhere else effeminate and irresolute. The accident of his birth, his personal

courage, and his superficial graces, had placed him in a post for which he was altogether unfitted. After

witnessing the ruin of the party of which he had been the nominal head, he had retired to Holland. The Prince

and Princess of Orange had now ceased to regard him as a rival. They received him most hospitably; for they

hoped that, by treating, him with kindness, they should establish a claim to the gratitude of his father. They

knew that paternal affection was not yet wearied out, that letters and supplies of money still came secretly

from Whitehall to Monmouth's retreat, and that Charles frowned on those who sought to pay their court to

him by speaking ill of his banished son. The Duke had been encouraged to expect that, in a very short time, if

he gave no new cause of displeasure, he would be recalled to his native land, and restored to all his high

honours and commands. Animated by such expectations he had been the life of the Hague during the late

winter. He had been the most conspicuous figure at a succession of balls in that splendid Orange Hall, which

blazes on every side with the most ostentatious colouring of Jord�ns and Hondthorst.326 He had taught the

English country dance to the Dutch ladies, and had in his turn learned from them to skate on the canals. The

Princess had accompanied him in his expeditions on the ice; and the figure which she made there, poised on

one leg, and clad in petticoats shorter than are generally worn by ladies so strictly decorous, had caused some

wonder and mirth to the foreign ministers. The sullen gravity which had been characteristic of the

Stadtholder's court seemed to have vanished before the influence of the fascinating Englishman. Even the

stern and pensive William relaxed into good humour when his brilliant guest appeared.327

Monmouth meanwhile carefully avoided all that could give offence in the quarter to which he looked for

protection. He saw little of any Whigs, and nothing of those violent men who had been concerned in the

worst part of the Whig plot. He was therefore loudly accused, by his old associates, of fickleness and

By none of the exiles was this accusation urged with more vehemence and bitterness than by Robert

Ferguson, the Judas of Dryden's great satire. Ferguson was by birth a Scot; but England had long been his

residence. At the time of the Restoration, indeed, he had held a living in Kent. He had been bred a

Presbyterian; but the Presbyterians had cast him out, and he had become an Independent. He had been master

of an academy which the Dissenters had set up at Islington as a rival to Westminster School and the Charter

House; and he had preached to large congregations at a meeting house in Moorfields. He had also published

some theological treatises which may still be found in the dusty recesses of a few old libraries; but, though

texts of Scripture were always on his lips, those who had pecuniary transactions with him soon found him to

At length he turned his attention almost entirely from theology to the worst part of politics. He belonged to

the class whose office it is to render in troubled times to exasperated parties those services from which honest

men shrink in disgust and prudent men in fear, the class of fanatical knaves. Violent, malignant, regardless of

truth, insensible to shame, insatiable of notoriety, delighting in intrigue, in tumult, in mischief for its own

sake, he toiled during many years in the darkest mines of faction. He lived among libellers and false

witnesses. He was the keeper of a secret purse from which agents too vile to be acknowledged received hire,

and the director of a secret press whence pamphlets, bearing no name, were daily issued. He boasted that he

had contrived to scatter lampoons about the terrace of Windsor, and even to lay them under the royal pillow.

In this way of life he was put to many shifts, was forced to assume many names, and at one time had four

different lodgings in different corners of London. He was deeply engaged in the Rye House plot. There is,

indeed, reason to believe that he was the original author of those sanguinary schemes which brought so much

discredit on the whole Whig party. When the conspiracy was detected and his associates were in dismay, he

bade them farewell with a laugh, and told them that they were novices, that he had been used to flight,

concealment and disguise, and that he should never leave off plotting while he lived. He escaped to the

Continent. But it seemed that even on the Continent he was not secure. The English envoys at foreign courts

were directed to be on the watch for him. The French government offered a reward of five hundred pistoles to

any who would seize him. Nor was it easy for him to escape notice; for his broad Scotch accent, his tall and

lean figure, his lantern jaws, the gleam of his sharp eyes which were always overhung by his wig, his cheeks

inflamed by an eruption, his shoulders deformed by a stoop, and his gait distinguished from that of other men

by a peculiar shuffle, made him remarkable wherever he appeared. But, though he was, as it seemed, pursued

with peculiar animosity, it was whispered that this animosity was feigned, and that the officers of justice had

secret orders not to see him. That he was really a bitter malecontent can scarcely be doubted. But there is

strong reason to believe that he provided for his own safety by pretending at Whitehall to be a spy on the

Whigs, and by furnishing the government with just so much information as sufficed to keep up his credit.

This hypothesis furnishes a simple explanation of what seemed to his associates to be his unnatural

recklessness and audacity. Being himself out of danger, he always gave his vote for the most violent and

perilous course, and sneered very complacently at the pusillanimity of men who, not having taken the

infamous precautions on which he relied, were disposed to think twice before they placed life, and objects

As soon as he was in the Low Countries he began to form new projects against the English government, and

found among his fellow emigrants men ready to listen to his evil counsels. Monmouth, however, stood

obstinately aloof; and, without the help of Monmouth's immense popularity, it was impossible to effect

anything. Yet such was the impatience and rashness of the exiles that they tried to find another leader. They

sent an embassy to that solitary retreat on the shores of Lake Leman where Edmund Ludlow, once

conspicuous among the chiefs of the parliamentary army and among the members of the High Court of

Justice, had, during many years, hidden himself from the vengeance of the restored Stuarts. The stern old

regicide, however, refused to quit his hermitage. His work, he said, was done. If England was still to be

The unexpected demise of the crown changed the whole aspect of affairs. Any hope which the proscribed

Whigs might have cherished of returning peaceably to their native land was extinguished by the death of a

careless and goodnatured prince, and by the accession of a prince obstinate in all things, and especially

obstinate in revenge. Ferguson was in his element. Destitute of the talents both of a writer and of a statesman,

he had in a high degree the unenviable qualifications of a tempter; and now, with the malevolent activity and

dexterity of an evil spirit, he ran from outlaw to outlaw, chattered in every ear, and stirred up in every bosom

He no longer despaired of being able to seduce Monmouth. The situation of that unhappy young man was

completely changed. While he was dancing and skating at the Hague, and expecting every day a summons to

London, he was overwhelmed with misery by the tidings of his father's death and of his uncle's accession.

During the night which followed the arrival of the news, those who lodged near him could distinctly hear his

sobs and his piercing cries. He quitted the Hague the next day, having solemnly pledged his word both to the

Prince and to the Princess of Orange not to attempt anything against the government of England, and having

The prospect which lay before Monmouth was not a bright one. There was now no probability that he would

be recalled from banishment. On the Continent his life could no longer be passed amidst the splendour and

festivity of a court. His cousins at the Hague seem to have really regarded him with kindness; but they could

no longer countenance him openly without serious risk of producing a rupture between England and Holland.

William offered a kind and judicious suggestion. The war which was then raging in Hungary, between the

Emperor and the Turks, was watched by all Europe with interest almost as great as that which the Crusades

had excited five hundred years earlier. Many gallant gentlemen, both Protestant and Catholic, were fighting

as volunteers in the common cause of Christendom. The Prince advised Monmouth to repair to the Imperial

camp, and assured him that, if he would do so, he should not want the means of making an appearance

befitting an English nobleman.332 This counsel was excellent: but the Duke could not make up his mind. He

retired to Brussels accompanied by Henrietta Wentworth, Baroness Wentworth of Nettlestede, a damsel of

high rank and ample fortune, who loved him passionately, who had sacrificed for his sake her maiden honour

and the hope of a splendid alliance, who had followed him into exile, and whom he believed to be his wife in

the sight of heaven. Under the soothing influence of female friendship, his lacerated mind healed fast. He

seemed to have found happiness in obscurity and repose, and to have forgotten that he had been the ornament

of a splendid court and the head of a great party, that he had commanded armies, and that he had aspired to a

But he was not suffered to remain quiet. Ferguson employed all his powers of temptation. Grey, who knew

not where to turn for a pistole, and was ready for any undertaking, however desperate, lent his aid. No art was

spared which could draw Monmouth from retreat. To the first invitations which he received from his old

associates he returned unfavourable answers. He pronounced the difficulties of a descent on England

insuperable, protested that he was sick of public life, and begged to be left in the enjoyment of his newly

found happiness. But he was little in the habit of resisting skilful and urgent importunity. It is said, too, that

he was induced to quit his retirement by the same powerful influence which had made that retirement

delightful. Lady Wentworth wished to see him a King. Her rents, her diamonds, her credit were put at his

disposal. Monmouth's judgment was not convinced; but he had not the firmness to resist such

By the English exiles he was joyfully welcomed, and unanimously acknowledged as their head. But there was

another class of emigrants who were not disposed to recognise his supremacy. Misgovernment, such as had

never been known in the southern part of our island, had driven from Scotland to the Continent many

fugitives, the intemperance of whose political and religious zeal was proportioned to the oppression which

they had undergone. These men were not willing to follow an English leader. Even in destitution and exile

they retained their punctilious national pride, and would not consent that their country should be, in their

persons, degraded into a province. They had a captain of their own, Archibald, ninth Earl of Argyle, who, as

chief of the great tribe of Campbell, was known among the population of the Highlands by the proud name of

Mac Callum More. His father, the Marquess of Argyle, had been the head of the Scotch Covenanters, had

greatly contributed to the ruin of Charles the First, and was not thought by the Royalists to have atoned for

this offence by consenting to bestow the empty title of King, and a state prison in a palace, on Charles the

Second. After the return of the royal family the Marquess was put to death. His marquisate became extinct;

but his son was permitted to inherit the ancient earldom, and was still among the greatest if not the greatest,

of the nobles of Scotland. The Earl's conduct during the twenty years which followed the Restoration had

been, as he afterwards thought, criminally moderate. He had, on some occasions, opposed the administration

which afflicted his country: but his opposition had been languid and cautious. His compliances in

ecclesiastical matters had given scandal to rigid Presbyterians: and so far had he been from showing any

inclination to resistance that, when the Covenanters had been persecuted into insurrection, he had brought

Such had been his political course until the Duke of York came down to Edinburgh armed with the whole

regal authority The despotic viceroy soon found that he could not expect entire support from Argyle. Since

the most powerful chief in the kingdom could not be gained, it was thought necessary that he should be

destroyed. On grounds so frivolous that even the spirit of party and the spirit of chicane were ashamed of

them, he was brought to trial for treason, convicted, and sentenced to death. The partisans of the Stuarts

afterwards asserted that it was never meant to carry this sentence into effect, and that the only object of the

prosecution was to frighten him into ceding his extensive jurisdiction in the Highlands. Whether James

designed, as his enemies suspected, to commit murder, or only, as his friends affirmed, to commit extortion

by threatening to commit murder, cannot now be ascertained. "I know nothing of the Scotch law," said

Halifax to King Charles; "but this I know, that we should not hang a dog here on the grounds on which my

Argyle escaped in disguise to England, and thence passed over to Friesland. In that secluded province his

father had bought a small estate, as a place of refuge for the family in civil troubles. It was said, among the

Scots that this purchase had been made in consequence of the predictions of a Celtic seer, to whom it had

been revealed that Mac Callum More would one day be driven forth from the ancient mansion of his race at

Inverary.335 But it is probable that the politic Marquess had been warned rather by the signs of the times

than by the visions of any prophet. In Friesland Earl Archibald resided during some time so quietly that it was

not generally known whither he had fled. From his retreat he carried on a correspondence with his friends in

Great Britain, was a party to the Whig conspiracy, and concerted with the chiefs of that conspiracy a plan for

invading Scotland.336 This plan had been dropped upon the detection of the Rye House plot, but became

He had, during his residence on the Continent, reflected much more deeply on religious questions than in the

preceding years of his life. In one respect the effect of these reflections on his mind had been pernicious. His

partiality for the synodical form of church government now amounted to bigotry. When he remembered how

long he had conformed to the established worship, he was overwhelmed with shame and remorse, and

showed too many signs of a disposition to atone for his defection by violence and intolerance. He had

however, in no long time, an opportunity of proving that the fear and love of a higher Power had nerved him

To his companions in adversity his assistance was of the highest moment. Though proscribed and a fugitive.

he was still, in some sense, the most powerful subject in the British dominions. In wealth, even before his

attainder, he was probably inferior, not only to the great English nobles, but to some of the opulent esquires

of Kent and Norfolk. But his patriarchal authority, an authority which no wealth could give and which no

attainder could take away, made him, as a leader of an insurrection, truly formidable. No southern lord could

feel any confidence that, if he ventured to resist the government, even his own gamekeepers and huntsmen

would stand by him. An Earl of Bedford, an Earl of Devonshire, could not engage to bring ten men into the

field. Mac Callum More, penniless and deprived of his earldom, might at any moment, raise a serious civil

war. He bad only to show himself on the coast of Lorn; and an army would, in a few days, gather round him.

The force which, in favourable circumstances, he could bring into the field, amounted to five thousand

fighting, men, devoted to his service accustomed to the use of target and broadsword, not afraid to encounter

regular troops even in the open plain, and perhaps superior to regular troops in the qualifications requisite for

the defence of wild mountain passes, hidden in mist, and torn by headlong torrents. What such a force, well

directed, could effect, even against veteran regiments and skilful commanders, was proved, a few years later,

But, strong as was the claim of Argyle to the confidence of the exiled Scots, there was a faction among them

which regarded him with no friendly feeling, and which wished to make use of his name and influence,

without entrusting to him any real power. The chief of this faction was a lowland gentleman, who had been

implicated in the Whig plot, and had with difficulty eluded the vengeance of the court, Sir Patrick Hume, of

Polwarth, in Berwickshire. Great doubt has been thrown on his integrity, but without sufficient reason. It

must, however, be admitted that he injured his cause by perverseness as much as he could have done by

treachery. He was a man incapable alike of leading and of following, conceited, captious, and wrongheaded,

an endless talker, a sluggard in action against the enemy and active only against his own allies. With Hume

was closely connected another Scottish exile of great note, who had many, of the same faults, Sir John

A far higher character belonged to Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, a man distinguished by learning and

eloquence, distinguished also by courage, disinterestedness, and public spirit but of an irritable and

impracticable temper. Like many of his most illustrious contemporaries, Milton for example, Harrington,

Marvel, and Sidney, Fletcher had, from the misgovernment of several successive princes, conceived a strong

aversion to hereditary monarchy. Yet he was no democrat. He was the head of an ancient Norman house, and

was proud of his descent. He was a fine speaker and a fine writer, and was proud of his intellectual

superiority. Both in his character of gentleman, and in his character of scholar, he looked down with disdain

on the common people, and was so little disposed to entrust them with political power that he thought them

unfit even to enjoy personal freedom. It is a curious circumstance that this man, the most honest, fearless, and

uncompromising republican of his time, should have been the author of a plan for reducing a large part of the

working classes of Scotland to slavery. He bore, in truth, a lively resemblance to those Roman Senators who,

while they hated the name of King, guarded the privileges of their order with inflexible pride against the

encroachments of the multitude, and governed their bondmen and bondwomen by means of the stocks and the

Amsterdam was the place where the leading emigrants, Scotch and English, assembled. Argyle repaired

thither from Friesland, Monmouth from Brabant. It soon appeared that the fugitives had scarcely anything in

common except hatred of James and impatience to return from banishment. The Scots were jealous of the

English, the English of the Scots. Monmouth's high pretensions were offensive to Argyle, who, proud of

ancient nobility and of a legitimate descent from kings, was by no means inclined to do homage to the

offspring of a vagrant and ignoble love. But of all the dissensions by which the little band of outlaws was

distracted the most serious was that which arose between Argyle and a portion of his own followers. Some of

the Scottish exiles had, in a long course of opposition to tyranny, been excited into a morbid state of

understanding and temper, which made the most just and necessary restraint insupportable to them. They

knew that without Argyle they could do nothing. They ought to have known that, unless they wished to run

headlong to ruin, they must either repose full confidence in their leader, or relinquish all thoughts of military

enterprise. Experience has fully proved that in war every operation, from the greatest to the smallest, ought to

be under the absolute direction of one mind, and that every subordinate agent, in his degree, ought to obey

implicitly, strenuously, and with the show of cheerfulness, orders which he disapproves, or of which the

reasons are kept secret from him. Representative assemblies, public discussions, and all the other checks by

which, in civil affairs, rulers are restrained from abusing power, are out of place in a camp. Machiavel justly

imputed many of the disasters of Venice and Florence to the jealousy which led those republics to interfere

with every one of their generals.337 The Dutch practice of sending to an army deputies, without whose

consent no great blow could be struck, was almost equally pernicious. It is undoubtedly by no means certain

that a captain, who has been entrusted with dictatorial power in the hour of peril, will quietly surrender that

power in the hour of triumph; and this is one of the many considerations which ought to make men hesitate

long before they resolve to vindicate public liberty by the sword. But, if they determine to try the chance of

war, they will, if they are wise, entrust to their chief that plenary authority without which war cannot be well

conducted. It is possible that, if they give him that authority, he may turn out a Cromwell or a Napoleon. But

it is almost certain that, if they withhold from him that authority, their enterprises will end like the enterprise

Some of the Scottish emigrants, heated with republican enthusiasm, and utterly destitute of the skill necessary

to the conduct of great affairs, employed all their industry and ingenuity, not in collecting means for the

attack which they were about to make on a formidable enemy, but in devising restraints on their leader's

power and securities against his ambition. The selfcomplacent stupidity with which they insisted on

Organising an army as if they had been organising a commonwealth would be incredible if it had not been

At length all differences were compromised. It was determined that an attempt should be forthwith made on

the western coast of Scotland, and that it should be promptly followed by a descent on England.

Argyle was to hold the nominal command in Scotland: but be was placed under the control of a Committee

which reserved to itself all the most important parts of the military administration. This committee was

empowered to determine where the expedition should land, to appoint officers, to superintend the levying of

troops, to dole out provisions and ammunition. All that was left to the general was to direct the evolutions of

the army in the field, and he was forced to promise that even in the field, except in the case of a surprise, he

Monmouth was to command in England. His soft mind had as usual, taken an impress from the society which

surrounded him. Ambitious hopes, which had seemed to be extinguished, revived in his bosom. He

remembered the affection with which he had been constantly greeted by the common people in town and

country, and expected that they would now rise by hundreds of thousands to welcome him. He remembered

the good will which the soldiers had always borne him, and flattered himself that they would come over to

him by regiments. Encouraging messages reached him in quick succession from London. He was assured that

the violence and injustice with which the elections had been carried on had driven the nation mad, that the

prudence of the leading Whigs had with difficulty prevented a sanguinary outbreak on the day of the

coronation, and that all the great Lords who had supported the Exclusion Bill were impatient to rally round

him. Wildman, who loved to talk treason in parables, sent to say that the Earl of Richmond, just two hundred

years before, had landed in England with a handful of men, and had a few days later been crowned, on the

field of Bosworth, with the diadem taken from the head of Richard. Danvers undertook to raise the City. The

Duke was deceived into the belief that, as soon as he set up his standard, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire,

Hampshire, Cheshire would rise in arms.339 He consequently became eager for the enterprise from which a

few weeks before he had shrunk. His countrymen did not impose on him restrictions so elaborately absurd as

those which the Scotch emigrants had devised. All that was required of him was to promise that he would not

assume the regal title till his pretensions has been submitted to the judgment of a free Parliament.

It was determined that two Englishmen, Ayloffe and Rumbold, should accompany Argyle to Scotland, and

that Fletcher should go with Monmouth to England. Fletcher, from the beginning, had augured ill of the

enterprise: but his chivalrous spirit would not suffer him to decline a risk which his friends seemed eager to

encounter. When Grey repeated with approbation what Wildman had said about Richmond and Richard, the

well read and thoughtful Scot justly remarked that there was a great difference between the fifteenth century

and the seventeenth. Richmond was assured of the support of barons, each of whom could bring an army of

feudal retainers into the field; and Richard had not one regiment of regular soldiers.340

The exiles were able to raise, partly from their own resources and partly from the contributions of well

wishers in Holland, a sum sufficient for the two expeditions. Very little was obtained from London. Six

thousand pounds had been expected thence. But instead of the money came excuses from Wildman, which

ought to have opened the eyes of all who were not wilfully blind. The Duke made up the deficiency by

pawning his own jewels and those of Lady Wentworth. Arms, ammunition, and provisions were bought, and

It is remarkable that the most illustrious and the most grossly injured man among the British exiles stood far

aloof from these rash counsels. John Locke hated tyranny and persecution as a philosopher; but his intellect

and his temper preserved him from the violence of a partisan. He had lived on confidential terms with

Shaftesbury, and had thus incurred the displeasure of the court. Locke's prudence had, however, been such

that it would have been to little purpose to bring him even before the corrupt and partial tribunals of that age.

In one point, however, he was vulnerable. He was a student of Christ Church in the University of Oxford. It

was determined to drive from that celebrated college the greatest man of whom it could ever boast. But this

was not easy. Locke had, at Oxford, abstained from expressing any opinion on the politics of the day. Spies

had been set about him. Doctors of Divinity and Masters of Arts had not been ashamed to perform the vilest

of all offices, that of watching the lips of a companion in order to report his words to his ruin. The

conversation in the hall had been purposely turned to irritating topics, to the Exclusion Bill, and to the

character of the Earl of Shaftesbury, but in vain. Locke neither broke out nor dissembled, but maintained such

steady silence and composure as forced the tools of power to own with vexation that never man was so

complete a master of his tongue and of his passions. When it was found that treachery could do nothing,

arbitrary power was used. After vainly trying to inveigle Locke into a fault, the government resolved to

punish him without one. Orders came from Whitehall that he should be ejected; and those orders the Dean

Locke was travelling on the Continent for his health when he learned that he had been deprived of his home

and of his bread without a trial or even a notice. The injustice with which he had been treated would have

excused him if he had resorted to violent methods of redress. But he was not to be blinded by personal

resentment he augured no good from the schemes of those who had assembled at Amsterdam; and he quietly

repaired to Utrecht, where, while his partners in misfortune were planning their own destruction, he

The English government was early apprised that something was in agitation among the outlaws. An invasion

of England seems not to have been at first expected; but it was apprehended that Argyle would shortly appear

in arms among his clansmen. A proclamation was accordingly issued directing that Scotland should be put

into a state of defence. The militia was ordered to be in readiness. All the clans hostile to the name of

Campbell were set in motion. John Murray, Marquess of Athol, was appointed Lord Lieutenant of

Argyleshire, and, at the head of a great body of his followers, occupied the castle of Inverary. Some

suspected persons were arrested. Others were compelled to give hostages. Ships of war were sent to cruise

near the isle of Bute; and part of the army of Ireland was moved to the coast of Ulster.343

While these preparations were making in Scotland, James called into his closet Arnold Van Citters, who had

long resided in England as Ambassador from the United Provinces, and Everard Van Dykvelt, who, after the

death of Charles, had been sent by the State General on a special mission of condolence and congratulation.

The King said that he had received from unquestionable sources intelligence of designs which were forming

against the throne by his banished subjects in Holland. Some of the exiles were cutthroats, whom nothing but

the special providence of God had prevented from committing a foul murder; and among them was the owner

of the spot which had been fixed for the butchery. "Of all men living," said the King, "Argyle has the greatest

means of annoying me; and of all places Holland is that whence a blow may be best aimed against me." The

Dutch envoys assured his Majesty that what he had said should instantly be communicated to the government

which they represented, and expressed their full confidence that every exertion would be made to satisfy

They were justified in expressing this confidence. Both the Prince of Orange and the States General, were, at

this time, most desirous that the hospitality of their country should not be abused for purposes of which the

English government could justly complain. James had lately held language which encouraged the hope that

he would not patiently submit to the ascendancy of France. It seemed probable that he would consent to form

a close alliance with the United Provinces and the House of Austria. There was, therefore, at the Hague, an

extreme anxiety to avoid all that could give him offence. The personal interest of William was also on this

But the case was one which required rapid and vigorous action; and the nature of the Batavian institutions

made such action almost impossible. The Union of Utrecht, rudely formed, amidst the agonies of a

revolution, for the purpose of meeting immediate exigencies, had never been deliberately revised and

perfected in a time of tranquillity. Every one of the seven commonwealths which that Union had bound

together retained almost all the rights of sovereignty, and asserted those rights punctiliously against the

central government. As the federal authorities had not the means of exacting prompt obedience from the

provincial authorities, so the provincial authorities had not the means of exacting prompt obedience from the

municipal authorities. Holland alone contained eighteen cities, each of which was, for many purposes, an

independent state, jealous of all interference from without. If the rulers of such a city received from the

Hague an order which was unpleasing to them, they either neglected it altogether, or executed it languidly

and tardily. In some town councils, indeed, the influence of the Prince of Orange was all powerful. But

unfortunately the place where the British exiles had congregated, and where their ships had been fitted out,

was the rich and populous Amsterdam; and the magistrates of Amsterdam were the heads of the faction

hostile to the federal government and to the House of Nassau. The naval administration of the United

Provinces was conducted by five distinct boards of Admiralty. One of those boards sate at Amsterdam, was

partly nominated by the authorities of that city, and seems to have been entirely animated by their spirit.

All the endeavours of the federal government to effect what James desired were frustrated by the evasions of

the functionaries of Amsterdam, and by the blunders of Colonel Bevil Skelton, who had just arrived at the

Hague as envoy from England. Skelton had been born in Holland during the English troubles, and was

therefore supposed to be peculiarly qualified for his post;345 but he was, in truth, unfit for that and for every

other diplomatic situation. Excellent judges of character pronounced him to be the most shallow, fickle,

passionate, presumptuous, and garrulous of men.346 He took no serious notice of the proceedings of the

refugees till three vessels which had been equipped for the expedition to Scotland were safe out of the Zuyder

Zee, till the arms, ammunition, and provisions were on board, and till the passengers had embarked. Then,

instead of applying, as he should have done, to the States General, who sate close to his own door, he sent a

messenger to the magistrates of Amsterdam, with a request that the suspected ships might be detained. The

magistrates of Amsterdam answered that the entrance of the Zuyder Zee was out of their jurisdiction, and

referred him to the federal government. It was notorious that this was a mere excuse, and that, if there had

been any real wish at the Stadthouse of Amsterdam to prevent Argyle from sailing, no difficulties would have

been made. Skelton now addressed himself to the States General. They showed every disposition to comply

with his demand, and, as the case was urgent, departed from the course which they ordinarily observed in the

transaction of business. On the same day on which he made his application to them, an order, drawn in exact

conformity with his request, was despatched to the Admiralty of Amsterdam. But this order, in consequence

of some misinformation, did not correctly describe the situation of the ships. They were said to be in the

Texel. They were in the Vlie. The Admiralty of Amsterdam made this error a plea for doing nothing; and,

The last hours which Argyle passed on the coast of Holland were hours of great anxiety. Near him lay a

Dutch man of war whose broadside would in a moment have put an end to his expedition. Round his little

fleet a boat was rowing, in which were some persons with telescopes whom he suspected to be spies. But no

effectual step was taken for the purpose of detaining him; and on the afternoon of the second of May he stood

The voyage was prosperous. On the sixth the Orkneys were in sight. Argyle very unwisely anchored off

Kirkwall, and allowed two of his followers to go on shore there. The Bishop ordered them to be arrested. The

refugees proceeded to hold a long and animated debate on this misadventure: for, from the beginning to the

end of their expedition, however languid and irresolute their conduct might be, they never in debate wanted

spirit or perseverance. Some were for an attack on Kirkwall. Some were for proceeding without delay to

Argyleshire. At last the Earl seized some gentlemen who lived near the coast of the island, and proposed to

the Bishop an exchange of prisoners. The Bishop returned no answer; and the fleet, after losing three days,

This delay was full of danger. It was speedily known at Edinburgh that the rebel squadron had touched at the

Orkneys. Troops were instantly put in motion. When the Earl reached his own province, he found that

preparations had been made to repel him. At Dunstaffnage he sent his second son Charles on Shore to call the

Campbells to arms. But Charles returned with gloomy tidings. The herdsmen and fishermen were indeed

ready to rally round Mac Callum More; but, of the heads of the clan, some were in confinement, and others

had fled. Those gentlemen who remained at their homes were either well affected to the government or afraid

of moving, and refused even to see the son of their chief. From Dunstaffnage the small armament proceeded

to Campbelltown, near the southern extremity of the peninsula of Kintyre. Here the Earl published a

manifesto, drawn up in Holland, under the direction of the Committee, by James Stewart, a Scotch advocate,

whose pen was, a few months later, employed in a very different way. In this paper were set forth, with a

strength of language sometimes approaching to scurrility, many real and some imaginary grievances. It was

hinted that the late King had died by poison. A chief object of the expedition was declared to be the entire

suppression, not only of Popery, but of Prelacy, which was termed the most bitter root and offspring of

Popery; and all good Scotchmen were exhorted to do valiantly for the cause of their country and of their God.

Zealous as Argyle was for what he considered as pure religion, he did not scruple to practice one rite half

Popish and half Pagan. The mysterious cross of yew, first set on fire, and then quenched in the blood of a

goat, was sent forth to summon all the Campbells, from sixteen to sixty. The isthmus of Tarbet was appointed

for the place of gathering. The muster, though small indeed when compared with what it would have been if

the spirit and strength of the clan had been unbroken, was still formidable. The whole force assembled

amounted to about eighteen hundred men. Argyle divided his mountaineers into three regiments, and

The bickerings which had begun in Holland had never been intermitted during the whole course of the

expedition; but at Tarbet they became more violent than ever. The Committee wished to interfere even with

the patriarchal dominion of the Earl over the Campbells, and would not allow him to settle the military rank

of his kinsmen by his own authority. While these disputatious meddlers tried to wrest from him his power

over the Highlands, they carried on their own correspondence with the Lowlands, and received and sent

letters which were never communicated to the nominal General. Hume and his confederates had reserved to

themselves the superintendence of the Stores, and conducted this important part of the administration of war

with a laxity hardly to be distinguished from dishonesty, suffered the arms to be spoiled, wasted the

provisions, and lived riotously at a time when they ought to have set to all beneath them an example of

The great question was whether the Highlands or the Lowlands should be the seat of war. The Earl's first

object was to establish his authority over his own domains, to drive out the invading clans which had been

poured from Perthshire into Argyleshire, and to take possession of the ancient seat of his family at Inverary.

He might then hope to have four or five thousand claymores at his command. With such a force he would be

able to defend that wild country against the whole power of the kingdom of Scotland. and would also have

secured an excellent base for offensive operations. This seems to have been the wisest course open to him.

Rumbold, who had been trained in an excellent military school, and who, as an Englishman, might be

supposed to be an impartial umpire between the Scottish factions, did all in his power to strengthen the Earl's

hands. But Hume and Cochrane were utterly impracticable. Their jealousy of Argyle was, in truth, stronger

than their wish for the success of the expedition. They saw that, among his own mountains and lakes, and at

the head of an army chiefly composed of his own tribe, he would be able to bear down their opposition, and

to exercise the full authority of a General. They muttered that the only men who had the good cause at heart

were the Lowlanders, and that the Campbells took up arms neither for liberty nor for the Church of God, but

Cochrane declared that he would go to Ayrshire if he went by himself, and with nothing but a pitchfork in his

hand. Argyle, after long resistance, consented, against his better judgment, to divide his little army. He

remained with Rumbold in the Highlands. Cochrane and Hume were at the head of the force which sailed to

Ayrshire was Cochrane's object: but the coast of Ayrshire was guarded by English frigates; and the

adventurers were under the necessity of running up the estuary of the Clyde to Greenock, then a small fishing

village consisting of a single row of thatched hovels, now a great and flourishing port, of which the customs

amount to more than five times the whole revenue which the Stuarts derived from the kingdom of Scotland.

A party of militia lay at Greenock: but Cochrane, who wanted provisions, was determined to land. Hume

objected. Cochrane was peremptory, and ordered an officer, named Elphinstone, to take twenty men in a boat

to the shore. But the wrangling spirit of the leaders had infected all ranks. Elphinstone answered that he was

bound to obey only reasonable commands, that he considered this command as unreasonable, and, in short,

that he would not go. Major Fullarton, a brave man, esteemed by all parties, but peculiarly attached to Argyle,

undertook to land with only twelve men, and did so in spite of a fire from the coast. A slight skirmish

followed. The militia fell back. Cochrane entered Greenock and procured a supply of meal, but found no

In fact, the state of public feeling in Scotland was not such as the exiles, misled by the infatuation common in

all ages to exiles, had supposed it to be. The government was, indeed, hateful and hated. But the malecontents

were divided into parties which were almost as hostile to one another as to their rulers; nor was any of those

parties eager to join the invaders. Many thought that the insurrection had no chance of success. The spirit of

many had been effectually broken by long and cruel oppression. There was, indeed, a class of enthusiasts

who were little in the habit of calculating chances, and whom oppression had not tamed but maddened. But

these men saw little difference between Argyle and James. Their wrath had been heated to such a temperature

that what everybody else would have called boiling zeal seemed to them Laodicean lukewarmness. The Earl's

past life had been stained by what they regarded as the vilest apostasy. The very Highlanders whom he now

summoned to extirpate Prelacy he had a few years before summoned to defend it. And were slaves who knew

nothing and cared nothing about religion, who were ready to fight for synodical government, for Episcopacy,

for Popery, just as Mac Callum More might be pleased to command, fit allies for the people of God? The

manifesto, indecent and intolerant as was its tone, was, in the view of these fanatics, a cowardly and worldly

performance. A settlement such as Argyle would have made, such as was afterwards made by a mightier and

happier deliverer, seemed to them not worth a struggle. They wanted not only freedom of conscience for

themselves, but absolute dominion over the consciences of others; not only the Presbyterian doctrine, polity,

and worship, but the Covenant in its utmost rigour. Nothing would content them but that every end for which

civil society exists should be sacrificed to the ascendency of a theological system. One who believed no form

of church government to be worth a breach of Christian charity, and who recommended comprehension and

toleration, was in their phrase, halting between Jehovah and Baal. One who condemned such acts as the

murder of Cardinal Beatoun and Archbishop Sharpe fell into the same sin for which Saul had been rejected

from being King over Israel. All the rules, by which, among civilised and Christian men, the horrors of war

are mitigated, were abominations in the sight of the Lord. Quarter was to be neither taken nor given. A Malay

running a muck, a mad dog pursued by a crowd, were the models to be imitated by warriors fighting in just

selfdefence. To reasons such as guide the conduct of statesmen and generals the minds of these zealots were

absolutely impervious. That a man should venture to urge such reasons was sufficient evidence that he was

not one of the faithful. If the divine blessing were withheld, little would be effected by crafty politicians, by

veteran captains, by cases of arms from Holland, or by regiments of unregenerate Celts from the mountains of

Lorn. If, on the other hand, the Lord's time were indeed come, he could still, as of old, cause the foolish

things of the world to confound the wise, and could save alike by many and by few. The broadswords of

Athol and the bayonets of Claverhouse would be put to rout by weapons as insignificant as the sling of David

Cochrane, having found it impossible to raise the population on the south of the Clyde, rejoined Argyle, who

was in the island of Bute. The Earl now again proposed to make an attempt upon Inverary. Again he

encountered a pertinacious opposition. The seamen sided with Hume and Cochrane. The Highlanders were

absolutely at the command of their chieftain. There was reason to fear that the two parties would come to

blows; and the dread of such a disaster induced the Committee to make some concession. The castle of Ealan

Ghierig, situated at the mouth of Loch Riddan, was selected to be the chief place of arms. The military stores

were disembarked there. The squadron was moored close to the walls in a place where it was protected by

rocks and shallows such as, it was thought, no frigate could pass. Outworks were thrown up. A battery was

planted with some small guns taken from the ships. The command of the fort was most unwisely given to

Elphinstone, who had already proved himself much more disposed to argue with his commanders than to

And now, during a few hours, there was some show of vigour. Rumbold took the castle of Ardkinglass. The

Earl skirmished successfully with Athol's troops, and was about to advance on Inverary, when alarming news

from the ships and factions in the Committee forced him to turn back. The King's frigates had come nearer to

Ealan Ghierig than had been thought possible. The Lowland gentlemen positively refused to advance further

into the Highlands. Argyle hastened back to Ealan Ghierig. There he proposed to make an attack on the

frigates. His ships, indeed, were ill fitted for such an encounter. But they would have been supported by a

flotilla of thirty large fishing boats, each well manned with armed Highlanders. The Committee, however,

refused to listen to this plan, and effectually counteracted it by raising a mutiny among the sailors.

All was now confusion and despondency. The provisions had been so ill managed by the Committee that

there was no longer food for the troops. The Highlanders consequently deserted by hundreds; and the Earl,

brokenhearted by his misfortunes, yielded to the urgency of those who still pertinaciously insisted that he

The little army therefore hastened to the shore of Loch Long, passed that inlet by night in boats, and landed in

Dumbartonshire. Hither, on the following morning, came news that the frigates had forced a passage, that all

the Earl's ships had been taken, and that Elphinstone had fled from Ealan Ghierig without a blow, leaving the

All that remained was to invade the Lowlands under every disadvantage. Argyle resolved to make a bold

push for Glasgow. But, as soon as this resolution was announced, the very men, who had, up to that moment,

been urging him to hasten into the low country, took fright, argued, remonstrated, and when argument and

remonstrance proved vain, laid a scheme for seizing the boats, making their own escape, and leaving their

General and his clansmen to conquer or perish unaided. This scheme failed; and the poltroons who had

formed it were compelled to share with braver men the risks of the last venture.

During the march through the country which lies between Loch Long and Loch Lomond, the insurgents were

constantly infested by parties of militia. Some skirmishes took place, in which the Earl had the advantage; but

the bands which he repelled, falling back before him, spread the tidings of his approach, and, soon after he

had crossed the river Leven, he found a strong body of regular and irregular troops prepared to encounter

He was for giving battle. Ayloffe was of the same opinion. Hume, on the other hand, declared that to fight

would be madness. He saw one regiment in scarlet. More might be behind. To attack such a force was to rush

on certain death The best course was to remain quiet till night, and then to give the enemy the slip.

A sharp altercation followed, which was with difficulty quieted by the mediation of Rumbold. It was now

evening. The hostile armies encamped at no great distance from each other. The Earl ventured to propose a

Since it was determined not to fight, nothing was left but to take the step which Hume had recommended.

There was a chance that, by decamping secretly, and hastening all night across heaths and morasses, the Earl

might gain many miles on the enemy, and might reach Glasgow without further obstruction. The watch fires

were left burning; and the march began. And now disaster followed disaster fast. The guides mistook the

track across the moors, and led the army into boggy ground. Military order could not be preserved by

undisciplined and disheartened soldiers under a dark sky, and on a treacherous and uneven soil. Panic after

panic spread through the broken ranks. Every sight and sound was thought to indicate the approach of

pursuers. Some of the officers contributed to spread the terror which it was their duty to calm. The army had

become a mob; and the mob melted fast away. Great numbers fled under cover of the night. Rumbold and a

few other brave men whom no danger could have scared lost their way, and were unable to rejoin the main

body. When the day broke, only five hundred fugitives, wearied and dispirited, assembled at Kilpatrick.

All thought of prosecuting the war was at an end: and it was plain that the chiefs of the expedition would

have sufficient difficulty in escaping with their lives. They fled in different directions. Hume reached the

Continent in safety. Cochrane was taken and sent up to London. Argyle hoped to find a secure asylum under

the roof of one of his old servants who lived near Kilpatrick. But this hope was disappointed; and he was

forced to cross the Clyde. He assumed the dress of a peasant and pretended to be the guide of Major

Fullarton, whose courageous fidelity was proof to all danger. The friends journeyed together through

Renfrewshire as far as Inchinnan. At that place the Black Cart and the White Cart, two streams which now

flow through prosperous towns, and turn the wheels of many factories, but which then held their quiet course

through moors and sheepwalks, mingle before they join the Clyde. The only ford by which the travellers

could cross was guarded by a party of militia. Some questions were asked. Fullarton tried to draw suspicion

on himself, in order that his companion might escape unnoticed. But the minds of the questioners misgave

them that the guide was not the rude clown that he seemed. They laid hands on him. He broke loose and

sprang into the water, but was instantly chased. He stood at bay for a short time against five assailants. But he

had no arms except his pocket pistols, and they were so wet, in consequence of his plunge, that they would

He owned himself to be the Earl of Argyle, probably in the hope that his great name would excite the awe

and pity of those who had seized him. And indeed they were much moved. For they were plain Scotchmen of

humble rank, and, though in arms for the crown, probably cherished a preference for the Calvinistic church

government and worship, and had been accustomed to reverence their captive as the head of an illustrious

house and as a champion of the Protestant religion But, though they were evidently touched, and though

some of them even wept, they were not disposed to relinquish a large reward and to incur the vengeance of an

implacable government. They therefore conveyed their prisoner to Renfrew. The man who bore the chief part

in the arrest was named Riddell. On this account the whole race of Riddells was, during more than a century,

held in abhorrence by the great tribe of Campbell. Within living memory, when a Riddell visited a fair in

And now commenced the brightest part of Argyle's career. His enterprise had hitherto brought on him

nothing but reproach and derision. His great error was that he did not resolutely refuse to accept the name

without the power of a general. Had he remained quietly at his retreat in Friesland, he would in a few years

have been recalled with honour to his country, and would have been conspicuous among the ornaments and

the props of constitutional monarchy. Had he conducted his expedition according to his own views, and

carried with him no followers but such as were prepared implicitly to obey all his orders, he might possibly

have effected something great. For what he wanted as a captain seems to have been, not courage, nor activity,

nor skill, but simply authority. He should have known that of all wants this is the most fatal. Armies have

triumphed under leaders who possessed no very eminent qualifications. But what army commanded by a

The great calamity which had fallen on Argyle had this advantage, that it enabled him to show, by proofs not

to be mistaken, what manner of man he was. From the day when he quitted. Friesland to the day when his

followers separated at Kilpatrick, he had never been a free agent. He had borne the responsibility of a long

series of measures which his judgment disapproved. Now at length he stood alone. Captivity had restored to

him the noblest kind of liberty, the liberty of governing himself in all his words and actions according to his

own sense of the right and of the becoming. From that moment he became as one inspired with new wisdom

and virtue. His intellect seemed to be strengthened and concentrated, his moral character to be at once

elevated and softened. The insolence of the conquerors spared nothing that could try the temper of a man

proud of ancient nobility and of patriarchal dominion. The prisoner was dragged through Edinburgh in

triumph. He walked on foot, bareheaded, up the whole length of that stately street which, overshadowed by

dark and gigantic piles of stone, leads from Holyrood House to the Castle. Before him marched the hangman,

bearing the ghastly instrument which was to be used at the quartering block. The victorious party had not

forgotten that, thirtyfive years before this time, the father of Argyle had been at the head of the faction

which put Montrose to death. Before that event the houses of Graham and Campbell had borne no love to

each other; and they had ever since been at deadly feud. Care was taken that the prisoner should pass through

the same gate and the same streets through which Montrose had been led to the same doom.349 When the

Earl reached the Castle his legs were put in irons, and he was informed that he had but a few days to live. It

had been determined not to bring him to trial for his recent offence, but to put him to death under the sentence

pronounced against him several years before, a sentence so flagitiously unjust that the most servile and

But neither the ignominious procession up the High Street, nor the near view of death, had power to disturb

the gentle and majestic patience of Argyle. His fortitude was tried by a still more severe test. A paper of

interrogatories was laid before him by order of the Privy Council. He replied to those questions to which he

could reply without danger to any of his friends, and refused to say more. He was told that unless he returned

fuller answers he should be put to the torture. James, who was doubtless sorry that he could not feast his own

eyes with the sight of Argyle in the boots, sent down to Edinburgh positive orders that nothing should be

omitted which could wring out of the traitor information against all who had been concerned in the treason.

But menaces were vain. With torments and death in immediate prospect Mac Callum More thought far less of

himself than of his poor clansmen. "I was busy this day," he wrote from his cell, "treating for them, and in

some hopes. But this evening orders came that I must die upon Monday or Tuesday; and I am to be put to the

torture if I answer not all questions upon oath. Yet I hope God shall support me."

The torture was not inflicted. Perhaps the magnanimity of the victim had moved the conquerors to unwonted

compassion. He himself remarked that at first they had been very harsh to him, but that they soon began to

treat him with respect and kindness. God, he said, had melted their hearts. It is certain that he did not, to save

himself from the utmost cruelty of his enemies, betray any of his friends. On the last morning of his life he

wrote these words: "I have named none to their disadvantage. I thank God he hath supported me

He composed his own epitaph, a short poem, full of meaning and spirit, simple and forcible in style, and not

contemptible in versification. In this little piece he complained that, though his enemies had repeatedly

decreed his death, his friends had been still more cruel. A comment on these expressions is to be found in a

letter which he addressed to a lady residing in Holland. She had furnished him with a large sum of money for

his expedition, and he thought her entitled to a full explanation of the causes which had led to his failure. He

acquitted his coadjutors of treachery, but described their folly, their ignorance, and their factious

perverseness, in terms which their own testimony has since proved to have been richly deserved. He

afterwards doubted whether he had not used language too severe to become a dying Christian, and, in a

separate paper, begged his friend to suppress what he had said of these men "Only this I must acknowledge,"

Most of his few remaining hours were passed in devotion, and in affectionate intercourse with some members

of his family. He professed no repentance on account of his last enterprise, but bewailed, with great emotion,

his former compliance in spiritual things with the pleasure of the government He had, he said, been justly

punished. One who had so long been guilty of cowardice and dissimulation was not worthy to be the

instrument of salvation to the State and Church. Yet the cause, he frequently repeated, was the cause of God,

and would assuredly triumph. "I do not," he said, "take on myself to be a prophet. But I have a strong

impression on my spirit, that deliverance will come very suddenly." It is not strange that some zealous

Presbyterians should have laid up his saying in their hearts, and should, at a later period, have attributed it to

So effectually had religious faith and hope, cooperating with natural courage and equanimity, composed his

spirits, that, on the very day on which he was to die, he dined with appetite, conversed with gaiety at table,

and, after his last meal, lay down, as he was wont, to take a short slumber, in order that his body and mind

might be in full vigour when he should mount the scaffold. At this time one of the Lords of the Council, who

had probably been bred a Presbyterian, and had been seduced by interest to join in oppressing the Church of

which he had once been a member, came to the Castle with a message from his brethren, and demanded

admittance to the Earl. It was answered that the Earl was asleep. The Privy Councillor thought that this was a

subterfuge, and insisted on entering. The door of the cell was softly opened; and there lay Argyle, on the bed,

sleeping, in his irons, the placid sleep of infancy. The conscience of the renegade smote him. He turned away

sick at heart, ran out of the Castle, and took refuge in the dwelling of a lady of his family who lived hard by.

There he flung himself on a couch, and gave himself up to an agony of remorse and shame. His kinswoman,

alarmed by his looks and groans, thought that he had been taken with sudden illness, and begged him to drink

a cup of sack. "No, no," he said; "that will do me no good." She prayed him to tell her what had disturbed

him. "I have been," he said, "in Argyle's prison. I have seen him within an hour of eternity, sleeping as

And now the Earl had risen from his bed, and had prepared himself for what was yet to be endured. He was

first brought down the High Street to the Council House, where he was to remain during the short interval

which was still to elapse before the execution. During that interval he asked for pen and ink, and wrote to his

wife: "Dear heart, God is unchangeable: He hath always been good and gracious to me: and no place alters it.

Forgive me all my faults; and now comfort thyself in Him, in whom only true comfort is to be found. The

It was now time to leave the Council House. The divines who attended the prisoner were not of his own

persuasion; but he listened to them with civility, and exhorted them to caution their flocks against those

doctrines which all Protestant churches unite in condemning. He mounted the scaffold, where the rude old

guillotine of Scotland, called the Maiden, awaited him, and addressed the people in a speech, tinctured with

the peculiar phraseology of his sect, but breathing the spirit of serene piety. His enemies, he said, he forgave,

as he hoped to be forgiven. Only a single acrimonious expression escaped him. One of the episcopal

clergymen who attended him went to the edge of the scaffold, and called out in a loud voice, "My Lord dies a

Protestant." "Yes," said the Earl, stepping forward, "and not only a Protestant, but with a heart hatred of

Popery, of Prelacy, and of all superstition." He then embraced his friends, put into their hands some tokens of

remembrance for his wife and children, kneeled down, laid his head on the block, prayed during a few

minutes, and gave the signal to the executioner. His head was fixed on the top of the Tolbooth, where the

The head of the brave and sincere, though not blameless Rumbold, was already on the West Port of

Edinburgh. Surrounded by factious and cowardly associates, he had, through the whole campaign, behaved

himself like a soldier trained in the school of the great Protector, had in council strenuously supported the

authority of Argyle, and had in the field been distinguished by tranquil intrepidity. After the dispersion of the

army he was set upon by a party of militia. He defended himself desperately, and would have cut his way

through them, had they not hamstringed his horse. He was brought to Edinburgh mortally wounded. The wish

of the government was that he should be executed in England. But he was so near death, that, if he was not

hanged in Scotland, he could not be hanged at all; and the pleasure of hanging him was one which the

conquerors could not bear to forego. It was indeed not to be expected that they would show much lenity to

one who was regarded as the chief of the Rye House plot, and who was the owner of the building from which

that plot took its name: but the insolence with which they treated the dying man seems to our more humane

age almost incredible. One of the Scotch Privy Councillors told him that he was a confounded villain. "I am

He was hastily tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged and quartered within a few hours, near the City

Cross in the High Street. Though unable to stand without the support of two men, he maintained his fortitude

to the last, and under the gibbet raised his feeble voice against Popery and tyranny with such vehemence that

the officers ordered the drums to strike up, lest the people should hear him. He was a friend, he said, to

limited monarchy. But he never would believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world ready

booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. "I desire," he cried, "to bless

and magnify God's holy name for this, that I stand here, not for any wrong that I have done, but for adhering

to his cause in an evil day. If every hair of my head were a man, in this quarrel I would venture them all."

Both at his trial and at his execution he spoke of assassination with the abhorrence which became a good

Christian and a brave soldier. He had never, he protested, on the faith of a dying man, harboured the thought

of committing such villany. But he frankly owned that, in conversation with his fellow conspirators, he had

mentioned his own house as a place where Charles and James might with advantage be attacked, and that

much had been said on the subject, though nothing had been determined. It may at first sight seem that this

acknowledgment is inconsistent with his declaration that he had always regarded assassination with horror.

But the truth appears to be that he was imposed upon by a distinction which deluded many of his

contemporaries. Nothing would have induced him to put poison into the food of the two princes, or to poinard

them in their sleep. But to make an unexpected onset on the troop of Life Guards which surrounded the royal

coach, to exchange sword cuts and pistol shots, and to take the chance of slaying or of being slain, was, in his

view, a lawful military operation. Ambuscades and surprises were among the ordinary incidents of war.

Every old soldier, Cavalier or Roundhead, had been engaged in such enterprises. If in the skirmish the King

should fall, he would fall by fair fighting and not by murder. Precisely the same reasoning was employed,

after the Revolution, by James himself and by some of his most devoted followers, to justify a wicked

attempt on the life of William the Third. A band of Jacobites was commissioned to attack the Prince of

Orange in his winter quarters. The meaning latent under this specious phrase was that the Prince's throat was

to be cut as he went in his coach from Richmond to Kensington. It may seem strange that such fallacies, the

dregs of the Jesuitical casuistry, should have had power to seduce men of heroic spirit, both Whigs and

Tories, into a crime on which divine and human laws have justly set a peculiar note of infamy. But no

Argyle, who survived Rumbold a few hours, left a dying testimony to the virtues of the gallant Englishman.

"Poor Rumbold was a great support to me, and a brave man, and died Christianly."352

Ayloffe showed as much contempt of death as either Argyle or Rumbold: but his end did not, like theirs,

edify pious minds. Though political sympathy had drawn him towards the Puritans, he had no religious

sympathy with them, and was indeed regarded by them as little better than an atheist. He belonged to that

section of the Whigs which sought for models rather among the patriots of Greece and Rome than among the

prophets and judges of Israel. He was taken prisoner, and carried to Glasgow. There he attempted to destroy

himself with a small penknife: but though he gave himself several wounds, none of them proved mortal, and

he had strength enough left to bear a journey to London. He was brought before the Privy Council, and

interrogated by the King, but had too much elevation of mind to save himself by informing against others. A

story was current among the Whigs that the King said, "You had better be frank with me, Mr. Ayloffe. You

know that it is in my power to pardon you." Then, it was rumoured, the captive broke his sullen silence, and

answered, "It may he in your power; but it is not in your nature." He was executed under his old outlawry

In the meantime the vengeance of the conquerors was mercilessly wreaked on the people of Argyleshire.

Many of the Campbells were hanged by Athol without a trial; and he was with difficulty restrained by the

Privy Council from taking more lives. The country to the extent of thirty miles round Inverary was wasted.

Houses were burned: the stones of mills were broken to pieces: fruit trees were cut down, and the very roots

seared with fire. The nets and fishing boats, the sole means by which many inhabitants of the coast subsisted,

were destroyed. More than three hundred rebels and malecontents were transported to the colonies. Many of

them were also Sentenced to mutilation. On a single day the hangman of Edinburgh cut off the ears of

thirtyfive prisoners. Several women were sent across the Atlantic after being first branded in the cheek with

a hot iron. It was even in contemplation to obtain an act of Parliament proscribing the name of Campbell, as

Argyle's expedition appears to have produced little sensation in the south of the island. The tidings of his

landing reached London just before the English Parliament met. The King mentioned the news from the

throne; and the Houses assured him that they would stand by him against every enemy. Nothing more was

required of them. Over Scotland they had no authority; and a war of which the theatre was so distant, and of

which the event might, almost from the first, be easily foreseen, excited only a languid interest in London.

But, a week before the final dispersion of Argyle's army England was agitated by the news that a more

formidable invader had landed on her own shores. It had been agreed among the refugees that Monmouth

should sail from Holland six days after the departure of the Scots. He had deferred his expedition a short

time, probably in the hope that most of the troops in the south of the island would be moved to the north as

soon as war broke out in the Highlands, and that he should find no force ready to oppose him. When at length

While his small fleet lay tossing in the Texel, a contest was going on among the Dutch authorities. The States

General and the Prince of Orange were on one side, the Town Council and Admiralty of Amsterdam on the

Skelton had delivered to the States General a list of the refugees whose residence in the United Provinces

caused uneasiness to his master. The States General, anxious to grant every reasonable request which James

could make, sent copies of the list to the provincial authorities. The provincial authorities sent copies to the

municipal authorities. The magistrates of all the towns were directed to take such measures as might prevent

the proscribed Whigs from molesting the English government. In general those directions were obeyed. At

Rotterdam in particular, where the influence of William was all powerful, such activity was shown as called

forth warm acknowledgments from James. But Amsterdam was the chief seat of the emigrants; and the

governing body of Amsterdam would see nothing, hear nothing, know of nothing. The High Bailiff of the

city, who was himself in daily communication with Ferguson, reported to the Hague that he did not know

where to find a single one of the refugees; and with this excuse the federal government was forced to be

content. The truth was that the English exiles were as well known at Amsterdam, and as much stared at in the

A few days later, Skelton received orders from his Court to request that, in consequence of the dangers which

threatened his master's throne, the three Scotch regiments in the service of the United Provinces might be sent

to Great Britain without delay. He applied to the Prince of Orange; and the prince undertook to manage the

matter, but predicted that Amsterdam would raise some difficulty. The prediction proved correct. The

deputies of Amsterdam refused to consent, and succeeded in causing some delay. But the question was not

one of those on which, by the constitution of the republic, a single city could prevent the wish of the majority

from being carried into effect. The influence of William prevailed; and the troops were embarked with great

Skelton was at the same time exerting himself, not indeed very judiciously or temperately, to stop the ships

which the English refugees had fitted out. He expostulated in warm terms with the Admiralty of Amsterdam.

The negligence of that board, he said, had already enabled one band of rebels to invade Britain. For a second

error of the same kind there could be no excuse. He peremptorily demanded that a large vessel, named the

Helderenbergh, might be detained. It was pretended that this vessel was bound for the Canaries. But in truth,

she had been freighted by Monmouth, carried twentysix guns, and was loaded with arms and ammunition.

The Admiralty of Amsterdam replied that the liberty of trade and navigation was not to be restrained for light

reasons, and that the Helderenbergh could not be stopped without an order from the States General. Skelton,

whose uniform practice seems to have been to begin at the wrong end, now had recourse to the States

General. The States General gave the necessary orders. Then the Admiralty of Amsterdam pretended that

there was not a sufficient naval force in the Texel to seize so large a ship as the Helderenbergh, and suffered

The weather was bad: the voyage was long; and several English menofwar were cruising in the channel.

But Monmouth escaped both the sea and the enemy. As he passed by the cliffs of Dorsetshire, it was thought

desirable to send a boat to the beach with one of the refugees named Thomas Dare. This man, though of low

mind and manners, had great influence at Taunton. He was directed to hasten thither across the country, and

On the morning of the eleventh of June the Helderenbergh, accompanied by two smaller vessels, appeared off

the port of Lyme. That town is a small knot of steep and narrow alleys, lying on a coast wild, rocky, and

beaten by a stormy sea. The place was then chiefly remarkable for a pier which, in the days of the

Plantagenets, had been constructed of stones, unhewn and uncemented. This ancient work, known by the

name of the Cob, enclosed the only haven where, in a space of many miles, the fishermen could take refuge

The appearance of the three ships, foreign built and without colours, perplexed the inhabitants of Lyme; and

the uneasiness increased when it was found that the Customhouse officers, who had gone on board according

to usage, did not return. The town's people repaired to the cliffs, and gazed long and anxiously, but could find

no solution of the mystery. At length seven boats put off from the largest of the strange vessels, and rowed to

the shore. From these boats landed about eighty men, well armed and appointed. Among them were

Monmouth, Grey, Fletcher, Ferguson, Wade, and Anthony Buyse, an officer who had been in the service of

Monmouth commanded silence, kneeled down on the shore, thanked God for having preserved the friends of

liberty and pure religion from the perils of the sea, and implored the divine blessing on what was yet to be

done by land. He then drew his sword, and led his men over the cliffs into the town.

As soon as it was known under what leader and for what purpose the expedition came, the enthusiasm of the

populace burst through all restraints. The little town was in an uproar with men running to and fro, and

shouting "A Monmouth! a Monmouth! the Protestant religion!" Meanwhile the ensign of the adventurers, a

blue flag, was set up in the marketplace. The military stores were deposited in the town hall; and a

Declaration setting forth the objects of the expedition was read from the Cross.360

This Declaration, the masterpiece of Ferguson's genius, was not a grave manifesto such as ought to be put

forth by a leader drawing the sword for a great public cause, but a libel of the lowest class, both in sentiment

and language.361 It contained undoubtedly many just charges against the government. But these charges

were set forth in the prolix and inflated style of a bad pamphlet; and the paper contained other charges of

which the whole disgrace falls on those who made them. The Duke of York, it was positively affirmed, had

burned down London, had strangled Godfrey, had cut the throat of Essex, and had poisoned the late King. On

account of those villanous and unnatural crimes, but chiefly of that execrable fact, the late horrible and

barbarous parricide,such was the copiousness and such the felicity of Ferguson's diction,James was

declared a mortal and bloody enemy, a tyrant, a murderer, and an usurper. No treaty should be made with

him. The sword should not be sheathed till he had been brought to condign punishment as a traitor. The

government should be settled on principles favourable to liberty. All Protestant sects should be tolerated. The

forfeited charters should be restored. Parliament should be held annually, and should no longer be prorogued

or dissolved by royal caprice. The only standing force should be the militia: the militia should be commanded

by the Sheriffs; and the Sheriffs should be chosen by the freeholders. Finally Monmouth declared that he

could prove himself to have been born in lawful wedlock, and to be, by right of blood, King of England, but

that, for the present, he waived his claims, that he would leave them to the judgment of a free Parliament, and

that, in the meantime, he desired to be considered only as the Captain General of the English Protestants, who

Disgraceful as this manifesto was to those who put it forth, it was not unskilfully framed for the purpose of

stimulating the passions of the vulgar. In the West the effect was great. The gentry and clergy of that part of

England were indeed, with few exceptions, Tories. But the yeomen, the traders of the towns, the peasants,

and the artisans were generally animated by the old Roundhead spirit. Many of them were Dissenters, and

had been goaded by petty persecution into a temper fit for desperate enterprise. The great mass of the

population abhorred Popery and adored Monmouth. He was no stranger to them. His progress through

Somersetshire and Devonshire in the. summer of 1680 was still fresh in the memory of all men.

He was on that occasion sumptuously entertained by Thomas Thynne at Longleat Hall, then, and perhaps

still, the most magnificent country house in England. From Longleat to Exeter the hedges were lined with

shouting spectators. The roads were strewn with boughs and flowers. The multitude, in their eagerness to see

and touch their favourite, broke down the palings of parks, and besieged the mansions where he was feasted.

When he reached Chard his escort consisted of five thousand horsemen. At Exeter all Devonshire had been

gathered together to welcome him. One striking part of the show was a company of nine hundred young men

who, clad in a white uniform, marched before him into the city.362 The turn of fortune which had alienated

the gentry from his cause had produced no effect on the common people. To them he was still the good Duke,

the Protestant Duke, the rightful heir whom a vile conspiracy kept out of his own. They came to his standard

in crowds. All the clerks whom he could employ were too few to take down the names of the recruits. Before

he had been twentyfour hours on English ground he was at the head of fifteen hundred men. Dare arrived

from Taunton with forty horsemen of no very martial appearance, and brought encouraging intelligence as to

the state of public feeling in Somersetshire. As Yet all seemed to promise well.363

But a force was collecting at Bridport to oppose the insurgents. On the thirteenth of June the red regiment of

Dorsetshire militia came pouring into that town. The Somersetshire, or yellow regiment, of which Sir

William Portman, a Tory gentleman of great note, was Colonel, was expected to arrive on the following

day.364 The Duke determined to strike an immediate blow. A detachment of his troops was preparing to

Fletcher of Saltoun had been appointed to command the cavalry under Grey. Fletcher was ill mounted; and

indeed there were few chargers in the camp which had not been taken from the plough. When he was ordered

to Bridport, he thought that the exigency of the case warranted him in borrowing, without asking permission,

a fine horse belonging to Dare. Dare resented this liberty, and assailed Fletcher with gross abuse. Fletcher

kept his temper better than any one who knew him expected. At last Dare, presuming on the patience with

which his insolence had been endured, ventured to shake a switch at the high born and high spirited Scot

Fletcher's blood boiled. He drew a pistol and shot Dare dead. Such sudden and violent revenge would not

have been thought strange in Scotland, where the law had always been weak, where he who did not right

himself by the strong hand was not likely to be righted at all, and where, consequently, human life was held

almost as cheap as in the worst governed provinces of Italy. But the people of the southern part of the island

were not accustomed to see deadly weapons used and blood spilled on account of a rude word or gesture,

except in duel between gentlemen with equal arms. There was a general cry for vengeance on the foreigner

who had murdered an Englishman. Monmouth could not resist the clamour. Fletcher, who, when his first

burst of rage had spent itself, was overwhelmed with remorse and sorrow, took refuge on board of the

Helderenbergh, escaped to the Continent, and repaired to Hungary, where he fought bravely against the

Situated as the insurgents were, the loss of a man of parts and energy was not easily to be repaired. Early on

the morning of the following day, the fourteenth of June, Grey, accompanied by Wade, marched with about

five hundred men to attack Bridport. A confused and indecisive action took place, such as was to be expected

when two bands of ploughmen, officered by country gentlemen and barristers, were opposed to each other.

For a time Monmouth's men drove the militia before them. Then the militia made a stand, and Monmouth's

men retreated in some confusion. Grey and his cavalry never stopped till they were safe at Lyme again: but

There was a violent outcry against Grey; and some of the adventurers pressed Monmouth to take a severe

course. Monmouth, however, would not listen to this advice. His lenity has been attributed by some writers to

his good nature, which undoubtedly often amounted to weakness. Others have supposed that he was

unwilling to deal harshly with the only peer who served in his army. It is probable, however, that the Duke,

who, though not a general of the highest order, understood war very much better than the preachers and

lawyers who were always obtruding their advice on him, made allowances which people altogether inexpert

in military affairs never thought of making. In justice to a man who has had few defenders, it must be

observed that the task, which, throughout this campaign, was assigned to Grey, was one which, if he had been

the boldest and most skilful of soldiers, he would scarcely have performed in such a manner as to gain credit.

He was at the head of the cavalry. It is notorious that a horse soldier requires a longer training than a foot

soldier, and that the war horse requires a longer training than his rider. Something may be done with a raw

infantry which has enthusiasm and animal courage: but nothing can be more helpless than a raw cavalry,

consisting of yeomen and tradesmen mounted on cart horses and post horses; and such was the cavalry which

Grey commanded. The wonder is, not that his men did not stand fire with resolution, not that they did not use

Still recruits came in by hundreds. Arming and drilling went on all day. Meantime the news of the

insurrection had spread fast and wide. On the evening on which the Duke landed, Gregory Alford, Mayor of

Lyme, a zealous Tory, and a bitter persecutor of Nonconformists, sent off his servants to give the alarm to the

gentry of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire, and himself took horse for the West. Late at night he stopped at

Honiton, and thence despatched a few hurried lines to London with the ill tidings.367 He then pushed on to

Exeter, where he found Christopher Monk, Duke of Albemarle. This nobleman, the son and heir of George

Monk, the restorer of the Stuarts, was Lord Lieutenant of Devonshire, and was then holding a muster of

militia. Four thousand men of the trainbands were actually assembled under his command. He seems to have

thought that, with this force, he should be able at once to crush the rebellion. He therefore marched towards

But when, on the afternoon of Monday the fifteenth of June, he reached Axminster, he found the insurgents

drawn up there to encounter him. They presented a resolute front. Four field pieces were pointed against the

royal troops. The thick hedges, which on each side overhung the narrow lanes, were lined with musketeers.

Albemarle, however, was less alarmed by the preparations of the enemy than by the spirit which appeared in

his own ranks. Such was Monmouth's popularity among the common people of Devonshire that, if once the

trainbands had caught sight of his well known face and figure, they would have probably gone over to him in

Albemarle, therefore, though he had a great superiority of force, thought it advisable to retreat. The retreat

soon became a rout. The whole country was strewn with the arms and uniforms which the fugitives had

thrown away; and, had Monmouth urged the pursuit with vigour, he would probably have taken Exeter

without a blow. But he was satisfied with the advantage which he had gained, and thought it desirable that his

recruits should be better trained before they were employed in any hazardous service. He therefore marched

towards Taunton, where he arrived on the eighteenth of June, exactly a week after his landing.368

The Court and the Parliament had been greatly moved by the news from the West. At five in the morning of

Saturday the thirteenth of June, the King had received the letter which the Mayor of Lyme had despatched

from Honiton. The Privy Council was instantly called together. Orders were given that the strength of every

company of infantry and of every troop of cavalry should be increased. Commissions were issued for the

levying of new regiments. Alford's communication was laid before the Lords; and its substance was

communicated to the Commons by a message. The Commons examined the couriers who had arrived from

the West, and instantly ordered a bill to be brought in for attainting Monmouth of high treason. Addresses

were voted assuring the King that both his peers and his people were determined to stand by him with life and

fortune against all his enemies. At the next meeting of the Houses they ordered the Declaration of the rebels

to be burned by the hangman, and passed the bill of attainder through all its stages. That bill received the

royal assent on the same day; and a reward of five thousand pounds was promised for the apprehension of

The fact that Monmouth was in arms against the government was so notorious that the bill of attainder

became a law with only a faint show of opposition from one or two peers, and has seldom been severely

censured even by Whig historians. Yet, when we consider how important it is that legislative and judicial

functions should be kept distinct, how important it is that common fame, however strong and general, should

not be received as a legal proof of guilt, how important it is to maintain the rule that no man shall be

condemned to death without an opportunity of defending himself, and how easily and speedily breaches in

great principles, when once made, are widened, we shall probably be disposed to think that the course taken

by the Parliament was open to some objection. Neither House had before it anything which even so corrupt a

judge as Jeffreys could have directed a jury to consider as proof of Monmouth's crime. The messengers

examined by the Commons were not on oath, and might therefore have related mere fictions without

incurring the penalties of perjury. The Lords, who might have administered an oath, appeared not to have

examined any witness, and to have had no evidence before them except the letter of the Mayor of Lyme,

which, in the eye of the law, was no evidence at all. Extreme danger, it is true, justifies extreme remedies. But

the Act of Attainder was a remedy which could not operate till all danger was over, and which would become

superfluous at the very moment at which it ceased to be null. While Monmouth was in arms it was impossible

to execute him. If he should be vanquished and taken, there would be no hazard and no difficulty in trying

him. It was afterwards remembered as a curious circumstance that, among zealous Tories who went up with

the bill from the House of Commons to the bar of the Lords, was Sir John Fenwick, member for

Northumberland. This gentleman, a few years later, had occasion to reconsider the whole subject, and then

The Parliament gave other proofs of loyalty in this hour of peril. The Commons authorised the King to raise

an extraordinary sum of four hundred thousand pounds for his present necessities, and that he might have no

difficulty in finding the money, proceeded to devise new imposts. The scheme of taxing houses lately built in

the capital was revived and strenuously supported by the country gentlemen. It was resolved not only that

such houses should be taxed, but that a bill should be brought in prohibiting the laying of any new

foundations within the bills of mortality. The resolution, however, was not carried into effect. Powerful men

who had land in the suburbs and who hoped to see new streets and squares rise on their estates, exerted all

their influence against the project. It was found that to adjust the details would be a work of time; and the

King's wants were so pressing that he thought it necessary to quicken the movements of the House by a

gentle exhortation to speed. The plan of taxing buildings was therefore relinquished; and new duties were

The Tories of the Lower House proceeded to introduce what they called a bill for the preservation of the

King's person and government. They proposed that it should be high treason to say that Monmouth was

legitimate, to utter any words tending to bring the person or government of the sovereign into hatred or

contempt, or to make any motion in Parliament for changing the order of succession. Some of these

provisions excited general disgust and alarm. The Whigs, few and weak as they were, attempted to rally, and

found themselves reinforced by a considerable number of moderate and sensible Cavaliers. Words, it was

said, may easily be misunderstood by a dull man. They may be easily misconstrued by a knave. What was

spoken metaphorically may be apprehended literally. What was spoken ludicrously may be apprehended

seriously. A particle, a tense, a mood, an emphasis, may make the whole difference between guilt and

innocence. The Saviour of mankind himself, in whose blameless life malice could find no acts to impeach,

had been called in question for words spoken. False witnesses had suppressed a syllable which would have

made it clear that those words were figurative, and had thus furnished the Sanhedrim with a pretext under

which the foulest of all judicial murders had been perpetrated. With such an example on record, who could

affirm that, if mere talk were made a substantive treason, the most loyal subject would be safe? These

arguments produced so great an effect that in the committee amendments were introduced which greatly

mitigated the severity of the bill. But the clause which made it high treason in a member of Parliament to

propose the exclusion of a prince of the blood seems to have raised no debate, and was retained. That clause

was indeed altogether unimportant, except as a proof of the ignorance and inexperience of the hotheaded

Royalists who thronged the House of Commons. Had they learned the first rudiments of legislation, they

would have known that the enactment to which they attached so much value would be superfluous while the

Parliament was disposed to maintain the order of succession, and would be repealed as soon as there was a

The bill, as amended, was passed and carried up to the Lords, but did not become law. The King had obtained

from the Parliament all the pecuniary assistance that he could expect; and he conceived that, while rebellion

was actually raging, the loyal nobility and gentry would be of more use in their counties than at Westminster.

He therefore hurried their deliberations to a close, and, on the second of July, dismissed them. On the same

day the royal assent was given to a law reviving that censorship of the press which had terminated in 1679.

This object was affected by a few words at the end of a miscellaneous statute which continued several

expiring acts. The courtiers did not think that they had gained a triumph. The Whigs did not utter a murmur.

Neither in the Lords nor in the Commons was there any division, or even, as far as can now be learned, any

debate on a question which would, in our age, convulse the whole frame of society. In truth, the change was

slight and almost imperceptible; for, since the detection of the Rye House plot, the liberty of unlicensed

printing had existed only in name. During many months scarcely one Whig pamphlet had been published

The Houses then rose. They were not prorogued, but only adjourned, in order that, when they should

reassemble, they might take up their business in the exact state in which they had left it.374

While the Parliament was devising sharp laws against Monmouth and his partisans, he found at Taunton a

reception which might well encourage him to hope that his enterprise would have a prosperous issue.

Taunton, like most other towns in the south of England, was, in that age, more important than at present.

Those towns have not indeed declined. On the contrary, they are, with very few exceptions, larger and richer,

better built and better peopled, than in the seventeenth century. But, though they have positively advanced,

they have relatively gone back. They have been far outstripped in wealth and population by the great

manufacturing and commercial cities of the north, cities which, in the time of the Stuarts, were but beginning

to be known as seats of industry. When Monmouth marched into Taunton it was an eminently prosperous

place. Its markets were plentifully supplied. It was a celebrated seat of the woollen manufacture. The people

boasted that they lived in a land flowing with milk and honey. Nor was this language held only by partial

natives; for every stranger who climbed the graceful tower of St. Mary Magdalene owned that he saw beneath

him the most fertile of English valleys. It was a country rich with orchards and green pastures, among which

were scattered, in gay abundance, manor houses, cottages, and village spires. The townsmen had long leaned

towards Presbyterian divinity and Whig politics. In the great civil war Taunton had, through all vicissitudes,

adhered to the Parliament, had been twice closely besieged by Goring, and had been twice defended with

heroic valour by Robert Blake, afterwards the renowned Admiral of the Commonwealth. Whole streets had

been burned down by the mortars and grenades of the Cavaliers. Food had been so scarce that the resolute

governor had announced his intention of putting the garrison on rations of horse flesh. But the spirit of the

The Restoration had produced no effect on the temper of the Taunton men. They had still continued to

celebrate the anniversary of the happy day on which the siege laid to their town by the royal army had been

raised; and their stubborn attachment to the old cause had excited so much fear and resentment at Whitehall

that, by a royal order, their moat had been filled up, and their wall demolished to the foundation.376 The

puritanical spirit had been kept up to the height among them by the precepts and example of one of the most

celebrated of the dissenting clergy, Joseph Alleine. Alleine was the author of a tract, entitled, An Alarm to the

Unconverted, which is still popular both in England and in America. From the gaol to which he was

consigned by the victorious Cavaliers, he addressed to his loving friends at Taunton many epistles breathing

the spirit of a truly heroic piety. His frame soon sank under the effects of study, toil, and persecution: but his

memory was long cherished with exceeding love and reverence by those whom he had exhorted and

The children of the men who, forty years before, had manned the ramparts of Taunton against the Royalists,

now welcomed Monmouth with transports of joy and affection. Every door and window was adorned with

wreaths of flowers. No man appeared in the streets without wearing in his hat a green bough, the badge of the

popular cause. Damsels of the best families in the town wove colours for the insurgents. One flag in

particular was embroidered gorgeously with emblems of royal dignity, and was offered to Monmouth by a

train of young girls. He received the gift with the winning courtesy which distinguished him. The lady who

headed the procession presented him also with a small Bible of great price. He took it with a show of

reverence. "I come," he said, "to defend the truths contained in this book, and to seal them, if it must be so,

But while Monmouth enjoyed the applause of the multitude, he could not but perceive, with concern and

apprehension, that the higher classes were. with scarcely an exception, hostile to his undertaking, and that no

rising had taken place except in the counties where he had himself appeared. He had been assured by agents,

who professed to have derived their information from Wildman, that the whole Whig aristocracy was eager to

take arms. Nevertheless more than a week had now elapsed since the blue standard had been set up at Lyme.

Day labourers, small farmers, shopkeepers, apprentices, dissenting preachers, had flocked to the rebel camp:

but not a single peer, baronet, or knight, not a single member of the House of Commons, and scarcely any

esquire of sufficient note to have ever been in the commission of the peace, had joined the invaders.

Ferguson, who, ever since the death of Charles, had been Monmouth's evil angel, had a suggestion ready. The

Duke had put himself into a false position by declining the royal title. Had he declared himself sovereign of

England, his cause would have worn a show of legality. At present it was impossible to reconcile his

Declaration with the principles of the constitution. It was clear that either Monmouth or his uncle was rightful

King. Monmouth did not venture to pronounce himself the rightful King, and yet denied that his uncle was

so. Those who fought for James fought for the only person who ventured to claim the throne, and were

therefore clearly in their duty, according to the laws of the realm. Those who fought for Monmouth fought for

some unknown polity, which was to be set up by a convention not yet in existence. None could wonder that

men of high rank and ample fortune stood aloof from an enterprise which threatened with destruction that

system in the permanence of which they were deeply interested. If the Duke would assert his legitimacy and

assume the crown, he would at once remove this objection. The question would cease to be a question

between the old constitution and a new constitution. It would be merely a question of hereditary right

On such grounds as these Ferguson, almost immediately after the landing, had earnestly pressed the Duke to

proclaim himself King; and Grey had seconded Ferguson. Monmouth had been very willing to take this

advice; but Wade and other republicans had been refractory; and their chief, with his usual pliability, had

yielded to their arguments. At Taunton the subject was revived. Monmouth talked in private with the

dissentients, assured them that he saw no other way of obtaining the support of any portion of the aristocracy,

and succeeded in extorting their reluctant consent. On the morning of the twentieth of June he was

proclaimed in the market place of Taunton. His followers repeated his new title with affectionate delight. But,

as some confusion might have arisen if he had been called King James the Second, they commonly used the

strange appellation of King Monmouth: and by this name their unhappy favourite was often mentioned in the

Within twentyfour hours after he had assumed the regal title, he put forth several proclamations headed with

his sign manual. By one of these he set a price on the head of his rival. Another declared the Parliament then

sitting at Westminster an unlawful assembly, and commanded the members to disperse. A third forbade the

Albemarle transmitted these proclamations to London merely as specimens of folly and impertinence. They

produced no effect, except wonder and contempt; nor had Monmouth any reason to think that the assumption

of royalty had improved his position. Only a week had elapsed since he had solemnly bound himself not to

take the crown till a free Parliament should have acknowledged his rights. By breaking that engagement he

had incurred the imputation of levity, if not of perfidy. The class which he had hoped to conciliate still stood

aloof. The reasons which prevented the great Whig lords and gentlemen from recognising him as their King

were at least as strong as those which had prevented them from rallying round him as their Captain General.

They disliked indeed the person, the religion, and the politics of James. But James was no longer young. His

eldest daughter was justly popular. She was attached to the reformed faith. She was married to a prince who

was the hereditary chief of the Protestants of the Continent, to a prince who had been bred in a republic, and

whose sentiments were supposed to be such as became a constitutional King. Was it wise to incur the horrors

of civil war, for the mere chance of being able to effect immediately what nature would, without bloodshed,

without any violation of law, effect, in all probability, before many years should have expired? Perhaps there

might be reasons for pulling down James. But what reason could be given for setting up Monmouth? To

exclude a prince from the throne on account of unfitness was a course agreeable to Whig principles. But on

no principle could it be proper to exclude rightful heirs, who were admitted to be, not only blameless, but

eminently qualified for the highest public trust. That Monmouth was legitimate, nay, that he thought himself

legitimate, intelligent men could not believe. He was therefore not merely an usurper, but an usurper of the

worst sort, an impostor. If he made out any semblance of a case, he could do so only by means of forgery and

perjury. All honest and sensible persons were unwilling to see a fraud which, if practiced to obtain an estate,

would have been punished with the scourge and the pillory, rewarded with the English crown. To the old

nobility of the realm it seemed insupportable that the bastard of Lucy Walters should be set up high above the

lawful descendants of the Fitzalans and De Veres. Those who were capable of looking forward must have

seen that, if Monmouth should succeed in overpowering the existing government, there would still remain a

war between him and the House of Orange, a war which might last longer and produce more misery than the

war of the Roses, a war which might probably break up the Protestants of Europe into hostile parties, might

arm England and Holland against each other, and might make both those countries an easy prey to France.

The opinion, therefore, of almost all the leading Whigs seems to have been that Monmouth's enterprise could

not fail to end in some great disaster to the nation, but that, on the whole, his defeat would be a less disaster

It was not only by the inaction of the Whig aristocracy that the invaders were disappointed. The wealth and

power of London had sufficed in the preceding generation, and might again suffice, to turn the scale in a civil

conflict. The Londoners had formerly given many proofs of their hatred of Popery and of their affection for

the Protestant Duke. He had too readily believed that, as soon as he landed, there would be a rising in the

capital. But, though advices came down to him that many thousands of the citizens had been enrolled as

volunteers for the good cause, nothing was done. The plain truth was that the agitators who had urged him to

invade England, who had promised to rise on the first signal, and who had perhaps imagined, while the

danger was remote, that they should have the courage to keep their promise, lost heart when the critical time

drew near. Wildman's fright was such that he seemed to have lost his understanding. The craven Danvers at

first excused his inaction by saying that he would not take up arms till Monmouth was proclaimed King, and.

when Monmouth had been proclaimed King, turned round and declared that good republicans were absolved

from all engagements to a leader who had so shamefully broken faith. In every age the vilest specimens of

On the day following that on which Monmouth had assumed the regal title he marched from Taunton to

Bridgewater. His own spirits, it was remarked, were not high. The acclamations of the devoted thousands

who surrounded him wherever he turned could not dispel the gloom which sate on his brow. Those who had

seen him during his progress through Somersetshire five years before could not now observe without pity the

traces of distress and anxiety on those soft and pleasing features which had won so many hearts.382

Ferguson was in a very different temper. With this man's knavery was strangely mingled an eccentric vanity

which resembled madness. The thought that he had raised a rebellion and bestowed a crown had turned his

head. He swaggered about, brandishing his naked sword, and crying to the crowd of spectators who had

assembled to see the army march out of Taunton, "Look at me! You have heard of me. I am Ferguson, the

famous Ferguson, the Ferguson for whose head so many hundred pounds have been offered." And this man,

at once unprincipled and brainsick, had in his keeping the understanding and the conscience of the unhappy

Bridgewater was one of the few towns which still had some Whig magistrates. The Mayor and Aldermen

came in their robes to welcome the Duke, walked before him in procession to the high cross, and there

proclaimed him King. His troops found excellent quarters, and were furnished with necessaries at little or no

cost by the people of the town and neighbourhood. He took up his residence in the Castle, a building which

had been honoured by several royal visits. In the Castle Field his army was encamped. It now consisted of

about six thousand men, and might easily have been increased to double the number, but for the want of

arms. The Duke had brought with him from the Continent but a scanty supply of pikes and muskets. Many of

his followers had, therefore, no other weapons than such as could be fashioned out of the tools which they

had used in husbandry or mining. Of these rude implements of war the most formidable was made by

fastening the blade of a scythe erect on a strong pole.384 The tithing men of the country round Taunton and

Bridgewater received orders to search everywhere for scythes and to bring all that could be found to the

camp. It was impossible, however, even with the help of these contrivances, to supply the demand; and great

The foot were divided into six regiments. Many of the men had been in the militia, and still wore their

uniforms, red and yellow. The cavalry were about a thousand in number; but most of them had only large

colts, such as were then bred in great herds on the marshes of Somersetshire for the purpose of supplying

London with coach horses and cart horses. These animals were so far from being fit for any military purpose

that they had not yet learned to obey the bridle, and became ungovernable as soon as they heard a gun fired or

a drum beaten. A small body guard of forty young men, well armed, and mounted at their own charge,

attended Monmouth. The people of Bridgewater, who were enriched by a thriving coast trade, furnished him

All this time the forces of the government were fast assembling. On the west of the rebel army, Albemarle

still kept together a large body of Devonshire militia. On the east, the trainbands of Wiltshire had mustered

under the command of Thomas Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. On the north east, Henry Somerset, Duke of

Beaufort, was in arms. The power of Beaufort bore some faint resemblance to that of the great barons of the

fifteenth century. He was President of Wales and Lord Lieutenant of four English counties. His official tours

through the extensive region in which he represented the majesty of the throne were scarcely inferior in pomp

to royal progresses. His household at Badminton was regulated after the fashion of an earlier generation. The

land to a great extent round his pleasure grounds was in his own hands; and the labourers who cultivated it

formed part of his family. Nine tables were every day spread under his roof for two hundred persons. A

crowd of gentlemen and pages were under the orders of the steward. A whole troop of cavalry obeyed the

master of the horse. The fame of the kitchen, the cellar, the kennel, and the stables was spread over all

England. The gentry, many miles round, were proud of the magnificence of their great neighbour, and were at

the same time charmed by his affability and good nature. He was a zealous Cavalier of the old school. At this

crisis, therefore, he used his whole influence and authority in support of the crown, and occupied Bristol with

the trainbands of Gloucestershire, who seem to have been better disciplined than most other troops of that

In the counties more remote from Somersetshire the supporters of the throne were on the alert. The militia of

Sussex began to march westward, under the command of Richard, Lord Lumley, who, though he had lately

been converted from the Roman Catholic religion, was still firm in his allegiance to a Roman Catholic King.

James Bertie, Earl of Abingdon, called out the array of Oxfordshire. John Fell, Bishop of Oxford, who was

also Dean of Christchurch, summoned the undergraduates of his University to take arms for the crown. The

gownsmen crowded to give in their names. Christchurch alone furnished near a hundred pikemen and

musketeers. Young noblemen and gentlemen commoners acted as officers; and the eldest son of the Lord

But it was chiefly on the regular troops that the King relied. Churchill had been sent westward with the Blues;

and Feversham was following with all the forces that could be spared from the neighbourhood of London. A

courier had started for Holland with a letter directing Skelton instantly to request that the three English

regiments in the Dutch service might be sent to the Thames. When the request was made, the party hostile to

the House of Orange, headed by the deputies of Amsterdam, again tried to cause delay. But the energy of

William, who had almost as much at stake as James, and who saw Monmouth's progress with serious

uneasiness, bore down opposition, and in a few days the troops sailed.389 The three Scotch regiments were

already in England. They had arrived at Gravesend in excellent condition, and James had reviewed them on

Blackheath. He repeatedly declared to the Dutch Ambassador that he had never in his life seen finer or better

disciplined soldiers, and expressed the warmest gratitude to the Prince of Orange and the States for so

valuable and seasonable a reinforcement This satisfaction, however, was not unmixed. Excellently as the men

went through their drill, they were not untainted with Dutch politics and Dutch divinity. One of them was

shot and another flogged for drinking the Duke of Monmouth's health. It was therefore not thought advisable

to place them in the post of danger. They were kept in the neighbourhood of London till the end of the

campaign. But their arrival enabled the King to send to the West some infantry which would otherwise have

While the government was thus preparing for a conflict with the rebels in the field, precautions of a different

kind were not neglected. In London alone two hundred of those persons who were thought most likely to be

at the head of a Whig movement were arrested. Among the prisoners were some merchants of great note.

Every man who was obnoxious to the Court went in fear. A general gloom overhung the capital. Business

languished on the Exchange; and the theatres were so generally deserted that a new opera, written by Dryden,

and set off by decorations of unprecedented magnificence, was withdrawn, because the receipts would not

cover the expenses of the performance.391 The magistrates and clergy were everywhere active. the

Dissenters were everywhere closely observed. In Cheshire and Shropshire a fierce persecution raged; in

Northamptonshire arrests were numerous; and the gaol of Oxford was crowded with prisoners. No Puritan

divine, however moderate his opinions, however guarded his conduct, could feel any confidence that he

Meanwhile Monmouth advanced from Bridgewater harassed through the whole march by Churchill, who

appears to have done all that, with a handful of men, it was possible for a brave and skilful officer to effect.

The rebel army, much annoyed, both by the enemy and by a heavy fall of rain, halted in the evening of the

twentysecond of June at Glastonbury. The houses of the little town did not afford shelter for so large a

force. Some of the troops were therefore quartered in the churches, and others lighted their fires among the

venerable ruins of the Abbey, once the wealthiest religious house in our island. From Glastonbury the Duke

Hitherto he seems to have wandered from place to place with no other object than that of collecting troops. It

was now necessary for him to form some plan of military operations. His first scheme was to seize Bristol.

Many of the chief inhabitants of that important place were Whigs. One of the ramifications of the Whig plot

had extended thither. The garrison consisted only of the Gloucestershire trainbands. If Beaufort and his rustic

followers could be overpowered before the regular troops arrived, the rebels would at once find themselves

possessed of ample pecuniary resources; the credit of Monmouth's arms would be raised; and his friends

throughout the kingdom would be encouraged to declare themselves. Bristol had fortifications which, on the

north of the Avon towards Gloucestershire, were weak, but on the south towards Somersetshire were much

stronger. It was therefore determined that the attack should be made on the Gloucestershire side. But for this

purpose it was necessary to take a circuitous route, and to cross the Avon at Keynsham. The bridge at

Keynsham had been partly demolished by the militia, and was at present impassable. A detachment was

therefore sent forward to make the necessary repairs. The other troops followed more slowly, and on the

evening of the twentyfourth of June halted for repose at Pensford. At Pensford they were only five miles

from the Somersetshire side of Bristol; but the Gloucestershire side, which could be reached only by going

That night was one of great tumult and expectation in Bristol. The partisans of Monmouth knew that he was

almost within sight of their city, and imagined that he would be among them before daybreak. About an hour

after sunset a merchantman lying at the quay took fire. Such an occurrence, in a port crowded with shipping,

could not but excite great alarm. The whole river was in commotion. The streets were crowded. Seditious

cries were heard amidst the darkness and confusion. It was afterwards asserted, both by Whigs and by Tories,

that the fire had been kindled by the friends of Monmouth, in the hope that the trainbands would be busied in

preventing the conflagration from spreading, and that in the meantime the rebel army would make a bold

push, and would enter the city on the Somersetshire side. If such was the design of the incendiaries, it

completely failed. Beaufort, instead of sending his men to the quay, kept them all night drawn up under arms

round the beautiful church of Saint Mary Redcliff, on the south of the Avon. He would see Bristol burnt

down, he said, nay, he would burn it down himself, rather than that it should be occupied by traitors. He was

able, with the help of some regular cavalry which had joined him from Chippenham a few hours before, to

prevent an insurrection. It might perhaps have been beyond his power at once to overawe the malecontents

within the walls and to repel an attack from without: but no such attack was made. The fire, which caused so

much commotion at Bristol, was distinctly seen at Pensford. Monmouth, however, did not think it expedient

to change his plan. He remained quiet till sunrise, and then marched to Keynsham. There he found the bridge

repaired. He determined to let his army rest during the afternoon, and, as soon as night came, to proceed to

But it was too late. The King's forces were now near at hand. Colonel Oglethorpe, at the head of about a

hundred men of the Life Guards, dashed into Keynsham, scattered two troops of rebel horse which ventured

to oppose him, and retired after inflicting much injury and suffering little. In these circumstances it was

But what was to be done? Several schemes were proposed and discussed. It was suggested that Monmouth

might hasten to Gloucester, might cross the Severn there, might break down the bridge behind him, and, with

his right flank protected by the river, might march through Worcestershire into Shropshire and Cheshire. He

had formerly made a progress through those counties, and had been received there with as much enthusiasm

as in Somersetshire and Devonshire. His presence might revive the zeal of his old friends; and his army might

On full consideration, however, it appeared that this plan, though specious, was impracticable. The rebels

were ill shod for such work as they had lately undergone, and were exhausted by toiling, day after day,

through deep mud under heavy rain. Harassed and impeded as they would be at every stage by the enemy's

cavalry, they could not hope to reach Gloucester without being overtaken by the main body of the royal

Then it was proposed to enter Wiltshire. Persons who professed to know that county well assured the Duke

that he would be joined there by such strong reinforcements as would make it safe for him to give battle.397

He took this advice, and turned towards Wiltshire. He first summoned Bath. But Bath was strongly

garrisoned for the King; and Feversham was fast approaching. The rebels, therefore made no attempt on the

walls, but hastened to Philip's Norton, where they halted on the evening of the twentysixth of June.

Feversham followed them thither. Early on the morning of the twentyseventh they were alarmed by tidings

that he was close at hand. They got into order, and lined the hedges leading to the town.

The advanced guard of the royal army soon appeared. It consisted of about five hundred men, commanded by

the Duke of Grafton, a youth of bold spirit and rough manners, who was probably eager to show that he had

no share in the disloyal schemes of his half brother. Grafton soon found himself in a deep lane with fences on

both sides of him, from which a galling fire of musketry was kept up. Still he pushed boldly on till he came to

the entrance of Philip's Norton. There his way was crossed by a barricade, from which a third fire met him

full in front. His men now lost heart, and made the best of their way back. Before they got out of the lane

more than a hundred of them had been killed or wounded. Grafton's retreat was intercepted by some of the

The advanced guard, thus repulsed, fell back on the main body of the royal forces. The two armies were now

face to face; and a few shots were exchanged that did little or no execution. Neither side was impatient to

come to action. Feversham did not wish to fight till his artillery came up, and fell back to Bradford.

Monmouth, as soon as the night closed in, quitted his position, marched southward, and by daybreak arrived

Frome was as zealous in his cause as either Taunton or Bridgewater, but could do nothing to serve him. There

had been a rising a few days before; and Monmouth's declaration had been posted up in the market place. But

the news of this movement had been carried to the Earl of Pembroke, who lay at no great distance with the

Wiltshire militia. He had instantly marched to Frome, had routed a mob of rustics who, with scythes and

pitchforks, attempted to oppose him, had entered the town and had disarmed the inhabitants. No weapons,

The rebel army was in evil case. The march of the preceding night had been wearisome. The rain had fallen

in torrents; and the roads had become mere quagmires. Nothing was heard of the promised succours from

Wiltshire. One messenger brought news that Argyle's forces had been dispersed in Scotland. Another

reported that Feversham, having been joined by his artillery, was about to advance. Monmouth understood

war too well not to know that his followers, with all their courage and all their zeal, were no match for regular

soldiers. He had till lately flattered himself with the hope that some of those regiments which he had formerly

commanded would pass over to his standard: but that hope he was now compelled to relinquish. His heart

failed him. He could scarcely muster firmness enough to give orders. In his misery he complained bitterly of

the evil counsellors who had induced him to quit his happy retreat in Brabant. Against Wildman in particular

he broke forth into violent imprecations.400 And now an ignominious thought rose in his weak and agitated

mind. He would leave to the mercy of the government the thousands who had, at his call and for his sake,

abandoned their quiet fields and dwellings. He would steal away with his chief officers, would gain some

seaport before his flight was suspected, would escape to the Continent, and would forget his ambition and his

shame in the arms of Lady Wentworth. He seriously discussed this scheme with his leading advisers. Some of

them, trembling for their necks, listened to it with approbation; but Grey, who, by the admission of his

detractors, was intrepid everywhere except where swords were clashing and guns going off around him,

opposed the dastardly proposition with great ardour, and implored the Duke to face every danger rather than

requite with ingratitude and treachery the devoted attachment of the Western peasantry.401

The scheme of flight was abandoned: but it was not now easy to form any plan for a campaign. To advance

towards London would have been madness; for the road lay right across Salisbury Plain; and on that vast

open space regular troops, and above all regular cavalry, would have acted with every advantage against

undisciplined men. At this juncture a report reached the camp that the rustics of the marshes near Axbridge

had risen in defence of the Protestant religion, had armed themselves with flails, bludgeons, and pitchforks,

and were assembling by thousands at Bridgewater. Monmouth determined to return thither, and to strengthen

The rebels accordingly proceeded to Wells, and arrived there in no amiable temper. They were, with few

exceptions, hostile to Prelacy; and they showed their hostility in a way very little to their honour. They not

only tore the lead from the roof of the magnificent Cathedral to make bullets, an act for which they might

fairly plead the necessities of war, but wantonly defaced the ornaments of the building. Grey with difficulty

preserved the altar from the insults of some ruffians who wished to carouse round it, by taking his stand

On Thursday, the second of July, Monmouth again entered Bridgewater, In circumstances far less cheering

than those in which he had marched thence ten days before. The reinforcement which he found there was

inconsiderable. The royal army was close upon him. At one moment he thought of fortifying the town; and

hundreds of labourers were summoned to dig trenches and throw up mounds. Then his mind recurred to the

plan of marching into Cheshire, a plan which he had rejected as impracticable when he was at Keynsham, and

While he was thus wavering between projects equally hopeless, the King's forces came in sight. They

consisted of about two thousand five hundred regular troops, and of about fifteen hundred of the Wiltshire

militia. Early on the morning of Sunday, the fifth of July, they left Somerton, and pitched their tents that day

Dr. Peter Mew, Bishop of Winchester, accompanied them. This prelate had in his youth borne arms for

Charles the First against the Parliament. Neither his years nor his profession had wholly extinguished his

martial ardour; and he probably thought that the appearance of a father of the Protestant Church in the King's

camp might confirm the loyalty of some honest men who were wavering between their horror of Popery and

The steeple of the parish church of Bridgewater is said to be the loftiest of Somersetshire, and commands a

wide view over the surrounding country. Monmouth, accompanied by some of his officers, went up to the top

of the square tower from which the spire ascends, and observed through a telescope the position of the

enemy. Beneath him lay a flat expanse, now rich with cornfields and apple trees, but then, as its name

imports, for the most part a dreary morass. When the rains were heavy, and the Parret and its tributary

streams rose above their banks, this tract was often flooded. It was indeed anciently part of that great swamp

which is renowned in our early chronicles as having arrested the progress of two successive races of invaders,

which long protected the Celts against the aggressions of the kings of Wessex, and which sheltered Alfred

from the pursuit of the Danes. In those remote times this region could be traversed only in boats. It was a vast

pool, wherein were scattered many islets of shifting and treacherous soil, overhung with rank jungle, and

swarming with deer and wild swine. Even in the days of the Tudors, the traveller whose journey lay from

Ilchester to Bridgewater was forced to make a circuit of several miles in order to avoid the waters. When

Monmouth looked upon Sedgemoor, it had been partially reclaimed by art, and was intersected by many deep

and wide trenches which, in that country, are called rhines. In the midst of the moor rose, clustering round the

towers of churches, a few villages of which the names seem to indicate that they once were surrounded by

waves. In one of these villages, called Weston Zoyland, the royal cavalry lay; and Feversham had fixed his

headquarters there. Many persons still living have seen the daughter of the servant girl who waited on him

that day at table; and a large dish of Persian ware, which was set before him, is still carefully preserved in the

neighbourhood. It is to be observed that the population of Somersetshire does not, like that of the

manufacturing districts, consist of emigrants from distant places. It is by no means unusual to find farmers

who cultivate the same land which their ancestors cultivated when the Plantagenets reigned in England. The

At a greater distance from Bridgewater lies the village of Middlezoy. In that village and its neighbourhood,

the Wiltshire militia were quartered, under the command of Pembroke. On the open moor, not far from

Chedzoy, were encamped several battalions of regular infantry. Monmouth looked gloomily on them. He

could not but remember how, a few years before, he had, at the head of a column composed of some of those

very men, driven before him in confusion the fierce enthusiasts who defended Bothwell Bridge He could

distinguish among the hostile ranks that gallant band which was then called from the name of its Colonel,

Dumbarton's regiment, but which has long been known as the first of the line, and which, in all the four

quarters of the world, has nobly supported its early reputation. "I know those men," said Monmouth; "they

Yet the aspect of the enemy was not altogether discouraging. The three divisions of the royal army lay far

apart from one another. There was all appearance of negligence and of relaxed discipline in all their

movements. It was reported that they were drinking themselves drunk with the Zoyland cider. The incapacity

of Feversham, who commanded in chief, was notorious. Even at this momentous crisis he thought only of

eating and sleeping. Churchill was indeed a captain equal to tasks far more arduous than that of scattering a

crowd of ill armed and ill trained peasants. But the genius, which, at a later period, humbled six Marshals of

France, was not now in its proper place. Feversham told Churchill little, and gave him no encouragement to

offer any suggestion. The lieutenant, conscious of superior abilities and science, impatient of the control of a

chief whom he despised, and trembling for the fate of the army, nevertheless preserved his characteristic

selfcommand, and dissembled his feelings so well that Feversham praised his submissive alacrity, and

Monmouth, having observed the disposition of the royal forces, and having been apprised of the state in

which they were, conceived that a night attack might be attended with success. He resolved to run the hazard;

It was Sunday; and his followers, who had, for the most part, been brought up after the Puritan fashion,

passed a great part of the day in religious exercises. The Castle Field, in which the army was encamped,

presented a spectacle such as, since the disbanding of Cromwell's soldiers, England had never seen. The

dissenting preachers who had taken arms against Popery, and some of whom had probably fought in the great

civil war, prayed and preached in red coats and huge jackboots, with swords by their sides. Ferguson was one

of those who harangued. He took for his text the awful imprecation by which the Israelites who dwelt beyond

Jordan cleared themselves from the charge ignorantly brought against them by their brethren on the other side

of the river. "The Lord God of Gods, the Lord God of Gods, he knoweth; and Israel he shall know. If it be in

That an attack was to be made under cover of the night was no secret in Bridgewater. The town was full of

women, who had repaired thither by hundreds from the surrounding region, to see their husbands, sons,

lovers, and brothers once more. There were many sad partings that day; and many parted never to meet

again.409 The report of the intended attack came to the ears of a young girl who was zealous for the King.

Though of modest character, she had the courage to resolve that she would herself bear the intelligence to

Feversham. She stole out of Bridgewater, and made her way to the royal camp. But that camp was not a place

where female innocence could be safe. Even the officers, despising alike the irregular force to which they

were opposed, and the negligent general who commanded them, had indulged largely in wine, and were ready

for any excess of licentiousness and cruelty. One of them seized the unhappy maiden, refused to listen to her

errand, and brutally outraged her. She fled in agonies of rage and shame, leaving the wicked army to its

And now the time for the great hazard drew near. The night was not ill suited for such an enterprise. The

moon was indeed at the full, and the northern streamers were shining brilliantly. But the marsh fog lay so

thick on Sedgemoor that no object could be discerned there at the distance of fifty paces.411

The clock struck eleven; and the Duke with his body guard rode out of the Castle. He was not in the frame of

mind which befits one who is about to strike a decisive blow. The very children who pressed to see him pass

observed, and long remembered, that his look was sad and full of evil augury. His army marched by a

circuitous path, near six miles in length, towards the royal encampment on Sedgemoor. Part of the route is to

this day called War Lane. The foot were led by Monmouth himself. The horse were confided to Grey, in spite

of the remonstrances of some who remembered the mishap at Bridport. Orders were given that strict silence

should be preserved, that no drum should be beaten, and no shot fired. The word by which the insurgents

were to recognise one another in the darkness was Soho. It had doubtless been selected in allusion to Soho

At about one in the morning of Monday the sixth of July, the rebels were on the open moor. But between

them and the enemy lay three broad rhines filled with water and soft mud. Two of these, called the Black

Ditch and the Langmoor Rhine, Monmouth knew that he must pass. But, strange to say, the existence of a

trench, called the Bussex Rhine, which immediately covered the royal encampment, had not been mentioned

The wains which carried the ammunition remained at the entrance of the moor. The horse and foot, in a long

narrow column, passed the Black Ditch by a causeway. There was a similar causeway across the Langmoor

Rhine: but the guide, in the fog, missed his way. There was some delay and some tumult before the error

could be rectified. At length the passage was effected: but, in the confusion, a pistol went off. Some men of

the Horse Guards, who were on watch, heard the report, and perceived that a great multitude was advancing

through the mist. They fired their carbines, and galloped off in different directions to give the alarm. Some

hastened to Weston Zoyland, where the cavalry lay. One trooper spurred to the encampment of the infantry,

and cried out vehemently that the enemy was at hand. The drums of Dumbarton's regiment beat to arms; and

the men got fast into their ranks. It was time; for Monmouth was already drawing up his army for action. He

ordered Grey to lead the way with the cavalry, and followed himself at the head of the infantry. Grey pushed

on till his progress was unexpectedly arrested by the Bussex Rhine. On the opposite side of the ditch the

"For whom are you?" called out an officer of the Foot Guards. "For the King," replied a voice from the ranks

of the rebel cavalry. "For which King?" was then demanded. The answer was a shout of "King Monmouth,"

mingled with the war cry, which forty years before had been inscribed on the colours of the parliamentary

regiments, "God with us." The royal troops instantly fired such a volley of musketry as sent the rebel horse

flying in all directions. The world agreed to ascribe this ignominious rout to Grey's pusillanimity. Yet it is by

no means clear that Churchill would have succeeded better at the head of men who had never before handled

arms on horseback, and whose horses were unused, not only to stand fire, but to obey the rein.

A few minutes after the Duke's horse had dispersed themselves over the moor, his infantry came up running

fast, and guided through the gloom by the lighted matches of Dumbarton's regiment.

Monmouth was startled by finding that a broad and profound trench lay between him and the camp which he

had hoped to surprise. The insurgents halted on the edge of the rhine, and fired. Part of the royal infantry on

the opposite bank returned the fire. During three quarters of an hour the roar of the musketry was incessant.

The Somersetshire peasants behaved themselves as if they had been veteran soldiers, save only that they

But now the other divisions of the royal army were in motion. The Life Guards and Blues came pricking fast

from Weston Zoyland, and scattered in an instant some of Grey's horse, who had attempted to rally. The

fugitives spread a panic among their comrades in the rear, who had charge of the ammunition. The waggoners

drove off at full speed, and never stopped till they were many miles from the field of battle. Monmouth had

hitherto done his part like a stout and able warrior. He had been seen on foot, pike in hand, encouraging his

infantry by voice and by example. But he was too well acquainted with military affairs not to know that all

was over. His men had lost the advantage which surprise and darkness had given them. They were deserted

by the horse and by the ammunition waggons. The King's forces were now united and in good order.

Feversham had been awakened by the firing, had got out of bed, had adjusted his cravat, had looked at

himself well in the glass, and had come to see what his men were doing. Meanwhile, what was of much more

importance, Churchill had rapidly made an entirely new disposition of the royal infantry. The day was about

to break. The event of a conflict on an open plain, by broad sunlight, could not be doubtful. Yet Monmouth

should have felt that it was not for him to fly, while thousands whom affection for him had hurried to

destruction were still fighting manfully in his cause. But vain hopes and the intense love of life prevailed. He

saw that if he tarried the royal cavalry would soon intercept his retreat. He mounted and rode from the field.

Yet his foot, though deserted, made a gallant stand. The Life Guards attacked them on the right, the Blues on

the left; but the Somersetshire clowns, with their scythes and the butt ends of their muskets, faced the royal

horse like old soldiers. Oglethorpe made a vigorous attempt to break them and was manfully repulsed.

Sarsfield, a brave Irish officer, whose name afterwards obtained a melancholy celebrity, charged on the other

flank. His men were beaten back. He was himself struck to the ground, and lay for a time as one dead. But the

struggle of the hardy rustics could not last. Their powder and ball were spent. Cries were heard of

"Ammunition! For God's sake ammunition!" But no ammunition was at hand. And now the King's artillery

came up. It had been posted half a mile off, on the high road from Weston Zoyland to Bridgewater. So

defective were then the appointments of an English army that there would have been much difficulty in

dragging the great guns to the place where the battle was raging, had not the Bishop of Winchester offered his

coach horses and traces for the purpose. This interference of a Christian prelate in a matter of blood has, with

strange inconsistency, been condemned by some Whig writers who can see nothing criminal in the conduct of

the numerous Puritan ministers then in arms against the government. Even when the guns had arrived, there

was such a want of gunners that a serjeant of Dumbarton's regiment was forced to take on himself the

management of several pieces.413 The cannon, however, though ill served, brought the engagement to a

speedy close. The pikes of the rebel battalions began to shake: the ranks broke; the King's cavalry charged

again, and bore down everything before them; the King's infantry came pouring across the ditch. Even in that

extremity the Mendip miners stood bravely to their arms, and sold their lives dearly. But the rout was in a few

minutes complete. Three hundred of the soldiers had been killed or wounded. Of the rebels more than a

So ended the last fight deserving the name of battle, that has been fought on English ground. The impression

left on the simple inhabitants of the neighbourhood was deep and lasting. That impression, indeed, has been

frequently renewed. For even in our own time the plough and the spade have not seldom turned up ghastly

memorials of the slaughter, skulls, and thigh bones, and strange weapons made out of implements of

husbandry. Old peasants related very recently that, in their childhood, they were accustomed to play on the

moor at the fight between King James's men and King Monmouth's men, and that King Monmouth's men

What seems most extraordinary in the battle of Sedgemoor is that the event should have been for a moment

doubtful, and that the rebels should have resisted so long. That five or six thousand colliers and ploughmen

should contend during an hour with half that number of regular cavalry and infantry would now be thought a

miracle. Our wonder will, perhaps, be diminished when we remember that, in the time of James the Second,

the discipline of the regular army was extremely lax, and that, on the other hand, the peasantry were

accustomed to serve in the militia. The difference, therefore, between a regiment of the Foot Guards and a

regiment of clowns just enrolled, though doubtless considerable, was by no means what it now is. Monmouth

did not lead a mere mob to attack good soldiers. For his followers were not altogether without a tincture of

soldiership; and Feversham's troops, when compared with English troops of our time, might almost he called

It was four o'clock: the sun was rising; and the routed army came pouring into the streets of Bridgewater. The

uproar, the blood, the gashes, the ghastly figures which sank down and never rose again, spread horror and

dismay through the town. The pursuers, too, were close behind. Those inhabitants who had favoured the

insurrection expected sack and massacre, and implored the protection of their neighbours who professed the

Roman Catholic religion, or had made themselves conspicuous by Tory politics; and it is acknowledged by

the bitterest of Whig historians that this protection was kindly and generously given.416

During that day the conquerors continued to chase the fugitives. The neighbouring villagers long remembered

with what a clatter of horsehoofs and what a storm of curses the whirlwind of cavalry swept by. Before

evening five hundred prisoners had been crowded into the parish church of Weston Zoyland. Eighty of them

were wounded; and five expired within the consecrated walls. Great numbers of labourers were impressed for

the purpose of burying the slain. A few, who were notoriously partial to the vanquished side, were set apart

for the hideous office of quartering the captives. The tithing men of the neighbouring parishes were busied in

setting up gibbets and providing chains. All this while the bells of Weston Zoyland and Chedzoy rang

joyously; and the soldiers sang and rioted on the moor amidst the corpses. For the farmers of the

neighbourhood had made haste, as soon as the event of the fight was known to send hogsheads of their best

Feversham passed for a goodnatured man: but he was a foreigner, ignorant of the laws and careless of the

feelings of the English. He was accustomed to the military license of France, and had learned from his great

kinsman, the conqueror and devastator of the Palatinate, not indeed how to conquer, but how to devastate. A

considerable number of prisoners were immediately selected for execution. Among them was a youth famous

for his speed. Hopes were held out to him that his life would be spared If he could run a race with one of the

colts of the marsh. The space through which the man kept up with the horse is still marked by well known

bounds on the moor, and is about three quarters of a mile. Feversham was not ashamed, after seeing the

performance, to send the wretched performer to the gallows. The next day a long line of gibbets appeared on

the road leading from Bridgewater to Weston Zoyland. On each gibbet a prisoner was suspended. Four of the

Meanwhile Monmouth, accompanied by Grey, by Buyse, and by a few other friends, was flying from the

field of battle. At Chedzoy he stopped a moment to mount a fresh horse and to hide his blue riband and his

George. He then hastened towards the Bristol Channel. From the rising ground on the north of the field of

battle he saw the flash and the smoke of the last volley fired by his deserted followers. Before six o'clock he

was twenty miles from Sedgemoor. Some of his companions advised him to cross the water, and seek refuge

in Wales; and this would undoubtedly have been his wisest course. He would have been in Wales many hours

before the news of his defeat was known there; and in a country so wild and so remote from the seat of

government, he might have remained long undiscovered. He determined, however, to push for Hampshire, in

the hope that he might lurk in the cabins of deerstealers among the oaks of the New Forest, till means of

conveyance to the Continent could be procured. He therefore, with Grey and the German, turned to the

southeast. But the way was beset with dangers. The three fugitives had to traverse a country in which every

one already knew the event of the battle, and in which no traveller of suspicious appearance could escape a

close scrutiny. They rode on all day, shunning towns and villages. Nor was this so difficult as it may now

appear. For men then living could remember the time when the wild deer ranged freely through a succession

of forests from the banks of the Avon in Wiltshire to the southern coast of Hampshire.419 At length, on

Cranbourne Chase, the strength of the horses failed. They were therefore turned loose. The bridles and

saddles were concealed. Monmouth and his friends procured rustic attire, disguised themselves, and

proceeded on foot towards the New Forest. They passed the night in the open air: but before morning they

were Surrounded on every side by toils. Lord Lumley, who lay at Ringwood with a strong body of the Sussex

militia, had sent forth parties in every direction. Sir William Portman, with the Somerset militia, had formed

a chain of posts from the sea to the northern extremity of Dorset. At five in the morning of the seventh, Grey,

who had wandered from his friends, was seized by two of the Sussex scouts. He submitted to his fate with the

calmness of one to whom suspense was more intolerable than despair. "Since we landed," he said, "I have not

had one comfortable meal or one quiet night." It could hardly be doubted that the chief rebel was not far off.

The pursuers redoubled their vigilance and activity. The cottages scattered over the heathy country on the

boundaries of Dorsetshire and Hampshire were strictly examined by Lumley; and the clown with whom

Monmouth had changed clothes was discovered. Portman came with a strong body of horse and foot to assist

in the search. Attention was soon drawn to a place well fitted to shelter fugitives. It was an extensive tract of

land separated by an enclosure from the open country, and divided by numerous hedges into small fields. In

some of these fields the rye, the pease, and the oats were high enough to conceal a man. Others were

overgrown with fern and brambles. A poor woman reported that she had seen two strangers lurking in this

covert. The near prospect of reward animated the zeal of the troops. It was agreed that every man who did his

duty in the search should have a share of the promised five thousand pounds. The outer fence was strictly

guarded: the space within was examined with indefatigable diligence; and several dogs of quick scent were

turned out among the bushes. The day closed before the work could be completed: but careful watch was kept

all night. Thirty times the fugitives ventured to look through the outer hedge: but everywhere they found a

sentinel on the alert: once they were seen and fired at; they then separated and concealed themselves in

At sunrise the next morning the search recommenced, and Buyse was found. He owned that he had parted

from the Duke only a few hours before. The corn and copsewood were now beaten with more care than ever.

At length a gaunt figure was discovered hidden in a ditch. The pursuers sprang on their prey. Some of them

were about to fire: but Portman forbade all violence. The prisoner's dress was that of a shepherd; his beard,

prematurely grey, was of several days' growth. He trembled greatly, and was unable to speak. Even those

who had often seen him were at first in doubt whether this were truly the brilliant and graceful Monmouth.

His pockets were searched by Portman, and in them were found, among some raw pease gathered in the rage

of hunger, a watch, a purse of gold, a small treatise on fortification, an album filled with songs, receipts,

prayers, and charms, and the George with which, many years before, King Charles the Second had decorated

his favourite son. Messengers were instantly despatched to Whitehall with the good news, and with the

George as a token that the news was true. The prisoner was conveyed under a strong guard to Ringwood.420

And all was lost; and nothing remained but that he should prepare to meet death as became one who had

thought himself not unworthy to wear the crown of William the Conqueror and of Richard the Lionhearted,

of the hero of Cressy and of the hero of Agincourt. The captive might easily have called to mind other

domestic examples, still better suited to his condition. Within a hundred years, two sovereigns whose blood

ran in his veins, one of them a delicate woman, had been placed in the same situation in which he now stood.

They had shown, in the prison and on the scaffold, virtue of which, in the season of prosperity, they had

seemed incapable, and had half redeemed great crimes and errors by enduring with Christian meekness and

princely dignity all that victorious enemies could inflict. Of cowardice Monmouth had never been accused;

and, even had he been wanting in constitutional courage, it might have been expected that the defect would

be supplied by pride and by despair. The eyes of the whole world were upon him. The latest generations

would know how, in that extremity, he had borne himself. To the brave peasants of the West he owed it to

show that they had not poured forth their blood for a leader unworthy of their attachment. To her who had

sacrificed everything for his sake he owed it so to bear himself that, though she might weep for him, she

should not blush for him. It was not for him to lament and supplicate. His reason, too, should have told him

that lamentation and supplication would be unavailing. He had done that which could never be forgiven. He

But the fortitude of Monmouth was not that highest sort of fortitude which is derived from reflection and

from selfrespect; nor had nature given him one of those stout hearts from which neither adversity nor peril

can extort any sign of weakness. His courage rose and fell with his animal spirits. It was sustained on the

field of battle by the excitement of action. By the hope of victory, by the strange influence of sympathy. All

such aids were now taken away. The spoiled darling of the court and of the populace, accustomed to be loved

and worshipped wherever he appeared, was now surrounded by stern gaolers in whose eyes he read his doom.

Yet a few hours of gloomy seclusion, and he must die a violent and shameful death. His heart sank within

him. Life seemed worth purchasing by any humiliation; nor could his mind, always feeble, and now

distracted by terror, perceive that humiliation must degrade, but could not save him.

As soon as he reached Ringwood he wrote to the King. The letter was that of a man whom a craven fear had

made insensible to shame. He professed in vehement terms his remorse for his treason. He affirmed that,

when be promised his cousins at the Hague not to raise troubles in England, he had fully meant to keep his

word. Unhappily he had afterwards been seduced from his allegiance by some horrid people who had heated

his mind by calumnies and misled him by sophistry; but now he abhorred them: he abhorred himself. He

begged in piteous terms that he might be admitted to the royal presence. There was a secret which he could

not trust to paper, a secret which lay in a single word, and which, if he spoke that word, would secure the

throne against all danger. On the following day he despatched letters, imploring the Queen Dowager and the

When it was known in London how he had abased himself the general surprise was great; and no man was

more amazed than Barillon, who had resided in England during two bloody proscriptions, and had seen

numerous victims, both of the Opposition and of the Court, submit to their fate without womanish entreaties

Monmouth and Grey remained at Ringwood two days. They were then carried up to London, under the guard

of a large body of regular troops and militia. In the coach with the Duke was an officer whose orders were to

stab the prisoner if a rescue were attempted. At every town along the road the trainbands of the

neighbourhood had been mustered under the command of the principal gentry. The march lasted three days,

and terminated at Vauxhall, where a regiment, commanded by George Legge, Lord Dartmouth, was in

readiness to receive the prisoners. They were put on board of a state barge, and carried down the river to

Whitehall Stairs. Lumley and Portman had alternately watched the Duke day and night till they had brought

Both the demeanour of Monmouth and that of Grey, during the journey, filled all observers with surprise.

Monmouth was altogether unnerved. Grey was not only calm but cheerful, talked pleasantly of horses, dogs,

and field sports, and even made jocose allusions to the perilous situation in which he stood.

The King cannot be blamed for determining that Monmouth should suffer death. Every man who heads a

rebellion against an established government stakes his life on the event; and rebellion was the smallest part of

Monmouth's crime. He had declared against his uncle a war without quarter. In the manifesto put forth at

Lyme, James had been held up to execration as an incendiary, as an assassin who had strangled one innocent

man and cut the throat of another, and, lastly, as the poisoner of his own brother. To spare an enemy who had

not scrupled to resort to such extremities would have been an act of rare, perhaps of blamable generosity. But

to see him and not to spare him was an outrage on humanity and decency.424 This outrage the King resolved

to commit. The arms of the prisoner were bound behind him with a silken cord; and, thus secured, he was

Then Monmouth threw himself on the ground, and crawled to the King's feet. He wept. He tried to embrace

his uncle's knees with his pinioned arms. He begged for life, only life, life at any price. He owned that he had

been guilty of a greet crime, but tried to throw the blame on others, particularly on Argyle, who would rather

have put his legs into the boots than have saved his own life by such baseness. By the ties of kindred, by the

memory of the late King, who had been the best and truest of brothers, the unhappy man adjured James to

show some mercy. James gravely replied that this repentance was of the latest, that he was sorry for the

misery which the prisoner had brought on himself, but that the case was not one for lenity. A Declaration,

filled with atrocious calumnies, had been put forth. The regal title had been assumed. For treasons so

aggravated there could be no pardon on this side of the grave. The poor terrified Duke vowed that he had

never wished to take the crown, but had been led into that fatal error by others. As to the Declaration, he had

not written it: he had not read it: he had signed it without looking at it: it was all the work of Ferguson, that

bloody villain Ferguson. "Do you expect me to believe," said James, with contempt but too well merited,

"that you set your hand to a paper of such moment without knowing what it contained?" One depth of infamy

only remained; and even to that the prisoner descended. He was preeminently the champion of the Protestant

religion. The interest of that religion had been his plea for conspiring against the government of his father,

and for bringing on his country the miseries of civil war; yet he was not ashamed to hint that he was inclined

to be reconciled to the Church of Rome. The King eagerly offered him spiritual assistance, but said nothing

of pardon or respite. "Is there then no hope?" asked Monmouth. James turned away in silence. Then

Monmouth strove to rally his courage, rose from his knees, and retired with a firmness which he had not

Grey was introduced next. He behaved with a propriety and fortitude which moved even the stern and

resentful King, frankly owned himself guilty, made no excuses, and did not once stoop to ask his life. Both

the prisoners were sent to the Tower by water. There was no tumult; but many thousands of people, with

anxiety and sorrow in their faces, tried to catch a glimpse of the captives. The Duke's resolution failed as

soon as he had left the royal presence. On his way to his prison he bemoaned himself, accused his followers,

and abjectly implored the intercession of Dartmouth. "I know, my Lord, that you loved my father. For his

sake, for God's sake, try if there be any room for mercy." Dartmouth replied that the King had spoken the

truth, and that a subject who assumed the regal title excluded himself from all hope of pardon.426

Soon after Monmouth had been lodged in the Tower, he was informed that his wife had, by the royal

command, been sent to see him. She was accompanied by the Earl of Clarendon, Keeper of the Privy Seal.

Her husband received her very coldly, and addressed almost all his discourse to Clarendon whose

intercession he earnestly implored. Clarendon held out no hopes; and that same evening two prelates, Turner,

Bishop of Ely, and Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, arrived at the Tower with a solemn message from the

He was greatly agitated. The blood left his cheeks; and it was some time before he could speak. Most of the

short time which remained to him he wasted in vain attempts to obtain, if not a pardon, at least a respite. He

wrote piteous letters to the King and to several courtiers, but in vain. Some Roman Catholic divines were sent

to him from Whitehall. But they soon discovered that, though he would gladly have purchased his life by

renouncing the religion of which he had professed himself in an especial manner the defender, yet, if he was

Nor were Ken and Turner much better pleased with his frame of mind. The doctrine of nonresistance was, in

their view, as in the view of most of their brethren, the distinguishing badge of the Anglican Church. The two

Bishops insisted on Monmouth's owning that, in drawing the sword against the government, he had

committed a great sin; and, on this point, they found him obstinately heterodox. Nor was this his only heresy.

He maintained that his connection with Lady Wentworth was blameless in the sight of God. He had been

married, he said, when a child. He had never cared for his Duchess. The happiness which he had not found at

home he had sought in a round of loose amours, condemned by religion and morality. Henrietta had

reclaimed him from a life of vice. To her he had been strictly constant. They had, by common consent,

offered up fervent prayers for the divine guidance. After those prayers they had found their affection for each

other strengthened; and they could then no longer doubt that, in the sight of God, they were a wedded pair.

The Bishops were so much scandalised by this view of the conjugal relation that they refused to administer

the sacrament to the prisoner. All that they could obtain from him was a promise that, during the single night

which still remained to him, he would pray to be enlightened if he were in error.

On the Wednesday morning, at his particular request, Doctor Thomas Tenison, who then held the vicarage of

Saint Martin's, and, in that important cure, had obtained the high esteem of the public, came to the Tower.

From Tenison, whose opinions were known to be moderate, the Duke expected more indulgence than Ken

and Turner were disposed to show. But Tenison, whatever might be his sentiments concerning nonresistance

in the abstract, thought the late rebellion rash and wicked, and considered Monmouth's notion respecting

marriage as a most dangerous delusion. Monmouth was obstinate. He had prayed, he said, for the divine

direction. His sentiments remained unchanged; and he could not doubt that they were correct. Tenison's

exhortations were in milder tone than those of the Bishops. But he, like them, thought that he should not be

justified in administering the Eucharist to one whose penitence was of so unsatisfactory a nature.428

The hour drew near: all hope was over; and Monmouth had passed from pusillanimous fear to the apathy of

despair. His children were brought to his room that he might take leave of them, and were followed by his

wife. He spoke to her kindly, but without emotion. Though she was a woman of great strength of mind, and

had little cause to love him, her misery was such that none of the bystanders could refrain from weeping. He

It was ten o'clock. The coach of the Lieutenant of the Tower was ready. Monmouth requested his spiritual

advisers to accompany him to the place of execution; and they consented: but they told him that, in their

judgment, he was about to die in a perilous state of mind, and that, if they attended him it would be their duty

to exhort him to the last. As he passed along the ranks of the guards he saluted them with a smile; and he

mounted the scaffold with a firm tread. Tower Hill was covered up to the chimney tops with an innumerable

multitude of gazers, who, in awful silence, broken only by sighs and the noise of weeping, listened for the last

accents of the darling of the people. "I shall say little," he began. "I come here, not to speak, but to die. I die a

Protestant of the Church of England." The Bishops interrupted him, and told him that, unless he

acknowledged resistance to be sinful, he was no member of their church He went on to speak of his Henrietta.

She was, he said, a young lady of virtue and honour. He loved her to the last, and he could not die without

giving utterance to his feelings The Bishops again interfered, and begged him not to use such language. Some

altercation followed. The divines have been accused of dealing harshly with the dying man. But they appear

to have only discharged what, in their view, was a sacred duty. Monmouth knew their principles, and, if he

wished to avoid their importunity, should have dispensed with their attendance. Their general arguments

against resistance had no effect on him. But when they reminded him of the ruin which he had brought on his

brave and loving followers, of the blood which had been shed, of the souls which had been sent unprepared to

the great account, he was touched, and said, in a softened voice, "I do own that. I am sorry that it ever

happened." They prayed with him long and fervently; and he joined in their petitions till they invoked a

blessing on the King. He remained silent. "Sir," said one of the Bishops, "do you not pray for the King with

us?" Monmouth paused some time, and, after an internal struggle, exclaimed "Amen." But it was in vain that

the prelates implored him to address to the soldiers and to the people a few words on the duty of obedience to

the government. "I will make no speeches," he exclaimed. "Only ten words, my Lord." He turned away,

called his servant, and put into the man's hand a toothpick case, the last token of ill starred love. "Give it," he

said, "to that person." He then accosted John Ketch the executioner, a wretch who had butchered many brave

and noble victims, and whose name has, during a century and a half, been vulgarly given to all who have

succeeded him in his odious office.430 "Here," said the Duke, "are six guineas for you. Do not hack me as

you did my Lord Russell. I have heard that you struck him three or four times. My servant will give you some

more gold if you do the work well." He then undressed, felt the edge of the axe, expressed some fear that it

was not sharp enough, and laid his head on the block. The divines in the meantime continued to ejaculate

with great energy: "God accept your repentance! God accept your imperfect repentance!"

The hangman addressed himself to his office. But he had been disconcerted by what the Duke had said. The

first blow inflicted only a slight wound. The Duke struggled, rose from the block, and looked reproachfully at

the executioner. The head sunk down once more. The stroke was repeated again and again; but still the neck

was not severed, and the body continued to move. Yells of rage and horror rose from the crowd. Ketch flung

down the axe with a curse. "I cannot do it," he said; "my heart fails me." "Take up the axe, man," cried the

sheriff. "Fling him over the rails," roared the mob. At length the axe was taken up. Two more blows

extinguished the last remains of life; but a knife was used to separate the head from the shoulders. The crowd

was wrought up to such an ecstasy of rage that the executioner was in danger of being torn in pieces, and was

In the meantime many handkerchiefs were dipped in the Duke's blood; for by a large part of the multitude he

was regarded as a martyr who had died for the Protestant religion. The head and body were placed in a coffin

covered with black velvet, and were laid privately under the communion table of Saint Peter's Chapel in the

Tower. Within four years the pavement of the chancel was again disturbed, and hard by the remains of

Monmouth were laid the remains of Jeffreys. In truth there is no sadder spot on the earth than that little

cemetery. Death is there associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, with genius and virtue, with

public veneration and imperishable renown; not, as in our humblest churches and churchyards, with

everything that is most endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is darkest in human

nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the

ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame. Thither

have been carried, through successive ages, by the rude hands of gaolers, without one mourner following, the

bleeding relics of men who had been the captains of armies, the leaders of parties, the oracles of senates, and

the ornaments of courts. Thither was borne, before the window where Jane Grey was praying, the mangled

corpse of Guilford Dudley. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and Protector of the realm, reposes there by

the brother whom he murdered. There has mouldered away the headless trunk of John Fisher, Bishop of

Rochester and Cardinal of Saint Vitalis, a man worthy to have lived in a better age and to have died in a

better cause. There are laid John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, Lord High Admiral, and Thomas

Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Lord High Treasurer. There, too, is another Essex, on whom nature and fortune had

lavished all their bounties in vain, and whom valour, grace, genius, royal favour, popular applause, conducted

to an early and ignominious doom. Not far off sleep two chiefs of the great house of Howard, Thomas, fourth

Duke of Norfolk, and Philip, eleventh Earl of Arundel. Here and there, among the thick graves of unquiet and

aspiring statesmen, lie more delicate sufferers; Margaret of Salisbury, the last of the proud name of

Plantagenet; and those two fair Queens who perished by the jealous rage of Henry. Such was the dust with

Yet a few months, and the quiet village of Toddington, in Bedfordshire, witnessed a still sadder funeral. Near

that village stood an ancient and stately hall, the seat of the Wentworths. The transept of the parish church

had long been their burial place. To that burial place, in the spring which followed the death of Monmouth,

was borne the coffin of the young Baroness Wentworth of Nettlestede. Her family reared a sumptuous

mausoleum over her remains: but a less costly memorial of her was long contemplated with far deeper

interest. Her name, carved by the hand of him whom she loved too well, was, a few years ago, still

It was not by Lady Wentworth alone that the memory of Monmouth was cherished with idolatrous fondness.

His hold on the hearts of the people lasted till the generation which had seen him had passed away. Ribands,

buckles, and other trifling articles of apparel which he had worn, were treasured up as precious relics by those

who had fought under him at Sedgemoor. Old men who long survived him desired, when they were dying,

that these trinkets might be buried with them. One button of gold thread which narrowly escaped this fate

may still be seen at a house which overlooks the field of battle. Nay, such was the devotion of the people to

their unhappy favourite that, in the face of the strongest evidence by which the fact of a death was ever

verified, many continued to cherish a hope that he was still living, and that he would again appear in arms. A

person, it was said, who was remarkably like Monmouth, had sacrificed himself to save the Protestant hero.

The vulgar long continued, at every important crisis, to whisper that the time was at hand, and that King

Monmouth would soon show himself. In 1686, a knave who had pretended to be the Duke, and had levied

contributions in several villages of Wiltshire, was apprehended, and whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. In

1698, when England had long enjoyed constitutional freedom under a new dynasty, the son of an innkeeper

passed himself on the yeomanry of Sussex as their beloved Monmouth, and defrauded many who were by no

means of the lowest class. Five hundred pounds were collected for him. The farmers provided him with a

horse. Their wives sent him baskets of chickens and ducks, and were lavish, it was said, of favours of a more

tender kind; for in gallantry at least, the counterfeit was a not unworthy representative of the original. When

this impostor was thrown into prison for his fraud, his followers maintained him in luxury. Several of them

appeared at the bar to countenance him when he was tried at the Horsham assizes. So long did this delusion

last that, when George the Third had been some years on the English throne, Voltaire thought it necessary

gravely to confute the hypothesis that the man in the iron mask was the Duke of Monmouth.433

It is, perhaps, a fact scarcely less remarkable that, to this day, the inhabitants of some parts of the West of

England, when any bill affecting their interest is before the House of Lords, think themselves entitled to claim

the help of the Duke of Buccleuch, the descendant of the unfortunate leader for whom their ancestors bled.

The history of Monmouth would alone suffice to refute the Imputation of inconstancy which is so frequently

thrown on the common people. The common people are sometimes inconstant; for they are human beings.

But that they are inconstant as compared with the educated classes, with aristocracies, or with princes, may

be confidently denied. It would be easy to name demagogues whose popularity has remained undiminished

while sovereigns and parliaments have withdrawn their confidence from a long succession of statesmen.

When Swift had survived his faculties many years, the Irish populace still continued to light bonfires on his

birthday, in commemoration of the services which they fancied that he had rendered to his country when his

mind was in full vigour. While seven administrations were raised to power and hurled from it in consequence

of court intrigues or of changes in the sentiments of the higher classes of society, the profligate Wilkes

retained his hold on the selections of a rabble whom he pillaged and ridiculed. Politicians, who, in 1807, had

sought to curry favour with George the Third by defending Caroline of Brunswick, were not ashamed, in

1820, to curry favour with George the Fourth by persecuting her. But in 1820, as in 1807, the whole body of

working men was fanatically devoted to her cause. So it was with Monmouth. In 1680, he had been adored

alike by the gentry and by the peasantry of the West. In 1685 he came again. To the gentry he had become an

object of aversion: but by the peasantry he was still loved with a love strong as death, with a love not to be

extinguished by misfortunes or faults, by the flight from Sedgemoor, by the letter from Ringwood, or by the

tears and abject supplications at Whitehall. The charge which may with justice be brought against the

common people is, not that they are inconstant, but that they almost invariably choose their favourite so ill

While the execution of Monmouth occupied the thoughts of the Londoners, the counties which had risen

against the government were enduring all that a ferocious soldiery could inflict. Feversham had been

summoned to the court, where honours and rewards which he little deserved awaited him. He was made a

Knight of the Garter and Captain of the first and most lucrative troop of Life Guards: but Court and City

laughed at his military exploits; and the wit of Buckingham gave forth its last feeble flash at the expense of

the general who had won a battle in bed.434 Feversham left in command at Bridgewater Colonel Percy Kirke,

a military adventurer whose vices had been developed by the worst of all schools, Tangier. Kirke had during

some years commanded the garrison of that town, and had been constantly employed in hostilities against

tribes of foreign barbarians, ignorant of the laws which regulate the warfare of civilized and Christian

nations. Within the ramparts of his fortress he was a despotic prince. The only check on his tyranny was the

fear of being called to account by a distant and a careless government. He might therefore safely proceed to

the most audacious excesses of rapacity, licentiousness, and cruelty. He lived with boundless dissoluteness,

and procured by extortion the means of indulgence. No goods could be sold till Kirke had had the refusal of

them. No question of right could be decided till Kirke had been bribed. Once, merely from a malignant whim,

he staved all the wine in a vintner's cellar. On another occasion he drove all the Jews from Tangier. Two of

them he sent to the Spanish Inquisition, which forthwith burned them. Under this iron domination scarce a

complaint was heard; for hatred was effectually kept down by terror. Two persons who had been refractory

were found murdered; and it was universally believed that they had been slain by Kirke's order. When his

soldiers displeased him he flogged them with merciless severity: but he indemnified them by permitting them

to sleep on watch, to reel drunk about the streets, to rob, beat, and insult the merchants and the labourers.

When Tangier was abandoned, Kirke returned to England. He still continued to command his old soldiers,

who were designated sometimes as the First Tangier Regiment, and sometimes as Queen Catharine's

Regiment. As they had been levied for the purpose of waging war on an infidel nation, they bore on their flag

a Christian emblem, the Paschal Lamb. In allusion to this device, and with a bitterly ironical meaning, these

men, the rudest and most ferocious in the English army, were called Kirke's Lambs. The regiment, now the

second of the line, still retains this ancient badge, which is however thrown into the shade by decorations

Such was the captain and such the soldiers who were now let loose on the people of Somersetshire. From

Bridgewater Kirke marched to Taunton. He was accompanied by two carts filled with wounded rebels whose

gashes had not been dressed, and by a long drove of prisoners on foot, who were chained two and two

Several of these he hanged as soon as he reached Taunton, without the form of a trial. They were not suffered

even to take leave of their nearest relations. The signpost of the White Hart Inn served for a gallows. It is said

that the work of death went on in sight of the windows where the officers of the Tangier regiment were

carousing, and that at every health a wretch was turned off. When the legs of the dying man quivered in the

last agony, the colonel ordered the drums to strike up. He would give the rebels, he said music to their

dancing. The tradition runs that one of the captives was not even allowed the indulgence of a speedy death.

Twice he was suspended from the signpost, and twice cut down. Twice he was asked if he repented of his

treason, and twice he replied that, if the thing were to do again, he would do it. Then he was tied up for the

last time. So many dead bodies were quartered that the executioner stood ankle deep in blood. He was

assisted by a poor man whose loyalty was suspected, and who was compelled to ransom his own life by

seething the remains of his friends in pitch. The peasant who had consented to perform this hideous office

afterwards returned to his plough. But a mark like that of Cain was upon him. He was known through his

village by the horrible name of Tom Boilman. The rustics long continued to relate that, though he had, by his

sinful and shameful deed, saved himself from the vengeance of the Lambs, he had not escaped the vengeance

of a higher power. In a great storm he fled for shelter under an oak, and was there struck dead by

The number of those who were thus butchered cannot now be ascertained. Nine were entered in the parish

registers of Taunton: but those registers contained the names of such only as had Christian burial. Those who

were hanged in chains, and those whose heads and limbs were sent to the neighbouring villages, must have

been much more numerous. It was believed in London, at the time, that Kirke put a hundred captives to death

Cruelty, however, was not this man's only passion. He loved money; and was no novice in the arts of

extortion. A safe conduct might be bought of him for thirty or forty pounds; and such a safe conduct, though

of no value in law, enabled the purchaser to pass the post of the Lambs without molestation, to reach a

seaport, and to fly to a foreign country. The ships which were bound for New England were crowded at this

juncture with so many fugitives from Sedgemoor that there was great danger lest the water and provisions

Kirke was also, in his own coarse and ferocious way, a man of pleasure; and nothing is more probable than

that he employed his power for the purpose of gratifying his licentious appetites. It was reported that he

conquered the virtue of a beautiful woman by promising to spare the life of one to whom she was strongly

attached, and that, after she had yielded, he showed her suspended on the gallows the lifeless remains of him

for whose sake she had sacrificed her honour. This tale an impartial judge must reject. It is unsupported by

proof. The earliest authority for it is a poem written by Pomfret. The respectable historians of that age, while

they speak with just severity of the crimes of Kirke, either omit all mention of this most atrocious crime, or

mention it as a thing rumoured but not proved. Those who tell the story tell it with such variations as deprive

it of all title to credit. Some lay the scene at Taunton, some at Exeter. Some make the heroine of the tale a

maiden, some a married woman. The relation for whom the shameful ransom was paid is described by some

as her father, by some as her brother, and by some as her husband. Lastly the story is one which, long before

Kirke was born, had been told of many other oppressors, and had become a favourite theme of novelists and

dramatists. Two politicians of the fifteenth century, Rhynsault, the favourite of Charles the Bold of

Burgundy, and Oliver le Dain, the favourite of Lewis the Eleventh of France, had been accused of the same

crime. Cintio had taken it for the subject of a romance. Whetstone had made out of Cintio's narrative the rude

play of Promos and Cassandra; and Shakspeare had borrowed from Whetstone the plot of the noble

tragicomedy of Measure for Measure. As Kirke was not the first so he was not the last, to whom this excess

of wickedness was popularly imputed. During the reaction which followed the Jacobin tyranny in France, a

very similar charge was brought against Joseph Lebon, one of the most odious agents of the Committee of

Public Safety, and, after enquiry, was admitted even by his prosecutors to be unfounded.439

The government was dissatisfied with Kirke, not on account of the barbarity with which he had treated his

needy prisoners, but on account of the interested lenity which he had shown to rich delinquents.440 He was

soon recalled from the West. A less irregular and more cruel massacre was about to be perpetrated. The

vengeance was deferred during some weeks. It was thought desirable that the Western Circuit should not

begin till the other circuits had terminated. In the meantime the gaols of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire were

filled with thousands of captives. The chief friend and protector of these unhappy men in their extremity was

one who abhorred their religious and political opinions, one whose order they hated, and to whom they had

done unprovoked wrong, Bishop Ken. That good prelate used all his influence to soften the gaolers, and

retrenched from his own episcopal state that he might be able to make some addition to the coarse and scanty

fare of those who had defaced his beloved Cathedral. His conduct on this occasion was of a piece with his

whole life. His intellect was indeed darkened by many superstitions and prejudices: but his moral character,

when impartially reviewed, sustains a comparison with any in ecclesiastical history, and seems to approach,

as near as human infirmity permits, to the ideal perfection of Christian virtue.441

His labour of love was of no long duration. A rapid and effectual gaol delivery was at hand. Early in

September, Jeffreys, accompanied by four other judges, set out on that circuit of which the memory will last

as long as our race and language. The officers who commanded the troops in the districts through which his

course lay had orders to furnish him with whatever military aid he might require. His ferocious temper

needed no spur; yet a spur was applied. The health and spirits of the Lord Keeper had given way. He had

been deeply mortified by the coldness of the King and by the insolence of the Chief Justice, and could find

little consolation in looking back on a life, not indeed blackened by any atrocious crime, but sullied by

cowardice, selfishness, and servility. So deeply was the unhappy man humbled that, when he appeared for the

last time in Westminster Hall. he took with him a nosegay to hide his face, because, as he afterwards owned,

he could not bear the eyes of the bar and of the audience. The prospect of his approaching end seems to have

inspired him with unwonted courage. He determined to discharge his conscience, requested an audience of

the King, spoke earnestly of the dangers inseparable from violent and arbitrary counsels, and condemned the

lawless cruelties which the soldiers had committed in Somersetshire. He soon after retired from London to

die. He breathed his last a few days after the Judges set out for the West. It was immediately notified to

Jeffreys that he might expect the Great Seal as the reward of faithful and vigorous service.442

At Winchester the Chief Justice first opened his commission. Hampshire had not been the theatre of war; but

many of the vanquished rebels had, like their leader, fled thither. Two of them, John Hickes, a Nonconformist

divine, and Richard Nelthorpe, a lawyer who had been outlawed for taking part in the Rye House plot, had

sought refuge at the house of Alice, widow of John Lisle. John Lisle had sate in the Long Parliament and in

the High Court of Justice, had been a commissioner of the Great Seal in the days of the Commonwealth and

had been created a Lord by Cromwell. The titles given by the Protector had not been recognised by any

government which had ruled England since the downfall of his house; but they appear to have been often

used in conversation even by Royalists. John Lisle's widow was therefore commonly known as the Lady

Alice. She was related to many respectable, and to some noble, families; and she was generally esteemed

even by the Tory gentlemen of her country. For it was well known to them that she had deeply regretted some

violent acts in which her husband had borne a part, that she had shed bitter tears for Charles the First, and that

she had protected and relieved many Cavaliers in their distress. The same womanly kindness, which had led

her to befriend the Royalists in their time of trouble, would not suffer her to refuse a meal and a hiding place

to the wretched men who now entreated her to protect them. She took them into her house, set meat and drink

before them, and showed them where they might take rest. The next morning her dwelling was surrounded by

soldiers. Strict search was made. Hickes was found concealed in the malthouse, and Nelthorpe in the

chimney. If Lady Alice knew her guests to have been concerned in the insurrection, she was undoubtedly

guilty of what in strictness was a capital crime. For the law of principal and accessory, as respects high

treason, then was, and is to this day, in a state disgraceful to English jurisprudence. In cases of felony, a

distinction founded on justice and reason, is made between the principal and the accessory after the fact. He

who conceals from justice one whom he knows to be a murderer is liable to punishment, but not to the

punishment of murder. He, on the other hand, who shelters one whom he knows to be a traitor is, according

to all our jurists, guilty of high treason. It is unnecessary to point out the absurdity and cruelty of a law which

includes under the same definition, and visits with the same penalty, offences lying at the opposite extremes

of the scale of guilt. The feeling which makes the most loyal subject shrink from the thought of giving up to a

shameful death the rebel who, vanquished, hunted down, and in mortal agony, begs for a morsel of bread and

a cup of water, may be a weakness; but it is surely a weakness very nearly allied to virtue, a weakness which,

constituted as human beings are, we can hardly eradicate from the mind without eradicating many noble and

benevolent sentiments. A wise and good ruler may not think it right to sanction this weakness; but he will

generally connive at it, or punish it very tenderly. In no case will he treat it as a crime of the blackest dye.

Whether Flora Macdonald was justified in concealing the attainted heir of the Stuarts, whether a brave soldier

of our own time was justified in assisting the escape of Lavalette, are questions on which casuists may differ:

but to class such actions with the crimes of Guy Faux and Fieschi is an outrage to humanity and common

sense. Such, however, is the classification of our law. It is evident that nothing but a lenient administration

could make such a state of the law endurable. And it is just to say that, during many generations, no English

government, save one, has treated with rigour persons guilty merely of harbouring defeated and flying

insurgents. To women especially has been granted, by a kind of tacit prescription, the right of indulging in the

midst of havoc and vengeance, that compassion which is the most endearing of all their charms. Since the

beginning of the great civil war, numerous rebels, some of them far more important than Hickes or Nelthorpe,

have been protected from the severity of victorious governments by female adroitness and generosity. But no

English ruler who has been thus baffled, the savage and implacable James alone excepted, has had the

barbarity even to think of putting a lady to a cruel and shameful death for so venial and amiable a

Odious as the law was, it was strained for the purpose of destroying Alice Lisle. She could not, according to

the doctrine laid down by the highest authority, be convicted till after the conviction of the rebels whom she

had harboured.443 She was, however, set to the bar before either Hickes or Nelthorpe had been tried. It was

no easy matter in such a case to obtain a verdict for the crown. The witnesses prevaricated. The jury,

consisting of the principal gentlemen of Hampshire, shrank from the thought of sending a fellow creature to

the stake for conduct which seemed deserving rather of praise than of blame. Jeffreys was beside himself

with fury. This was the first case of treason on the circuit; and there seemed to be a strong probability that his

prey would escape him. He stormed, cursed, and swore in language which no wellbred man would have used

at a race or a cockfight. One witness named Dunne, partly from concern for Lady Alice, and partly from

fright at the threats and maledictions of the Chief Justice, entirely lost his head, and at last stood silent. "Oh

how hard the truth is," said Jeffreys, "to come out of a lying Presbyterian knave." The witness, after a pause

of some minutes, stammered a few unmeaning words. "Was there ever," exclaimed the judge, with an oath,

"was there ever such a villain on the face of the earth? Dost thou believe that there is a God? Dost thou

believe in hell fire. Of all the witnesses that I ever met with I never saw thy fellow." Still the poor man,

scared out of his senses, remained mute; and again Jeffreys burst forth. "I hope, gentlemen of the jury, that

you take notice of the horrible carriage of this fellow. How can one help abhorring both these men and their

religion? A Turk is a saint to such a fellow as this. A Pagan would be ashamed of such villany. Oh blessed

Jesus! What a generation of vipers do we live among!" "I cannot tell what to say, my Lord," faltered Dunne.

The judge again broke forth into a volley of oaths. "Was there ever," he cried, "such an impudent rascal?

Hold the candle to him that we may see his brazen face. You, gentlemen, that are of counsel for the crown,

see that an information for perjury be preferred against this fellow." After the witnesses had been thus

handled, the Lady Alice was called on for her defence. She began by saying, what may possibly have been

true, that though she knew Hickes to be in trouble when she took him in, she did not know or suspect that he

had been concerned in the rebellion. He was a divine, a man of peace. It had, therefore, never occurred to her

that he could have borne arms against the government; and she had supposed that he wished to conceal

himself because warrants were out against him for field preaching. The Chief Justice began to storm. "But I

will tell you. There is not one of those lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterians but, one way or another, had a

hand in the rebellion. Presbytery has all manner of villany in it. Nothing but Presbytery could have made

Dunne such a rogue. Show me a Presbyterian; and I'll show thee a lying knave." He summed up in the same

style, declaimed during an hour against Whigs and Dissenters, and reminded the jury that the prisoner's

husband had borne a part in the death of Charles the First, a fact which had not been proved by any

testimony, and which, if it had been proved, would have been utterly irrelevant to the issue. The jury retired,

and remained long in consultation. The judge grew impatient. He could not conceive, he said, how, in so

plain a case, they should even have left the box. He sent a messenger to tell them that, if they did not instantly

return, he would adjourn the court and lock them up all night. Thus put to the torture, they came, but came to

say that they doubted whether the charge had been made out. Jeffreys expostulated with them vehemently,

On the following morning sentence was pronounced. Jeffreys gave directions that Alice Lisle should be

burned alive that very afternoon. This excess of barbarity moved the pity and indignation even of the class

which was most devoted to the crown. The clergy of Winchester Cathedral remonstrated with the Chief

Justice, who, brutal as he was, was not mad enough to risk a quarrel on such a subject with a body so much

respected by the Tory party. He consented to put off the execution five days. During that time the friends of

the prisoner besought James to be merciful. Ladies of high rank interceded for her. Feversham, whose recent

victory had increased his influence at court, and who, it is said, had been bribed to take the compassionate

side, spoke in her favour. Clarendon, the King's brother in law, pleaded her cause. But all was vain. The

utmost that could be obtained was that her sentence should be commuted from burning to beheading. She was

put to death on a scaffold in the marketplace of Winchester, and underwent her fate with serene courage.444

In Hampshire Alice Lisle was the only victim: but, on the day following her execution, Jeffreys reached

Dorchester, the principal town of the county in which Monmouth had landed; and the judicial massacre

began. The court was hung, by order of the Chief Justice, with scarlet; and this innovation seemed to the

multitude to indicate a bloody purpose. It was also rumoured that, when the clergyman who preached the

assize sermon enforced the duty of mercy, the ferocious mouth of the Judge was distorted by an ominous

More than three hundred prisoners were to be tried. The work seemed heavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance

for making it light. He let it be understood that the only chance of obtaining pardon or respite was to plead

guilty. Twentynine persons, who put themselves on their country and were convicted, were ordered to be

tied up without delay. The remaining prisoners pleaded guilty by scores. Two hundred and ninetytwo

received sentence of death. The whole number hanged in Dorsetshire amounted to seventyfour.

From Dorchester Jeffreys proceeded to Exeter. The civil war had barely grazed the frontier of Devonshire.

Here, therefore, comparatively few persons were capitally punished. Somersetshire, the chief seat of the

rebellion, had been reserved for the last and most fearful vengeance. In this county two hundred and

thirtythree prisoners were in a few days hanged, drawn, and quartered. At every spot where two roads met,

on every marketplace, on the green of every large village which had furnished Monmouth with soldiers,

ironed corpses clattering in the wind, or heads and quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air, and made the

traveller sick with horror. In many parishes the peasantry could not assemble in the house of God without

seeing the ghastly face of a neighbour grinning at them over the porch. The Chief Justice was all himself. His

spirits rose higher and higher as the work went on. He laughed, shouted, joked, and swore in such a way that

many thought him drunk from morning to night. But in him it was not easy to distinguish the madness

produced by evil passions from the madness produced by brandy. A prisoner affirmed that the witnesses who

appeared against him were not entitled to credit. One of them, he said, was a Papist, and another a prostitute.

"Thou impudent rebel," exclaimed the Judge, "to reflect on the King's evidence! I see thee, villain, I see thee

already with the halter round thy neck." Another produced testimony that he was a good Protestant.

"Protestant! " said Jeffreys; "you mean Presbyterian. I'll hold you a wager of it. I can smell a Presbyterian

forty miles." One wretched man moved the pity even of bitter Tories. "My Lord," they said, "this poor

creature is on the parish." "Do not trouble yourselves," said the Judge, "I will ease the parish of the burden."

It was not only against the prisoners that his fury broke forth. Gentlemen and noblemen of high consideration

and stainless loyalty, who ventured to bring to his notice any extenuating circumstance, were almost sure to

receive what he called, in the coarse dialect which he had learned in the pothouses of Whitechapel, a lick with

the rough side of his tongue. Lord Stawell, a Tory peer, who could not conceal his horror at the remorseless

manner in which his poor neighbours were butchered, was punished by having a corpse suspended in chains

at his park gate.446 In such spectacles originated many tales of terror, which were long told over the cider by

the Christmas fires of the farmers of Somersetshire. Within the last forty years, peasants, in some districts,

Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest. It is

certain that the number of persons whom he put to death in one month, and in one shire, very much exceeded

the number of all the political offenders who have been put to death in our island since the Revolution. The

rebellions of 1715 and 1745 were of longer duration, of wider extent, and of more formidable aspect than that

which was put down at Sedgemoor. It has not been generally thought that, either after the rebellion of 1715,

or after the rebellion of 1745, the House of Hanover erred on the side of clemency. Yet all the executions of

1715 and 1745 added together will appear to have been few indeed when compared with those which

disgraced the Bloody Assizes. The number of the rebels whom Jeffreys hanged on this circuit was three

Such havoc must have excited disgust even if the sufferers had been generally odious. But they were, for the

most part, men of blameless life, and of high religious profession. They were regarded by themselves, and by

a large proportion of their neighbours, not as wrongdoers, but as martyrs who sealed with blood the truth of

the Protestant religion. Very few of the convicts professed any repentance for what they had done. Many,

animated by the old Puritan spirit, met death, not merely with fortitude, but with exultation. It was in vain

that the ministers of the Established Church lectured them on the guilt of rebellion and on the importance of

priestly absolution. The claim of the King to unbounded authority in things temporal, and the claim of the

clergy to the spiritual power of binding and loosing, moved the bitter scorn of the intrepid sectaries. Some of

them composed hymns in the dungeon, and chaunted them on the fatal sledge. Christ, they sang while they

were undressing for the butchery, would soon come to rescue Zion and to make war on Babylon, would set

up his standard, would blow his trumpet, and would requite his foes tenfold for all the evil which had been

inflicted on his servants. The dying words of these men were noted down: their farewell letters were kept as

treasures; and, in this way, with the help of some invention and exaggeration, was formed a copious

A few eases deserve special mention. Abraham Holmes, a retired officer of the parliamentary army, and one

of those zealots who would own no king but King Jesus, had been taken at Sedgemoor. His arm had been

frightfully mangled and shattered in the battle; and, as no surgeon was at hand, the stout old soldier

amputated it himself. He was carried up to London, and examined by the King in Council, but would make

no submission. "I am an aged man," he said, "and what remains to me of life is not worth a falsehood or a

baseness. I have always been a republican; and I am so still." He was sent back to the West and hanged. The

people remarked with awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him to the gallows became restive

and went back. Holmes himself doubted not that the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in the way

sword in hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to the inferior animals. "Stop, gentlemen," he cried: "let

me go on foot. There is more in this than you think. Remember how the ass saw him whom the prophet could

not see." He walked manfully to the gallows, harangued the people with a smile, prayed fervently that God

would hasten the downfall of Antichrist and the deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an

Not less courageously died Christopher Balttiscombe, a young Templar of good family and fortune, who, at

Dorchester, an agreeable provincial town proud of its taste and refinement, was regarded by all as the model

of a fine gentleman. Great interest was made to save him. It was believed through the West of England that

he was engaged to a young lady of gentle blood, the sister of the Sheriff, that she threw herself at the feet of

Jeffreys to beg for mercy, and that Jeffreys drove her from him with a jest so hideous that to repeat it would

be an offence against decency and humanity. Her lover suffered at Lyme piously and courageously.451

A still deeper interest was excited by the fate of two gallant brothers, William and Benjamin Hewling. They

were young, handsome, accomplished, and well connected. Their maternal grandfather was named Kiffin. He

was one of the first merchants in London, and was generally considered as the head of the Baptists. The Chief

Justice behaved to William Hewling on the trial with characteristic brutality. "You have a grandfather," he

said, "who deserves to be hanged as richly as you." The poor lad, who was only nineteen, suffered death with

so much meekness and fortitude, that an officer of the army who attended the execution, and who had made

himself remarkable by rudeness and severity, was strangely melted, and said, "I do not believe that my Lord

Chief Justice himself could be proof against this." Hopes were entertained that Benjamin would be pardoned.

One victim of tender years was surely enough for one house to furnish. Even Jeffreys was, or pretended to be,

inclined to lenity. The truth was that one of his kinsmen, from whom he had large expectations, and whom,

therefore, he could not treat as he generally treated intercessors. pleaded strongly for the afflicted family.

Time was allowed for a reference to London. The sister of the prisoner went to Whitehall with a petition.

Many courtiers wished her success; and Churchill, among whose numerous faults cruelty had no place,

obtained admittance for her. "I wish well to your suit with all my heart," he said, as they stood together in the

antechamber; "but do not flatter yourself with hopes. This marble," and he laid his hand on the

chimneypiece,"is not harder than the King." The prediction proved true. James was inexorable. Benjamin

Hewling died with dauntless courage, amidst lamentations in which the soldiers who kept guard round the

Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be pitied than some of the survivors. Several

prisoners to whom Jeffreys was unable to bring home the charge of high treason were convicted of

misdemeanours, and were sentenced to scourging not less terrible than that which Oates had undergone. A

woman for some idle words, such as had been uttered by half the women in the districts where the war had

raged, was condemned to be whipped through all the market towns in the county of Dorset. She suffered part

of her punishment before Jeffreys returned to London; but, when he was no longer in the West, the gaolers,

with the humane connivance of the magistrates, took on themselves the responsibility of sparing her any

further torture. A still more frightful sentence was passed on a lad named Tutchin, who was tried for seditious

words. He was, as usual, interrupted in his defence by ribaldry and scurrility from the judgment seat. "You

are a rebel; and all your family have been rebels Since Adam. They tell me that you are a poet. I'll cap verses

with you. The sentence was that the boy should be imprisoned seven years, and should, during that period, be

flogged through every market town in Dorsetshire every year. The women in the galleries burst into tears.

The clerk of the arraigns stood up in great disorder. "My Lord," said he, "the prisoner is very young. There

are many market towns in our county. The sentence amounts to whipping once a fortnight for seven years."

"If he is a young man," said Jeffreys, "he is an old rogue. Ladies, you do not know the villain as well as I do.

The punishment is not half bad enough for him. All the interest in England shall not alter it." Tutchin in his

despair petitioned, and probably with sincerity, that he might be hanged. Fortunately for him he was, just at

this conjuncture, taken ill of the smallpox and given over. As it seemed highly improbable that the sentence

would ever be executed, the Chief Justice consented to remit it, in return for a bribe which reduced the

prisoner to poverty. The temper of Tutchin, not originally very mild, was exasperated to madness by what he

had undergone. He lived to be known as one of the most acrimonious and pertinacious enemies of the House

The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was eight hundred and fortyone. These men, more

wretched than their associates who suffered death, were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on persons who

enjoyed favour at court. The conditions of the gift were that the convicts should be carried beyond sea as

slaves, that they should not be emancipated for ten years, and that the place of their banishment should be

some West Indian island. This last article was studiously framed for the purpose of aggravating the misery of

the exiles. In New England or New Jersey they would have found a population kindly disposed to them and a

climate not unfavourable to their health and vigour. It was therefore determined that they should be sent to

colonies where a Puritan could hope to inspire little sympathy, and where a labourer born in the temperate

zone could hope to enjoy little health. Such was the state of the slave market that these bondmen, long as was

the passage, and sickly as they were likely to prove, were still very valuable. It was estimated by Jeffreys that,

on an average, each of them, after all charges were paid, would be worth from ten to fifteen pounds. There

was therefore much angry competition for grants. Some Tories in the West conceived that they had, by their

exertions and sufferings during the insurrection, earned a right to share in the profits which had been eagerly

snatched up by the sycophants of Whitehall. The courtiers, however, were victorious.454

The misery of the exiles fully equalled that of the negroes who are now carried from Congo to Brazil. It

appears from the best information which is at present accessible that more than one fifth of those who were

shipped were flung to the sharks before the end of the voyage. The human cargoes were stowed close in the

holds of small vessels. So little space was allowed that the wretches, many of whom were still tormented by

unhealed wounds, could not all lie down at once without lying on one another. They were never suffered to

go on deck. The hatchway was constantly watched by sentinels armed with hangers and blunderbusses. In the

dungeon below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease and death. Of ninetynine convicts who were

carried out in one vessel, twentytwo died before they reached Jamaica, although the voyage was performed

with unusual speed. The survivors when they arrived at their house of bondage were mere skeletons. During

some weeks coarse biscuit and fetid water had been doled out to them in such scanty measure that any one of

them could easily have consumed the ration which was assigned to five. They were, therefore, in such a state

that the merchant to whom they had been consigned found it expedient to fatten them before selling them.455

Meanwhile the property both of the rebels who had suffered death, and of those more unfortunate men who

were withering under the tropical sun, was fought for and torn in pieces by a crowd of greedy informers. By

law a subject attainted of treason forfeits all his substance; and this law was enforced after the Bloody

Assizes with a rigour at once cruel and ludicrous. The brokenhearted widows and destitute orphans of the

labouring men whose corpses hung at the cross roads were called upon by the agents of the Treasury to

explain what had become of a basket, of a goose, of a flitch of bacon, of a keg of cider, of a sack of beans, of

a truss of hay.456 While the humbler retainers of the government were pillaging the families of the

slaughtered peasants, the Chief Justice was fast accumulating a fortune out of the plunder of a higher class of

Whigs. He traded largely in pardons. His most lucrative transaction of this kind was with a gentleman named

Edmund Prideaux. It is certain that Prideaux had not been in arms against the government; and it is probable

that his only crime was the wealth which he had inherited from his father, an eminent lawyer who had been

high in office under the Protector. No exertions were spared to make out a case for the crown. Mercy was

offered to some prisoners on condition that they would bear evidence against Prideaux. The unfortunate man

lay long in gaol and at length, overcome by fear of the gallows, consented to pay fifteen thousand pounds for

his liberation. This great sum was received by Jeffreys. He bought with it an estate, to which the people gave

the name of Aceldama, from that accursed field which was purchased with the price of innocent blood.457

He was ably assisted in the work of extortion by the crew of parasites who were in the habit of drinking and

laughing with him. The office of these men was to drive hard bargains with convicts under the strong terrors

of death, and with parents trembling for the lives of children. A portion of the spoil was abandoned by

Jeffreys to his agents. To one of his boon companions, it is said. he tossed a pardon for a rich traitor across

the table during a revel. It was not safe to have recourse to any intercession except that of his creatures, for he

guarded his profitable monopoly of mercy with jealous care. It was even suspected that he sent some persons

to the gibbet solely because they had applied for the royal clemency through channels independent of

Some courtiers nevertheless contrived to obtain a small share of this traffic. The ladies of the Queen's

household distinguished themselves preeminently by rapacity and hardheartedness. Part of the disgrace which

they incurred falls on their mistress: for it was solely on account of the relation in which they stood to her that

they were able to enrich themselves by so odious a trade; and there can be no question that she might with a

word or a look have restrained them. But in truth she encouraged them by her evil example, if not by her

express approbation. She seems to have been one of that large class of persons who bear adversity better than

prosperity. While her husband was a subject and an exile, shut out from public employment, and in imminent

danger of being deprived of his birthright, the suavity and humility of her manners conciliated the kindness

even of those who most abhorred her religion. But when her good fortune came her good nature disappeared.

The meek and affable Duchess turned out an ungracious and haughty Queen.459 The misfortunes which she

subsequently endured have made her an object of some interest; but that interest would be not a little

heightened if it could be shown that, in the season of her greatness, she saved, or even tried to save, one

single victim from the most frightful proscription that England has ever seen. Unhappily the only request that

she is known to have preferred touching the rebels was that a hundred of those who were sentenced to

transportation might be given to her.460 The profit which she cleared on the cargo, after making large

allowance for those who died of hunger and fever during the passage, cannot be estimated at less than a

thousand guineas. We cannot wonder that her attendants should have imitated her unprincely greediness and

her unwomanly cruelty. They exacted a thousand pounds from Roger Hoare, a merchant of Bridgewater; who

had contributed to the military chest of the rebel army. But the prey on which they pounced most eagerly was

one which it might have been thought that even the most ungentle natures would have spared. Already some

of the girls who had presented the standard to Monmouth at Taunton had cruelly expiated their offence. One

of them had been thrown into prison where an infectious malady was raging. She had sickened and died

there. Another had presented herself at the bar before Jeffreys to beg for mercy. "Take her, gaoler,"

vociferated the Judge, with one of those frowns which had often struck terror into stouter hearts than hers.

She burst into tears, drew her hood over her face, followed the gaoler out of the court, fell ill of fright, and in

a few hours was a corpse. Most of the young ladies, however, who had walked in the procession were still

alive. Some of them were under ten years of age. All had acted under the orders of their schoolmistress,

without knowing that they were committing a crime. The Queen's maids of honour asked the royal

permission to wring money out of the parents of the poor children; and the permission was granted. An order

was sent down to Taunton that all these little girls should be seized and imprisoned. Sir Francis Warre of

Hestercombe, the Tory member for Bridgewater, was requested to undertake the office of exacting the

ransom. He was charged to declare in strong language that the maids of honour would not endure delay, that

they were determined to prosecute to outlawry, unless a reasonable sum were forthcoming, and that by a

reasonable sum was meant seven thousand pounds. Warre excused himself from taking any part in a

transaction so scandalous. The maids of honour then requested William Penn to act for them; and Penn

accepted the commission. Yet it should seem that a little of the pertinacious scrupulosity which he had often

shown about taking off his hat would not have been altogether out of place on this occasion. He probably

silenced the remonstrances of his conscience by repeating to himself that none of the money which he

extorted would go into his own pocket; that if he refused to be the agent of the ladies they would find agents

less humane; that by complying he should increase his influence at the court, and that his influence at the

court had already enabled him, and still might enable him, to render great services to his oppressed brethren.

The maids of honour were at last forced to content themselves with less than a third part of what they had

No English sovereign has ever given stronger proof of a cruel nature than James the Second. Yet his cruelty

was not more odious than his mercy. Or perhaps it may be more correct to say that his mercy and his cruelty

were such that each reflects infamy on the other. Our horror at the fate of the simple clowns, the young lads,

the delicate women, to whom he was inexorably severe, is increased when we find to whom and for what

The rule by which a prince ought, after a rebellion, to be guided in selecting rebels for punishment is

perfectly obvious. The ringleaders, the men of rank, fortune, and education, whose power and whose artifices

have led the multitude into error, are the proper objects of severity. The deluded populace, when once the

slaughter on the field of battle is over, can scarcely be treated too leniently. This rule, so evidently agreeable

to justice and humanity, was not only not observed: it was inverted. While those who ought to have been

spared were slaughtered by hundreds, the few who might with propriety have been left to the utmost rigour of

the law were spared. This eccentric clemency has perplexed some writers, and has drawn forth ludicrous

eulogies from others. It was neither at all mysterious nor at all praiseworthy. It may be distinctly traced in

every case either to a sordid or to a malignant motive, either to thirst for money or to thirst for blood.

In the case of Grey there was no mitigating circumstance. His parts and knowledge, the rank which he had

inherited in the state, and the high command which he had borne in the rebel army, would have pointed him

out to a just government as a much fitter object of punishment than Alice Lisle, than William Hewling, than

any of the hundreds of ignorant peasants whose skulls and quarters were exposed in Somersetshire. But

Grey's estate was large and was strictly entailed. He had only a life interest in his property; and he could

forfeit no more interest than he had. If he died, his lands at once devolved on the next heir. If he were

pardoned, he would be able to pay a large ransom. He was therefore suffered to redeem himself by giving a

bond for forty thousand pounds to the Lord Treasurer, and smaller sums to other courtiers.462

Sir John Cochrane had held among the Scotch rebels the same rank which had been held by Grey in the West

of England. That Cochrane should be forgiven by a prince vindictive beyond all example, seemed incredible.

But Cochrane was the younger son of a rich family; it was therefore only by sparing him that money could be

made out of him. His father, Lord Dundonald, offered a bribe of five thousand pounds to the priests of the

Samuel Storey, a noted sower of sedition, who had been Commissary to the rebel army, and who had

inflamed the ignorant populace of Somersetshire by vehement harangues in which James had been described

as an incendiary and a poisoner, was admitted to mercy. For Storey was able to give important assistance to

None of the traitors had less right to expect favour than Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson. These three

chiefs of the rebellion had fled together from the field of Sedgemoor, and had reached the coast in safety. But

they had found a frigate cruising near the spot where they had hoped to embark. They had then separated.

Wade and Goodenough were soon discovered and brought up to London. Deeply as they had been implicated

in the Rye House plot, conspicuous as they had been among the chiefs of the Western insurrection, they were

suffered to live, because they had it in their power to give information which enabled the King to slaughter

and plunder some persons whom he hated, but to whom he had never yet been able to bring home any

How Ferguson escaped was, and still is, a mystery. Of all the enemies of the government he was, without

doubt, the most deeply criminal. He was the original author of the plot for assassinating the royal brothers. He

had written that Declaration which, for insolence, malignity, and mendacity, stands unrivalled even among

the libels of those stormy times. He had instigated Monmouth first to invade the kingdom, and then to usurp

the crown. It was reasonable to expect that a strict search would be made for the archtraitor, as he was often

called; and such a search a man of so singular an aspect and dialect could scarcely have eluded. It was

confidently reported in the coffee houses of London that Ferguson was taken, and this report found credit

with men who had excellent opportunities of knowing the truth. The next thing that was heard of him was

that he was safe on the Continent. It was strongly suspected that he had been in constant communication with

the government against which he was constantly plotting, that he had, while urging his associates to every

excess of rashness sent to Whitehall just so much information about their proceedings as might suffice to save

And now Jeffreys had done his work, and returned to claim his reward. He arrived at Windsor from the West,

leaving carnage, mourning, and terror behind him. The hatred with which he was regarded by the people of

Somersetshire has no parallel in our history. It was not to be quenched by time or by political changes, was

long transmitted from generation to generation, and raged fiercely against his innocent progeny. When he had

been many years dead, when his name and title were extinct, his granddaughter, the Countess of Pomfret,

travelling along the western road, was insulted by the populace, and found that she could not safely venture

But at the Court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was a judge after his master's own heart. James had

watched the circuit with interest and delight. In his drawingroom and at his table he had frequently talked of

the havoc which was making among his disaffected subjects with a glee at which the foreign ministers stood

aghast. With his own hand he had penned accounts of what he facetiously called his Lord Chief Justice's

campaign in the West. Some hundreds of rebels, His Majesty wrote to the Hague, had been condemned.

Some of them had been hanged: more should be hanged: and the rest should be sent to the plantations. It was

to no purpose that Ken wrote to implore mercy for the misguided people, and described with pathetic

eloquence the frightful state of his diocese. He complained that it was impossible to walk along the highways

without seeing some terrible spectacle, and that the whole air of Somersetshire was tainted with death. The

King read, and remained, according to the saying of Churchill, hard as the marble chimneypieces of

Whitehall. At Windsor the great seal of England was put into the hands of Jeffreys and in the next London

Gazette it was solemnly notified that this honour was the reward of the many eminent and faithful services

At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with horror of the Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge and

the wicked King attempted to vindicate themselves by throwing the blame on each other. Jeffreys, in the

Tower, protested that, in his utmost cruelty, he had not gone beyond his master's express orders, nay, that he

had fallen short of them. James, at Saint Germain's would willingly have had it believed that his own

inclinations had been on the side of clemency, and that unmerited obloquy had been brought on him by the

violence of his minister. But neither of these hardhearted men must be absolved at the expense of the other.

The plea set up for James can be proved under his own hand to be false in fact. The plea of Jeffreys, even if it

The slaughter in the West was over. The slaughter in London was about to begin. The government was

peculiarly desirous to find victims among the great Whig merchants of the City. They had, in the last reign,

been a formidable part of the strength of the opposition. They were wealthy; and their wealth was not, like

that of many noblemen and country gentlemen, protected by entail against forfeiture. In the case of Grey and

of men situated like him, it was impossible to gratify cruelty and rapacity at once; but a rich trader might be

both hanged and plundered. The commercial grandees, however, though in general hostile to Popery and to

arbitrary power, had yet been too scrupulous or too timid to incur the guilt of high treason. One of the most

considerable among them was Henry Cornish. He had been an Alderman under the old charter of the City,

and had filled the office of Sheriff when the question of the Exclusion Bill occupied the public mind. In

politics he was a Whig: his religious opinions leaned towards Presbyterianism: but his temper was cautious

and moderate. It is not proved by trustworthy evidence that he ever approached the verge of treason. He had,

indeed, when Sheriff, been very unwilling to employ as his deputy a man so violent and unprincipled as

Goodenough. When the Rye House plot was discovered, great hopes were entertained at Whitehall that

Cornish would appear to have been concerned: but these hopes were disappointed. One of the conspirators,

indeed, John Rumsey, was ready to swear anything: but a single witness was not sufficient; and no second

witness could be found. More than two years had since elapsed. Cornish thought himself safe; but the eye of

the tyrant was upon him. Goodenough, terrified by the near prospect of death, and still harbouring malice on

account of the unfavourable opinion which had always been entertained of him by his old master, consented

to supply the testimony which had hitherto been wanting. Cornish was arrested while transacting business on

the Exchange, was hurried to gaol, was kept there some days in solitary confinement, and was brought

altogether unprepared to the bar of the Old Bailey. The case against him rested wholly on the evidence of

Rumsey and Goodenough. Both were, by their own confession accomplices in the plot with which they

charged the prisoner. Both were impelled by the strongest pressure of hope end fear to criminate him.

Evidence was produced which proved that Goodenough was also under the influence of personal enmity.

Rumsey's story was inconsistent with the story which he had told when he appeared as a witness against Lord

Russell. But these things were urged in vain. On the bench sate three judges who had been with Jeffreys in

the West; and it was remarked by those who watched their deportment that they had come back from the

carnage of Taunton in a fierce and excited state. It is indeed but too true that the taste for blood is a taste

which even men not naturally cruel may, by habit, speedily acquire. The bar and the bench united to browbeat

the unfortunate Whig. The jury, named by a courtly Sheriff, readily found a verdict of Guilty; and, in spite of

the indignant murmurs of the public, Cornish suffered death within ten days after he had been arrested. That

no circumstance of degradation might be wanting, the gibbet was set up where King Street meets Cheapside,

in sight of the house where he had long lived in general respect, of the Exchange where his credit had always

stood high, and of the Guildhall where he had distinguished himself as a popular leader. He died with courage

and with many pious expressions, but showed, by look and gesture, such strong resentment at the barbarity

and injustice with which he had been treated, that his enemies spread a calumnious report concerning him. He

was drunk, they said, or out of his mind, when he was turned off. William Penn, however, who stood near the

gallows, and whose prejudice were all on the side of the government, afterwards said that he could see in

Cornish's deportment nothing but the natural indignation of an innocent man slain under the forms of law.

Black as this case was, it was not the blackest which disgraced the sessions of that autumn at the Old Bailey.

Among the persons concerned in the Rye House plot was a man named James Burton. By his own confession

he had been present when the design of assassination was discussed by his accomplices. When the conspiracy

was detected, a reward was offered for his apprehension. He was saved from death by an ancient matron of

the Baptist persuasion, named Elizabeth Gaunt. This woman, with the peculiar manners and phraseology

which then distinguished her sect, had a large charity. Her life was passed in relieving the unhappy of all

religious denominations, and she was well known as a constant visitor of the gaols. Her political and

theological opinions, as well as her compassionate disposition, led her to do everything in her power for

Burton. She procured a boat which took him to Gravesend, where he got on board of a ship bound for

Amsterdam. At the moment of parting she put into his hand a sum of money which, for her means, was very

large. Burton, after living some time in exile, returned to England with Monmouth, fought at Sedgemoor, fled

to London, and took refuge in the house of John Fernley, a barber in Whitechapel. Fernley was very poor. He

was besieged by creditors. He knew that a reward of a hundred pounds had been offered by the government

for the apprehension of Burton. But the honest man was incapable of betraying one who, in extreme peril, had

come under the shadow of his roof. Unhappily it was soon noised abroad that the anger of James was more

strongly excited against those who harboured rebels than against the rebels themselves. He had publicly

declared that of all forms of treason the hiding of traitors from his vengeance was the most unpardonable.

Burton knew this. He delivered himself up to the government; and he gave information against Fernley and

Elizabeth Gaunt. They were brought to trial. The villain whose life they had preserved had the heart and the

forehead to appear as the principal witness against them. They were convicted. Fernley was sentenced to the

gallows, Elizabeth Gaunt to the stake. Even after all the horrors of that year, many thought it impossible that

these judgments should be carried into execution. But the King was without pity. Fernley was hanged.

Elizabeth Gaunt was burned alive at Tyburn on the same day on which Cornish suffered death in Cheapside.

She left a paper written, indeed, in no graceful style, yet such as was read by many thousands with

compassion and horror. "My fault," she said, "was one which a prince might well have forgiven. I did but

relieve a poor family; and lo! I must die for it." She complained of the insolence of the judges, of the ferocity

of the gaoler, and of the tyranny of him, the great one of all, to whose pleasure she and so many other victims

had been sacrificed. In so far as they had injured herself, she forgave them: but, in that they were implacable

enemies of that good cause which would yet revive and flourish, she left them to the judgment of the King of

Kings. To the last she preserved a tranquil courage, which reminded the spectators of the most heroic deaths

of which they had read in Fox. William Penn, for whom exhibitions which humane men generally avoid seem

to have had a strong attraction, hastened from Cheapside, where he had seen Cornish hanged, to Tyburn, in

order to see Elizabeth Gaunt burned. He afterwards related that, when she calmly disposed the straw about

her in such a manner as to shorten her sufferings, all the bystanders burst into tears. It was much noticed that,

while the foulest judicial murder which had disgraced even those times was perpetrating, a tempest burst

forth, such as had not been known since that great hurricane which had raged round the deathbed of Oliver.

The oppressed Puritans reckoned up, not without a gloomy satisfaction the houses which had been blown

down, and the ships which had been cast away, and derived some consolation from thinking that heaven was

bearing awful testimony against the iniquity which afflicted the earth. Since that terrible day no woman has

It was not thought that Goodenough had yet earned his pardon. The government was bent on destroying a

victim of no high rank, a surgeon in the City, named Bateman. He had attended Shaftesbury professionally,

and had been a zealous Exclusionist. He may possibly have been privy to the Whig plot; but it is certain that

he had not been one of the leading conspirators; for, in the great mass of depositions published by the

government, his name occurs only once, and then not in connection with any crime bordering on high

treason. From his indictment, and from the scanty account which remains of his trial, it seems clear that he

was not even accused of participating in the design of murdering the royal brothers. The malignity with

which so obscure a man, guilty of so slight an offence, was hunted down, while traitors far more criminal and

far more eminent were allowed to ransom themselves by giving evidence against him, seemed to require

explanation; and a disgraceful explanation was found. When Oates, after his scourging, was carried into

Newgate insensible, and, as all thought, in the last agony, he had been bled and his wounds had been dressed

by Bateman. This was an offence not to be forgiven. Bateman was arrested and indicted. The witnesses

against him were men of infamous character, men, too, who were swearing for their own lives. None of them

had yet got his pardon; and it was a popular saying, that they fished for prey, like tame cormorants, with

ropes round their necks. The prisoner, stupefied by illness, was unable to articulate, or to understand what

passed. His son and daughter stood by him at the bar. They read as well as they could some notes which he

had set down, and examined his witnesses. It was to little purpose. He was convicted, hanged, and

Never, not even under the tyranny of Laud, had the condition of the Puritans been so deplorable as at that

time. Never had spies been so actively employed in detecting congregations. Never had magistrates, grand

jurors, rectors and churchwardens been so much on the alert. Many Dissenters were cited before the

ecclesiastical courts. Others found it necessary to purchase the connivance of the agents of the government by

presents of hogsheads of wine, and of gloves stuffed with guineas. It was impossible for the separatists to

pray together without precautions such as are employed by coiners and receivers of stolen goods. The places

of meeting were frequently changed. Worship was performed sometimes just before break of day and

sometimes at dead of night. Round the building where the little flock was gathered sentinels were posted to

give the alarm if a stranger drew near. The minister in disguise was introduced through the garden and the

back yard. In some houses there were trap doors through which, in case of danger, he might descend. Where

Nonconformists lived next door to each other, the walls were often broken open, and secret passages were

made from dwelling to dwelling. No psalm was sung; and many contrivances were used to prevent the voice

of the preacher, in his moments of fervour, from being heard beyond the walls. Yet, with all this care, it was

often found impossible to elude the vigilance of informers. In the suburbs of London, especially, the law was

enforced with the utmost rigour. Several opulent gentlemen were accused of holding conventicles. Their

houses were strictly searched, and distresses were levied to the amount of many thousands of pounds. The

fiercer and bolder sectaries, thus driven from the shelter of roofs, met in the open air, and determined to repel

force by force. A Middlesex justice who had learned that a nightly prayer meeting was held in a gravel pit

about two miles from London, took with him a strong body of constables, broke in upon the assembly, and

seized the preacher. But the congregation, which consisted of about two hundred men, soon rescued their

pastor. and put the magistrate and his officers to flight.472 This, however, was no ordinary occurrence. In

general the Puritan spirit seemed to be more effectually cowed at this conjuncture than at any moment before

or since. The Tory pamphleteers boasted that not one fanatic dared to move tongue or pen in defence of his

religious opinions. Dissenting ministers, however blameless in life, however eminent for learning and

abilities, could not venture to walk the streets for fear of outrages, which were not only not repressed, but

encouraged, by those whose duty it was to preserve the peace. Some divines of great fame were in prison.

Among these was Richard Baxter. Others, who had, during a quarter of a century, borne up against

oppression, now lost heart, and quitted the kingdom. Among these was John Howe. Great numbers of persons

who had been accustomed to frequent conventicles repaired to the parish churches. It was remarked that the

schismatics who had been terrified into this show of conformity might easily be distinguished by the

difficulty which they had in finding out the collect, and by the awkward manner in which they bowed at the

Through many years the autumn of 1685 was remembered by the Nonconformists as a time of misery and

terror. Yet in that autumn might be discerned the first faint indications of a great turn of fortune; and before

eighteen months had elapsed, the intolerant King and the intolerant Church were eagerly bidding against each

1 In this, and in the next chapter, I have very seldom thought it necessary to cite authorities: for, in these

chapters, I have not detailed events minutely, or used recondite materials; and the facts which I mention are

for the most part such that a person tolerably well read in English history, if not already apprised of them,

will at least know where to look for evidence of them. In the subsequent chapters I shall carefully indicate the

2 This is excellently put by Mr. Hallam in the first chapter of his Constitutional History.

3 See a very curious paper which Strype believed to be in Gardiner's handwriting. Ecclesiastical Memorials,

4 These are Cranmer's own words. See the Appendix to Burnet's History of the Reformation, Part 1. Book III.

5 The Puritan historian, Neal, after censuring the cruelty with which she treated the sect to which he

belonged, concludes thus: "However, notwithstanding all these blemishes, Queen Elizabeth stands upon

record as a wise and politic princess, for delivering her kingdom from the difficulties in which it was

involved at her accession,. for preserving the Protestant reformation against the potent attempts of the Pope,

the Emperor, and King of Spain abroad, and the Queen of Scots and her Popish subjects at home.... She was

the glory of the age in which she lived, and will be the admiration of posterity."History of the Puritans,

6 On this subject, Bishop Cooper's language is remarkably clear and strong. He maintains, in his Answer to

Martin Marprelate, printed in 1589, that no form of church government is divinely ordained; that Protestant

communities, in establishing different forms, have only made a legitimate use of their Christian liberty; and

that episcopacy is peculiarly suited to England, because the English constitution is monarchical." All those

Churches," says the Bishop, "in which the Gospell, in these daies, after great darknesse, was first renewed,

and the learned men whom God sent to instruct them, I doubt not but have been directed by the Spirite of

God to retaine this liberty, that, in external government and other outward orders; they might choose such as

they thought in wisedome and godlinesse to be most convenient for the state of their countrey and disposition

of their people. Why then should this liberty that other countreys have used under anie colour be wrested

from us? I think it therefore great presumption and boldnesse that some of our nation, and those, whatever

they may think of themselves, not of the greatest wisedome and skill, should take upon them to controlle the

whole realme, and to binde both prince and people in respect of conscience to alter the present state, and tie

themselves to a certain platforme devised by some of our neighbours. which, in the judgment of many wise

9 Joseph Hall, then dean of Worcester, and afterwards bishop of Norwich, was one of the commissioners. In

his life of himself, he says: "My unworthiness was named for one of the assistants of that honourable, grave,

and reverend meeting." To high churchmen this humility will seem not a little out of place.

10 It was by the Act of Uniformity, passed after the Restoration, that persons not episcopally ordained were,

for the first time, made incapable of holding benefices. No man was more zealous for this law than

Clarendon. Yet he says: "This was new; for there had been many, and at present there were some, who

possessed benefices with cure of souls and other ecclesiastical promotions, who had never received orders but

in France or Holland; and these men must now receive new ordination, which had been always held unlawful

in the Church, or by this act of parliament must be deprived of their livelihood which they enjoyed in the

11 Peckard's Life of Ferrar; The Arminian Nunnery, or a Brief Description of the late erected monastical

12 The correspondence of Wentworth seems to me fully to bear out what I have said in the text. To transcribe

all the passages which have led me to the conclusion at which I have arrived, would be impossible, nor would

it be easy to make a better selection than has already been made by Mr. Hallam. I may, however direct the

attention of the reader particularly to the very able paper which Wentworth drew up respecting the affairs of

13 These are Wentworth's own words. See his letter to Laud, dated Dec. 16, 1634.

16 How little compassion for the bear had to do with the matter is sufficiently proved by the following extract

from a paper entitled A perfect Diurnal of some Passages of Parliament, and from other Parts of the

Kingdom, from Monday July 24th, to Monday July 31st, 1643. "Upon the Queen's coming from Holland, she

brought with her, besides a company of savagelike ruffians, a company of savage bears, to what purpose

you may judge by the sequel. Those bears were left about Newark, and were brought into country towns

constantly on the Lord's day to be baited, such is the religion those here related would settle amongst us; and,

if any went about to hinder or but speak against their damnable profanations, they were presently noted as

Roundheads and Puritans, and sure to be plundered for it. But some of Colonel Cromwell's forces coming by

accident into Uppingham town, in Rutland, on the Lord's day, found these bears playing there in the usual

manner, and, in the height of their sport, caused them to be seized upon, tied to a tree and shot." This was by

no means a solitary instance. Colonel Pride, when Sheriff of Surrey, ordered the beasts in the bear garden of

Southwark to be killed. He is represented by a loyal satirist as defending the act thus: "The first thing that is

upon my spirits is the killing of the bears, for which the people hate me, and call me all the names in the

rainbow. But did not David kill a bear? Did not the Lord Deputy Ireton kill a bear? Did not another lord of

18 I am happy to say, that, since this passage was written, the territories both of the Rajah of Nagpore and of

19 The most sensible thing said in the House of Commons, on this subject, came from Sir William Coventry:

20 Halifax was undoubtedly the real author of the Character of a Trimmer, which, for a time, went under the

22 A peer who was present has described the effect of Halifax's oratory in words which I will quote, because,

though they have been long in print, they are probably known to few even of the most curious and diligent

"Of powerful eloquence and great parts were the Duke's enemies who did assert the Bill; but a noble Lord

appeared against it who, that day, in all the force of speech, in reason, in arguments of what could concern the

public or the private interests of men, in honour, in conscience, in estate, did outdo himself and every other

man; and in fine his conduct and his parts were both victorious, and by him all the wit and malice of that

This passage is taken from a memoir of Henry Earl of Peterborough, in a volume entitled "Succinct

Genealogies, by Robert Halstead," fol. 1685. The name of Halstead is fictitious. The real authors were the

Earl of Peterborough himself and his chaplain. The book is extremely rare. Only twentyfour copies were

printed, two of which are now in the British Museum. Of these two one belonged to George the Fourth, and

23 This is mentioned in the curious work entitled "Ragguaglio della solenne Comparsa fatta in Roma gli otto

di Gennaio, 1687, dall' illustrissimo et eccellentissimo signor Conte di Castlemaine."

25 Lord Preston, who was envoy at Paris, wrote thence to Halifax as follows: "I find that your Lordship lies

still under the same misfortune of being no favourite to this court; and Monsieur Barillon dare not do you the

honor to shine upon you, since his master frowneth. They know very well your lordship's qualifications

which make them fear and consequently hate you; and be assured, my lord, if all their strength can send you

to Rufford, it shall be employed for that end. Two things, I hear, they particularly object against you, your

secrecy, and your being incapable of being corrupted. Against these two things I know they have declared."

26 During the interval which has elapsed since this chapter was written, England has continued to advance

rapidly in material prosperity, I have left my text nearly as it originally stood; but I have added a few notes

which may enable the reader to form some notion of the progress which has been made during the last nine

years; and, in general, I would desire him to remember that there is scarcely a district which is not more

populous, or a source of wealth which is not more productive, at present than in 1848. (1857.)

27 Observations on the Bills of Mortality, by Captain John Graunt (Sir William Petty), chap. xi.

29 Isaac Vossius, De Magnitudine Urbium Sinarum, 1685. Vossius, as we learn from Saint Evremond, talked

30 King's Natural and Political Observations, 1696 This valuable treatise, which ought to be read as the

author wrote it, and not as garbled by Davenant, will be found in some editions of Chalmers's Estimate.

31 Dalrymple's Appendix to Part II. Book I, The practice of reckoning the population by sects was long

fashionable. Gulliver says of the King of Brobdignag; "He laughed at my odd arithmetic, as he was pleased to

call it, in reckoning the numbers of our people by a computation drawn from the several sects among us in

36 North's Life of Guildford; Hutchinson's History of Cumberland, Parish of Brampton.

38 Dalrymple, Appendix to Part II. Book I. The returns of the hearth money lead to nearly the same

conclusion. The hearths in the province of York were not a sixth of the hearths of England.

39 I do not, of course, pretend to strict accuracy here; but I believe that whoever will take the trouble to

compare the last returns of hearth money in the reign of William the Third with the census of 1841, will come

40 There are in the Pepysian Library some ballads of that age on the chimney money. I will give a specimen

In the British Museum there are doggrel verses composed on the same subject and in the same spirit:

I take this opportunity the first which occurs, of acknowledging most grateful the kind and liberal manner in

which the Master and Vicemaster of Magdalei College, Cambridge, gave me access to the valuable

41 My chief authorities for this financial statement will be found in the Commons' Journal, March 1, and

42 See, for example, the picture of the mound at Marlborough, in Stukeley's Dinerarium Curiosum.

44 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 3; 15 Car. II. c. 4. Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684.

45 Dryden, in his Cymon and Iphigenia, expressed, with his usual keenness and energy, the sentiments which

46 Most of the materials which I have used for this account of the regular army will be found in the Historical

Records of Regiments, published by command of King William the Fourth, and under the direction of the

Adjutant General. See also Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Abridgment of the English Military

Discipline, printed by especial command, 1688; Exercise of Foot, by their Majesties' command, 1690.

47 I refer to a despatch of Bonrepaux to Seignelay, dated Feb. 8/18.1686. It was transcribed for Mr. Fox from

the French archives, during the peace of Amiens, and, with the other materials brought together by that great

man, was entrusted to me by the kindness of the late Lady Holland, and of the present Lord Holland. I ought

to add that, even in the midst of the troubles which have lately agitated Paris, I found no difficulty in

obtaining, from the liberality of the functionaries there, extracts supplying some chasms in Mr. Fox's

48 My information respecting the condition of the navy, at this time, is chiefly derived from Pepys. His

report, presented to Charles the Second in May, 1684, has never, I believe, been printed. The manuscript is at

Magdalene College Cambridge. At Magdalene College is also a valuable manuscript containing a detailed

account of the maritime establishments of the country in December 1684. Pepys's "Memoirs relating to the

State of the Royal Navy for Ten Years determined December, 1688," and his diary and correspondence

during his mission to Tangier, are in print. I have made large use of them. See also Sheffield's Memoirs,

Teonge's Diary, Aubrey's Life of Monk, the Life of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, 1708, Commons' Journals, March

49 Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Commons' Journals, March 1, and March 20, 16889. In 1833, it

was determined, after full enquiry, that a hundred and seventy thousand barrels of gunpowder should

50 It appears from the records of the Admiralty, that Flag officers were allowed half pay in 1668, Captains of

52 Evelyn's Diary. Jan. 27, 1682. I have seen a privy seal, dated May 17. 1683, which confirms Evelyn's

53 James the Second sent Envoys to Spain, Sweden, and Denmark; yet in his reign the diplomatic

expenditure was little more than 30,000�. a year. See the Commons' Journals, March 20, 16889.

56 See the Report of the Bath and Montague case, which was decided by Lord Keeper Somers, in December,

57 During three quarters of a year, beginning from Christmas, 1689, the revenues of the see of Canterbury

were received by an officer appointed by the crown. That officer's accounts are now in the British Museum.

(Lansdowne MSS. 885.) The gross revenue for the three quarters was not quite four thousand pounds; and the

difference between the gross and the net revenue was evidently something considerable.

58 King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance of Trade. Sir W. Temple says, "The

revenues of a House of Commons have seldom exceeded four hundred thousand pounds." Memoirs, Third

63 See the Itinerarium Angliae, 1675, by John Ogilby, Cosmographer Royal. He describes great part of the

land as wood, fen, heath on both sides, marsh on both sides. In some of his maps the roads through enclosed

country are marked by lines, and the roads through unenclosed country by dots. The proportion of unenclosed

country, which, if cultivated, must have been wretchedly cultivated, seems to have been very great. From

Abingdon to Gloucester, for example, a distance of forty or fifty miles, there was not a single enclosure, and

64 Large copies of these highly interesting drawings are in the noble collection bequeathed by Mr. Grenville

66 See White's Selborne; Bell's History of British Quadrupeds, Gentleman's Recreation, 1686; Aubrey's

Natural History of Wiltshire, 1685; Morton's History of Northamptonshire, 1712; Willoughby's Ornithology,

by Ray, 1678; Latham's General Synopsis of Birds; and Sir Thomas Browne's Account of Birds found in

69 See Mr. M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire, Part III. chap. i. sec. 6.

70 King and Davenant as before The Duke of Newcastle on Horsemanship; Gentleman's Recreation, 1686.

The "dappled Flanders mares" were marks of greatness in the time of Pope, and even later.

The vulgar proverb, that the grey mare is the better horse, originated, I suspect, in the preference generally

71 See a curious note by Tonkin, in Lord De Dunstanville's edition of Carew's Survey of Cornwall.

72 Borlase's Natural History of Cornwall, 1758. The quantity of copper now produced, I have taken from

parliamentary returns. Davenant, in 1700, estimated the annual produce of all the mines of England at

73 Philosophical Transactions, No. 53. Nov. 1669, No. 66. Dec. 1670, No. 103. May 1674, No 156. Feb.

74 Yarranton, England's Improvement by Sea and Land, 1677; Porter's Progress of the Nation. See also a

remarkably perspicnous history, in small compass of the English iron works, in Mr. M'Culloch's Statistical

75 See Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684, 1687, Angliae, Metropolis, 1691; M'Culloch's Statistical

Account of the British Empire Part III. chap. ii. (edition of 1847). In 1845 the quantity of coal brought into

London appeared, by the Parliamentary returns, to be 3,460,000 tons. (1848.) In 1854 the quantity of coal

76 My notion of the country gentleman of the seventeenth century has been derived from sources too

numerous to be recapitulated. I must leave my description to the judgment of those who have studied the

77 In the eighteenth century the great increase in the value of benefices produced a change. The younger sons

of the nobility were allured back to the clerical profession. Warburton in a letter to Hurd, dated the 6th of

July, 1762, mentions this change. which was then recent. "Our grandees have at last found their way back

into the Church. I only wonder they have been so long about it. But be assured that nothing but a new

religious revolution, to sweep away the fragments that Henry the Eighth left after banqueting his courtiers,

79 Eachard, Causes of the Contempt of the Clergy; Oldham, Satire addressed to a Friend about to leave the

University; Tatler, 255, 258. That the English clergy were a lowborn class, is remarked in the Travels of the

80 "A causidico, medicastro, ipsaque artificum farragine, ecclesiae rector aut vicarius contemnitur et fit

ludibrio. Gentis et familiae nitor sacris ordinibus pollutus censetur: foeminisque natalitio insignibus unicum

inculcatur saepius praeceptum, ne modestiae naufragium faciant, aut, (quod idem auribus tam delicatulis

sonat,) ne clerico se nuptas dari patiantur."Angliae Notitia, by T. Wood, of New College Oxford 1686.

82 See the injunctions of 1559, In Bishop Sparrow's Collection. Jeremy Collier, in his Essay on Pride, speaks

of this injunction with a bitterness which proves that his own pride had not been effectually tamed.

83 Roger and Abigail in Fletcher's Scornful Lady, Bull and the Nurse in Vanbrugh's Relapse, Smirk and

84 Swift's Directions to Servants. In Swift's Remarks on the Clerical Residence Bill, he describes the family

of an English vicar thus: "His wife is little better than a Goody, in her birth, education, or dress. . . . . His

daughters shall go to service, or be sent apprentice to the sempstress of the next town."

85 Even in Tom Jones, published two generations later. Mrs. Seagrim, the wife of a gamekeeper, and Mrs.

Honour, a waitingwoman, boast of their descent from clergymen, "It is to be hoped," says Fielding, "such

instances will in future ages, when some provision is made for the families of the inferior clergy, appear

86 This distinction between country clergy and town clergy is strongly marked by Eachard, and cannot but be

observed by every person who has studied the ecclesiastical history of that age.

87 Nelson's Life of Bull. As to the extreme difficulty which the country clergy found in procuring books, see

the Life of Thomas Bray, the founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

88 "I have frequently heard him (Dryden) own with pleasure, that if he had any talent for English prose it was

owing to his having often read the writings of the great Archbishop Tillotson."Congreve's Dedication of

90 Evelvn's Diary, June 27. 1654; Pepys's Diary, June 13. 1668; Roger North's Lives of Lord Keeper

Guildford, and of Sir Dudley North; Petty's Political Arithmetic. I have taken Petty's facts, but, in drawing

inferences from them, I have been guided by King and Davenant, who, though not abler men than he, had the

advantage of coming after him. As to the kidnapping for which Bristol was infamous, see North's Life of

Guildford, 121, 216, and the harangue of Jeffreys on the subject, in the Impartial History of his Life and

Death, printed with the Bloody Assizes. His style was, as usual, coarse, but I cannot reckon the reprimand

91 Fuller's Worthies; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 17,1671; Journal of T. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, Jan.

16634; Blomefield's History of Norfolk; History of the City and County of Norwich, 2 vols. 1768.

92 The population of York appears, from the return of baptisms and burials in Drake's History, to have been

about 13,000 in 1730. Exeter had only 17,000 inhabitants in 1801. The population of Worcester was

numbered just before the siege in 1646. See Nash's History of Worcestershire. I have made allowance for the

increase which must be supposed to have taken place in forty years. In 1740, the population of Nottingham

was found, by enumeration, to be just 10,000. See Dering's History. The population of Gloucester may

readily be inferred from the number of houses which King found in the returns of hearth money, and from the

number of births and burials which is given in Atkyns's History. The population of Derby was 4,000 in 1712.

See Wolley's MS. History, quoted in Lyson's Magna Britannia. The population of Shrewsbury was

ascertained, in 1695, by actual enumeration. As to the gaieties of Shrewsbury, see Farquhar's Recruiting

Officer. Farquhar's description is borne out by a ballad in the Pepysian Library, of which the burden is

93 Blome's Britannia, 1673; Aikin's Country round Manchester; Manchester Directory, 1845: Baines, History

of the Cotton Manufacture. The best information which I have been able to find, touching the population of

Manchester in the seventeenth century is contained in a paper drawn up by the Reverend R. Parkinson, and

94 Thoresby's Ducatus Leodensis; Whitaker's Loidis and Elmete; Wardell's Municipal History of the

95 Hunter's History of Hallamshire. (1848.) In 1851 the population of Sheffield had increased to 135,000.

96 Blome's Britannia, 1673; Dugdale's Warwickshire, North's Examen, 321; Preface to Absalom and

Achitophel; Hutton's History of Birmingham; Boswell's Life of Johnson. In 1690 the burials at Birmingham

were 150, the baptisms 125. I think it probable that the annual mortality was little less than one in

twentyfive. In London it was considerably greater. A historian of Nottingham, half a century later, boasted

of the extraordinary salubrity of his town, where the annual mortality was one in thirty. See Doring's History

of Nottingham. (1848.) In 1851 the population of Birmingham had increased to 222,000. (1857.)

97 Blome's Britannia; Gregson's Antiquities of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, Part II.; Petition

from Liverpool in the Privy Council Book, May 10, 1686. In 1690 the burials at Liverpool were 151, the

baptisms 120. In 1844 the net receipt of the customs at Liverpool was 4,366,526�. 1s. 8d. (1848.) In 1851

101 Memoires de Grammont; Hasted's History of Kent; Tunbridge Wells, a Comedy, 1678; Causton's

102 See Wood's History of Bath, 1719; Evelyn's Diary, June 27,1654; Pepys's Diary, June 12, 1668;

Stukeley's Itinerarium Curiosum; Collinson's Somersetshire; Dr. Peirce's History and Memoirs of the Bath,

1713, Book I. chap. viii. obs. 2, 1684. I have consulted several old maps and pictures of Bath, particularly one

curious map which is surrounded by views of the principal buildings. It Dears the date of 1717.

103 According to King 530,000. (1848.) In 1851 the population of London exceeded, 2,300,000. (1857.)

104 Macpherson's History of Commerce; Chalmers's Estimate; Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. The

tonnage of the steamers belonging to the port of London was, at the end of 1847, about 60,000 tons. The

customs of the port, from 1842 to 1845, very nearly averaged 11,000,000�. (1848.) In 1854 the tonnage of the

steamers of the port of London amounted to 138,000 tons, without reckoning vessels of less than fifty tons.

105 Lyson's Environs of London. The baptisms at Chelsea, between 1680 and 1690, were only 42 a year.

107 The fullest and most trustworthy information about the state of the buildings of London at this time is to

be derived from the maps and drawings in the British Museum and in the Pepysian Library. The badness of

the bricks in the old buildings of London is particularly mentioned in the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.

There is an account of the works at Saint Paul's in Ward's London Spy. I am almost ashamed to quote such

nauseous balderdash; but I have been forced to descend even lower, if possible, in search of materials.

110 North's Examen. This amusing writer has preserved a specimen of the sublime raptures in which the

111 Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Anglie Metropolis, 1690; Seymour's London, 1734.

114 Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Pennant's London; Smith's Life of Nollekens.

117 Old General Oglethorpe, who died in 1785, used to boast that he had shot birds here in Anne's reign. See

118 The pest field will be seen in maps of London as late as the end of George the First's reign.

119 See a very curious plan of Covent Garden made about 1690, and engraved for Smith's History of

Westminster. See also Hogarth's Morning, painted while some of the houses in the Piazza were still occupied

120 London Spy, Tom Brown's comical View of London and Westminster; Turner's Propositions for the

employing of the Poor, 1678; Daily Courant and Daily Journal of June 7, 1733; Case of Michael v. Allestree,

in 1676, 2 Levinz, p. 172. Michael had been run over by two horses which Allestree was breaking in

Lincoln's Inn Fields. The declaration set forth that the defendant "porta deux chivals ungovernable en un

coach, et improvide, incante, et absque debita consideratione ineptitudinis loci la eux drive pur eux faire

tractable et apt pur an coach, quels chivals, pur ceo que, per leur ferocite, ne poientestre rule, curre sur le

121 Stat. 12 Geo. I. c. 25; Commons' Journals, Feb. 25, March 2, 17256; London Gardener, 1712; Evening

Post, March, 23, 1731. I have not been able to find this number of the Evening Post; I therefore quote it on

122 Lettres sur les Anglois, written early in the reign of William the Third; Swift's City Shower; Gay's Trivia.

Johnson used to relate a curious conversation which ho had with his mother about giving and taking the wall.

123 Oldham's Imitation of the 3d Satire of Juvenal, 1682; Shadwell's Scourers, 1690. Many other authorities

will readily occur to all who are acquainted with the popular literature of that and the succeeding generation.

It may be suspected that some of the Tityre Tus, like good Cavaliers, broke Milton's windows shortly after

the Restoration. I am confident that he was thinking of those pests of London when he dictated the noble

125 Angliae Metropolis, 1690, Sect. 17, entitled, "Of the new lights"; Seymour's London.

126 Stowe's Survey of London; Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia; Ward's London Spy; Stat. 8 9 Gul. III. cap. 27.

127 See Sir Roger North's account of the way in which Wright was made a judge, and Clarendon's account of

128 The sources from which I have drawn my information about the state of the Court are too numerous to

recapitulate. Among them are the Despatches of Barillon, Van Citters, Ronquillo, and Adda, the Travels of

the Grand Duke Cosmo, the works of Roger North, the Diares of Pepys, Evelyn, and Teonge, and the

129 The chief peculiarity of this dialect was that, in a large class of words, the O was pronounced like A.

Thus Lord was pronounced Lard. See Vanbrugh's Relapse. Lord Sunderland was a great master of this court

tune, as Roger North calls it; and Titus Oates affected it in the hope of passing for a fine gentleman. Examen,

130 Lettres sur les Anglois; Tom Brown's Tour; Ward's London Spy; The Character of a Coffee House, 1673;

Rules and Orders of the Coffee House, 1674; Coffee Houses vindicated, 1675; A Satyr against Coffee;

North's Examen, 138; Life of Guildford, 152; Life of Sir Dudley North, 149; Life of Dr. Radcliffe, published

by Curll in 1715. The liveliest description of Will's is in the City and Country Mouse. There is a remarkable

passage about the influence of the coffee house orators in Halstead's Succinct Genealogies, printed in 1685.

138 Tour in Derbyshire, by J. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, 1662; Cotton's Angler, 1676.

140 Postlethwaite's Dictionary, Roads; History of Hawkhurst, in the Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica.

143 The evils of the old system are strikingly set forth in many petitions which appear in the Commons'

Journal of 172 5/6. How fierce an opposition was offered to the new system may be learned from the

145 Loidis and Elmete; Marshall's Rural Economy of England, In 1739 Roderic Random came from Scotland

148 Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. See also the list of stage coaches and waggons at the end of the

149 John Cresset's Reasons for suppressing Stage Coaches, 1672. These reason. were afterwards inserted in a

tract, entitled "The Grand Concern of England explained, 1673." Cresset's attack on stage coaches called

150 Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; North's Examen, 105; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 9,10, 1671.

151 See the London Gazette, May 14, 1677, August 4, 1687, Dec. 5, 1687. The last confession of Augustin

King, who was the son of an eminent divine, and had been educated at Cambridge but was hanged at

152 Aimwell. Pray sir, han't I seen your face at Will's coffeehouse? Gibbet. Yes. sir, and at White's

153 Gent's History of York. Another marauder of the same description, named Biss, was hanged at Salisbury

in 1695. In a ballad which is in the Pepysian Library, he is represented as defending himself thus before the

154 Pope's Memoirs of Duval, published immediately after the execution. Oates's Eikwg basilikh, Part I.

155 See the prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Harrison's Historical Description of the Island of Great Britain,

and Pepys's account of his tour in the summer of 1668. The excellence of the English inns is noticed in the

156 Stat. 12 Car. II. c. 36; Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684; Angliae Metropolis, 1690; London

160 Commons' Journals, Sept. 4, 1660, March 1, 16889; Chamberlayne, 1684; Davenant on the Public

161 I have left the text as it stood in 1848. In the year 1856 the gross receipt of the Post Office was more than

2,800,000�.; and the net receipt was about 1,200,000�. The number of letters conveyed by post was

163 There is a very curious, and, I should think, unique collection of these papers in the British Museum.

164 For example, there is not a word in the Gazette about the important parliamentary proceedings of

165 Roger North's Life of Dr. John North. On the subject of newsletters, see the Examen, 133.

166 I take this opportunity of expressing my warm gratitude to the family of my dear and honoured friend sir

James Mackintosh for confiding to me the materials collected by him at a time when he meditated a work

similar to that which I have undertaken. I have never seen, and I do not believe that there anywhere exists,

within the same compass, so noble a collection of extracts from public and private archives The judgment

with which sir James in great masses of the rudest ore of history, selected what was valuable, and rejected

what was worthless, can be fully appreciated only by one who has toiled after him in the same mine.

167 Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing houses in 1724 will be found in Nichols's Literary

Anecdotae of the eighteenth century. There had then been a great increase within a few years in the number

of presses, and yet there were thirtyfour counties in which there was no printer, one of those counties being

168 Observator, Jan. 29, and 31, 1685; Calamy's Life of Baxter; Nonconformist Memorial.

169 Cotton seems, from his Angler, to have found room for his whole library in his hall window; and Cotton

was a man of letters. Even when Franklin first visited London in 1724, circulating libraries were unknown

there. The crowd at the booksellers' shops in Little Britain is mentioned by Roger North in his life of his

170 One instance will suffice. Queen Mary, the daughter of James, had excellent natural abilities, had been

educated by a Bishop, was fond of history and poetry and was regarded by very eminent men as a superior

woman. There is, in the library at the Hague, a superb English Bible which was delivered to her when she

was crowned in Westminster Abbey. In the titlepage are these words in her own hand, " This book was given

171 Roger North tells us that his brother John, who was Greek professor at Cambridge, complained bitterly of

173 The most offensive instance which I remember is in a poem on the coronation of Charles the Second by

Dryden, who certainly could not plead poverty as an excuse for borrowing words from any foreign tongue:

174 Jeremy Collier has censured this odious practice with his usual force and keenness.

180 If any reader thinks my expressions too severe, I would advise him to read Dryden's Epilogue to the

187 Butler was, I think, the only man of real genius who, between the Restoration and the Revolution showed

a bitter enmity to the new philosophy, as it was then called. See the Satire on the Royal Society, and the

188 The eagerness with which the agriculturists of that age tried experiments and introduced improvements is

190 Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, London Gazette, May 31, 1683; North's Life of Guildford.

191 The great prices paid to Varelst and Verrio are mentioned in Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting.

194 Plain and easy Method showing how the office of Overseer of the Poor may be managed, by Richard

197 See, in Thurloe's State Papers, the memorandum of the Dutch Deputies dated August 212, 1653.

198 The orator was Mr. John Basset, member for Barnstaple. See Smith's Memoirs of Wool, chapter lxviii.

199 This ballad is in the British Museum. The precise year is not given; but the Imprimatur of Roger

Lestrange fixes the date sufficiently for my purpose. I will quote some of the lines. The master clothier is

200 Chamberlayne's State of England; Petty's Political Arithmetic, chapter viii.; Dunning's Plain and Easy

Method; Firmin's Proposition for the Employing of the Poor. It ought to be observed that Firmin was an

201 King in his Natural and Political Conclusions roughly estimated the common people of England at

880,0O0 families. Of these families 440,000, according to him ate animal food twice a week. The remaining

202 Fourteenth Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, Appendix B. No. 2, Appendix C. No 1, 1848. Of the

two estimates of the poor rate mentioned in the text one was formed by Arthur Moore, the other, some years

later, by Richard Dunning. Moore's estimate will be found in Davenant's Essay on Ways and Means;

Dunning's in Sir Frederic Eden's valuable work on the poor. King and Davenant estimate the paupers and

beggars in 1696, at the incredible number of 1,330,000 out of a population of 5,500,000. In 1846 the number

of persons who received relief appears from the official returns to have been only 1,332,089 out of a

population of about 17,000,000. It ought also to be observed that, in those returns, a pauper must very often

I would advise the reader to consult De Foe's pamphlet entitled "Giving Alms no Charity," and the

Greenwich tables which will be found in Mr. M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary under the head Prices.

209 Burnet, i, 606; Spectator, No. 462; Lords' Journals, October 28, 1678; Cibber's Apology.

211 I may take this opportunity of mentioning that whenever I give only one date, I follow the old style,

which was, in the seventeenth century, the style of England; but I reckon the year from the first of January.

212 Saint Everemond, passim; Saint Real, Memoires de la Duchesse de Mazarin; Rochester's Farewell;

215 Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North, 170; The true Patriot vindicated, or a Justification of his

Excellency the Eof R; Burnet, i. 605. The Treasury Books prove that Burnet had good intelligence.

219 See the London Gazette of Nov. 21, 1678. Barillon and Burnet say that Huddleston was excepted out of

220 Clark's Life of James the Second, i, 746. Orig. Mem.; Barillon's Despatch of Feb. 118, 1685; Van

Citters's Despatches of Feb. 313 and Feb. 116. Huddleston's Narrative; Letters of Philip, second Earl of

Chesterfield, 277; Sir H. Ellis's Original Letters, First Series. iii. 333: Second Series, iv 74; Chaillot MS.;

Burnet, i. 606: Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4. 16845: Welwood's Memoires 140; North's Life of Guildford. 252;

Examen, 648; Hawkins's Life of Ken; Dryden's Threnodia Augustalis; Sir H. Halford's Essay on Deaths of

Eminent Persons. See also a fragment of a letter written by the Earl of Ailesbury, which is printed in the

European Magazine for April, 1795. Ailesbury calls Burnet an impostor. Yet his own narrative and Burnet's

will not, to any candid and sensible reader, appear to contradict each other. I have seen in the British

Museum, and also in the Library of the Royal Institution, a curious broadside containing an account of the

death of Charles. It will be found in the Somers Collections. The author was evidently a zealous Roman

Catholic, and must have had access to good sources of information. I strongly suspect that he had been in

communication, directly or indirectly, with James himself. No name is given at length; but the initials are

perfectly intelligible, except in one place. It is said that the D. of Y. was reminded of the duty which he owed

to his brother by P.M.A.C.F. I must own myself quite unable to decipher the last five letters. It is some

consolation that Sir Walter Scott was equally unsuccessful. (1848.) Since the first edition of this work was

published, several ingenious conjectures touching these mysterious letters have been communicated to me,

but I am convinced that the true solution has not yet been suggested. (1850.) I still greatly doubt whether the

riddle has been solved. But the most plausible interpretation is one which, with some variations, occurred,

almost at the same time, to myself and to several other persons; I am inclined to read "Pere Mansuete A

Cordelier Friar." Mansuete, a Cordelier, was then James's confessor. To Mansuete therefore it peculiarly

belonged to remind James of a sacred duty which had been culpably neglected. The writer of the broadside

must have been unwilling to inform the world that a soul which many devout Roman Catholics had left to

perish had been snatched from destruction by the courageous charity of a woman of loose character. It is

therefore not unlikely that he would prefer a fiction, at once probable and edifying, to a truth which could not

It should seem that no transactions in history ought to be more accurately known to us than those which took

place round the deathbed of Charles the Second. We have several relations written by persons who were

actually in his room. We have several relations written by persons who, though not themselves eyewitnesses,

had the best opportunity of obtaining information from eyewitnesses. Yet whoever attempts to digest this vast

mass of materials into a consistent narrative will find the task a difficult one. Indeed James and his wife,

when they told the story to the nuns of Chaillot, could not agree as to some circumstances. The Queen said

that, after Charles had received the last sacraments the Protestant Bishops renewed their exhortations. The

King said that nothing of the kind took place. "Surely," said the Queen, "you told me so yourself." "It is

impossible that I have told you so," said the King, "for nothing of the sort happened."

It is much to be regretted that Sir Henry Halford should have taken so little trouble ascertain the facts on

which he pronounced judgment. He does not seem to have been aware of the existence of the narrative of

As this is the first occasion on which I cite the correspondence of the Dutch ministers at the English court, I

ought here to mention that a series of their despatches, from the accession of James the Second to his flight,

forms one of the most valuable parts of the Mackintosh collection. The subsequent despatches, down to the

settlement of the government in February, 1689, I procured from the Hague. The Dutch archives have been

far too little explored. They abound with information interesting in the highest degree to every Englishman.

They are admirably arranged and they are in the charge of gentlemen whose courtesy, liberality and zeal for

the interests of literature, cannot be too highly praised. I wish to acknowledge, in the strongest manner, my

221 Clarendon mentions this calumny with just scorn. "According to the charity of the time towards

Cromwell, very many would have it believed to be by poison, of which there was no appearance, nor any

222 Welwood, 139 Burnet, i. 609; Sheffield's Character of Charles the Second; North's Life of Guildford,

252; Examen, 648; Revolution Politics; Higgons on Burnet. What North says of the embarrassment and

vacillation of the physicians is confirmed by the despatches of Van Citters. I have been much perplexed by

the strange story about Short's suspicions. I was, at one time, inclined to adopt North's solution. But, though I

attach little weight to the authority of Welwood and Burnet in such a case, I cannot reject the testimony of so

223 London Gazette, Feb. 9. 16845; Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii. 3; Barillon, Feb. 919: Evelyn's

224 See the authorities cited in the last note. See also the Examen, 647; Burnet, i. 620; Higgons on Burnet.

225 London Gazette, Feb. 14, 16845; Evelyn's Diary of the same day; Burnet, i. 610: The Hind let loose.

227 The letters which passed between Rochester and Ormond on this subject will be found in the Clarendon

228 The ministerial changes are announced in the London Gazette, Feb. 19, 16845. See Burnet, i. 621;

229 Carte's Life of Ormond; Secret Consults of the Romish Party in Ireland, 1690; Memoirs of Ireland, 1716.

231 The Acts of the Witnesses of the Spirit, part v chapter v. In this work Lodowick, after his fashion,

revenges himself on the "bawling devil," as he calls Jeffreys, by a string of curses which Ernulphus, or

232 This saying is to be found in many contemporary pamphlets. Titus Oates was never tired of quoting it.

233 The chief sources of information concerning Jeffreys are the State Trials and North's Life of Lord

Guildford. Some touches of minor importance I owe to contemporary pamphlets in verse and prose. Such are

the Bloody Assizes the life and Death of George Lord Jeffreys, the Panegyric on the late Lord Jeffreys, the

Letter to the Lord Chancellor, Jeffreys's Elegy. See also Evelyn's Diary, Dec. 5, 1683, Oct. 31. 1685. I

scarcely need advise every reader to consult Lord Campbell's excellent Life of Jeffreys.

235 The chief authority for these transactions is Barillon's despatch of February 919, 1685. It will he found

in the Appendix to Mr. Fox's History. See also Preston's Letter to James, dated April 1828, 1685, in

239 Swift who hated Marlborough, and who was little disposed to allow any merit to those whom he hated,

240 Dartmouth's note on Burnet, i. 264. Chesterfleld's Letters, Nov., 18, 1748. Chesterfield is an

unexceptional witness; for the annuity was a charge on the estate of his grandfather, Halifax. I believe that

there is no foundation for a disgraceful addition to the story which may be found in Pope:

242 See the Historical Records of the first or Royal Dragoons. The appointment of Churchill to the command

of this regiment was ridiculed as an instance of absurd partiality. One lampoon of that time which I do not

remember to have seen in print, but of which a manuscript copy is in the British Museum, contains these

245 I might transcribe half Barillon's correspondence in proof of this proposition, but I will quote only one

passage, in which the policy of the French government towards England is exhibited concisely and with

"On peut tenir pour un maxime indubitable que l'accord du Roy d'Angleterre avec son parlement, en quelque

maniere qu'il se fasse, n'est pas conforme aux interets de V. M. Je me contente de penser cela sane m'en

ouvrir a personne, et je cache avec soin mes sentimens a cet egard."Barillon to Lewis, Feb. 28,/Mar. 1687.

That this was the real secret of the whole policy of Lewis towards our country was perfectly understood at

Vienna. The Emperor Leopold wrote thus to James, March 30,/April 9, 1689: "Galli id unum agebant, ut,

perpetuas inter Serenitatem vestram et ejusdem populos fovendo simultates, reliqu� Christian� Europe tanto

246 "Que sea unido con su reyno, yen todo buena intelligencia con el parlamenyo." Despatch from the King

of Spain to Don Pedro Ronquillo, March 1626, 1685. This despatch is in the archives of Samancas, which

contain a great mass of papers relating to English affairs. Copies of the most interesting of those papers are in

the possession of M. Guizot, and were by him lent to me. It is with peculiar pleasure that at this time, I

247 Few English readers will be desirous to go deep into the history of this quarrel. Summaries will be found

248 Burnet, i. 661, and Letter from Rome, Dodd's Church History, part viii. book i. art. 1.

249 Consultations of the Spanish Council of State on April 212 and April 1626, In the Archives of

251 Life of James the Second, i. 5. Barillon, Feb. 19,/Mar. 1, 1685; Evelyn's Diary, March 5, 1685.

254 From Adda's despatch of Jan. 22,/Feb. 1, 1686, and from the expressions of the Pere d'Orleans (Histoire

des Revolutions d'Angleterre, liv. xi.), it is clear that rigid Catholics thought the King's conduct indefensible.

255 London Gazette, Gazette de France; Life of James the Second, ii. 10; History of the Coronation of King

James the Second and Queen Mary, by Francis Sandford, Lancaster Herald, fol. 1687; Evelyn's Diary, May,

21, 1685; Despatch of the Dutch Ambassadors, April 1020, 1685; Burnet, i. 628; Eachard, iii. 734; A

sermon preached before their Majesties King James the Second and Queen Mary at their Coronation in

Westminster Abbey, April 23, 1695, by Francis Lord Bishop of Ely, and Lord Almoner. I have seen an Italian

account of the Coronation which was published at Modena, and which is chiefly remarkable for the skill with

which the writer sinks the fact that the prayers and psalms were in English, and that the Bishops were

256 See the London Gazette during the months of February, March, and April, 1685.

257 It would be easy to fill a volume with what Whig historians and pamphleteers have written on this

subject. I will cite only one witness, a churchman and a Tory. "Elections," says Evelyn, "were thought to be

very indecently carried on in most places. God give a better issue of it than some expect!" May 10, 1685.

Again he says, "The truth is there were many of the new members whose elections and returns were

258 This fact I learned from a newsletter in the library of the Royal Institution. Van Citters mentions the

260 Reflections on a Remonstrance and Protestation of all the good Protestants of this Kingdom, 1689;

262 See the Guardian, No. 67; an exquisite specimen of Addison's peculiar manner. It would be difficult to

find in the works of any other writer such an instance of benevolence delicately flavoured with contempt.

266 A faithful account of the Sickness, Death, and Burial of Captain Bedlow, 1680; Narrative of Lord Chief

271 There remain many pictures of Oates. The most striking descriptions of his person are in North's

Examen, 225, in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, and In a broadside entitled, A Hue and Cry after T. O.

275 Evelyn's Diary, May 22, 1685; Eachard, iii. 741; Burnet, i. 637; Observator, May 27, 1685; Oates's

Eikvn, 89; Eikwn Brotoloigon, 1697; Commons' Journals of May, June, and July, 1689; Tom Brown's advice

to Dr. Oates. Some interesting circumstances are mentioned in a broadside, printed for A. Brooks, Charing

Cross, 1685. I have seen contemporary French and Italian pamphlets containing the history of the trial and

execution. A print of Titus in the pillory was published at Milan, with the following curious inscription:

"Questo e il naturale ritratto di Tito Otez, o vero Oatz, Inglese, posto in berlina, uno de' principali professor

della religion protestante, acerrimo persecutore de' Cattolici, e gran spergiuro." I have also seen a Dutch

engraving of his punishment, with some Latin verses, of which the following are a specimen:

The anagram of his name, "Testis Ovat," may be found on many prints published in different countries.

277 According to Roger North the judges decided that Dangerfield, having been previously convicted of

perjury, was incompetent to be a witness of the plot. But this is one among many instances of Roger's

inaccuracy. It appears, from the report of the trial of Lord Castlemaine in June 1680, that, after much

altercation between counsel, and much consultation among the judges of the different courts in Westminster

Hall, Dangerfield was sworn and suffered to tell his story; but the jury very properly gave no credit to his

278 Dangerfield's trial was not reported; but I have seen a concise account of it in a contemporary broadside.

An abstract of the evidence against Francis, and his dying speech, will be found in the Collection of State

Trials. See Eachard, iii. 741. Burnet's narrative contains more mistakes than lines. See also North's Examen,

256, the sketch of Dangerfield's life in the Bloody Assizes, the Observator of July 29, 1685, and the poem

entitled "Dangerfield's Ghost to Jeffreys." In the very rare volume entitled "Succinct Genealogies, by Robert

Halstead," Lord Peterbough says that Dangerfield, with whom he had had some intercourse, was "a young

man who appeared under a decent figure, a serious behaviour, and with words that did not seem to proceed

279 Baxter's preface to Sir Mathew Hale's Judgment of the Nature of True Religion, 1684.

280 See the Observator of February 28, 1685, the information in the Collection of State Trials, the account of

what passed in court given by Calamy, Life of Baxter, chap. xiv., and the very curious extracts from the

282 Act Parl. Car. II. March 29,1661, Jac. VII. April 28, 1685, and May 13, 1685.

283 Act Parl. Jac. VII. May 8, 1685, Observator, June 20, 1685; Lestrange evidently wished to see the

284 His own words reported by himself. Life of James the Second, i. 666. Orig. Mem.

286 Burnet, i. 583; Wodrow, III. v. 2. Unfortunately the Acta of the Scottish Privy Council during almost the

whole administration of the Duke of York are wanting. (1848.) This assertion has been met by a direct

contradiction. But the fact is exactly as I have stated it. There is in he Acta of the Scottish Privy Council a

hiatus extending from August 1678 to August 1682. The Duke of York began to reside in Scotland in

288 Wodrow, III. ix. 6. The editor of the Oxford edition of Burnet attempts to excuse this act by alleging that

Claverhouse was then employed to intercept all communication between Argyle and Monmouth, and by

supposing that John Brown may have been detected in conveying intelligence between the rebel camps.

Unfortunately for this hypothesis John Brown was shot on the first of May, when both Argyle and Monmouth

290 Wodrow, III. ix. 6. It has been confidently asserted, by persons who have not taken the trouble to look at

the authority to which I have referred, that I have grossly calumniated these unfortunate men; that I do not

understand the Calvinistic theology; and that it is impossible that members of the Church of Scotland can

have refused to pray for any man on the ground that he was not one of the elect.

I can only refer to the narrative which Wodrow has inserted in his history, and which he justly calls plain and

natural. That narrative is signed by two eyewitnesses, and Wodrow, before he published it, submitted it to a

third eyewitness, who pronounced it strictly accurate. From that narrative I will extract the only words which

bear on the point in question: "When all the three were taken, the officers consulted among themselves, and,

withdrawing to the west side of the town, questioned the prisoners, particularly if they would pray for King

James VII. They answered, they would pray for all within the election of grace. Balfour said Do you question

the King's election? They answered, sometimes they questioned their own. Upon which he swore dreadfully,

and said they should die presently, because they would not pray for Christ's vicegerent, and so without one

In this narrative Wodrow saw nothing improbable; and I shall not easily be convinced that any writer now

living understands the feelings and opinions of the Covenanters better than Wodrow did. (1857.)

292 Wodrow, III. ix. 6. The epitaph of Margaret Wilson, in the churchyard at Wigton, is printed in the

297 After this passage was written, I found in the British Museum, a manuscript (Harl. MS. 7506) entitled,

"An Account of the Seizures, Sequestrations, great Spoil and Havock made upon the Estates of the several

Protestant Dissenters called Quakers, upon Prosecution of old Statutes made against Papist and Popish

Recusants." The manuscript is marked as having belonged to James, and appears to have been given by his

confidential servant, Colonel Graham, to Lord Oxford. This circumstance appears to me to confirm the view

298 Penn's visits to Whitehall, and levees at Kensington, are described with great vivacity, though in very bad

Latin, by Gerard Croese. "Sumebat," he says, "rex s�pe secretum, non horarium, vero horarum plurium, in

quo de variis rebus cum Penno serio sermonem conferebat, et interim differebat audire pr�cipuorum

nobilium ordinem, qui hoc interim spatio in proc�tone, in proximo, regem conventum pr�sto erant." Of the

crowd of suitors at Penn's house. Croese says, "Visi quandoquo de hoc genere hominum non minus bis

299 "Twenty thousand into my pocket; and a hundred thousand into my province." Penn's Letter to Popple."

300 These orders, signed by Sunderland, will be found in Sewel's History. They bear date April 18, 1685.

They are written in a style singularly obscure and intricate: but I think that I have exhibited the meaning

correctly. I have not been able to find any proof that any person, not a Roman Catholic or a Quaker, regained

his freedom under these orders. See Neal's History of the Puritans, vol. ii. chap. ii.; Gerard Croese, lib. ii.

301 Barillon, May 28,/June 7, 1685. Observator, May 27, 1685; Sir J. Reresby's Memoirs.

302 Lewis wrote to Barillon about this class of Exclusionists as follows: "L'interet qu'ils auront a effacer cette

tache par des services considerables les portera, aelon toutes les apparences, a le servir plus utilement que ne

pourraient faire ceux qui ont toujours ete les plus attaches a sa personne." May 1525,1685.

307 Burnet, i. 382; Letter from Lord Conway to Sir George Rawdon, Dec. 28, 1677. in the Rawdon Papers.

310 Burnet, i. 639; Evelyn's Diary, May 22, 1685; Barillon, May 23,/June 2, and May 25,/June 4, 1685 The

silence of the journals perplexed Mr. Fox ; but it is explained by the circumstance that Seymour's motion was

314 Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North; Life of Lord GuiIford, 166; Mr M'Cullough's Literature of

315 Life of Dudley North, 176, Lonsdale's Memoirs, Van Citters, June 1222, 1685.

319 Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, book xiv.; Burnet's Own Times, i. 546, 625; Wade's and Ireton's

Narratives, Lansdowne MS. 1152; West's information in the Appendix to Sprat's True Account.

320 London Gazette, January, 4, 16845; Ferguson MS. in Eachard's History, iii. 764; Grey's Narratives;

Sprat's True Account, Danvers's Treatise on Baptism; Danvers's Innocency and Truth vindicated; Crosby's

Lord Howard of Escrick accused Ayloffe of proposing to assassinate the Duke of York; but Lord Howard

was an abject liar; and this story was not part of his original confession, but was added afterwards by way of

322 Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 6845; Lansdowne MS. 1152; Holloway's narrative in the Appendix to

324 Sprat's True Account and Appendix, Proceedings against Rumbold in the Collection of State Trials;

325 Grey's narrative; his trial in the Collection of State Trials; Sprat's True Account.

326 In the Pepysian Collection is a print representing one of the balls which About this time William and

327 Avaux Neg. January 25, 1685. Letter from James to the Princess of Orange dated January 16845,

329 Burnet, i. 542; Wood, Ath. Ox. under the name of Owen; Absalom and Achtophel, part ii.; Eachard, iii.

682, 697; Sprat's True Account, passim; Lond. Gaz. Aug. 6,1683; Nonconformist's Memorial; North's

333 Welwood's Memoirs, App. xv.; Burnet, i. 530. Grey told a somewhat different story, but he told it to save

his life. The Spanish ambassador at the English court, Don Pedro de Ronquillo, in a letter to the governor of

the Low Countries written about this time, sneers at Monmouth for living on the bounty of a fond woman,

and hints a very unfounded suspicion that the Duke's passion was altogether interested. "HaIIandose hoy tan

falto de medios que ha menester trasformarse en Amor con Miledi en vista de la ecesidad de poder

334 Proceedings against Argyle in the Collection of State Trials, Burnet, i 521; A True and Plain Account of

the Discoveries made in Scotland, 1684, The Scotch Mist Cleared; Sir George Mackenzie's Vindication, Lord

342 Le Clerc's Life of Locke; Lord King's Life of Locke; Lord Grenville's Oxford and Locke. Locke must not

be confounded with the Anabapist Nicholas Look, whose name was spelled Locke in Grey's Confession, and

who is mentioned in the Lansdowne MS. 1152, and in the Buccleuch narrative appended to Mr. Rose's

dissertation. I should hardly think it necessary to make this remark, but that the similarity of the two names

appears to have misled a man so well acquainted with the history of those times as Speaker Onslow. See his

343 Wodrow, book iii. chap. ix; London Gazette, May 11, 1685; Barillon, May 1121.

347 Avaux Neg. April 30,/May 10, May 111, May 515, 1685; Sir Patrick Hume's Narrative; Letter from

The Admiralty of Amsterdam to the States General, dated June 20, 1685; Memorial of Skelton, delivered to

348 If any person is inclined to suspect that I have exaggerated the absurdity and ferocity of these men, I

would advise him to read two books, which will convince him that I have rather softened than overcharged

349 A few words which were in the first five editions have been omitted in this place. Here and in another

passage I had, as Mr. Aytoun has observed, mistaken the City Guards, which were commanded by an officer

350 The authors from whom I have taken the history of Argyle's expedition are Sir Patrick Hume, who was

an eyewitness of what he related, and Wodrow, who had access to materials of the greatest value, among

which were the Earl's own papers. Wherever there is a question of veracity between Argyle and Hume, I have

See also Burnet, i. 631, and the life of Bresson, published by Dr. Mac Crie. The account of the Scotch

rebellion in the Life of James the Second, is a ridiculous romance, not written by the King himself, nor

derived from his papers, but composed by a Jacobite who did not even take the trouble to look at a map of the

351 Wodrow, III. ix 10; Western Martyrology; Burnet, i. 633; Fox's History, Appendix iv. I can find no way,

except that indicated in the text, of reconciling Rumbold's denial that he had ever admitted into his mind the

thought of assassination with his confession that he had himself mentioned his own house as a convenient

place for an attack on the royal brothers. The distinction which I suppose him to have taken was certainly

taken by another Rye House conspirator, who was, like him, an old soldier of the Commonwealth, Captain

Walcot. On Walcot's trial, West, the witness for the crown, said, "Captain, you did agree to be one of those

that were to fight the Guards." "What, then, was the reason." asked Chief Justice Pemberton, "that he would

not kill the King?" "He said," answered West, "that it was a base thing to kill a naked man, and he would not

353 Wade's narrative, Harl, MS. 6845; Burnet, i. 634; Van Citters's Despatch of Oct. 30,/Nov. 9, 1685;

354 Wodrow, III, ix. 4, and III. ix. 10. Wodrow gives from the Acts of Council the names of all the prisoners

355 Skelton's letter is dated the 717th of May 1686. It will be found, together with a letter of the Schout or

High Bailiff of Amsterdam, in a little volume published a few months later, and entitled, "Histoire des

Evenemens Tragiques d'Angleterre." The documents inserted in that work are, as far as I have examined

them, given exactly from the Dutch archives, except that Skelton's French, which was not the purest, is

Goodenough, on his examination after the battle of Sedgemoor, said, "The Schout of Amsterdam was a

It is not worth while to refute those writers who represent the Prince of Orange as an accomplice in

Monmouth's enterprise. The circumstance on which they chiefly rely is that the authorities of Amsterdam

took no effectual steps for preventing the expedition from sailing. This circumstance is in truth the strongest

proof that the expedition was not favoured by William. No person, not profoundly ignorant of the institutions

and politics of Holland, would hold the Stadtholder answerable for the proceedings of the heads of the

356 Avaux Neg. June 717, 818, 1424, 1685, Letter of the Prince of Orange to Lord Rochester, June 9,

357 Van Citters, June 919, June 1222,1685. The correspondence of Skelton with the States General and

with the Admiralty of Amsterdam is in the archives at the Hague. Some pieces will be found in the

359 See Buyse's evidence against Monmouth and Fletcher in the Collection of State Trials.

360 Journals of the House of Commons, June 13, 1685; Harl. MS. 6845; Lansdowne MS. 1152.

361 Burnet, i. 641, Goodenough's confession in the Lansdowne MS. 1152. Copies of the Declaration, as

362 Historical Account of the Life and magnanimous Actions of the most illustrious Protestant Prince James,

365 Buyse's evidence in the Collection of State Trials; Burnet i 642; Ferguson's MS. quoted by Eachard.

368 Wade's Confession; Ferguson MS.; Axe Papers, Harl. MS. 6845, Oldmixon, 701, 702. Oldmixon, who

369 London Gazette, June 18, 1685; Lords' and Commons' Journals, June 13 and 15; Dutch Despatch, 1626.

370 Oldmixon is wrong in saying that Fenwick carried up the bill. It was carried up, as appears from the

Journals, by Lord Ancram. See Delamere's Observations on the Attainder of the Late Duke of Monmouth.

372 Commons' Journals, June 19, 29, 1685; Lord Lonsdale's Memoirs, 8, 9, Burnet, i. 639. The bill, as

amended by the committee, will be found in Mr. Fox's historical work. Appendix iii. If Burnet's account be

correct, the offences which, by the amended bill, were made punishable only with civil incapacities were, by

379 Wade's Confession; Goodenough's Confession, Harl. MS. 1152, Oldmixon, 702. Ferguson's denial is

quite undeserving of credit. A copy of the proclamation is in the Harl. MS. 7006.

380 Copies of the last three proclamations are in the British Museum; Harl. MS. 7006. The first I have never

385 Grey's Narrative; Paschall's Narrative in the Appendix to Heywood's Vindication.

387 North's Life of Guildford, 132. Accounts of Beaufort's progress through Wales and the neighbouring

counties are in the London Gazettes of July 1684. Letter of Beaufort to Clarendon, June 19, 1685.

388 Bishop Fell to Clarendon, June 20; Abingdon to Clarendon, June 20, 25, 26, 1685; Lansdowne MS. 846.

390 Van Citters, June 30,/July 10, July 313, 2131,1685; Avaux Neg. July 515, London Gazette, July 6.

393 London Gazette, June 22, and June 25,1685; Wade's Confession; Oldmixon, 703; Harl. MS. 6845.

395 Wade's Confession; Oldmixon, 703; Harl. MS. 6845; Charge of Jeffreys to the grand jury of Bristol,

405 Matt. West. Flor. Hist., A. D. 788; MS. Chronicle quoted by Mr. Sharon Turner in the History of the

AngloSaxons, book IV. chap. xix; Drayton's Polyolbion, iii; Leland's Itinerary; Oldmixon, 703. Oldmixon

was then at Bridgewater, and probably saw the Duke on the church tower. The dish mentioned in the text is

the property of Mr. Stradling, who has taken laudable pain's to preserve the relics and traditions of the

410 Kennet, ed. 1719, iii. 432. I am forced to believe that this lamentable story is true. The Bishop declares

that it was communicated to him in the year 1718 by a brave officer of the Blues, who had fought at

Sedgemoor, and who had himself seen the poor girl depart in an agony of distress.

411 Narrative of an officer of the Horse Guards in Kennet, ed. 1718, iii. 432; MS. Journal of the Western

Rebellion, kept by Mr. Edward Dummer, Dryden's Hind and Panther, part II. The lines of Dryden are

412 It has been said by several writers, and among them by Pennant, that the district in London called Soho

derived its name from the watchword of Monmouth's army at Sedgemoor. Mention of Soho Fields will be

found in many books printed before the Western insurrection; for example, in Chamberlayne's State of

413 There is a warrant of James directing that forty pounds should be paid to Sergeant Weems, of

Dumbarton's regiment, "for good service in the action at Sedgemoor in firing the great guns against the

414 James the Second's account of the battle of Sedgemoor in Lord Hardwicke's State Papers; Wade's

Confession; Ferguson's MS. Narrative in Eachard, iii. 768; Narrative of an Officer of the Horse Guards in

Kennet, ed. 1719, iii. 432, London Gazette, July 9, 1685; Oldmixon, 703; Paschall's Narrative; Burnet, i. 643;

Evelyn's Diary, July 8; Van Citters, .July 717; Barillon, July 919; Reresby's Memoirs; the Duke of

Buckingham's battle of Sedgemoor, a Farce; MS. Journal of the Western Rebellion, kept by Mr. Edward

Dummer, then serving in the train of artillery employed by His Majesty for the suppression of the same. The

last mentioned manuscript is in the Pepysian library, and is of the greatest value, not on account of the

narrative, which contains little that is remarkable, but on account of the plans, which exhibit the battle in four

"The history of a battle," says the greatest of living generals, "is not unlike the history of a ball. Some

individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no

individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the

difference as to their value or importance . . . . . Just to show you how little reliance can be placed even on

what are supposed the best accounts of a battle, I mention that there are some circumstances mentioned in

General's account which did not occur as he relates them. It is impossible to say when each important

occurrence took place, or in what order."Wellington Papers, Aug. 8, and 17, 1815.

The battle concerning which the Duke of Wellington wrote thus was that of Waterloo, fought only a few

weeks before, by broad day, under his own vigilant and experienced eye. What then must be the difficulty of

compiling from twelve or thirteen narratives an account of a battle fought more than a hundred and sixty

years ago in such darkness that not a man of those engaged could see fifty paces before him? The difficulty is

aggravated by the circumstance that those witnesses who had the best opportunity of knowing the truth were

by no means inclined to tell it. The Paper which I have placed at the head of my list of authorities was

evidently drawn up with extreme partiality to Feversham. Wade was writing under the dread of the halter.

Ferguson, who was seldom scrupulous about the truth of his assertions, lied on this occasion like Bobadil or

Parolles. Oldmixon, who was a boy at Bridgewater when the battle was fought, and passed a great part of his

subsequent life there, was so much under the influence of local passions that his local information was

useless to him. His desire to magnify the valour of the Somersetshire peasants, a valour which their enemies

acknowledged and which did not need to be set off by exaggeration and fiction, led him to compose an

absurd romance. The eulogy which Barillon, a Frenchman accustomed to despise raw levies, pronounced on

the vanquished army, is of much more value, "Son infanterie fit fort bien. On eut de la peine a les rompre, et

les soldats combattoient avec les crosses de mousquet et les scies qu'ils avoient au bout de grands bastons au

Little is now to be learned by visiting the field of battle for the face of the country has been greatly changed;

and the old Bussex Rhine on the banks of which the great struggle took place, has long disappeared. The

I have derived much assistance from Mr. Roberts's account of the battle. Life of Monmouth, chap. xxii. His

420 Account of the manner of taking the late Duke of Monmouth, published by his Majesty's command;

Gazette de France, July 1828, 1688; Eachard, iii. 770; Burnet, i. 664, and Dartmouth's note: Van Citters,

421 The letter to the King was printed at the time by authority; that to the Queen Dowager will be found in

Sir H. Ellis's Original Letters; that to Rochester in the Clarendon Correspondence.

422 "On trouve," he wrote, "fort a redire icy qu'il ayt fait une chose si peu ordinaire aux Anglois." July

423 Account of the manner of taking the Duke of Monmouth; Gazette, July 16, 1685; Van Citters, July

424 Barillon was evidently much shocked. "Ill se vient," he says, "de passer icy, une chose bien

extraordinaire et fort opposee a l'usage ordinaire des autres nations" 1323, 1685.

425 Burnet. i. 644; Evelyn's Diary, July 15; Sir J. Bramston's Memoirs; Reresby's Memoirs; James to the

426 James to the Prince of Orange, July 14, 1685, Dutch Despatch of the same date, Dartmouth's note on

Burnet, i. 646; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, (1848) a copy of this diary, from July 1685 to Sept. 1690, is among

the Mackintosh papers. To the rest I was allowed access by the kindness of the Warden of All Souls' College,

where the original MS. is deposited. The delegates of the Press of the University of Oxford have since

published the whole in six substantial volumes, which will, I am afraid, find little favour with readers who

seek only for amusement, but which will always be useful as materials for history. (1857.)

427 Buccleuch MS; Life of James the Second, ii. 37, Orig. Mem., Van Citters, July 1424, 1685; Gazette de

428 Buccleuch MS.; Life of James the Second, ii. 37, 38, Orig. Mem., Burnet, i. 645; Tenison's account in

430 The name of Ketch was often associated with that of Jeffreys in the lampoons of those days.

says one poet. In the year which followed Monmouth's execution Ketch was turned out of his office for

insulting one of the Sheriffs, and was succeeded by a butcher named Rose. But in four months Rose himself

was hanged at Tyburn, and Ketch was reinstated. Luttrell's Diary, January 20, and May 28, 1686. See a

431 Account of the execution of Monmouth, signed by the divines who attended him; Buccleuch MS; Burnet,

i. 646; Van Citters, July 1727,1685, Luttrell's Diary; Evelyn's Diary, July 15; Barillon, July 1929.

432 I cannot refrain from expressing my disgust at the barbarous stupidity which has transformed this most

interesting little church into the likeness of a meetinghouse in a manufacturing town.

433 Observator, August 1, 1685; Gazette de France, Nov. 2, 1686; Letter from Humphrey Wanley, dated

Aug. 25, 1698, in the Aubrey Collection; Voltaire, Dict. Phil. There are, in the Pepysian Collection, several

ballads written after Monmouth's death which represent him as living, and predict his speedy return. I will

435 Pepys's Diary, kept at Tangier; Historical Records of the Second or Queen's Royal Regiment of Foot.

436 Bloody Assizes, Burnet, i. 647; Luttrell's Diary, July 15, 1685; Locke's Western Rebellion; Toulmin's

439 The silence of Whig writers so credulous and so malevolent as Oldmixon and the compilers of the

Western Martyrology would alone seem to me to settle the question. It also deserves to be remarked that the

story of Rhynsault is told by Steele in the Spectator, No. 491. Surely it is hardly possible to believe that, if a

crime exactly resembling that of Rhynsault had been committed within living memory in England by an

officer of James the Second, Steele, who was indiscreetly and unseasonably forward to display his Whiggism,

would have made no allusion to that fact. For the case of Lebon, see the Moniteur, 4 Messidor, l'an 3.

440 Sunderland to Kirke, July 14 and 28, 1685. "His Majesty," says Sunderland, "commands me to signify to

you his dislike of these proceedings, and desires you to take care that no person concerned in the rebellion be

at large." It is but just to add that, in the same letter, Kirke is blamed for allowing his soldiers to live at free

441 I should be very glad if I could give credit to the popular story that Ken, immediately after the battle of

Sedgemoor, represented to the chiefs of the royal army the illegality of military executions. He would, I

doubt not, have exerted all his influence on the side of law and of mercy, if he had been present. But there is

no trustworthy evidence that he was then in the West at all. Indeed what we know about his proceedings at

this time amounts very nearly to proof of an alibi. It is certain from the Journals of the House of Lords that,

on the Thursday before the battle, he was at Westminster, it is equally certain that, on the Monday after the

battle, he was with Monmouth in the Tower; and, in that age, a journey from London to Bridgewater and

442 North's Life of Guildford, 260, 263, 273; Mackintosh's View of the Reign of James the Second, page 16,

444 Trial of Alice Lisle in the Collection of State Trials; Act of the First of William and Mary for annulling

and making void the Attainder of Alice Lisle widow; Burnet, i. 649; Caveat against the Whigs.

448 Lord Lonsdale says seven hundred; Burnet six hundred. I have followed the list which the Judges sent to

the Treasury, and which may still be seen there in the letter book of 1685. See the Bloody Assizes, Locke's

Western Rebellion; the Panegyric on Lord Jeffreys; Burnet, i. 648; Eachard, iii. 775; Oldmixon, 705.

449 Some of the prayers, exhortations, and hymns of the sufferers will be found in the Bloody Assizes.

450 Bloody Assizes; Locke's Western Rebellion; Lord Lonsdale's Memoirs; Account of the Battle of

Sedgemoor in the Hardwicke Papers. The story in the Life of James the Second, ii. 43; is not taken from the

451 Bloody Assizes; Locke's Western Rebellion, Humble Petition of Widows and Fatherless Children in the

452 As to the Hewlings, I have followed Kiffin's Memoirs, and Mr. Hewling Luson's narrative, which will be

found in the second edition of the Hughes Correspondence, vol. ii. Appendix. The accounts in Locke's

Western Rebellion and in the Panegyric on Jeffreys are full of errors. Great part of the account in the Bloody

454 Sunderland to Jeffreys, Sept. 14, 1685; Jeffreys to the King, Sept. 19, 1685, in the State Paper Office.

455 The best account of the sufferings of those rebels who were sentenced to transportation is to be found in

a very curious narrative written by John Coad, an honest, Godfearing carpenter who joined Monmouth, was

badly wounded at Philip's Norton, was tried by Jeffreys, and was sent to Jamaica. The original manuscript

456 In the Treasury records of the autumn of 1685 are several letters directing search to be made for trifles of

457 Commons' Journals, Oct. 9, Nov. 10, Dec 26, 1690; Oldmixon, 706. Panegyrie on Jeffreys.

459 Burnet, i 368; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 4, 16845, July 13, 1686. In one of the satires of that time are these

461 Locke's Western Rebellion; Toulmin's History of Taunton, edited by Savage, Letter of the Duke of

Somerset to Sir F. Warre; Letter of Sunderland to Penn, Feb. 13, 16856, from the State Paper Office, in the

"Her Majesty's Maids of Honour having acquainted me that they design to employ you and Mr. Walden in

making a composition with the Relations of the Maids of Taunton for the high Misdemeanour they have been

guilty of, I do at their request hereby let you know that His Majesty has been pleased to give their Fines to the

said Maids of Honour, and therefore recommend it to Mr. Walden and you to make the most advantageous

That the person to whom this letter was addressed was William Penn the Quaker was not doubted by Sir

James Mackintosh who first brought it to light, or, as far as I am aware, by any other person, till after the

publication of the first part of this History. It has since been confidently asserted that the letter was addressed

to a certain George Penne, who appears from an old accountbook lately discovered to have been concerned in

a negotiation for the ransom of one of Monmouth's followers, named Azariah Pinney.

If I thought that I had committed an error, I should, I hope, have the honesty to acknowledge it. But, after full

consideration, I am satisfied that Sunderland's letter was addressed to William Penn.

Much has been said about the way in which the name is spelt. The Quaker, we are told, was not Mr. Penne,

but Mr. Penn. I feel assured that no person conversant with the books and manuscripts of the seventeenth

century will attach any importance to this argument. It is notorious that a proper name was then thought to be

well spelt if the sound were preserved. To go no further than the persons, who, in Penn's time, held the Great

Seal, one of them is sometimes Hyde and sometimes Hide: another is Jefferies, Jeffries, Jeffereys, and

Jeffreys: a third is Somers, Sommers, and Summers: a fourth is Wright and Wrighte; and a fifth is Cowper

and Cooper. The Quaker's name was spelt in three ways. He, and his father the Admiral before him,

invariably, as far as I have observed, spelt it Penn; but most people spelt it Pen; and there were some who

adhered to the ancient form, Penne. For example. William the father is Penne in a letter from Disbrowe to

Thurloe, dated on the 7th of December, 1654; and William the son is Penne in a newsletter of the 22nd of

September, 1688, printed in the Ellis Correspondence. In Richard Ward's Life and Letters of Henry More,

printed in 1710, the name of the Quaker will be found spelt in all the three ways, Penn in the index, Pen in

page 197, and Penne in page 311. The name is Penne in the Commission which the Admiral carried out with

him on his expedition to the West Indies. Burchett, who became Secretary to the Admiralty soon after the

Revolution, and remained in office long after the accession of the House of Hannover, always, in his Naval

History, wrote the name Penne. Surely it cannot be thought strange that an oldfashioned spelling, in which

the Secretary of the Admiralty persisted so late as 1720, should have been used at the office of the Secretary

of State in 1686. I am quite confident that, if the letter which we are considering had been of a different kind,

if Mr. Penne had been informed that, in consequence of his earnest intercession, the King had been graciously

pleased to grant a free pardon to the Taunton girls, and if I had attempted to deprive the Quaker of the credit

of that intercession on the ground that his name was not Penne, the very persons who now complain so

bitterly that I am unjust to his memory would have complained quite as bitterly, and, I must say, with much

I think myself, therefore perfectly justified in considering the names, Penn and Penne, as the same. To which,

then, of the two persons who bore that name George or William, is it probable that the letter of the Secretary

George was evidently an adventurer of a very low class. All that we learn about him from the papers of the

Pinney family is that he was employed in the purchase of a pardon for the younger son of a dissenting

minister. The whole sum which appears to have passed through George's hands on this occasion was

sixtyfive pounds. His commission on the transaction must therefore have been small. The only other

information which we have about him, is that he, some time later, applied to the government for a favour

which was very far from being an honour. In England the Groom Porter of the Palace had a jurisdiction over

games of chance, and made some very dirty gain by issuing lottery tickets and licensing hazard tables.

George appears to have petitioned for a similar privilege in the American colonies.

William Penn was, during the reign of James the Second, the most active and powerful solicitor about the

Court. I will quote the words of his admirer Crose. "Quum autem Pennus tanta gratia plurinum apud regem

valeret, et per id perplures sibi amicos acquireret, illum omnes, etiam qui modo aliqua notitia erant conjuncti,

quoties aliquid a rege postulandum agendumve apud regem esset, adire, ambire, orare, ut eos apud regem

adjuvaret." He was overwhelmed by business of this kind, "obrutus negotiationibus curationibusque." His

house and the approaches to it were every day blocked up by crowds of persons who came to request his

good offices; "domus ac vestibula quotidie referta clientium et suppliccantium." From the Fountainhall

papers it appears that his influence was felt even in the highlands of Scotland. We learn from himself that, at

this time, he was always toiling for others, that he was a daily suitor at Whitehall, and that, if he had chosen

to sell his influence, he could, in little more than three, years, have put twenty thousand pounds into his

pocket, and obtained a hundred thousand more for the improvement of the colony of which he was proprietor.

Such was the position of these two men. Which of them, then, was the more likely to be employed in the

matter to which Sunderland's letter related? Was it George or William, an agent of the lowest or of the

highest class? The persons interested were ladies of rank and fashion, resident at the palace. where George

would hardly have been admitted into an outer room, but where William was every day in the presence

chamber and was frequently called into the closet. The greatest nobles in the kingdom were zealous and

active in the cause of their fair friends, nobles with whom William lived in habits of familiar intercourse, but

who would hardly have thought George fit company for their grooms. The sum in question was seven

thousand pounds, a sum not large when compared with the masses of wealth with which William had

constantly to deal, but more than a hundred times as large as the only ransom which is known to have passed

through the hands of George. These considerations would suffice to raise a strong presumption that

Sunderland's letter was addressed to William, and not to George: but there is a still stronger argument behind.

It is most important to observe that the person to whom this letter was addressed was not the first person

whom the Maids of Honour had requested to act for them. They applied to him because another person to

whom they had previously applied, had, after some correspondence, declined the office. From their first

application we learn with certainty what sort of person they wished to employ. If their first application had

been made to some obscure pettifogger or needy gambler, we should be warranted in believing that the Penne

to whom their second application was made was George. If, on the other hand, their first application was

made to a gentleman of the highest consideration, we can hardly be wrong in saying that the Penne to whom

their second application was made must have been William. To whom, then, was their first application made?

It was to Sir Francis Warre of Hestercombe, a Baronet and a Member of Parliament. The letters are still

extant in which the Duke of Somerset, the proud Duke, not a man very likely to have corresponded with

George Penne, pressed Sir Francis to undertake the commission. The latest of those letters is dated about

three weeks before Sunderland's letter to Mr. Penne. Somerset tells Sir Francis that the town clerk of

Bridgewater, whose name, I may remark in passing, is spelt sometimes Bird and sometimes Birde, had

offered his services, but that those services had been declined. It is clear, therefore, that the Maids of Honour

were desirous to have an agent of high station and character. And they were right. For the sum which they

demanded was so large that no ordinary jobber could safely be entrusted with the care of their interests.

As Sir Francis Warre excused himself from undertaking the negotiation, it became necessary for the Maids of

Honour and their advisers to choose somebody who might supply his place; and they chose Penne. Which of

the two Pennes, then, must have been their choice, George, a petty broker to whom a percentage on

sixtyfive pounds was an object, and whose highest ambition was to derive an infamous livelihood from

cards and dice, or William, not inferior in social position to any commoner in the kingdom? Is it possible to

believe that the ladies, who, in January, employed the Duke of Somerset to procure for them an agent in the

first rank of the English gentry, and who did not think an attorney, though occupying a respectable post in a

respectable corporation, good enough for their purpose, would, in February, have resolved to trust everything

But, it is said, Sunderland's letter is dry and distant; and he never would have written in such a style to

William Penn with whom he was on friendly terms. Can it be necessary for me to reply that the official

communications which a Minister of State makes to his dearest friends and nearest relations are as cold and

formal as those which he makes to strangers? Will it be contended that the General Wellesley to whom the

Marquis Wellesley, when Governor of India, addressed so many letters beginning with "Sir," and ending with

"I have the honour to be your obedient servant,'' cannot possibly have been his Lordship's brother Arthur?

But, it is said, Oldmixon tells a different story. According to him, a Popish lawyer named Brent, and a

subordinate jobber, named Crane, were the agents in the matter of the Taunton girls. Now it is notorious that

of all our historians Oldmixon is the least trustworthy. His most positive assertion would be of no value when

opposed to such evidence as is furnished by Sunderland's letter, But Oldmixon asserts nothing positively. Not

only does he not assert positively that Brent and Crane acted for the Maids of Honour; but he does not even

assert positively that the Maids of Honour were at all concerned. He goes no further than "It was said," and

"It was reported." It is plain, therefore, that he was very imperfectly informed. I do not think it impossible,

however, that there may have been some foundation for the rumour which he mentions. We have seen that

one busy lawyer, named Bird, volunteered to look after the interest of the Maids of Honour, and that they

were forced to tell him that they did not want his services. Other persons, and among them the two whom

Oldmixon names, may have tried to thrust themselves into so lucrative a job, and may, by pretending to

interest at Court, have succeeded in obtaining a little money from terrified families. But nothing can be more

clear than that the authorised agent of the Maids of Honour was the Mr. Penne, to whom the Secretary of

State wrote; and I firmly believe that Mr. Penne to have been William the Quaker

If it be said that it is incredible that so good a man would have been concerned in so bad an affair, I can only

answer that this affair was very far indeed from being the worst in which he was concerned.

For those reasons I leave the text, and shall leave it exactly as it originally stood. (1857.)

462 Burnet, i. 646, and Speaker Onslow's note; Clarendon to Rochester, May 8, 1686.

464 Calamy's Memoirs; Commons' Journals, December 26,1690; Sunderland to Jeffreys, September 14,

466 Many writers have asserted, without the slightest foundation, that a pardon was granted to Ferguson by

James. Some have been so absurd as to cite this imaginary pardon, which, if it were real would prove only

that Ferguson was a court spy, in proof of the magnanimity and benignity of the prince who beheaded Alice

Lisle and burned Elizabeth Gaunt. Ferguson was not only not specially pardoned, but was excluded by name

from the general pardon published in the following spring. (London Gazette, March 15, 16856.) If, as the

public suspected and as seems probable, indulgence was shown to him; it was indulgence of which James

was, not without reason, ashamed, and which was, as far as possible, kept secret. The reports which were

Sir John Reresby, who ought to have been well informed, positively affirms that Ferguson was taken three

days after the battle of Sedgemoor. But Sir John was certainly wrong as to the date, and may therefore have

been wrong as to the whole story. From the London Gazette, and from Goodenough's confession (Lansdowne

MS. 1152), it is clear that, a fortnight after the battle, Ferguson had not been caught, and was supposed to be

468 Burnet, i. 648; James to the Prince of Orange, Sept. 10, and 24, 1685; Lord Lonadale's Memoirs; London

469 Trial of Cornish in the Collection of State Trials, Sir J. Hawles's Remarks on Mr. Cornish's Trial; Burnet,

470 Trials of Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt, in the Collection of State Trials Burnet, i. 649; Bloody Assizes;

471 Bateman's Trial in the Collection of State Trials; Sir John Hawles's Remarks. It is worth while to

compare Thomas Lee's evidence on this occasion with his confession previously published by authority.

473 Neal's History of the Puritans, Calamy's Account of the ejected Ministers and the Nonconformists'

Memorial contain abundant proofs of the severity of this persecution. Howe's farewell letter to his flock will

be found in the interesting life of that great man, by Mr. Rogers. Howe complains that he could not venture to

show himself in the streets of London, and that his health had suffered from want of air and exercise. But the

most vivid picture of the distress of the Nonconformists is furnished by their deadly enemy, Lestrange, in the

The Power of James at the HeightHis Foreign PolicyHis Plans of Domestic Government; the Habeas

Corpus ActThe Standing Army Designs in favour of the Roman Catholic ReligionViolation of the

Test ActDisgrace of Halifax; general Discontent Persecution of the French HuguenotsEffect of that

Persecution in EnglandMeeting of Parliament; Speech of the King; an Opposition formed in the House of

CommonsSentiments of Foreign GovernmentsCommittee of the Commons on the King's Speech

Defeat of the GovernmentSecond Defeat of the Government; the King reprimands the CommonsCoke

committed by the Commons for Disrespect to the KingOpposition to the Government in the Lords; the

Earl of DevonshireThe Bishop of LondonViscount MordauntProrogationTrials of Lord Gerard

and of Hampden Trial of DelamereEffect of his AcquittalParties in the Court; Feeling of the

Protestant ToriesPublication of Papers found in the Strong Box of Charles II.Feeling of the respectable

Roman CatholicsCabal of violent Roman Catholics; CastlemaineJermyn; White; TyrconnelFeeling of

the Ministers of Foreign GovernmentsThe Pope and the Order of Jesus opposed to each otherThe Order

of JesusFather PetreThe King's Temper and OpinionsThe King encouraged in his Errors by

Sunderland Perfidy of JeffreysGodolphin; the Queen; Amours of the King Catharine

SedleyIntrigues of Rochester in favour of Catharine SedleyDecline of Rochester's

InfluenceCastelmaine sent to Rome; the Huguenots illtreated by JamesThe Dispensing Power

Dismission of Refractory JudgesCase of Sir Edward HalesRoman Catholics authorised to hold

Ecclesiastical Benefices;Sclater; WalkerThe Deanery of Christchurch given to a Roman Catholic

Disposal of BishopricsResolution of James to use his Ecclesiastical Supremacy against the ChurchHis

DifficultiesHe creates a new Court of High CommissionProceedings against the Bishop of

LondonDiscontent excited by the Public Display of Roman CatholicRites and VestmentsRiotsA

Camp formed at HounslowSamuel JohnsonHugh SpekeProceedings against JohnsonZeal of the

ScotlandQueensberry Perth and MelfortFavour shown to the Roman Catholic Religion in

ScotlandRiots at EdinburghAnger of the King; his Plans concerning ScotlandDeputation of Scotch

Privy Councillors sent to LondonTheir Negotiations with the King Meeting of the Scotch Estates; they

prove refractoryThey are adjourned; arbitrary System of Government in ScotlandIrelandState of the

Law on the Subject of ReligionHostility of RacesAboriginal Peasantry; aboriginal AristocracyState

of the English Colony Course which James ought to have followedHis ErrorsClarendon arrives in

Ireland as Lord LieutenantHis Mortifications; Panic among the ColonistsArrival of Tyrconnel at Dublin

as General; his Partiality and ViolenceHe is bent on the Repeal of the Act of Settlement; he returns to

EnglandThe King displeased with ClarendonRochester attacked by the Jesuitical CabalAttempts of

James to convert RochesterDismission of Rochester Dismission of Clarendon; Tyrconnel Lord

JAMES was now at the height of power and prosperity. Both in England and in Scotland he had vanquished

his enemies, and had punished them with a severity which had indeed excited their bitterest hatred, but had, at

the same time, effectually quelled their courage. The Whig party seemed extinct. The name of Whig was

never used except as a term of reproach. The Parliament was devoted to the King; and it was in his power to

keep that Parliament to the end of his reign. The Church was louder than ever in professions of attachment to

him, and had, during the late insurrection, acted up to those professions. The Judges were his tools; and if

they ceased to be so, it was in his power to remove them. The corporations were filled with his creatures. His

revenues far exceeded those of his predecessors. His pride rose high. He was not the same man who, a few

months before, in doubt whether his throne might not be overturned in a hour, had implored foreign help with

unkingly supplications, and had accepted it with tears of gratitude. Visions of dominion and glory rose before

him. He already saw himself, in imagination, the umpire of Europe, the champion of many states oppressed

by one too powerful monarchy. So early as the month of June he had assured the United Provinces that, as

soon as the affairs of England were settled, he would show the world how little he feared France. In

conformity with these assurances, he, within a month after the battle of Sedgemoor, concluded with the States

General a defensive treaty, framed in the very spirit of the Triple League. It was regarded, both at the Hague

and at Versailles, as a most significant circumstance that Halifax, who was the constant and mortal enemy of

French ascendency, and who had scarcely ever before been consulted on any grave affair since the beginning

of the reign, took the lead on this occasion, and seemed to have the royal ear. It was a circumstance not less

significant that no previous communication was made to Barillon. Both he and his master were taken by

surprise. Lewis was much troubled, and expressed great, and not unreasonable, anxiety as to the ulterior

designs of the prince who had lately been his pensioner and vassal. There were strong rumours that William

of Orange was busied in organizing a great confederacy, which was to include both branches of the House of

Austria, the United Provinces, the kingdom of Sweden, and the electorate of Brandenburg. It now seemed

that this confederacy would have at its head the King and Parliament of England.

In fact, negotiations tending to such a result were actually opened. Spain proposed to form a close alliance

with James; and he listened to the proposition with favour, though it was evident that such an alliance would

be little less than a declaration of war against France. But he postponed his final decision till after the

Parliament should have reassembled. The fate of Christendom depended on the temper in which he might

then find the Commons. If they were disposed to acquiesce in his plans of domestic government, there would

be nothing to prevent him from interfering with vigour and authority in the great dispute which must soon be

brought to an issue on the Continent. If they were refractory, he must relinquish all thought of arbitrating

between contending nations, must again implore French assistance, must again submit to French dictation,

must sink into a potentate of the third or fourth class, and must indemnify himself for the contempt with

which he would be regarded abroad by triumphs over law and public opinion at home.1

It seemed, indeed, that it would not be easy for him to demand more than the Commons were disposed to

give. Already they had abundantly proved that they were desirous to maintain his prerogatives unimpaired,

and that they were by no means extreme to mark his encroachments on the rights of the people. Indeed,

eleven twelfths of the members were either dependents of the court, or zealous Cavaliers from the country.

There were few things which such an assembly could pertinaciously refuse to the Sovereign; and, happily for

the nation, those few things were the very things on which James had set his heart.

One of his objects was to obtain a repeal of the Habeas Corpus Act, which he hated, as it was natural that a

tyrant should hate the most stringent curb that ever legislation imposed on tyranny. This feeling remained

deeply fixed in his mind to the last, and appears in the instructions which he drew up, in exile, for the

guidance of his son.2 But the Habeas Corpus Act, though passed during the ascendency of the Whigs, was

not more dear to the Whigs than to the Tories. It is indeed not wonderful that this great law should be highly

prized by all Englishmen without distinction of party: for it is a law which, not by circuitous, but by direct

operation, adds to the security and happiness of every inhabitant of the realm.3

James had yet another design, odious to the party which had set him on the throne and which had upheld him

there. He wished to form a great standing army. He had taken advantage of the late insurrection to make large

additions to the military force which his brother had left. The bodies now designated as the first six regiments

of dragoon guards, the third and fourth regiments of dragoons, and the nine regiments of infantry of the line,

from the seventh to the fifteenth inclusive, had just been raised.4 The effect of these augmentations, and of

the recall of the garrison of Tangier, was that the number of regular troops in England had, in a few months,

been increased from six thousand to near twenty thousand. No English King had ever, in time of peace, had

such a force at his command. Yet even with this force James was not content. He often repeated that no

confidence could be placed in the fidelity of the trainbands, that they sympathized with all the passions of

the class to which they belonged, that, at Sedgemoor, there had been more militia men in the rebel army than

in the royal encampment, and that, if the throne had been defended only by the array of the counties,

The revenue, large as it was when compared with that of former Kings, barely sufficed to meet this new

charge. A great part of the produce of the new taxes was absorbed by the naval expenditure. At the close of

the late reign the whole cost of the army, the Tangier regiments included, had been under three hundred

thousand pounds a year. Six hundred thousand pounds a year would not now suffice.5 If any further

augmentation were made, it would be necessary to demand a supply from Parliament; and it was not likely

that Parliament would be in a complying mood. The very name of standing army was hateful to the whole

nation, and to no part of the nation more hateful than to the Cavalier gentlemen who filled the Lower House.

In their minds a standing army was inseparably associated with the Rump, with the Protector, with the

spoliation of the Church, with the purgation of the Universities, with the abolition of the peerage, with the

murder of the King, with the sullen reign of the Saints, with cant and asceticism, with fines and

sequestrations, with the insults which Major Generals, sprung from the dregs of the people, had offered to the

oldest and most honourable families of the kingdom. There was, moreover, scarcely a baronet or a squire in

the Parliament who did not owe part of his importance in his own county to his rank in the militia. If that

national force were set aside, the gentry of England must lose much of their dignity and influence. It was

therefore probable that the King would find it more difficult to obtain funds for the support of his army than

But both the designs which have been mentioned were subordinate to one great design on which the King's

whole soul was bent, but which was abhorred by those Tory gentlemen who were ready to shed their blood

for his rights, abhorred by that Church which had never, during three generations of civil discord, wavered in

fidelity to his house, abhorred even by that army on which, in the last extremity, he must rely.

His religion was still under proscription. Many rigorous laws against Roman Catholics appeared on the

Statute Book, and had, within no long time, been rigorously executed. The Test Act excluded from civil and

military office all who dissented from the Church of England; and, by a subsequent Act, passed when the

fictions of Oates had driven the nation wild, it had been provided that no person should sit in either House of

Parliament without solemnly abjuring the doctrine of transubstantiation. That the King should wish to obtain

for the Church to which he belonged a complete toleration was natural and right; nor is there any reason to

doubt that, by a little patience, prudence, and justice, such a toleration might have been obtained.

The extreme antipathy and dread with which the English people regarded his religion was not to be ascribed

solely or chiefly to theological animosity. That salvation might be found in the Church of Rome, nay, that

some members of that Church had been among the brightest examples of Christian virtue, was admitted by all

divines of the Anglican communion and by the most illustrious Nonconformists. It is notorious that the penal

laws against Popery were strenuously defended by many who thought Arianism, Quakerism, and Judaism

more dangerous, in a spiritual point of view, than Popery, and who yet showed no disposition to enact similar

It is easy to explain why the Roman Catholic was treated with less indulgence than was shown to men who

renounced the doctrine of the Nicene fathers, and even to men who had not been admitted by baptism within

the Christian pale. There was among the English a strong conviction that the Roman Catholic, where the

interests of his religion were concerned, thought himself free from all the ordinary rules of morality, nay, that

he thought it meritorious to violate those rules if, by so doing, he could avert injury or reproach from the

Nor was this opinion destitute of a show of reason. It was impossible to deny that Roman Catholic casuists of

great eminence had written in defence of equivocation, of mental reservation, of perjury, and even of

assassination. Nor, it was said, had the speculations of this odious school of sophists been barren of results.

The massacre of Saint Bartholomew, the murder of the first William of Orange, the murder of Henry the

Third of France, the numerous conspiracies which had been formed against the life of Elizabeth, and, above

all, the gunpowder treason, were constantly cited as instances of the close connection between vicious theory

and vicious practice. It was alleged that every one of these crimes had been prompted or applauded by Roman

Catholic divines. The letters which Everard Digby wrote in lemon juice from the Tower to his wife had

recently been published, and were often quoted. He was a scholar and a gentleman, upright in all ordinary

dealings, and strongly impressed with a sense of duty to God. Yet he had been deeply concerned in the plot

for blowing up King, Lords, and Commons, and had, on the brink of eternity, declared that it was

incomprehensible to him how any Roman Catholic should think such a design sinful. The inference popularly

drawn from these things was that, however fair the general character of a Papist might be, there was no

excess of fraud or cruelty of which he was not capable when the safety and honour of his Church were at

The extraordinary success of the fables of Oates is to be chiefly ascribed to the prevalence of this opinion. It

was to no purpose that the accused Roman Catholic appealed to the integrity, humanity, and loyalty which he

had shown through the whole course of his life. It was to no purpose that he called crowds of respectable

witnesses, of his own persuasion, to contradict monstrous romances invented by the most infamous of

mankind. It was to no purpose that, with the halter round his neck, he invoked on himself the whole

vengeance of the God before whom, in a few moments, he must appear, if he had been guilty of meditating

any ill to his prince or to his Protestant fellow countrymen. The evidence which he produced in his favour

proved only how little Popish oaths were worth. His very virtues raised a presumption of his guilt. That he

had before him death and judgment in immediate prospect only made it more likely that he would deny what,

without injury to the holiest of causes, he could not confess. Among the unhappy men who were convicted of

the murder of Godfrey was one Protestant of no high character, Henry Berry. It is a remarkable and well

attested circumstance, that Berry's last words did more to shake the credit of the plot than the dying

declarations of all the pious and honourable Roman Catholics who underwent the same fate.6

It was not only by the ignorant populace, it was not only by zealots in whom fanaticism had extinguished all

reason and charity, that the Roman Catholic was regarded as a man the very tenderness of whose conscience

might make him a false witness, an incendiary, or a murderer, as a man who, where his Church was

concerned, shrank from no atrocity and could be bound by no oath. If there were in that age two persons

inclined by their judgment and by their temper to toleration, those persons were Tillotson and Locke. Yet

Tillotson, whose indulgence for various kinds of schismatics and heretics brought on him the reproach of

heterodoxy, told the House of Commons from the pulpit that it was their duty to make effectual provision

against the propagation of a religion more mischievous than irreligion itself, of a religion which demanded

from its followers services directly opposed to the first principles of morality. His temper, he truly said, was

prone to lenity; but his duty to he community forced him to be, in this one instance, severe. He declared that,

in his judgment, Pagans who had never heard the name of Christ, and who were guided only by the light of

nature, were more trustworthy members of civil society than men who had been formed in the schools of the

Popish casuists.7 Locke, in the celebrated treatise in which he laboured to show that even the grossest forms

of idolatry ought not to be prohibited under penal sanctions, contended that the Church which taught men not

It is evident that, in such circumstances, the greatest service which an English Roman Catholic could render

to his brethren in the faith was to convince the public that, whatever some rash men might, in times of violent

excitement, have written or done, his Church did not hold that any end could sanctify means inconsistent with

morality. And this great service it was in the power of James to render. He was King. He was more powerful

than any English King had been within the memory of the oldest man. It depended on him whether the

reproach which lay on his religion should be taken away or should be made permanent.

Had he conformed to the laws, had be fulfilled his promises, had he abstained from employing any

unrighteous methods for the propagation of his own theological tenets, had he suspended the operation of the

penal statutes by a large exercise of his unquestionable prerogative of mercy, but, at the same time, carefully

abstained from violating the civil or ecclesiastical constitution of the realm, the feeling of his people must

have undergone a rapid change. So conspicuous an example of good faith punctiliously observed by a Popish

prince towards a Protestant nation would have quieted the public apprehensions. Men who saw that a Roman

Catholic might safely be suffered to direct the whole executive administration, to command the army and

navy, to convoke and dissolve the legislature, to appoint the Bishops and Deans of the Church of England,

would soon have ceased to fear that any great evil would arise from allowing a Roman Catholic to be captain

of a company or alderman of a borough. It is probable that, in a few years, the sect so long detested by the

nation would, with general applause, have been admitted to office and to Parliament.

If, on the other hand, James should attempt to promote the interest of his Church by violating the fundamental

laws of his kingdom and the solemn promises which he had repeatedly made in the face of the whole world, it

could hardly be doubted that the charges which it had been the fashion to bring against the Roman Catholic

religion would be considered by all Protestants as fully established. For, if ever a Roman Catholic could be

expected to keep faith with heretics, James might have been expected to keep faith with the Anglican clergy.

To them he owed his crown. But for their strenuous opposition to the Exclusion Bill he would have been a

banished man. He had repeatedly and emphatically acknowledged his obligation to them, and had vowed to

maintain them in all their legal rights. If he could not be bound by ties like these, it must be evident that,

where his superstition was concerned, no tie of gratitude or of honour could bind him. To trust him would

thenceforth be impossible; and, if his people could not trust him, what member of his Church could they

trust? He was not supposed to be constitutionally or habitually treacherous. To his blunt manner, and to his

want of consideration for the feelings of others, he owed a much higher reputation for sincerity than he at all

deserved. His eulogists affected to call him James the Just. If then it should appear that, in turning Papist, he

had also turned dissembler and promisebreaker, what conclusion was likely to be drawn by a nation already

disposed to believe that Popery had a pernicious influence on the moral character?

On these grounds many of the most eminent Roman Catholics of that age, and among them the Supreme

Pontiff, were of opinion that the interest of their Church in our island would be most effectually promoted by

a moderate and constitutional policy. But such reasoning had no effect on the slow understanding and

imperious temper of James. In his eagerness to remove the disabilities under which the professors of his

religion lay, he took a course which convinced the most enlightened and tolerant Protestants of his time that

those disabilities were essential to the safety of the state. To his policy the English Roman Catholics owed

three years of lawless and insolent triumph, and a hundred and forty years of subjection and degradation.

Many members of his Church held commissions in the newly raised regiments. This breach of the law for a

time passed uncensured: for men were not disposed to note every irregularity which was committed by a

King suddenly called upon to defend his crown and his life against rebels. But the danger was now over. The

insurgents had been vanquished and punished. Their unsuccessful attempt had strengthened the government

which they had hoped to overthrow. Yet still James continued to grant commissions to unqualified persons;

and speedily it was announced that he was determined to be no longer bound by the Test Act, that he hoped

to induce the Parliament to repeal that Act, but that, if the Parliament proved refractory, he would not the less

As soon as this was known, a deep murmur, the forerunner of a tempest, gave him warning that the spirit

before which his grandfather, his father, and his brother had been compelled to recede, though dormant, was

not extinct. Opposition appeared first in the cabinet. Halifax did not attempt to conceal his disgust and alarm.

At the Council board he courageously gave utterance to those feelings which, as it soon appeared, pervaded

the whole nation. None of his colleagues seconded him; and the subject dropped. He was summoned to the

royal closet, and had two long conferences with his master. James tried the effect of compliments and

blandishments, but to no purpose. Halifax positively refused to promise that he would give his vote in the

House of Lords for the repeal either of the Test Act or of the Habeas Corpus Act.

Some of those who were about the King advised him not, on the eve of the meeting of Parliament, to drive

the most eloquent and accomplished statesman of the age into opposition. They represented that Halifax

loved the dignity and emoluments of office, that, while he continued to be Lord President, it would be hardly

possible for him to put forth his whole strength against the government, and that to dismiss him from his high

post was to emancipate him from all restraint. The King was peremptory. Halifax was informed that his

services were no longer needed; and his name was struck out of the CouncilBook.9

His dismission produced a great sensation not only in England, but also at Paris, at Vienna, and at the Hague:

for it was well known, that he had always laboured to counteract the influence exercised by the court of

Versailles on English affairs. Lewis expressed great pleasure at the news. The ministers of the United

Provinces and of the House of Austria, on the other hand, extolled the wisdom and virtue of the discarded

statesman in a manner which gave great offence at Whitehall. James was particularly angry with the secretary

of the imperial legation, who did not scruple to say that the eminent service which Halifax had performed in

It soon became clear that Halifax would have many followers. A portion of the Tories, with their old leader,

Danby, at their head, began to hold Whiggish language. Even the prelates hinted that there was a point at

which the loyalty due to the prince must yield to higher considerations. The discontent of the chiefs of the

army was still more extraordinary and still more formidable. Already began to appear the first symptoms of

that feeling which, three years later, impelled so many officers of high rank to desert the royal standard. Men

who had never before had a scruple had on a sudden become strangely scrupulous. Churchill gently

whispered that the King was going too far. Kirke, just returned from his western butchery, swore to stand by

the Protestant religion. Even if he abjured the faith in which he had been bred, he would never, he said,

become a Papist. He was already bespoken. If ever he did apostatize, he was bound by a solemn promise to

While the nation, agitated by many strong emotions, looked anxiously forward to the reassembling of the

Houses, tidings, which increased the prevailing excitement, arrived from France.

The long and heroic struggle which the Huguenots had maintained against the French government had been

brought to a final close by the ability and vigour of Richelieu. That great statesman vanquished them; but he

confirmed to them the liberty of conscience which had been bestowed on them by the edict of Nantes. They

were suffered, under some restraints of no galling kind, to worship God according to their own ritual, and to

write in defence of their own doctrine. They were admissible to political and military employment; nor did

their heresy, during a considerable time, practically impede their rise in the world. Some of them commanded

the armies of the state; and others presided over important departments of the civil administration. At length a

change took place. Lewis the Fourteenth had, from an early age, regarded the Calvinists with an aversion at

once religious and political. As a zealous Roman Catholic, he detested their theological dogmas. As a prince

fond of arbitrary power, he detested those republican theories which were intermingled with the Genevese

divinity. He gradually retrenched all the privileges which the schismatics enjoyed. He interfered with the

education of Protestant children, confiscated property bequeathed to Protestant consistories, and on frivolous

pretexts shut up Protestant churches. The Protestant ministers were harassed by the tax gatherers. The

Protestant magistrates were deprived of the honour of nobility. The Protestant officers of the royal household

were informed that His Majesty dispensed with their services. Orders were given that no Protestant should be

admitted into the legal profession. The oppressed sect showed some faint signs of that spirit which in the

preceding century had bidden defiance to the whole power of the House of Valois. Massacres and executions

followed. Dragoons were quartered in the towns where the heretics were numerous, and in the country seats

of the heretic gentry; and the cruelty and licentiousness of these rude missionaries was sanctioned or leniently

censured by the government. Still, however, the edict of Nantes, though practically violated in its most

essential provisions, had not been formally rescinded; and the King repeatedly declared in solemn public acts

that he was resolved to maintain it. But the bigots and flatterers who had his ear gave him advice which he

was but too willing to take. They represented to him that his rigorous policy had been eminently successful,

that little or no resistance had been made to his will, that thousands of Huguenots had already been converted,

that, if he would take the one decisive step which yet remained, those who were still obstinate would speedily

submit, France would be purged from the taint of heresy, and her prince would have earned a heavenly crown

not less glorious than that of Saint Lewis. These arguments prevailed. The final blow was struck. The edict of

Nantes was revoked; and a crowd of decrees against the sectaries appeared in rapid succession. Boys and

girls were torn from their parents and sent to be educated in convents. All Calvinistic ministers were

commanded either to abjure their religion or to quit their country within a fortnight. The other professors of

the reformed faith were forbidden to leave the kingdom; and, in order to prevent them from making their

escape, the outports and frontiers were strictly guarded. It was thought that the flocks, thus separated from the

evil shepherds, would soon return to the true fold. But in spite of all the vigilance of the military police there

was a vast emigration. It was calculated that, in a few months, fifty thousand families quitted France for ever.

Nor were the refugees such as a country can well spare. They were generally persons of intelligent minds, of

industrious habits, and of austere morals. In the list are to be found names eminent in war, in science, in

literature, and in art. Some of the exiles offered their swords to William of Orange, and distinguished

themselves by the fury with which they fought against their persecutor. Others avenged themselves with

weapons still more formidable, and, by means of the presses of Holland, England, and Germany, inflamed,

during thirty years, the public mind of Europe against the French government. A more peaceful class erected

silk manufactories in the eastern suburb of London. One detachment of emigrants taught the Saxons to make

the stuffs and hats of which France had hitherto enjoyed a monopoly. Another planted the first vines in the

In ordinary circumstances the courts of Spain and of Rome would have eagerly applauded a prince who had

made vigorous war on heresy. But such was the hatred inspired by the injustice and haughtiness of Lewis

that, when he became a persecutor, the courts of Spain and Rome took the side of religious liberty, and loudly

reprobated the cruelty of turning a savage and licentious soldiery loose on an unoffending people.13 One cry

of grief and rage rose from the whole of Protestant Europe. The tidings of the revocation of the edict of

Nantes reached England about a week before the day to which the Parliament stood adjourned. It was clear

then that the spirit of Gardiner and of Alva was still the spirit of the Roman Catholic Church. Lewis was not

inferior to James in generosity and humanity, and was certainly far superior to James in all the abilities and

acquirements of a statesman. Lewis had, like James, repeatedly promised to respect the privileges of his

Protestant subjects. Yet Lewis was now avowedly a persecutor of the reformed religion. What reason was

there, then, to doubt that James waited only for an opportunity to follow the example? He was already

forming, in defiance of the law, a military force officered to a great extent by Roman Catholics. Was there

anything unreasonable in the apprehension that this force might be employed to do what the French dragoons

James was almost as much disturbed as his subjects by the conduct of the court of Versailles. In truth, that

court had acted as if it had meant to embarrass and annoy him. He was about to ask from a Protestant

legislature a full toleration for Roman Catholics. Nothing, therefore, could be more unwelcome to him than

the intelligence that, in a neighbouring country, toleration had just been withdrawn by a Roman Catholic

government from Protestants. His vexation was increased by a speech which the Bishop of Valence, in the

name of the Gallican clergy, addressed at this time to Lewis, the Fourteenth. The pious Sovereign of England,

the orator said, looked to the most Christian King for support against a heretical nation. It was remarked that

the members of the House of Commons showed particular anxiety to procure copies of this harangue, and

that it was read by all Englishmen with indignation and alarm.14 James was desirous to counteract the

impression which these things had made, and was also at that moment by no means unwilling to let all

Europe see that he was not the slave of France. He therefore declared publicly that he disapproved of the

manner in which the Huguenots had been treated, granted to the exiles some relief from his privy purse, and,

by letters under his great seal, invited his subjects to imitate his liberality. In a very few months it became

clear that all this compassion was feigned for the purpose of cajoling his Parliament, that he regarded the

refugees with mortal hatred, and that he regretted nothing so much as his own inability to do what Lewis had

On the ninth of November the Houses met. The Commons were summoned to the bar of the Lords; and the

King spoke from the throne. His speech had been composed by himself. He congratulated his loving subjects

on the suppression of the rebellion in the West: but he added that the speed with which that rebellion had

risen to a formidable height, and the length of time during which it had continued to rage, must convince all

men how little dependence could be placed on the militia. He had, therefore, made additions to the regular

army. The charge of that army would henceforth be more than double of what it had been; and he trusted that

the Commons would grant him the means of defraying the increased expense. He then informed his hearers

that he had employed some officers who had not taken the test; but he knew them to be fit for public trust. He

feared that artful men might avail themselves of this irregularity to disturb the harmony which existed

between himself and his Parliament. But he would speak out. He was determined not to part with servants on

This explicit declaration that he had broken the laws which were regarded by the nation as the chief

safeguards of the established religion, and that he was resolved to persist in breaking those laws, was not

likely to soothe the excited feelings of his subjects. The Lords, seldom disposed to take the lead in opposition

to a government, consented to vote him formal thanks for what he had said. But the Commons were in a less

complying mood. When they had returned to their own House there was a long silence; and the faces of many

of the most respectable members expressed deep concern. At length Middleton rose and moved the House to

go instantly into committee on the King's speech: but Sir Edmund Jennings, a zealous Tory from Yorkshire,

who was supposed to speak the sentiments of Danby, protested against this course, and demanded time for

consideration. Sir Thomas Clarges, maternal uncle of the Duke of Albemarle, and long distinguished in

Parliament as a man of business and a viligant steward of the public money, took the same side. The feeling

of the House could not be mistaken. Sir John Ernley, Chancellor of the Exchequer, insisted that the delay

should not exceed fortyeight hours; but he was overruled; and it was resolved that the discussion should be

The interval was well employed by those who took the lead against the court. They had indeed no light work

to perform. In three days a country party was to be organized. The difficulty of the task is in our age not

easily to be appreciated; for in our age all the nation may be said to assist at every deliberation of the Lords

and Commons. What is said by the leaders of the ministry and of the opposition after midnight is read by the

whole metropolis at dawn, by the inhabitants of Northumberland and Cornwall in the afternoon, and in

Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland on the morrow. In our age, therefore, the stages of legislation, the rules

of debate, the tactics of faction, the opinions, temper, and style of every active member of either House, are

familiar to hundreds of thousands. Every man who now enters Parliament possesses what, in the seventeenth

century, would have been called a great stock of parliamentary knowledge. Such knowledge was then to be

obtained only by actual parliamentary service. The difference between an old and a new member was as great

as the difference between a veteran soldier and a recruit just taken from the plough; and James's Parliament

contained a most unusual proportion of new members, who had brought from their country seats to

Westminster no political knowledge and many violent prejudices. These gentlemen hated the Papists, but

hated the Whigs not less intensely, and regarded the King with superstitious veneration. To form an

opposition out of such materials was a feat which required the most skilful and delicate management. Some

men of great weight, however, undertook the work, and performed it with success. Several experienced Whig

politicians, who had not seats in that Parliament, gave useful advice and information. On the day preceding

that which had been fixed for the debate, many meetings were held at which the leaders instructed the

The foreign embassies were all in a ferment. It was well understood that a few days would now decide the

great question, whether the King of England was or was not to be the vassal of the King of France. The

ministers of the House of Austria were most anxious that James should give satisfaction to his Parliament.

Innocent had sent to London two persons charged to inculcate moderation, both by admonition and by

example. One of them was John Leyburn, an English Dominican, who had been secretary to Cardinal

Howard, and who, with some learning and a rich vein of natural humour, was the most cautious, dexterous,

and taciturn of men. He had recently been consecrated Bishop of Adrumetum, and named Vicar Apostolic in

Great Britain. Ferdinand, Count of Adda, an Italian of no eminent abilities, but of mild temper and courtly

manners, had been appointed Nuncio. These functionaries were eagerly welcomed by James. No Roman

Catholic Bishop had exercised spiritual functions in the island during more than half a century. No Nuncio

had been received here during the hundred and twentyseven years which had elapsed since the death of

Mary. Leyburn was lodged in Whitehall, and received a pension of a thousand pounds a year. Adda did not

yet assume a public character. He passed for a foreigner of rank whom curiosity had brought to London,

appeared daily at court, and was treated with high consideration. Both the Papal emissaries did their best to

diminish, as much as possible, the odium inseparable from the offices which they filled, and to restrain the

rash zeal of James. The Nuncio, in particular, declared that nothing could be more injurious to the interests of

Barillon was active on the other side. The instructions which he received from Versailles on this occasion

well deserve to be studied; for they furnish a key to the policy systematically pursued by his master towards

England during the twenty years which preceded our revolution. The advices from Madrid, Lewis wrote,

were alarming. Strong hopes were entertained there that James would ally himself closely with the House of

Austria, as soon as he should be assured that his Parliament would give him no trouble. In these

circumstances, it was evidently the interest of France that the Parliament should prove refractory. Barillon

was therefore directed to act, with all possible precautions against detection, the part of a makebate. At court

he was to omit no opportunity of stimulating the religious zeal and the kingly pride of James; but at the same

time it might be desirable to have some secret communication with the malecontents. Such communication

would indeed be hazardous and would require the utmost adroitness; yet it might perhaps be in the power of

the Ambassador, without committing himself or his government, to animate the zeal of the opposition for the

laws and liberties of England, and to let it be understood that those laws and liberties were not regarded by

Lewis, when he dictated these instructions, did not foresee how speedily and how completely his uneasiness

would be removed by the obstinacy and stupidity of James. On the twelfth of November the House of

Commons, resolved itself into a committee on the royal speech. The Solicitor General Heneage Finch, was in

the chair. The debate was conducted by the chiefs of the new country party with rare tact and address. No

expression indicating disrespect to the Sovereign or sympathy for rebels was suffered to escape. The western

insurrection was always mentioned with abhorrence. Nothing was said of the barbarities of Kirke and

Jeffreys. It was admitted that the heavy expenditure which had been occasioned by the late troubles justified

the King in asking some further supply: but strong objections were made to the augmentation of the army and

The subject of the Test Act the courtiers appear to have carefully avoided. They harangued, however, with

some force on the great superiority of a regular army to a militia. One of them tauntingly asked whether the

defence of the kingdom was to be entrusted to the beefeaters. Another said that he should be glad to know

how the Devonshire trainbands, who had fled in confusion before Monmouth's scythemen, would have faced

the household troops of Lewis. But these arguments had little effect on Cavaliers who still remembered with

bitterness the stern rule of the Protector. The general feeling was forcibly expressed by the first of the Tory

country gentlemen of England, Edward Seymour. He admitted that the militia was not in a satisfactory state,

but maintained that it might be remodelled. The remodelling might require money; but, for his own part, he

would rather give a million to keep up a force from which he had nothing to fear, than half a million to keep

up a force of which he must ever be afraid. Let the trainbands be disciplined; let the navy be strengthened;

and the country would be secure. A standing army was at best a mere drain on the public resources. The

soldier was withdrawn from all useful labour. He produced nothing: he consumed the fruits of the industry of

other men; and he domineered over those by whom he was supported. But the nation was now threatened, not

only with a standing army, but with a Popish standing army, with a standing army officered by men who

might be very amiable and honourable, but who were on principle enemies to the constitution of the realm.

Sir William Twisden, member for the county of Kent, spoke on the same side with great keenness and loud

applause. Sir Richard Temple, one of the few Whigs who had a seat in that Parliament, dexterously

accommodating his speech to the temper of his audience, reminded the House that a standing army had been

found, by experience, to be as dangerous to the just authority of princes as to the liberty of nations. Sir John

Maynard, the most learned lawyer of his time, took part in the debate. He was now more than eighty years

old, and could well remember the political contests of the reign of James the First. He had sate in the Long

Parliament, and had taken part with the Roundheads, but had always been for lenient counsels, and had

laboured to bring about a general reconciliation. His abilities, which age had not impaired, and his

professional knowledge, which had long overawed all Westminster Hall, commanded the ear of the House of

Commons. He, too, declared himself against the augmentation of the regular forces.

After much debate, it was resolved that a supply should be granted to the crown; but it was also resolved that

a bill should be brought in for making the militia more efficient. This last resolution was tantamount to a

declaration against the standing army. The King was greatly displeased; and it was whispered that, if things

On the morrow the contention was renewed. The language of the country party was perceptibly bolder and

sharper than on the preceding day. That paragraph of the King's speech which related to supply preceded the

paragraph which related to the test. On this ground Middleton proposed that the paragraph relating to supply

should be first considered in committee. The opposition moved the previous question. They contended that

the reasonable and constitutional practice was to grant no money till grievances had been redressed, and that

there would be an end of this practice if the House thought itself bound servilely to follow the order in which

The division was taken on the question whether Middletons motion should be put. The Noes were ordered by

the Speaker to go forth into the lobby. They resented this much, and complained loudly of his servility and

partiality: for they conceived that, according to the intricate and subtle rule which was then in force, and

which, in our time, was superseded by a more rational and convenient practice, they were entitled to keep

their seats; and it was held by all the Parliamentary tacticians of that age that the party which stayed in the

House had an advantage over the party which went out; for the accommodation on the benches was then so

deficient that no person who had been fortunate enough to get a good seat was willing to lose it. Nevertheless,

to the dismay of the ministers, many persons on whose votes the court had absolutely depended were seen

moving towards the door. Among them was Charles Fox, Paymaster of the Forces, and son of Sir Stephen

Fox, Clerk of the Green Cloth. The Paymaster had been induced by his friends to absent himself during part

of the discussion. But his anxiety had become insupportable. He come down to the Speaker's chamber, heard

part of the debate, withdrew, and, after hesitating for an hour or two between conscience and five thousand

pounds a year, took a manly resolution and rushed into the House just in time to vote. Two officers of the

army, Colonel John Darcy, son of the Lord Conyers, and Captain James Kendall, withdrew to the lobby.

Middleton went down to the bar and expostulated warmly with them. He particularly addressed himself to

Kendall, a needy retainer of the court, who had, in obedience to the royal mandate, been sent to Parliament by

a packed corporation in Cornwall, and who had recently obtained a grant of a hundred head of rebels

sentenced to transportation. "Sir," said Middleton, "have not you a troop of horse in His Majesty's service?"

"Yes, my Lord," answered Kendall: "but my elder brother is just dead, and has left me seven hundred a year."

When the tellers had done their office it appeared that the Ayes were one hundred and eightytwo, and the

Noes one and eighty three. In that House of Commons which had been brought together by the

unscrupulous use of chicanery, of corruption, and of violence, in that House of Commons of which James had

said that more than eleven twelfths of the members were such as he would himself have nominated, the court

In consequence of this vote the expressions which the King had used respecting the test were, on the

thirteenth of November, taken into consideration. It was resolved, after much discussion, that an address

should be presented to him, reminding him that he could not legally continue to employ officers who refused

to qualify, and pressing him to give such directions as might quiet the apprehensions and jealousies of his

A motion was then made that the Lords should be requested to join in the address. Whether this motion was

honestly made by the opposition, in the hope that the concurrence of the peers would add weight to the

remonstrance, or artfully made by the courtiers, in the hope that a breach between the Houses might be the

The House then resolved itself into a committee, for the purpose of considering the amount of supply to be

granted. The King wanted fourteen hundred thousand pounds: but the ministers saw that it would be vain to

ask for so large a sum. The Chancellor of the Exchequer mentioned twelve hundred thousand pounds. The

chiefs of the opposition replied that to vote for such a grant would be to vote for the permanence of the

present military establishment: they were disposed to give only so much as might suffice to keep the regular

troops on foot till the militia could be remodelled and they therefore proposed four hundred thousand pounds.

The courtiers exclaimed against this motion as unworthy of the House and disrespectful to the King: but they

were manfully encountered. One of the western members, John Windham, who sate for Salisbury, especially

distinguished himself. He had always, he said, looked with dread and aversion on standing armies; and recent

experience had strengthened those feelings. He then ventured to touch on a theme which had hitherto been

studiously avoided. He described the desolation of the western counties. The people, he said, were weary of

the oppression of the troops, weary of free quarters, of depredations, of still fouler crimes which the law

called felonies, but for which, when perpetrated by this class of felons, no redress could be obtained. The

King's servants had indeed told the House that excellent rules had been laid down for the government of the

army; but none could venture to say that these rules had been observed. What, then, was the inevitable

inference? Did not the contrast between the paternal injunctions issued from the throne and the insupportable

tyranny of the soldiers prove that the army was even now too strong for the prince as well as for the people?

The Commons might surely, with perfect consistency, while they reposed entire confidence in the intentions

of His Majesty, refuse to make any addition to a force which it was clear that His Majesty could not manage.

The motion that the sum to be granted should not exceed four hundred thousand pounds, was lost by twelve

votes. This victory of the ministers was little better than a defeat. The leaders of the country party, nothing

disheartened, retreated a little, made another stand, and proposed the sum of seven hundred thousand pounds.

The committee divided again, and the courtiers were beaten by two hundred and twelve votes to one hundred

On the following day the Commons went in procession to Whitehall with their address on the subject of the

test. The King received them on his throne. The address was drawn up in respectful and affectionate

language; for the great majority of those who had voted for it were zealously and even superstitiously loyal,

and had readily agreed to insert some complimentary phrases, and to omit every word which the courtiers

thought offensive. The answer of James was a cold and sullen reprimand. He declared himself greatly

displeased and amazed that the Commons should have profited so little by the admonition which he had

given them. "But," said he, "however you may proceed on your part, I will be very steady in all the promises

The Commons reassembled in their chamber, discontented, yet somewhat overawed. To most of them the

King was still an object of filial reverence. Three more years filled with injuries, and with insults more

galling than injuries, were scarcely sufficient to dissolve the ties which bound the Cavalier gentry to the

The Speaker repeated the substance of the King's reply. There was, for some time, a solemn stillness; then the

order of the day was read in regular course; and the House went into committee on the bill for remodelling

In a few hours, however, the spirit of the opposition revived. When, at the close of the day, the Speaker

resumed the chair, Wharton, the boldest and most active of the Whigs, proposed that a time should be

appointed for taking His Majesty's answer into consideration. John Coke, member for Derby, though a noted

Tory, seconded Wharton. "I hope," he said, "that we are all Englishmen, and that we shall not be frightened

It was manfully, but not wisely, spoken. The whole House was in a tempest. "Take down his words," "To the

bar," "To the Tower," resounded from every side. Those who were most lenient proposed that the offender

should be reprimanded: but the ministers vehemently insisted that he should be sent to prison. The House

might pardon, they said, offences committed against itself, but had no right to pardon an insult offered to the

crown. Coke was sent to the Tower. The indiscretion of one man had deranged the whole system of tactics

which had been so ably concerted by the chiefs of the opposition. It was in vain that, at that moment, Edward

Seymour attempted to rally his followers, exhorted them to fix a day for discussing the King's answer, and

expressed his confidence that the discussion would be conducted with the respect due from subjects to the

sovereign. The members were so much cowed by the royal displeasure, and so much incensed by the

The House adjourned; and the ministers flattered themselves that the spirit of opposition was quelled. But on

the morrow, the nineteenth of November, new and alarming symptoms appeared. The time had arrived for

taking into consideration the petitions which had been presented from all parts of England against the late

elections. When, on the first meeting of the Parliament, Seymour had complained of the force and fraud by

which the government had prevented the sense of constituent bodies from being fairly taken, he had found no

seconder. But many who had then flinched from his side had subsequently taken heart, and, with Sir John

Lowther, member for Cumberland, at their head, had, before the recess, suggested that there ought to be an

enquiry into the abuses which had so much excited the public mind. The House was now in a much more

angry temper; and many voices were boldly raised in menace and accusation. The ministers were told that the

nation expected, and should have, signal redress. Meanwhile it was dexterously intimated that the best

atonement which a gentleman who had been brought into the House by irregular means could make to the

public was to use his ill acquired power in defence of the religion and liberties of his country. No member

who, in that crisis, did his duty had anything to fear. It might be necessary to unseat him; but the whole

On the same day it became clear that the spirit of opposition had spread from the Commons to the Lords, and

even to the episcopal bench. William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire, took the lead in the Upper House; and

he was well qualified to do so. In wealth and influence he was second to none of the English nobles; and the

general voice designated him as the finest gentleman of his time. His magnificence, his taste, his talents, his

classical learning, his high spirit, the grace and urbanity of his manners, were admitted by his enemies. His

eulogists, unhappily, could not pretend that his morals had escaped untainted from the widespread contagion

of that age. Though an enemy of Popery and of arbitrary power, he had been averse to extreme courses, had

been willing, when the Exclusion Bill was lost, to agree to a compromise, and had never been concerned in

the illegal and imprudent schemes which had brought discredit on the Whig party. But, though regretting part

of the conduct of his friends, he had not, on that account, failed to perform zealously the most arduous and

perilous duties of friendship. He had stood near Russell at the bar, had parted from him on the sad morning of

the execution with close embraces and with many bitter tears, nay, had offered to manage an escape at the

hazard of his own life.28 This great nobleman now proposed that a day should be fixed for considering the

royal speech. It was contended, on the other side, that the Lords, by voting thanks for the speech, had

precluded themselves from complaining of it. But this objection was treated with contempt by Halifax. "Such

thanks," he said with the sarcastic pleasantry in which he excelled, "imply no approbation. We are thankful

whenever our gracious Sovereign deigns to speak to us. Especially thankful are we when, as on the present

occasion, he speaks out, and gives us fair warning of what we are to suffer."29 Doctor Henry Compton,

Bishop of London, spoke strongly for the motion. Though not gifted with eminent abilities, nor deeply versed

in the learning of his profession, he was always heard by the House with respect; for he was one of the few

clergymen who could, in that age, boast of noble blood. His own loyalty, and the loyalty of his family, had

been signally proved. His father, the second Earl of Northampton, had fought bravely for King Charles the

First, and, surrounded by the parliamentary soldiers, had fallen, sword in hand, refusing to give or take

quarter. The Bishop himself, before he was ordained, had borne arms in the Guards; and, though he generally

did his best to preserve the gravity and sobriety befitting a prelate, some flashes of his military spirit would,

to the last, occasionally break forth. He had been entrusted with the religious education of the two Princesses,

and had acquitted himself of that important duty in a manner which had satisfied all good Protestants, and

had secured to him considerable influence over the minds of his pupils, especially of the Lady Anne.30 He

now declared that he was empowered to speak the sense of his brethren, and that, in their opinion and in his

own, the whole civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm was in danger.

One of the most remarkable speeches of that day was made by a young man, whose eccentric career was

destined to amaze Europe. This was Charles Mordaunt, Viscount Mordaunt, widely renowned, many years

later, as Earl of Peterborough. Already he had given abundant proofs of his courage, of his capacity, and of

that strange unsoundness of mind which made his courage and capacity almost useless to his country.

Already he had distinguished himself as a wit and a scholar, as a soldier and a sailor. He had even set his

heart on rivalling Bourdaloue and Bossuet. Though an avowed freethinker, he had sate up all night at sea to

compose sermons, and had with great difficulty been prevented from edifying the crew of a man of war with

his pious oratory.31 He now addressed the House of Peers, for the first time, with characteristic eloquence,

sprightliness, and audacity. He blamed the Commons for not having taken a bolder line. "They have been

afraid," he said, "to speak out. They have talked of apprehensions and jealousies. What have apprehension

and jealousy to do here? Apprehension and jealousy are the feelings with which we regard future and

uncertain evils. The evil which we are considering is neither future nor uncertain. A standing army exists. It is

officered by Papists. We have no foreign enemy. There is no rebellion in the land. For what, then, is this force

maintained, except for the purpose of subverting our laws and establishing that arbitrary power which is so

Jeffreys spoke against the motion in the coarse and savage style of which he was a master; but he soon found

that it was not quite so easy to browbeat the proud and powerful barons of England in their own hall, as to

intimidate advocates whose bread depended on his favour or prisoners whose necks were at his mercy. A man

whose life has been passed in attacking and domineering, whatever may be his talents and courage, generally

makes a mean figure when he is vigorously assailed, for, being unaccustomed to stand on the defensive, he

becomes confused; and the knowledge that all those whom he has insulted are enjoying his confusion

confuses him still more. Jeffreys was now, for the first time since he had become a great man, encountered on

equal terms by adversaries who did not fear him. To the general delight, he passed at once from the extreme

of insolence to the extreme of meanness, and could not refrain from weeping with rage and vexation.33

Nothing indeed was wanting to his humiliation; for the House was crowded by about a hundred peers, a

larger number than had voted even on the great day of the Exclusion Bill. The King, too, was present. His

brother had been in the habit of attending the sittings of the Lords for amusement, and used often to say that a

debate was as entertaining as a comedy. James came, not to be diverted, but in the hope that his presence

might impose some restraint on the discussion. He was disappointed. The sense of the House was so strongly

manifested that, after a closing speech, of great keenness, from Halifax, the courtiers did not venture to

divide. An early day was fixed for taking the royal speech into consideration; and it was ordered that every

On the following morning the King came down, in his robes, to the House of Lords. The Usher of the Black

Rod summoned the Commons to the bar; and the Chancellor announced that the Parliament was prorogued to

the tenth of February.35 The members who had voted against the court were dismissed from the public

service. Charles Fox quitted the Pay Office. The Bishop of London ceased to be Dean of the Chapel Royal,

The effect of the prorogation was to put an end to a legal proceeding of the highest importance. Thomas

Grey, Earl of Stamford, sprung from one of the most illustrious houses of England, had been recently arrested

and committed close prisoner to the Tower on a charge of high treason. He was accused of having been

concerned in the Rye House Plot. A true bill had been found against him by the grand jury of the City of

London, and had been removed into the House of Lords, the only court before which a temporal peer can,

during a session of Parliament, be arraigned for any offence higher than a misdemeanour. The first of

December had been fixed for the trial; and orders had been given that Westminster Hall should be fitted up

with seats and hangings. In consequence of the prorogation, the hearing of the cause was postponed for an

Three other Whigs of great eminence were in confinement when the session closed, Charles Gerard, Lord

Gerard of Brandon, eldest son of the Earl of Macclesfield, John Hampden, grandson of the renowned leader

of the Long Parliament, and Henry Booth, Lord Delamere. Gerard and Hampden were accused of having

taken part in the Rye House Plot: Delamere of having abetted the Western insurrection.

It was not the intention of the government to put either Gerard or Hampden to death. Grey had stipulated for

their lives before he consented to become a witness against them.37 But there was a still stronger reason for

sparing them. They were heirs to large property: but their fathers were still living. The court could therefore

get little in the way of forfeiture, and might get much in the way of ransom. Gerard was tried, and, from the

very scanty accounts which have come down to us, seems to have defended himself with great spirit and

force. He boasted of the exertions and sacrifices made by his family in the cause of Charles the First, and

proved Rumsey, the witness who had murdered Russell by telling one story and Cornish by telling another, to

be utterly undeserving of credit. The jury, with some hesitation, found a verdict of Guilty. After long

imprisonment Gerard was suffered to redeem himself.38 Hampden had inherited the political opinions and a

large share of the abilities of his grandfather, but had degenerated from the uprightness and the courage by

which his grandfather had been distinguished. It appears that the prisoner was, with cruel cunning, long kept

in an agony of suspense, in order that his family might be induced to pay largely for mercy. His spirit sank

under the terrors of death. When brought to the bar of the Old Bailey he not only pleaded guilty, but

disgraced the illustrious name which he bore by abject submissions and entreaties. He protested that he had

not been privy to the design of assassination; but he owned that he had meditated rebellion, professed deep

repentance for his offence, implored the intercession of the Judges, and vowed that, if the royal clemency

were extended to him, his whole life should be passed in evincing his gratitude for such goodness. The Whigs

were furious at his pusillanimity, and loudly declared him to be far more deserving of blame than Grey, who,

even in turning King's evidence, had preserved a certain decorum. Hampden's life was spared; but his family

paid several thousand pounds to the Chancellor. Some courtiers of less note succeeded in extorting smaller

sums. The unhappy man had spirit enough to feel keenly the degradation to which he had stooped. He

survived the day of his ignominy several years. He lived to see his party triumphant, to be once more an

important member of it, to rise high in the state, and to make his persecutors tremble in their turn. But his

prosperity was embittered by one insupportable recollection. He never regained his cheerfulness, and at

That Delamere, if he had needed the royal mercy, would have found it is not very probable. It is certain that

every advantage which the letter of the law gave to the government was used against him without scruple or

shame. He was in a different situation from that in which Stamford stood. The indictment against Stamford

had been removed into the House of Lords during the session of Parliament, and therefore could not be

prosecuted till the Parliament should reassemble. All the peers would then have voices, and would be judges

as well of law as of fact. But the bill against Delamere was not found till after the prorogation.40 He was

therefore within the jurisdiction of the Court of the Lord High Steward. This court, to which belongs, during

a recess of Parliament, the cognizance of treasons and felonies committed by temporal peers, was then so

constituted that no prisoner charged with a political offence could expect an impartial trial. The King named a

Lord High Steward. The Lord High Steward named, at his discretion, certain peers to sit on their accused

brother. The number to be summoned was indefinite. No challenge was allowed. A simple majority, provided

that it consisted of twelve, was sufficient to convict. The High Steward was sole judge of the law; and the

Lords Triers formed merely a jury to pronounce on the question of fact. Jeffreys was appointed High

Steward. He selected thirty Triers; and the selection was characteristic of the man and of the times. All the

thirty were in politics vehemently opposed to the prisoner. Fifteen of them were colonels of regiments, and

might be removed from their lucrative commands at the pleasure of the King. Among the remaining fifteen

were the Lord Treasurer, the principal Secretary of State, the Steward of the Household, the Comptroller of

the Household, the Captain of the Band of Gentlemen Pensioners, the Queen's Chamberlain, and other

persons who were bound by strong ties of interest to the court. Nevertheless, Delamere had some great

advantages over the humbler culprits who had been arraigned at the Old Bailey. There the jurymen, violent

partisans, taken for a single day by courtly Sheriffs from the mass of society and speedily sent back to mingle

with that mass, were under no restraint of shame, and being little accustomed to weigh evidence, followed

without scruple the directions of the bench. But in the High Steward's Court every Trier was a man of some

experience in grave affairs. Every Trier filled a considerable space in the public eye. Every Trier, beginning

from the lowest, had to rise separately and to give in his verdict, on his honour, before a great concourse.

That verdict, accompanied with his name, would go to every part of the world, and would live in history.

Moreover, though the selected nobles were all Tories, and almost all placemen, many of them had begun to

look with uneasiness on the King's proceedings, and to doubt whether the case of Delamere might not soon

Jeffreys conducted himself, as was his wont, insolently and unjustly. He had indeed an old grudge to

stimulate his zeal. He had been Chief Justice of Chester when Delamere, then Mr. Booth, represented that

county in Parliament. Booth had bitterly complained to the Commons that the dearest interests of his

constituents were intrusted to a drunken jackpudding.41 The revengeful judge was now not ashamed to resort

to artifices which even in an advocate would have been culpable. He reminded the Lords Triers, in very

significant language, that Delamere had, in Parliament, objected to the bill for attainting Monmouth, a fact

which was not, and could not be, in evidence. But it was not in the power of Jeffreys to overawe a synod of

peers as he had been in the habit of overawing common juries. The evidence for the crown would probably

have been thought amply sufficient on the Western Circuit or at the City Sessions, but could not for a

moment impose on such men as Rochester, Godolphin, and Churchill; nor were they, with all their faults,

depraved enough to condemn a fellow creature to death against the plainest rules of justice. Grey, Wade, and

Goodenough were produced, but could only repeat what they had heard said by Monmouth and by Wildman's

emissaries. The principal witness for the prosecution, a miscreant named Saxton, who had been concerned in

the rebellion, and was now labouring to earn his pardon by swearing against all who were obnoxious to the

government, who proved by overwhelming evidence to have told a series of falsehoods. All the Triers, from

Churchill who, as junior baron, spoke first, up to the Treasurer, pronounced, on their honour, that Delamere

was not guilty. The gravity and pomp of the whole proceeding made a deep impression even on the Nuncio,

accustomed as he was to the ceremonies of Rome, ceremonies which, in solemnity and splendour, exceed all

that the rest of the world can show.42 The King, who was present, and was unable to complain of a decision

evidently just, went into a rage with Saxton, and vowed that the wretch should first be pilloried before

Westminster Hall for perjury, and then sent down to the West to be hanged, drawn, and quartered for

The public joy at the acquittal of Delamere was great. The reign of terror was over. The innocent began to

breathe freely, and false accusers to tremble. One letter written on this occasion is scarcely to be read without

tears. The widow of Russell, in her retirement, learned the good news with mingled feelings. "I do bless

God," she wrote, "that he has caused some stop to be put to the shedding of blood in this poor land. Yet when

I should rejoice with them that do rejoice, I seek a corner to weep in. I find I am capable of no more gladness;

but every new circumstance, the very comparing my night of sorrow after such a day, with theirs of joy, does,

from a reflection of one kind or another, rack my uneasy mind. Though I am far from wishing the close of

theirs like mine, yet I cannot refrain giving some time to lament mine was not like theirs."44

And now the tide was on the turn. The death of Stafford, witnessed with signs of tenderness and remorse by

the populace to whose rage he was sacrificed, marks the close of one proscription. The acquittal of Delamere

marks the close of another. The crimes which had disgraced the stormy tribuneship of Shaftesbury had been

fearfully expiated. The blood of innocent Papists had been avenged more than tenfold by the blood of zealous

Protestants. Another great reaction had commenced. Factions were fast taking new forms. Old allies were

separating. Old enemies were uniting. Discontent was spreading fast through all the ranks of the party lately

dominant. A hope, still indeed faint and indefinite, of victory and revenge, animated the party which had

lately seemed to be extinct. Amidst such circumstances the eventful and troubled year 1685 terminated, and

The prorogation had relieved the King from the gentle remonstrances of the Houses: but he had still to listen

to remonstrances, similar in effect, though uttered in a tone even more cautious and subdued. Some men who

had hitherto served him but too strenuously for their own fame and for the public welfare had begun to feel

painful misgivings, and occasionally ventured to hint a small part of what they felt.

During many years the zeal of the English Tory for hereditary monarchy and his zeal for the established

religion had grown up together and had strengthened each other. It had never occurred to him that the two

sentiments, which seemed inseparable and even identical, might one day be found to be not only distinct but

incompatible. From the commencement of the strife between the Stuarts and the Commons, the cause of the

crown and the cause of the hierarchy had, to all appearance, been one. Charles the First was regarded by the

Church as her martyr. If Charles the Second had plotted against her, he had plotted in secret. In public he had

ever professed himself her grateful and devoted son, had knelt at her altars, and, in spite of his loose morals,

had succeeded in persuading the great body of her adherents that he felt a sincere preference for her.

Whatever conflicts, therefore, the honest Cavalier might have had to maintain against Whigs and Roundheads

he had at least been hitherto undisturbed by conflict in his own mind. He had seen the path of duty plain

before him. Through good and evil he was to be true to Church and King. But, if those two august and

venerable powers, which had hitherto seemed to be so closely connected that those who were true to one

could not be false to the other, should be divided by a deadly enmity, what course was the orthodox Royalist

to take? What situation could be more trying than that in which he would be placed, distracted between two

duties equally sacred, between two affections equally ardent? How was he to give to Caesar all that was

Caesar's, and yet to withhold from God no part of what was God's? None who felt thus could have watched,

without deep concern and gloomy forebodings, the dispute between the King and the Parliament on the

subject of the test. If James could even now be induced to reconsider his course, to let the Houses reassemble,

Such were the sentiments of the King's two kinsmen, the Earls of Clarendon and Rochester. The power and

favour of these noblemen seemed to be great indeed. The younger brother was Lord Treasurer and prime

minister; and the elder, after holding the Privy Seal during some months, had been appointed Lord Lieutenant

of Ireland. The venerable Ormond took the same side. Middleton and Preston, who, as managers of the House

of Commons, had recently learned by proof how dear the established religion was to the loyal gentry of

At the very beginning of the new year these statesmen and the great party which they represented had to

suffer a cruel mortification. That the late King had been at heart a Roman Catholic had been, during some

months, suspected and whispered, but not formally announced. The disclosure, indeed, could not be made

without great scandal. Charles had, times without number, declared himself a Protestant, and had been in the

habit of receiving the Eucharist from the Bishops of the Established Church. Those Protestants who had stood

by him in his difficulties, and who still cherished an affectionate remembrance of him, must be filled with

shame and indignation by learning that his whole life had been a lie, that, while he professed to belong to

their communion, he had really regarded them as heretics, and that the demagogues who had represented him

as a concealed Papist had been the only people who had formed a correct judgment of his character. Even

Lewis understood enough of the state of public feeling in England to be aware that the divulging of the truth

might do harm, and had, of his own accord, promised to keep the conversion of Charles strictly secret.45

James, while his power was still new, had thought that on this point it was advisable to be cautious, and had

not ventured to inter his brother with the rites of the Church of Rome. For a time, therefore, every man was at

liberty to believe what he wished. The Papists claimed the deceased prince as their proselyte. The Whigs

execrated him as a hypocrite and a renegade. The Tories regarded the report of his apostasy as a calumny

which Papists and Whigs had, for very different reasons, a common interest in circulating. James now took a

step which greatly disconcerted the whole Anglican party. Two papers, in which were set forth very concisely

the arguments ordinarily used by Roman Catholics in controversy with Protestants, had been found in

Charles's strong box, and appeared to be in his handwriting. These papers James showed triumphantly to

several Protestants, and declared that, to his knowledge, his brother had lived and died a Roman Catholic.46

One of the persons to whom the manuscripts were exhibited was Archbishop Sancroft. He read them with

much emotion, and remained silent. Such silence was only the natural effect of a struggle between respect

and vexation. But James supposed that the Primate was struck dumb by the irresistible force of reason, and

eagerly challenged his Grace to produce, with the help of the whole episcopal bench, a satisfactory reply.

"Let me have a solid answer, and in a gentlemanlike style; and it may have the effect which you so much

desire of bringing me over to your Church." The Archbishop mildly said that, in his opinion, such an answer

might, without much difficulty, be written, but declined the controversy on the plea of reverence for the

memory of his deceased master. This plea the King considered as the subterfuge of a vanquished disputant.47

Had he been well acquainted with the polemical literature of the preceding century and a half, he would have

known that the documents to which he attached so much value might have been composed by any lad of

fifteen in the college of Douay, and contained nothing which had not, in the opinion of all Protestant divines,

been ten thousand times refuted. In his ignorant exultation he ordered these tracts to be printed with the

utmost pomp of typography, and appended to them a declaration attested by his sign manual, and certifying

that the originals were in his brother's own hand. James himself distributed the whole edition among his

courtiers and among the people of humbler rank who crowded round his coach. He gave one copy to a young

woman of mean condition whom he supposed to be of his own religious persuasion, and assured her that she

would be greatly edified and comforted by the perusal. In requital of his kindness she delivered to him, a few

days later, an epistle adjuring him to come out of the mystical Babylon and to dash from his lips the cup of

These things gave great uneasiness to Tory churchmen. Nor were the most respectable Roman Catholic

noblemen much better pleased. They might indeed have been excused if passion had, at this conjuncture,

made them deaf to the voice of prudence and justice: for they had suffered much. Protestant jealousy had

degraded them from the rank to which they were born, had closed the doors of the Parliament House on the

heirs of barons who had signed the Charter, had pronounced the command of a company of foot too high a

trust for the descendants of the generals who had conquered at Flodden and Saint Quentin. There was

scarcely one eminent peer attached to the old faith whose honour, whose estate, whose life had not been in

jeopardy, who had not passed months in the Tower, who had not often anticipated for himself the fate of

Stafford. Men who had been so long and cruelly oppressed might have been pardoned if they had eagerly

seized the first opportunity of obtaining at once greatness and revenge. But neither fanaticism nor ambition,

neither resentment for past wrongs nor the intoxication produced by sudden good fortune, could prevent the

most eminent Roman Catholics from perceiving that the prosperity which they at length enjoyed was only

temporary, and, unless wisely used, might be fatal to them. They had been taught, by a cruel experience, that

the antipathy of the nation to their religion was not a fancy which would yield to the mandate of a prince, but

a profound sentiment, the growth of five generations, diffused through all ranks and parties, and intertwined

not less closely with the principles of the Tory than with the principles of the Whig. It was indeed in the

power of the King, by the exercise of his prerogative of mercy, to suspend the operation of the penal laws. It

might hereafter be in his power, by discreet management, to obtain from the Parliament a repeal of the acts

which imposed civil disabilities on those who professed his religion. But, if he attempted to subdue the

Protestant feeling of England by rude means, it was easy to see that the violent compression of so powerful

and elastic a spring would be followed by as violent a recoil. The Roman Catholic peers, by prematurely

attempting to force their way into the Privy Council and the House of Lords, might lose their mansions and

their ample estates, and might end their lives as traitors on Tower Hill, or as beggars at the porches of Italian

Such was the feeling of William Herbert, Earl of Powis, who was generally regarded as the chief of the

Roman Catholic aristocracy, and who, according to Oates, was to have been prime minister if the Popish plot

had succeeded. John Lord Bellasyse took the same view of the state of affairs. In his youth he had fought

gallantly for Charles the First, had been rewarded after the Restoration with high honours and commands, and

had quitted them when the Test Act was passed. With these distinguished leaders all the noblest and most

opulent members of their church concurred, except Lord Arundell of Wardour, an old man fast sinking into

But there was at the court a small knot of Roman Catholics whose hearts had been ulcerated by old injuries,

whose heads had been turned by recent elevation, who were impatient to climb to the highest honours of the

state, and who, having little to lose, were not troubled by thoughts of the day of reckoning. One of these was

Roger Palmer, Earl of Castelmaine in Ireland, and husband of the Duchess of Cleveland. His title had

notoriously been purchased by his wife's dishonour and his own. His fortune was small. His temper, naturally

ungentle, had been exasperated by his domestic vexations, by the public reproaches, and by what he had

undergone in the days of the Popish plot. He had been long a prisoner, and had at length been tried for his

life. Happily for him, he was not put to the bar till the first burst of popular rage had spent itself, and till the

credit of the false witnesses had been blown upon. He had therefore escaped, though very narrowly.49 With

Castelmaine was allied one of the most favoured of his wife's hundred lovers, Henry Jermyn, whom James

had lately created a peer by the title of Lord Dover. Jermyn had been distinguished more than twenty years

before by his vagrant amours and his desperate duels. He was now ruined by play, and was eager to retrieve

his fallen fortunes by means of lucrative posts from which the laws excluded him.50 To the same party

belonged an intriguing pushing Irishman named White, who had been much abroad, who had served the

House of Austria as something between an envoy and a spy, and who had been rewarded for his services with

Soon after the prorogation this reckless faction was strengthened by an important reinforcement. Richard

Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, the fiercest and most uncompromising of all those who hated the liberties and

Talbot was descended from an old Norman family which had been long settled in Leinster, which had there

sunk into degeneracy, which had adopted the manners of the Celts, which had, like the Celts, adhered to the

old religion, and which had taken part with the Celts in the rebellion of 1641. In his youth he had been one of

the most noted sharpers and bullies of London. He had been introduced to Charles and James when they were

exiles in Flanders, as a man fit and ready for the infamous service of assassinating the Protector. Soon after

the Restoration, Talbot attempted to obtain the favour of the royal family by a service more infamous still. A

plea was wanted which might justify the Duke of York in breaking that promise of marriage by which he had

obtained from Anne Hyde the last proof of female affection. Such a plea Talbot, in concert with some of his

dissolute companions, undertook to furnish. They agreed to describe the poor young lady as a creature

without virtue, shame, or delicacy, and made up long romances about tender interviews and stolen favours.

Talbot in particular related how, in one of his secret visits to her, he had unluckily overturned the

Chancellor's inkstand upon a pile of papers, and how cleverly she had averted a discovery by laying the

blame of the accident on her monkey. These stories, which, if they had been true, would never have passed

the lips of any but the basest of mankind, were pure inventions. Talbot was soon forced to own that they were

so; and he owned it without a blush. The injured lady became Duchess of York. Had her husband been a man

really upright and honourable, he would have driven from his presence with indignation and contempt the

wretches who had slandered her. But one of the peculiarities of James's character was that no act, however

wicked and shameful, which had been prompted by a desire to gain his favour, ever seemed to him deserving

of disapprobation. Talbot continued to frequent the court, appeared daily with brazen front before the princess

whose ruin he had plotted, and was installed into the lucrative post of chief pandar to her husband. In no long

time Whitehall was thrown into confusion by the news that Dick Talbot, as he was commonly called, had laid

a plan to murder the Duke of Ormond. The bravo was sent to the Tower: but in a few days he was again

swaggering about the galleries, and carrying billets backward and forward between his patron and the ugliest

maids of honour. It was in vain that old and discreet counsellors implored the royal brothers not to

countenance this bad man, who had nothing to recommend him except his fine person and his taste in dress.

Talbot was not only welcome at the palace when the bottle or the dicebox was going round, but was heard

with attention on matters of business. He affected the character of an Irish patriot, and pleaded, with great

audacity, and sometimes with success, the cause of his countrymen whose estates had been confiscated. He

took care, however, to be well paid for his services, and succeeded in acquiring, partly by the sale of his

influence, partly by gambling, and partly by pimping, an estate of three thousand pounds a year. For under an

outward show of levity, profusion, improvidence, and eccentric impudence, he was in truth one of the most

mercenary and crafty of mankind. He was now no longer young, and was expiating by severe sufferings the

dissoluteness of his youth: but age and disease had made no essential change in his character and manners.

He still, whenever he opened his mouth, ranted, cursed and swore with such frantic violence that superficial

observers set him down for the wildest of libertines. The multitude was unable to conceive that a man who,

even when sober, was more furious and boastful than others when they were drunk, and who seemed utterly

incapable of disguising any emotion or keeping any secret, could really be a coldhearted, farsighted,

scheming sycophant. Yet such a man was Talbot. In truth his hypocrisy was of a far higher and rarer sort than

the hypocrisy which had flourished in Barebone's Parliament. For the consummate hypocrite is not he who

conceals vice behind the semblance of virtue, but he who makes the vice which he has no objection to show a

stalking horse to cover darker and more profitable vice which it is for his interest to hide.

Talbot, raised by James to the earldom of Tyrconnel, had commanded the troops in Ireland during the nine

months which elapsed between the death of Charles and the commencement of the viceroyalty of Clarendon.

When the new Lord Lieutenant was about to leave London for Dublin, the General was summoned from

Dublin to London. Dick Talbot had long been well known on the road which he had now to travel. Between

Chester and the capital there was not an inn where he had not been in a brawl. Wherever he came he pressed

horses in defiance of law, swore at the cooks and postilions, and almost raised mobs by his insolent

rodomontades. The Reformation, he told the people, had ruined everything. But fine times were coming. The

Catholics would soon be uppermost. The heretics should pay for all. Raving and blaspheming incessantly,

like a demoniac, he came to the court.52 As soon as he was there, he allied himself closely with Castelmaine,

Dover, and Albeville. These men called with one voice for war on the constitution of the Church and the

State. They told their master that he owed it to his religion and to the dignity of his crown to stand firm

against the outcry of heretical demagogues, and to let the Parliament see from the first that he would be

master in spite of opposition, and that the only effect of opposition would be to make him a hard master.

Each of the two parties into which the court was divided had zealous foreign allies. The ministers of Spain, of

the Empire, and of the States General were now as anxious to support Rochester as they had formerly been to

support Halifax. All the influence of Barillon was employed on the other side; and Barillon was assisted by

another French agent, inferior to him in station, but far superior in abilities, Bonrepaux. Barillon was not

without parts, and possessed in large measure the graces and accomplishments which then distinguished the

French gentry. But his capacity was scarcely equal to what his great place required. He had become sluggish

and self indulgent, liked the pleasures of society and of the table better than business, and on great

emergencies generally waited for admonitions and even for reprimands from Versailles before he showed

much activity.53 Bonrepaux had raised himself from obscurity by the intelligence and industry which he had

exhibited as a clerk in the department of the marine, and was esteemed an adept in the mystery of mercantile

politics. At the close of the year 1685, he was sent to London, charged with several special commissions of

high importance. He was to lay the ground for a treaty of commerce; he was to ascertain and report the state

of the English fleets and dockyards; and he was to make some overtures to the Huguenot refugees, who, it

was supposed, had been so effectually tamed by penury and exile, that they would thankfully accept almost

any terms of reconciliation. The new Envoy's origin was plebeian, his stature was dwarfish, his countenance

was ludicrously ugly, and his accent was that of his native Gascony: but his strong sense, his keen

penetration, and his lively wit eminently qualified him for his post. In spite of every disadvantage of birth and

figure he was soon known as a most pleasing companion and as a most skilful diplomatist. He contrived,

while flirting with the Duchess of Mazarin, discussing literary questions with Waller and Saint Evremond,

and corresponding with La Fontaine, to acquire a considerable knowledge of English politics. His skill in

maritime affairs recommended him to James, who had, during many years, paid close attention to the

business of the Admiralty, and understood that business as well as he was capable of understanding anything.

They conversed every day long and freely about the state of the shipping and the dockyards. The result of

this intimacy was, as might have been expected, that the keen and vigilant Frenchman conceived a great

contempt for the King's abilities and character. The world, he said, had much overrated His Britannic

The two envoys of Lewis, though pursuing one object, very judiciously took different paths. They made a

partition of the court. Bonrepaux lived chiefly with Rochester and Rochester's adherents. Barillon's

connections were chiefly with the opposite faction. The consequence was that they sometimes saw the same

event in different points of view. The best account now extant of the contest which at this time agitated

As each of the two parties at the Court of James had the support of foreign princes, so each had also the

support of an ecclesiastical authority to which the King paid great deference. The Supreme Pontiff was for

legal and moderate courses; and his sentiments were expressed by the Nuncio and by the Vicar Apostolic.55

On the other side was a body of which the weight balanced even the weight of the Papacy, the mighty Order

That at this conjuncture these two great spiritual powers, once, as it seemed, inseparably allied, should have

been opposed to each other, is a most important and remarkable circumstance. During a period of little less

than a thousand years the regular clergy had been the chief support of the Holy See. By that See they had

been protected from episcopal interference; and the protection which they had received had been amply

repaid. But for their exertions it is probable that the Bishop of Rome would have been merely the honorary

president of a vast aristocracy of prelates. It was by the aid of the Benedictines that Gregory the Seventh was

enabled to contend at once against the Franconian Caesars and against the secular priesthood. It was by the

aid of the Dominicans and Franciscans that Innocent the Third crushed the Albigensian sectaries. In the

sixteenth century the Pontificate exposed to new dangers more formidable than had ever before threatened it,

was saved by a new religious order, which was animated by intense enthusiasm and organized with exquisite

skill. When the Jesuits came to the rescue of the Papacy, they found it in extreme peril: but from that moment

the tide of battle turned. Protestantism, which had, during a whole generation, carried all before it, was

stopped in its progress, and rapidly beaten back from the foot of the Alps to the shores of the Baltic. Before

the Order had existed a hundred years, it had filled the whole world with memorials of great things done and

suffered for the faith. No religious community could produce a list of men so variously distinguished: none

had extended its operations over so vast a space; yet in none had there ever been such perfect unity of feeling

and action. There was no region of the globe, no walk of speculative or of active life, in which Jesuits were

not to be found. They guided the counsels of Kings. They deciphered Latin inscriptions. They observed the

motions of Jupiter's satellites. They published whole libraries, controversy, casuistry, history, treatises on

optics, Alcaic odes, editions of the fathers, madrigals, catechisms, and lampoons. The liberal education of

youth passed almost entirely into their hands, and was conducted by them with conspicuous ability. They

appear to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried without risk of

intellectual emancipation. Enmity itself was compelled to own that, in the art of managing and forming the

tender mind, they had no equals. Meanwhile they assiduously and successfully cultivated the eloquence of the

pulpit. With still greater assiduity and still greater success they applied themselves to the ministry of the

confessional. Throughout Catholic Europe the secrets of every government and of almost every family of

note were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country to another under innumerable disguises,

as gay Cavaliers, as simple rustics, as Puritan preachers. They wandered to countries which neither

mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever impelled any stranger to explore. They were to be found in

the garb of Mandarins, superintending the observatory at Pekin. They were to be found, spade in hand,

teaching the rudiments of agriculture to the savages of Paraguay. Yet, whatever might be their residence,

whatever might be their employment, their spirit was the same, entire devotion to the common cause, implicit

obedience to the central authority. None of them had chosen his dwelling place or his vocation for himself.

Whether the Jesuit should live under the arctic circle or under the equator, whether he should pass his life in

arranging gems and collating manuscripts at the Vatican or in persuading naked barbarians in the southern

hemisphere not to eat each other, were matters which he left with profound submission to the decision of

others. If he was wanted at Lima, he was on the Atlantic in the next fleet. If he was wanted at Bagdad, he was

toiling through the desert with the next caravan. If his ministry was needed in some country where his life

was more insecure than that of a wolf, where it was a crime to harbour him, where the heads and quarters of

his brethren, fixed in the public places, showed him what he had to expect, he went without remonstrance or

hesitation to his doom. Nor is this heroic spirit yet extinct. When, in our own time, a new and terrible

pestilence passed round the globe, when, in some great cities, fear had dissolved all the ties which hold

society together, when the secular clergy had deserted their flocks, when medical succour was not to he

purchased by gold, when the strongest natural affections had yielded to the love of life, even then the Jesuit

was found by the pallet which bishop and curate, physician and nurse, father and mother, had deserted,

bending over infected lips to catch the faint accents of confession, and holding up to the last, before the

But with the admirable energy, disinterestedness, and self devotion which were characteristic of the Society,

great vices were mingled. It was alleged, and not without foundation, that the ardent public spirit which made

the Jesuit regardless of his ease, of his liberty, and of his life, made him also regardless of truth and of mercy;

that no means which could promote the interest of his religion seemed to him unlawful, and that by the

interest of his religion he too often meant the interest of his Society. It was alleged that, in the most atrocious

plots recorded in history, his agency could be distinctly traced; that, constant only in attachment to the

fraternity to which he belonged, he was in some countries the most dangerous enemy of freedom, and in

others the most dangerous enemy of order. The mighty victories which he boasted that he had achieved in the

cause of the Church were, in the judgment of many illustrious members of that Church, rather apparent than

real. He had indeed laboured with a wonderful show of success to reduce the world under her laws; but he

had done so by relaxing her laws to suit the temper of the world. Instead of toiling to elevate human nature to

the noble standard fixed by divine precept and example, he had lowered the standard till it was beneath the

average level of human nature. He gloried in multitudes of converts who had been baptized in the remote

regions of the East: but it was reported that from some of those converts the facts on which the whole

theology of the Gospel depends had been cunningly concealed, and that others were permitted to avoid

persecution by bowing down before the images of false gods, while internally repeating Paters and Ayes. Nor

was it only in heathen countries that such arts were said to be practised. It was not strange that people of alt

ranks, and especially of the highest ranks, crowded to the confessionals in the Jesuit temples; for from those

confessionals none went discontented away. There the priest was all things to all men. He showed just so

much rigour as might not drive those who knelt at his spiritual tribunal to the Dominican or the Franciscan

church. If he had to deal with a mind truly devout, he spoke in the saintly tones of the primitive fathers, but

with that very large part of mankind who have religion enough to make them uneasy when they do wrong,

and not religion enough to keep them from doing wrong, he followed a very different system. Since he could

not reclaim them from guilt, it was his business to save them from remorse. He had at his command an

immense dispensary of anodynes for wounded consciences. In the books of casuistry which had been written

by his brethren, and printed with the approbation of his superiors, were to be found doctrines consolatory to

transgressors of every class. There the bankrupt was taught how he might, without sin, secrete his goods from

his creditors. The servant was taught how he might, without sin, run off with his master's plate. The pandar

was assured that a Christian man might innocently earn his living by carrying letters and messages between

married women and their gallants. The high spirited and punctilious gentlemen of France were gratified by a

decision in favour of duelling. The Italians, accustomed to darker and baser modes of vengeance, were glad

to learn that they might, without any crime, shoot at their enemies from behind hedges. To deceit was given a

license sufficient to destroy the whole value of human contracts and of human testimony. In truth, if society

continued to hold together, if life and property enjoyed any security, it was because common sense and

common humanity restrained men from doing what the Society of Jesus assured them that they might with a

So strangely were good and evil intermixed in the character of these celebrated brethren; and the intermixture

was the secret of their gigantic power. That power could never have belonged to mere hypocrites. It could

never have belonged to rigid moralists. It was to be attained only by men sincerely enthusiastic in the pursuit

From the first the Jesuits had been bound by a peculiar allegiance to the Pope. Their mission had been not

less to quell all mutiny within the Church than to repel the hostility of her avowed enemies. Their doctrine

was in the highest degree what has been called on our side of the Alps Ultramontane, and differed almost as

much from the doctrine of Bossuet as from that of Luther. They condemned the Gallican liberties, the claim

of oecumenical councils to control the Holy See, and the claim of Bishops to an independent commission

from heaven. Lainez, in the name of the whole fraternity, proclaimed at Trent, amidst the applause of the

creatures of Pius the Fourth, and the murmurs of French and Spanish prelates, that the government of the

faithful had been committed by Christ to the Pope alone, that in the Pope alone all sacerdotal authority was

concentrated, and that through the Pope alone priests and bishops derived whatever divine authority they

possessed.56 During many years the union between the Supreme Pontiffs and the Order had continued

unbroken. Had that union been still unbroken when James the Second ascended the English throne, had the

influence of the Jesuits as well as the influence of the Pope been exerted in favour of a moderate and

constitutional policy, it is probable that the great revolution which in a short time changed the whole state of

European affairs would never have taken place. But, even before the middle of the seventeenth century, the

Society, proud of its services and confident in its strength, had become impatient of the yoke. A generation of

Jesuits sprang up, who looked for protection and guidance rather to the court of France than to the court of

Rome; and this disposition was not a little strengthened when Innocent the Eleventh was raised to the papal

The Jesuits were, at that time, engaged in a war to the death against an enemy whom they had at first

disdained, but whom they had at length been forced to regard with respect and fear. Just when their prosperity

was at the height, they were braved by a handful of opponents, who had indeed no influence with the rulers of

this world, but who were strong in religious faith and intellectual energy. Then followed a long, a strange, a

glorious conflict of genius against power. The Jesuit called cabinets, tribunals, universities to his aid; and

they responded to the call. Port Royal appealed, not in vain, to the hearts and to the understandings of

millions. The dictators of Christendom found themselves, on a sudden, in the position of culprits. They were

arraigned on the charge of having systematically debased the standard of evangelical morality, for the

purpose of increasing their own influence; and the charge was enforced in a manner which at once arrested

the attention of the whole world: for the chief accuser was Blaise Pascal. His intellectual powers were such as

have rarely been bestowed on any of the children of men; and the vehemence of the zeal which animated him

was but too well proved by the cruel penances and vigils under which his macerated frame sank into an early

grave. His spirit was the spirit of Saint Bernard: but the delicacy of his wit, the purity, the energy, the

simplicity of his rhetoric, had never been equalled, except by the great masters of Attic eloquence. All Europe

read and admired, laughed and wept. The Jesuits attempted to reply: but their feeble answers were received

by the public with shouts of mockery. They wanted, it is true, no talent or accomplishment into which men

can be drilled by elaborate discipline; but such discipline, though it may bring out the powers of ordinary

minds, has a tendency to suffocate, rather than to develop, original genius. It was universally acknowledged

that, in the literary contest, the Jansenists were completely victorious. To the Jesuits nothing was left but to

oppress the sect which they could not confute. Lewis the Fourteenth was now their chief support. His

conscience had, from boyhood, been in their keeping; and he had learned from them to abhor Jansenism quite

as much as he abhorred Protestantism, and very much more than he abhorred Atheism. Innocent the Eleventh,

on the other hand, leaned to the Jansenist opinions. The consequence was, that the Society found itself in a

situation never contemplated by its founder. The Jesuits were estranged from the Supreme Pontiff; and they

were closely allied with a prince who proclaimed himself the champion of the Gallican liberties and the

enemy of Ultramontane pretensions. Thus the Order became in England an instrument of the designs of

Lewis, and laboured, with a success which the Roman Catholics afterwards long and bitterly deplored, to

widen the breach between the King and the Parliament, to thwart the Nuncio, to undermine the power of the

Thus on one side were the Hydes and the whole body of Tory churchmen, Powis and all the most respectable

noblemen and gentlemen of the King's own faith, the States General, the House of Austria, and the Pope. On

the other side were a few Roman Catholic adventurers, of broken fortune and tainted reputation, backed by

The chief representative of the Jesuits at Whitehall was an English brother of the Order, who had, during

some time, acted as Viceprovincial, who had been long regarded by James with peculiar favour, and who had

lately been made Clerk of the Closet. This man, named Edward Petre, was descended from an honourable

family. His manners were courtly: his speech was flowing and plausible; but he was weak and vain, covetous

and ambitious. Of all the evil counsellors who had access to the royal ear, he bore, perhaps, the largest part in

The obstinate and imperious nature of the King gave great advantages to those who advised him to be firm, to

yield nothing, and to make himself feared. One state maxim had taken possession of his small understanding,

and was not to be dislodged by reason. To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of

arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are

accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people

ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and

conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections.57 "I will make no concession," he often

repeated; "my father made concessions, and he was beheaded."58 If it were true that concession had been

fatal to Charles the First, a man of sense would have known that a single experiment is not sufficient to

establish a general rule even in sciences much less complicated than the science of government; that, since

the beginning of the world, no two political experiments were ever made of which all the conditions were

exactly alike; and that the only way to learn civil prudence from history is to examine and compare an

immense number of cases. But, if the single instance on which the King relied proved anything, it proved that

he was in the wrong. There can be little doubt that, if Charles had frankly made to the Short Parliament,

which met in the spring of 1640, but one half of the concessions which he made, a few months later, to the

Long Parliament, he would have lived and died a powerful King. On the other hand, there can be no doubt

whatever that, if he had refused to make any concession to the Long Parliament, and had resorted to arms in

defence of the ship money and of the Star Chamber, he would have seen, in the hostile ranks, Hyde and

Falkland side by side with Hollis and Hampden. But, in truth, he would not have been able to resort to arms;

for nor twenty Cavaliers would have joined his standard. It was to his large concessions alone that he owed

the support of that great body of noblemen and gentlemen who fought so long and so gallantly in his cause.

Another fatal delusion had taken possession of his mind, and was never dispelled till it had ruined him. He

firmly believed that, do what he might, the members of the Church of England would act up to their

principles. It had, he knew, been proclaimed from ten thousand pulpits, it had been solemnly declared by the

University of Oxford, that even tyranny as frightful as that of the most depraved of the Caesars did not justify

subjects in resisting the royal authority; and hence he was weak enough to conclude that the whole body of

Tory gentlemen and clergymen would let him plunder, oppress, and insult them without lifting an arm against

him. It seems strange that any man should have passed his fiftieth year without discovering that people

sometimes do what they think wrong: and James had only to look into his own heart for abundant proof that

even a strong sense of religious duty will not always prevent frail human beings from indulging their passions

in defiance of divine laws, and at the risk of awful penalties. He must have been conscious that, though he

thought adultery sinful, he was an adulterer: but nothing could convince him that any man who professed to

think rebellion sinful would ever, in any extremity, be a rebel. The Church of England was, in his view, a

passive victim, which he might, without danger, outrage and torture at his pleasure; nor did he ever see his

error till the Universities were preparing to coin their plate for the purpose of supplying the military chest of

his enemies, and till a Bishop, long renowned for loyalty, had thrown aside his cassock, girt on a sword, and

In these fatal follies the King was artfully encouraged by a minister who had been an Exclusionist, and who

still called himself a Protestant, the Earl of Sunderland. The motives and conduct of this unprincipled

politician have often been misrepresented. He was, in his own lifetime, accused by the Jacobites of having,

even before the beginning of the reign of James, determined to bring about a revolution in favour of the

Prince of Orange, and of having, with that view, recommended a succession of outrages on the civil and

ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. This idle story has been repeated down to our own days by ignorant

writers. But no well informed historian, whatever might be his prejudices, has condescended to adopt it: for it

rests on no evidence whatever; and scarcely any evidence would convince reasonable men that Sunderland

deliberately incurred guilt and infamy in order to bring about a change by which it was clear that he could not

possibly be a gainer, and by which, in fact, he lost immense wealth and influence. Nor is there the smallest

reason for resorting to so strange a hypothesis. For the truth lies on the surface. Crooked as this man's course

was, the law which determined it was simple. His conduct is to be ascribed to the alternate influence of

cupidity and fear on a mind highly susceptible of both those passions, and quicksighted rather than farsighted.

He wanted more power and more money. More power he could obtain only at Rochester's expense; and the

obvious way to obtain power at Rochester's expense was to encourage the dislike which the King felt for

Rochester's moderate counsels. Money could be most easily and most largely obtained from the court of

Versailles; and Sunderland was eager to sell himself to that court. He had no jovial generous vices. He cared

little for wine or for beauty: but he desired riches with an ungovernable and insatiable desire. The passion for

play raged in him without measure, and had not been tamed by ruinous losses. His hereditary fortune was

ample. He had long filled lucrative posts, and had neglected no art which could make them more lucrative:

but his ill luck at the hazard table was such that his estates were daily becoming more and more encumbered.

In the hope of extricating himself from his embarrassments, he betrayed to Barillon all the schemes adverse

to France which had been meditated in the English cabinet, and hinted that a Secretary of State could in such

times render services for which it might be wise in Lewis to pay largely. The Ambassador told his master that

six thousand guineas was the smallest gratification that could be offered to so important a minister. Lewis

consented to go as high as twentyfive thousand crowns, equivalent to about five thousand six hundred

pounds sterling. It was agreed that Sunderland should receive this sum yearly, and that he should, in return,

exert all his influence to prevent the reassembling of the Parliament.59 He joined himself therefore to the

Jesuitical cabal, and made so dexterous an use of the influence of that cabal that he was appointed to succeed

Halifax in the high dignity of Lord President without being required to resign the far more active and

lucrative post of Secretary.60 He felt, however, that he could never hope to obtain paramount influence in the

court while he was supposed to belong to the Established Church. All religions were the same to him. In

private circles, indeed, he was in the habit of talking with profane contempt of the most sacred things. He

therefore determined to let the King have the delight and glory of effecting a conversion. Some management,

however, was necessary. No man is utterly without regard for the opinion of his fellow creatures; and even

Sunderland, though not very sensible to shame, flinched from the infamy of public apostasy. He played his

part with rare adroitness. To the world he showed himself as a Protestant. In the royal closet he assumed the

character of an earnest inquirer after truth, who was almost persuaded to declare himself a Roman Catholic,

and who, while waiting for fuller illumination, was disposed to render every service in his power to the

professors of the old faith. James, who was never very discerning, and who in religious matters was

absolutely blind, suffered himself, notwithstanding all that he had seen of human knavery, of the knavery of

courtiers as a class, and of the knavery of Sunderland in particular, to be duped into the belief that divine

grace had touched the most false and callous of human hearts. During many months the wily minister

continued to be regarded at court as a promising catechumen, without exhibiting himself to the public in the

He early suggested to the King the expediency of appointing a secret committee of Roman Catholics to

advise on all matters affecting the interests of their religion. This committee met sometimes at Chiffinch's

lodgings, and sometimes at the official apartments of Sunderland, who, though still nominally a Protestant,

was admitted to all its deliberations, and soon obtained a decided ascendency over the other members. Every

Friday the Jesuitical cabal dined with the Secretary. The conversation at table was free; and the weaknesses

of the prince whom the confederates hoped to manage were not spared. To Petre Sunderland promised a

Cardinal's hat; to Castelmaine a splendid embassy to Rome; to Dover a lucrative command in the Guards; and

to Tyrconnel high employment in Ireland. Thus hound together by the strongest ties of interest, these men

There were two Protestant members of the cabinet who took no decided part in the struggle. Jeffreys was at

this time tortured by a cruel internal malady which had been aggravated by intemperance. At a dinner which a

wealthy Alderman gave to some of the leading members of the government, the Lord Treasurer and the Lord

Chancellor were so drunk that they stripped themselves almost stark naked, and were with difficulty

prevented from climbing up a signpost to drink His Majesty's health. The pious Treasurer escaped with

nothing but the scandal of the debauch: but the Chancellor brought on a violent fit of his complaint. His life

was for some time thought to be in serious danger. James expressed great uneasiness at the thought of losing

a minister who suited him so well, and said, with some truth, that the loss of such a man could not be easily

repaired. Jeffreys, when he became convalescent, promised his support to both the contending parties, and

waited to see which of them would prove victorious. Some curious proofs of his duplicity are still extant. It

has been already said that the two French agents who were then resident in London had divided the English

court between them. Bonrepaux was constantly with Rochester; and Barillon lived with Sunderland. Lewis

was informed in the same week by Bonrepaux that the Chancellor was entirely with the Treasurer, and by

Godolphin, cautious and taciturn, did his best to preserve neutrality. His opinions and wishes were

undoubtedly with Rochester; but his office made it necessary for him to be in constant attendance on the

Queen; and he was naturally unwilling to be on bad terms with her. There is indeed reason to believe that he

regarded her with an attachment more romantic than often finds place in the hearts of veteran statesmen; and

circumstances, which it is now necessary to relate, had thrown her entirely into the hands of the Jesuitical

The King, stern as was his temper and grave as was his deportment, was scarcely less under the influence of

female attractions than his more lively and amiable brother had been. The beauty, indeed, which

distinguished the favourite ladies of Charles was not necessary to James. Barbara Palmer, Eleanor Gwynn,

and Louisa de Querouaille were among the finest women of their time. James, when young, had surrendered

his liberty, descended below his rank, and incurred the displeasure of his family for the coarse features of

Anne Hyde. He had soon, to the great diversion of the whole court, been drawn away from his plain consort

by a plainer mistress, Arabella Churchill. His second wife, though twenty years younger than himself, and of

no unpleasing face or figure, had frequent reason to complain of his inconstancy. But of all his illicit

This woman was the daughter of Sir Charles Sedley, one of the most brilliant and profligate wits of the

Restoration. The licentiousness of his writings is not redeemed by much grace or vivacity; but the charms of

his conversation were acknowledged even by sober men who had no esteem for his character. To sit near him

at the theatre, and to hear his criticisms on a new play, was regarded as a privilege.65 Dryden had done him

the honour to make him a principal interlocutor in the Dialogue on Dramatic Poesy. The morals of Sedley

were such as, even in that age, gave great scandal. He on one occasion, after a wild revel, exhibited himself

without a shred of clothing in the balcony of a tavern near Covent Garden, and harangued the people who

were passing in language so indecent and profane that he was driven in by a shower of brickbats, was

prosecuted for a misdemeanour, was sentenced to a heavy fine, and was reprimanded by the Court of King's

Bench in the most cutting terms.66 His daughter had inherited his abilities and his impudence. Personal

charms she had none, with the exception of two brilliant eyes, the lustre of which, to men of delicate taste,

seemed fierce and unfeminine. Her form was lean, her countenance haggard. Charles, though he liked her

conversation, laughed at her ugliness, and said that the priests must have recommended her to his brother by

way of penance. She well knew that she was not handsome, and jested freely on her own homeliness. Yet,

with strange inconsistency, she loved to adorn herself magnificently, and drew on herself much keen ridicule

by appearing in the theatre and the ring plastered, painted, clad in Brussels lace, glittering with diamonds, and

The nature of her influence over James is not easily to be explained. He was no longer young. He was a

religious man; at least he was willing to make for his religion exertions and sacrifices from which the great

majority of those who are called religious men would shrink. It seems strange that any attractions should have

drawn him into a course of life which he must have regarded as highly criminal; and in this case none could

understand where the attraction lay. Catharine herself was astonished by the violence of his passion. "It

cannot be my beauty," she said; "for he must see that I have none; and it cannot be my wit, for he has not

At the moment of the King's accession a sense of the new responsibility which lay on him made his mind for

a time peculiarly open to religious impressions. He formed and announced many good resolutions, spoke in

public with great severity of the impious and licentious manners of the age, and in private assured his Queen

and his confessor that he would see Catharine Sedley no more. He wrote to his mistress intreating her to quit

the apartments which she occupied at Whitehall, and to go to a house in Saint James's Square which had been

splendidly furnished for her at his expense. He at the same time promised to allow her a large pension from

his privy purse. Catharine, clever, strongminded, intrepid, and conscious of her power, refused to stir. In a

few months it began to be whispered that the services of Chiffinch were again employed, and that the

mistress frequently passed and repassed through that private door through which Father Huddleston had

borne the host to the bedside of Charles. The King's Protestant ministers had, it seems, conceived a hope that

their master's infatuation for this woman might cure him of the more pernicious infatuation which impelled

him to attack their religion. She had all the talents which could qualify her to play on his feelings, to make

game of his scruples, to set before him in a strong light the difficulties and dangers into which he was running

headlong. Rochester, the champion of the Church, exerted himself to strengthen her influence. Ormond, who

is popularly regarded as the personification of all that is pure and highminded in the English Cavalier,

encouraged the design. Even Lady Rochester was not ashamed to cooperate, and that in the very worst way.

Her office was to direct the jealousy of the injured wife towards a young lady who was perfectly innocent.

The whole court took notice of the coldness and rudeness with which the Queen treated the poor girl on

whom suspicion had been thrown: but the cause of Her Majesty's ill humour was a mystery. For a time the

intrigue went on prosperously and secretly. Catharine often told the King plainly what the Protestant Lords of

the Council only dared to hint in the most delicate phrases. His crown, she said, was at stake: the old dotard

Arundell and the blustering Tyrconnel would lead him to his ruin. It is possible that her caresses might have

done what the united exhortations of the Lords and the Commons, of the House of Austria and the Holy See,

had failed to do, but for a strange mishap which changed the whole face of affairs. James, in a fit of fondness,

determined to make his mistress Countess of Dorchester in her own right. Catharine saw all the peril of such

a step, and declined the invidious honour. Her lover was obstinate, and himself forced the patent into her

hands. She at last accepted it on one condition, which shows her confidence in her own power and in his

weakness. She made him give her a solemn promise, not that he would never quit her, but that, if he did so,

he would himself announce his resolution to her, and grant her one parting interview.

As soon as the news of her elevation got abroad, the whole palace was in an uproar. The warm blood of Italy

boiled in the veins of the Queen. Proud of her youth and of her charms, of her high rank and of her stainless

chastity, she could not without agonies of grief and rage see herself deserted and insulted for such a rival.

Rochester, perhaps remembering how patiently, after a short struggle, Catharine of Braganza had consented

to treat the mistresses of Charles with politeness, had expected that, after a little complaining and pouting,

Mary of Modena would be equally submissive. It was not so. She did not even attempt to conceal from the

eyes of the world the violence of her emotions. Day after day the courtiers who came to see her dine observed

that the dishes were removed untasted from the table. She suffered the tears to stream down her cheeks

unconcealed in the presence of the whole circle of ministers and envoys. To the King she spoke with wild

vehemence. "Let me go," she cried. "You have made your woman a Countess: make her a Queen. Put my

crown on her head. Only let me hide myself in some convent, where I may never see her more." Then, more

soberly, she asked him how he reconciled his conduct to his religious professions. "You are ready," she said,

"to put your kingdom to hazard for the sake of your soul; and yet you are throwing away your soul for the

sake of that creature." Father Petre, on bended knees, seconded these remonstrances. It was his duty to do so;

and his duty was not the less strenuously performed because it coincided with his interest. The King went on

for a time sinning and repenting. In his hours of remorse his penances were severe. Mary treasured up to the

end of her life, and at her death bequeathed to the convent of Chaillot, the scourge with which he had

vigorously avenged her wrongs upon his own shoulders. Nothing but Catharine's absence could put an end to

this struggle between an ignoble love and an ignoble superstition. James wrote, imploring and commanding

her to depart. He owned that he had promised to bid her farewell in person. "But I know too well," he added,

"the power which you have over me. I have not strength of mind enough to keep my resolution if I see you."

He offered her a yacht to convey her with all dignity and comfort to Flanders, and threatened that if she did

not go quietly she should be sent away by force. She at one time worked on his feelings by pretending to be

ill. Then she assumed the airs of a martyr, and impudently proclaimed herself a sufferer for the Protestant

religion. Then again she adopted the style of John Hampden. She defied the King to remove her. She would

try the right with him. While the Great Charter and the Habeas Corpus Act were the law of the land, she

would live where she pleased. "And Flanders," she cried; "never! I have learned one thing from my friend the

Duchess of Mazarin; and that is never to trust myself in a country where there are convents." At length she

selected Ireland as the place of her exile, probably because the brother of her patron Rochester was viceroy

The history of this extraordinary intrigue would be imperfect, if it were not added that there is still extant a

religious meditation, written by the Treasurer, with his own hand, on the very same day on which the

intelligence of his attempt to govern his master by means of a concubine was despatched by Bonrepaux to

Versailles. No composition of Ken or Leighton breathes a spirit of more fervent and exalted piety than this

effusion. Hypocrisy cannot be suspected: for the paper was evidently meant only for the writer's own eye, and

was not published till he had been more than a century in his grave. So much is history stranger than fiction;

and so true is it that nature has caprices which art dares not imitate. A dramatist would scarcely venture to

bring on the stage a grave prince, in the decline of life, ready to sacrifice his crown in order to serve the

interests of his religion, indefatigable in making proselytes, and yet deserting and insulting a wife who had

youth and beauty for the sake of a profligate paramour who had neither. Still less, if possible, would a

dramatist venture to introduce a statesman stooping to the wicked and shameful part of a procurer, and calling

in his wife to aid him in that dishonourable office, yet, in his moments of leisure, retiring to his closet, and

there secretly pouring out his soul to his God in penitent tears and devout ejaculations.69

The Treasurer soon found that, in using scandalous means for the purpose of obtaining a laudable end, he had

committed, not only a crime, but a folly. The Queen was now his enemy. She affected, indeed, to listen with

civility while the Hydes excused their recent conduct as well as they could; and she occasionally pretended to

use her influence in their favour: but she must have been more or less than woman if she had really forgiven

the conspiracy which had been formed against her dignity and her domestic happiness by the family of her

husband's first wife. The Jesuits strongly represented to the King the danger which he had so narrowly

escaped. His reputation, they said, his peace, his soul, had been put in peril by the machinations of his prime

minister. The Nuncio, who would gladly have counteracted the influence of the violent party, and cooperated

with the moderate members of the cabinet, could not honestly or decently separate himself on this occasion

from Father Petre. James himself, when parted by the sea from the charms which had so strongly fascinated

him, could not but regard with resentment and contempt those who had sought to govern him by means of his

vices. What had passed must have had the effect of raising his own Church in his esteem, and of lowering the

Church of England. The Jesuits, whom it was the fashion to represent as the most unsafe of spiritual guides,

as sophists who refined away the whole system of evangelical morality, as sycophants who owed their

influence chiefly to the indulgence with which they treated the sins of the great, had reclaimed him from a

life of guilt by rebukes as sharp and bold as those which David had heard from Nathan and Herod from the

Baptist. On the other hand, zealous Protestants, whose favourite theme was the laxity of Popish casuists and

the wickedness of doing evil that good might come, had attempted to obtain advantages for their own Church

in a way which all Christians regarded as highly criminal. The victory of the cabal of evil counsellors was

therefore complete. The King looked coldly on Rochester. The courtiers and foreign ministers soon perceived

that the Lord Treasurer was prime minister only in name. He continued to offer his advice daily, and had the

mortification to find it daily rejected. Yet he could not prevail on himself to relinquish the outward show of

power and the emoluments which he directly and indirectly derived from his great place. He did his best,

therefore, to conceal his vexations from the public eye. But his violent passions and his intemperate habits

disqualified him for the part of a dissembler. His gloomy looks, when he came out of the council chamber,

showed how little he was pleased with what had passed at the board; and, when the bottle had gone round

He might, indeed, well be uneasy. Indiscreet and unpopular measures followed each other in rapid

succession. All thought of returning to the policy of the Triple Alliance was abandoned. The King explicitly

avowed to the ministers of those continental powers with which he had lately intended to ally himself, that all

his views had undergone a change, and that England was still to be, as she had been under his grandfather, his

father, and his brother, of no account in Europe. "I am in no condition," he said to the Spanish Ambassador,

"to trouble myself about what passes abroad. It is my resolution to let foreign affairs take their course, to

establish my authority at home, and to do something for my religion." A few days later he announced the

same intentions to the States General.71 From that time to the close of his ignominious reign, he made no

serious effort to escape from vassalage, though, to the last, he could never hear, without transports of rage,

The two events which proved to the public that Sunderland and Sunderland's party were victorious were the

prorogation of the Parliament from February to May, and the departure of Castelmaine for Rome with the

Hitherto all the business of the English government at the papal court had been transacted by John Caryl. This

gentleman was known to his contemporaries as a man of fortune and fashion, and as the author of two

successful plays, a tragedy in rhyme which had been made popular by the action and recitation of Betterton,

and a comedy which owes all its value to scenes borrowed from Moliere. These pieces have long been

forgotten; but what Caryl could not do for himself has been done for him by a more powerful genius. Half a

Caryl, who was, like all the other respectable Roman Catholics, an enemy to violent courses, had acquitted

himself of his delicate errand at Rome with good sense and good feeling. The business confided to him was

well done; but he assumed no public character, and carefully avoided all display. His mission, therefore, put

the government to scarcely any charge, and excited scarcely any murmurs. His place was now most unwisely

supplied by a costly and ostentatious embassy, offensive in the highest degree to the people of England, and

by no means welcome to the court of Rome. Castelmaine had it in charge to demand a Cardinal's hat for his

About the same time the King began to show, in an unequivocal manner, the feeling which he really

entertained towards the banished Huguenots. While he had still hoped to cajole his Parliament into

submission and to become the head of an European coalition against France, he had affected to blame the

revocation of the edict of Nantes, and to pity the unhappy men whom persecution had driven from their

country. He had caused it to be announced that, at every church in the kingdom, a collection would be made

under his sanction for their benefit. A proclamation on this subject had been drawn up in terms which might

have wounded the pride of a sovereign less sensitive and vainglorious than Lewis. But all was now changed.

The principles of the treaty of Dover were again the principles of the foreign policy of England. Ample

apologies were therefore made for the discourtesy with which the English government had acted towards

France in showing favour to exiled Frenchmen. The proclamation which had displeased Lewis was

recalled.73 The Huguenot ministers were admonished to speak with reverence of their oppressor in their

public discourses, as they would answer it at their peril. James not only ceased to express commiseration for

the sufferers, but declared that he believed them to harbour the worst designs, and owned that he had been

guilty of an error in countenancing them. One of the most eminent of the refugees, John Claude, had

published on the Continent a small volume in which he described with great force the sufferings of his

brethren. Barillon demanded that some opprobrious mark should be put on his book. James complied, and in

full council declared it to be his pleasure that Claude's libel should be burned by the hangman before the

Royal Exchange. Even Jeffreys was startled, and ventured to represent that such a proceeding was without

example, that the book was written in a foreign tongue, that it had been printed at a foreign press, that it

related entirely to transactions which had taken place in a foreign country, and that no English government

had ever animadverted on such works. James would not suffer the question to be discussed. "My resolution,"

he said, "is taken. It has become the fashion to treat Kings disrespectfully; and they must stand by each other.

One King should always take another's part: and I have particular reasons for showing this respect to the King

of France." There was silence at the board. The order was forthwith issued; and Claude's pamphlet was

committed to the flames, not without the deep murmurs of many who had always been reputed steady

The promised collection was long put off under various pretexts. The King would gladly have broken his

word; but it was pledged so solemnly that he could not for very shame retract.75 Nothing, however, which

could cool the zeal of congregations was omitted. It had been expected that, according to the practice usual

on such occasions, the people would be exhorted to liberality from the pulpits. But James was determined not

to tolerate declamations against his religion and his ally. The Archbishop of Canterbury was therefore

commanded to inform the clergy that they must merely read the brief, and must not presume to preach on the

sufferings of the French Protestants.76 Nevertheless the contributions were so large that, after all deductions,

the sum of forty thousand pounds was paid into the Chamber of London. Perhaps none of the munificent

subscriptions of our own age has borne so great a proportion to the means of the nation.77

The King was bitterly mortified by the large amount of the collection which had been made in obedience to

his own call. He knew, he said, what all this liberality meant. It was mere Whiggish spite to himself and his

religion.78 He had already resolved that the money should be of no use to those whom the donors wished to

benefit. He had been, during some weeks, in close communication with the French embassy on this subject,

and had, with the approbation of the court of Versailles, determined on a course which it is not very easy to

reconcile with those principles of toleration to which he afterwards pretended to be attached. The refugees

were zealous for the Calvinistic discipline and worship. James therefore gave orders that none should receive

a crust of bread or a basket of coals who did not first take the sacrament according to the Anglican ritual.79 It

is strange that this inhospitable rule should have been devised by a prince who affected to consider the Test

Act as an outrage on the rights of conscience: for, however unjustifiable it may be to establish a sacramental

test for the purpose of ascertaining whether men are fit for civil and military office, it is surely much more

unjustifiable to establish a sacramental test for the purpose of ascertaining whether, in their extreme distress,

they are fit objects of charity. Nor had James the plea which may be urged in extenuation of the guilt of

almost all other persecutors: for the religion which he commanded the refugees to profess, on pain of being

left to starve, was not his own religion. His conduct towards them was therefore less excusable than that of

Lewis: for Lewis oppressed them in the hope of bringing them over from a damnable heresy to the true

Church: James oppressed them only for the purpose of forcing them to apostatize from one damnable heresy

Several Commissioners, of whom the Chancellor was one, had been appointed to dispense the public alms.

When they met for the first time, Jeffreys announced the royal pleasure. The refugees, he said, were too

generally enemies of monarchy and episcopacy. If they wished for relief, they must become members of the

Church of England, and must take the sacrament from the hands of his chaplain. Many exiles, who had come

full of gratitude and hope to apply for succour, heard their sentence, and went brokenhearted away.80

May was now approaching; and that month had been fixed for the meeting of the Houses: but they were again

prorogued to November.81 It was not strange that the King did not wish to meet them: for he had determined

to adopt a policy which he knew to be, in the highest degree, odious to them. From his predecessors he had

inherited two prerogatives, of which the limits had never been defined with strict accuracy, and which, if

exerted without any limit, would of themselves have sufficed to overturn the whole polity of the State and of

the Church. These were the dispensing power and the ecclesiastical supremacy. By means of the dispensing

power the King purposed to admit Roman Catholics, not merely to civil and military, but to spiritual, offices.

By means of the ecclesiastical supremacy he hoped to make the Anglican clergy his instruments for the

This scheme developed itself by degrees. It was not thought safe to begin by granting to the whole Roman

Catholic body a dispensation from all statutes imposing penalties and tests. For nothing was more fully

established than that such a dispensation was illegal. The Cabal had, in 1672, put forth a general Declaration

of Indulgence. The Commons, as soon as they met, had protested against it. Charles the Second had ordered it

to be cancelled in his presence, and had, both by his own mouth and by a written message, assured the

Houses that the step which had caused so much complaint should never be drawn into precedent. It would

have been difficult to find in all the Inns of Court a barrister of reputation to argue in defence of a prerogative

which the Sovereign, seated on his throne in full Parliament, had solemnly renounced a few years before. But

it was not quite so clear that the King might not, on special grounds, grant exemptions to individuals by

name. The first object of James, therefore, was to obtain from the courts of common law an acknowledgment

But, though his pretensions were moderate when compared with those which he put forth a few months later,

he soon found that he had against him almost the whole sense of Westminster Hall. Four of the Judges gave

him to understand that they could not, on this occasion, serve his purpose; and it is remarkable that all the

four were violent Tories, and that among them were men who had accompanied Jeffreys on the Bloody

Circuit, and who had consented to the death of Cornish and of Elizabeth Gaunt. Jones, the Chief Justice of the

Common Pleas, a man who had never before shrunk from any drudgery, however cruel or servile, now held

in the royal closet language which might have become the lips of the purest magistrates in our history. He

was plainly told that he must either give up his opinion or his place. "For my place," he answered, "I care

little. I am old and worn out in the service of the crown; but I am mortified to find that your Majesty thinks

me capable of giving a judgment which none but an ignorant or a dishonest man could give." "I am

determined," said the King, "to have twelve Judges who will be all of my mind as to this matter." "Your

Majesty," answered Jones, "may find twelve Judges of your mind, but hardly twelve lawyers."82 He was

dismissed together with Montague, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and two puisne Judges, Neville and

Charlton. One of the new Judges was Christopher Milton, younger brother of the great poet. Of Christopher

little is known except that, in the time of the civil war, he had been a Royalist, and that he now, in his old age,

leaned towards Popery. It does not appear that he was ever formally reconciled to the Church of Rome: but he

certainly had scruples about communicating with the Church of England, and had therefore a strong interest

The King found his counsel as refractory as his Judges. The first barrister who learned that he was expected

to defend the dispensing power was the Solicitor General, Heneage Finch. He peremptorily refused, and was

turned out of office on the following day.84 The Attorney General, Sawyer, was ordered to draw warrants

authorising members of the Church of Rome to hold benefices belonging to the Church of England. Sawyer

had been deeply concerned in some of the harshest and most unjustifiable prosecutions of that age; and the

Whigs abhorred him as a man stained with the blood of Russell and Sidney: but on this occasion he showed

no want of honesty or of resolution. "Sir," said he, "this is not merely to dispense with a statute; it is to annul

the whole statute law from the accession of Elizabeth to this day. I dare not do it; and I implore your Majesty

to consider whether such an attack upon the rights of the Church be in accordance with your late gracious

promises."85 Sawyer would have been instantly dismissed as Finch had been, if the government could have

found a successor: but this was no easy matter. It was necessary for the protection of the rights of the crown

that one at least of the crown lawyers should be a man of learning, ability, and experience; and no such man

was willing to defend the dispensing power. The Attorney General was therefore permitted to retain his place

during some months. Thomas Powis, an insignificant man, who had no qualification for high employment

The preliminary arrangements were now complete. There was a Solicitor General to argue for the dispensing

power, and twelve Judges to decide in favour of it. The question was therefore speedily brought to a hearing.

Sir Edward Hales, a gentleman of Kent, had been converted to Popery in days when it was not safe for any

man of note openly to declare himself a Papist. He had kept his secret, and, when questioned, had affirmed

that he was a Protestant with a solemnity which did little credit to his principles. When James had ascended

the throne, disguise was no longer necessary. Sir Edward publicly apostatized, and was rewarded with the

command of a regiment of foot. He had held his commission more than three months without taking the

sacrament. He was therefore liable to a penalty of five hundred pounds, which an informer might recover by

action of debt. A menial servant was employed to bring a suit for this sum in the Court of King's Bench. Sir

Edward did not dispute the facts alleged against him, but pleaded that he had letters patent authorising him to

hold his commission notwithstanding the Test Act. The plaintiff demurred, that is to say, admitted Sir

Edward's plea to be true in fact, but denied that it was a sufficient answer. Thus was raised a simple issue of

law to be decided by the court. A barrister, who was notoriously a tool of the government, appeared for the

mock plaintiff, and made some feeble objections to the defendant's plea. The new Solicitor General replied.

The Attorney General took no part in the proceedings. Judgment was given by the Lord Chief Justice, Sir

Edward Herbert. He announced that he had submitted the question to all the twelve Judges, and that, in the

opinion of eleven of them, the King might lawfully dispense with penal statutes in particular cases, and for

special reasons of grave importance. The single dissentient, Baron Street, was not removed from his place.

He was a man of morals so bad that his own relations shrank from him, and that the Prince of Orange, at the

time of the Revolution, was advised not to see him. The character of Street makes it impossible to believe

that he would have been more scrupulous than his brethren. The character of James makes it impossible to

believe that a refractory Baron of the Exchequer would have been permitted to retain his post. There can be

no reasonable doubt that the dissenting Judge was, like the plaintiff and the plaintiff's counsel, acting

collusively. It was important that there should be a great preponderance of authority in favour of the

dispensing power; yet it was important that the bench, which had been carefully packed for the occasion,

should appear to be independent. One Judge, therefore, the least respectable of the twelve, was permitted, or

The power which the courts of law had thus recognised was not suffered to lie idle. Within a month after the

decision of the King's Bench had been pronounced, four Roman Catholic Lords were sworn of the Privy

Council. Two of these, Powis and Bellasyse, were of the moderate party, and probably took their seats with

reluctance and with many sad forebodings. The other two, Arundell and Dover, had no such misgivings.87

The dispensing power was, at the same time, employed for the purpose of enabling Roman Catholics to hold

ecclesiastical preferment. The new Solicitor readily drew the warrants in which Sawyer had refused to be

concerned. One of these warrants was in favour of a wretch named Edward Sclater, who had two livings

which he was determined to keep at all costs and through all changes. He administered the sacrament to his

parishioners according to the rites of the Church of England on Palm Sunday 1686. On Easter Sunday, only

seven days later, he was at mass. The royal dispensation authorised him to retain the emoluments of his

benefices. To the remonstrances of the patrons from whom he had received his preferment he replied in terms

of insolent defiance, and, while the Roman Catholic cause prospered, put forth an absurd treatise in defence

of his apostasy. But, a very few weeks after the Revolution, a great congregation assembled at Saint Mary's in

the Savoy, to see him received again into the bosom of the Church which he had deserted. He read his

recantation with tears flowing from his eyes, and pronounced a bitter invective against the Popish priests

Scarcely less infamous was the conduct of Obadiah Walker. He was an aged priest of the Church of England,

and was well known in the University of Oxford as a man of learning. He had in the late reign been suspected

of leaning towards Popery, but had outwardly conformed to the established religion, and had at length been

chosen Master of University College. Soon after the accession of James, Walker determined to throw off the

disguise which he had hitherto worn. He absented himself from the public worship of the Church of England,

and, with some fellows and undergraduates whom he had perverted, heard mass daily in his own apartments.

One of the first acts performed by the new Solicitor General was to draw up an instrument which authorised

Walker and his proselytes to hold their benefices, notwithstanding their apostasy. Builders were immediately

employed to turn two sets of rooms into an oratory. In a few weeks the Roman Catholic rites were publicly

performed in University College. A Jesuit was quartered there as chaplain. A press was established there

under royal license for the printing of Roman Catholic tracts. During two years and a half, Walker continued

to make war on Protestantism with all the rancour of a renegade: but when fortune turned he showed that he

wanted the courage of a martyr. He was brought to the bar of the House of Commons to answer for his

conduct, and was base enough to protest that he had never changed his religion, that he had never cordially

approved of the doctrines of the Church of Rome, and that he had never tried to bring any other person within

the pale of that Church. It was hardly worth while to violate the most sacred obligations of law and of

In a short time the King went a step further. Sclater and Walker had only been permitted to keep, after they

became Papists, the preferment which had been bestowed on them while they passed for Protestants. To

confer a high office in the Established Church on an avowed enemy of that Church was a far bolder violation

of the laws and of the royal word. But no course was too bold for James. The Deanery of Christchurch

became vacant. That office was, both in dignity and in emolument, one of the highest in the University of

Oxford. The Dean was charged with the government of a greater number of youths of high connections and

of great hopes than could then be found in any other college. He was also the head of a Cathedral. In both

characters it was necessary that he should be a member of the Church of England. Nevertheless John Massey,

who was notoriously a member of the Church of Rome, and who had not one single recommendation, except

that he was a member of the Church of Rome, was appointed by virtue of the dispensing power; and soon

within the walls of Christchurch an altar was decked, at which mass was daily celebrated.90 To the Nuncio

the King said that what had been done at Oxford should very soon be done at Cambridge.91

Yet even this was a small evil compared with that which Protestants had good ground to apprehend. It

seemed but too probable that the whole government of the Anglican Church would shortly pass into the

hands of her deadly enemies. Three important sees had lately become vacant, that of York, that of Chester,

and that of Oxford. The Bishopric of Oxford was given to Samuel Parker, a parasite, whose religion, if he had

any religion, was that of Rome, and who called himself a Protestant only because he was encumbered with a

wife. "I wished," the King said to Adda, "to appoint an avowed Catholic: but the time is not come. Parker is

well inclined to us; he is one of us in feeling; and by degrees he will bring round his clergy."92 The Bishopric

of Chester, vacant by the death of John Pearson, a great name both in philology and in divinity, was bestowed

on Thomas Cartwright, a still viler sycophant than Parker. The Archbishopric of York remained several years

vacant. As no good reason could be found for leaving so important a place unfilled, men suspected that the

nomination was delayed only till the King could venture to place the mitre on the head of an avowed Papist.

It is indeed highly probable that the Church of England was saved from this outrage by the good sense and

good feeling of the Pope. Without a special dispensation from Rome no Jesuit could be a Bishop; and

James did not even make any secret of his intention to exert vigorously and systematically for the destruction

of the Established Church all the powers which he possessed as her head. He plainly said that, by a wise

dispensation of Providence, the Act of Supremacy would be the means of healing the fatal breach which it

had caused. Henry and Elizabeth had usurped a dominion which rightfully belonged to the Holy See. That

dominion had, in the course of succession, descended to an orthodox prince, and would be held by him in

trust for the Holy See. He was authorised by law to repress spiritual abuses; and the first spiritual abuse

which he would repress should be the liberty which the Anglican clergy assumed of defending their own

But he was met by a great difficulty. The ecclesiastical supremacy which had devolved on him, was by no

means the same great and terrible prerogative which Elizabeth, James the First, and Charles the First had

possessed. The enactment which annexed to the crown an almost boundless visitatorial authority over the

Church, though it had never been formally repealed, had really lost a great part of its force. The substantive

law remained; but it remained unaccompanied by any formidable sanction or by any efficient system of

The statute, which restored to Elizabeth the spiritual dominion assumed by her father and resigned by her

sister, contained a clause authorising the sovereign to constitute a tribunal which might investigate, reform,

and punish all ecclesiastical delinquencies. Under the authority given by this clause, the Court of High

Commission was created. That court was, during many years, the terror of Nonconformists, and, under the

harsh administration of Laud, became an object of fear and hatred even to those who most loved the

Established Church. When the Long Parliament met, the High Commission was generally regarded as the

most grievous of the many grievances under which the nation laboured. An act was therefore somewhat

hastily passed, which not only took away from the Crown the power of appointing visitors to superintend the

After the Restoration, the Cavaliers who filled the House of Commons, zealous as they were for the

prerogative, still remembered with bitterness the tyranny of the High Commission, and were by no means

disposed to revive an institution so odious. They at the same time thought, and not without reason, that the

statute which had swept away all the courts Christian of the realm, without providing any substitute, was

open to grave objection. They accordingly repealed that statute, with the exception of the part which related

to the High Commission. Thus, the Archidiaconal Courts, the Consistory Courts, the Court of Arches, the

Court of Peculiars, and the Court of Delegates were revived: but the enactment by which Elizabeth and her

successors had been empowered to appoint Commissioners with visitatorial authority over the Church was

not only not revived, but was declared, with the utmost strength of language, to be completely abrogated. It is

therefore as clear as any point of constitutional law can be that James the Second was not competent to

appoint a Commission with power to visit and govern the Church of England.94 But, if this were so, it was to

little purpose that the Act of Supremacy, in high sounding words, empowered him to amend what was amiss

in that Church. Nothing but a machinery as stringent as that which the Long Parliament had destroyed could

force the Anglican clergy to become his agents for the destruction of the Anglican doctrine and discipline. He

therefore, as early as the month of April 1686, determined to create a new Court of High Commission. This

design was not immediately executed. It encountered the opposition of every minister who was not devoted to

France and to the Jesuits. It was regarded by lawyers as an outrageous violation of the law, and by

Churchmen as a direct attack upon the Church. Perhaps the contest might have lasted longer, but for an event

which wounded the pride and inflamed the rage of the King. He had, as supreme ordinary, put forth

directions, charging the clergy of the establishment to abstain from touching in their discourses on

controverted points of doctrine. Thus, while sermons in defence of the Roman Catholic religion were

preached on every Sunday and holiday within the precincts of the royal palaces, the Church of the state, the

Church of the great majority of the nation, was forbidden to explain and vindicate her own principles. The

spirit of the whole clerical order rose against this injustice. William Sherlock, a divine of distinguished

abilities, who had written with sharpness against Whigs and Dissenters, and had been rewarded by the

government with the Mastership of the Temple and with a pension, was one of the first who incurred the

royal displeasure. His pension was stopped, and he was severely reprimanded.95 John Sharp, Dean of

Norwich and Rector of St. Giles's in the Fields, soon gave still greater offence. He was a man of learning and

fervent piety, a preacher of great fame, and an exemplary parish priest. In politics he was, like most of his

brethren, a Tory, and had just been appointed one of the royal chaplains. He received an anonymous letter

which purported to come from one of his parishioners who had been staggered by the arguments of Roman

Catholic theologians, and who was anxious to be satisfied that the Church of England was a branch of the

true Church of Christ. No divine, not utterly lost to all sense of religious duty and of professional honour,

could refuse to answer such a call. On the following Sunday Sharp delivered an animated discourse against

the high pretensions of the see of Rome. Some of his expressions were exaggerated, distorted, and carried by

talebearers to Whitehall. It was falsely said that he had spoken with contumely of the theological

disquisitions which had been found in the strong box of the late King, and which the present King had

published. Compton, the Bishop of London, received orders from Sunderland to suspend Sharp till the royal

pleasure should be further known. The Bishop was in great perplexity. His recent conduct in the House of

Lords had given deep offence to the court. Already his name had been struck out of the list of Privy

Councillors. Already he had been dismissed from his office in the royal chapel. He was unwilling to give

fresh provocation but the act which he was directed to perform was a judicial act. He felt that it was unjust,

and he was assured by the best advisers that it was also illegal, to inflict punishment without giving any

opportunity for defence. He accordingly, in the humblest terms, represented his difficulties to the King, and

privately requested Sharp not to appear in the pulpit for the present. Reasonable as were Compton's scruples,

obsequious as were his apologies, James was greatly incensed. What insolence to plead either natural justice

or positive law in opposition to an express command of the Sovereign Sharp was forgotten. The Bishop

became a mark for the whole vengeance of the government.96 The King felt more painfully than ever the

want of that tremendous engine which had once coerced refractory ecclesiastics. He probably knew that, for a

few angry words uttered against his father's government, Bishop Williams had been suspended by the High

Commission from all ecclesiastical dignities and functions. The design of reviving that formidable tribunal

was pushed on more eagerly than ever. In July London was alarmed by the news that the King had, in direct

defiance of two acts of Parliament drawn in the strongest terms, entrusted the whole government of the

Church to seven Commissioners.97 The words in which the jurisdiction of these officers was described were

loose, and might be stretched to almost any extent. All colleges and grammar schools, even those founded by

the liberality of private benefactors, were placed under the authority of the new board. All who depended for

bread on situations in the Church or in academical institutions, from the Primate down to the youngest curate,

from the Vicechancellors of Oxford and Cambridge down to the humblest pedagogue who taught Corderius,

were at the royal mercy. If any one of those many thousands was suspected of doing or saying anything

distasteful to the government, the Commissioners might cite him before them. In their mode of dealing with

him they were fettered by no rules. They were themselves at once prosecutors and judges. The accused party

was furnished with no copy of the charge. He was examined and crossexamined. If his answers did not give

satisfaction, he was liable to be suspended from his office, to be ejected from it, to be pronounced incapable

of holding any preferment in future. If he were contumacious, he might be excommunicated, or, in other

words, be deprived of all civil rights and imprisoned for life. He might also, at the discretion of the court, be

loaded with all the costs of the proceeding by which he had been reduced to beggary. No appeal was given.

The Commissioners were directed to execute their office notwithstanding any law which might be, or might

seem to be, inconsistent with these regulations. Lastly, lest any person should doubt that it was intended to

revive that terrible court from which the Long Parliament had freed the nation, the new tribunal was directed

to use a seal bearing exactly the same device and the same superscription with the seal of the old High

The chief Commissioner was the Chancellor. His presence and assent were necessary to every proceeding.

All men knew how unjustly, insolently, and barbarously he had acted in courts where he had been, to a

certain extent, restrained by the known laws of England. It was, therefore, not difficult to foresee how he

would conduct himself in a situation in which he was at entire liberty to make forms of procedure and rules of

Of the other six Commissioners three were prelates and three laymen. The name of Archbishop Sancroft

stood first. But he was fully convinced that the court was illegal, that all its judgments would be null, and that

by sitting in it he should incur a serious responsibility. He therefore determined not to comply with the royal

mandate. He did not, however, act on this occasion with that courage and sincerity which he showed when

driven to extremity two years later. He begged to be excused on the plea of business and ill health. The other

members of the board, he added, were men of too much ability to need his assistance. These disingenuous

apologies ill became the Primate of all England at such a crisis; nor did they avert the royal displeasure.

Sancroft's name was not indeed struck out of the list of Privy Councillors: but, to the bitter mortification of

the friends of the Church, he was no longer summoned on Council days. "If," said the King, "he is too sick or

too busy to go to the Commission, it is a kindness to relieve him from attendance at Council."99

The government found no similar difficulty with Nathaniel Crewe, Bishop of the great and opulent see of

Durham, a man nobly born, and raised so high in his profession that he could scarcely wish to rise higher, but

mean, vain, and cowardly. He had been made Dean of the Chapel Royal when the Bishop of London was

banished from the palace. The honour of being an Ecclesiastical Commissioner turned Crewe's head. It was to

no purpose that some of his friends represented to him the risk which he ran by sitting in an illegal tribunal.

He was not ashamed to answer that he could not live out of the royal smile, and exultingly expressed his hope

that his name would appear in history, a hope which has not been altogether disappointed.100

Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, was the third clerical Commissioner. He was a man to whose talents

posterity has scarcely done justice. Unhappily for his fame, it has been usual to print his verses in collections

of the British poets; and those who judge of him by his verses must consider him as a servile imitator, who,

without one spark of Cowley's admirable genius, mimicked whatever was least commendable in Cowley's

manner: but those who are acquainted with Sprat's prose writings will form a very different estimate of his

powers. He was indeed a great master of our language, and possessed at once the eloquence of the orator, of

the controversialist, and of the historian. His moral character might have passed with little censure had he

belonged to a less sacred profession; for the worst that can be said of him is that he was indolent, luxurious,

and worldly: but such failings, though not commonly regarded as very heinous in men of secular callings, are

scandalous in a prelate. The Archbishopric of York was vacant; Sprat hoped to obtain it, and therefore

accepted a seat at the ecclesiastical board: but he was too goodnatured a man to behave harshly; and he was

too sensible a man not to know that he might at some future time be called to a serious account by a

Parliament. He therefore, though he consented to act, tried to do as little mischief, and to make as few

The three remaining Commissioners were the Lord Treasurer, the Lord President, and the Chief Justice of the

King's Bench. Rochester, disapproving and murmuring, consented to serve. Much as he had to endure at the

court, he could not bear to quit it. Much as he loved the Church, he could not bring himself to sacrifice for her

sake his white staff, his patronage, his salary of eight thousand pounds a year, and the far larger indirect

emoluments of his office. He excused his conduct to others, and perhaps to himself, by pleading that, as a

Commissioner, he might be able to prevent much evil, and that, if he refused to act, some person less attached

to the Protestant religion would be found to replace him. Sunderland was the representative of the Jesuitical

cabal. Herbert's recent decision on the question of the dispensing power seemed to prove that he would not

As soon as the Commission had been opened, the Bishop of London was cited before the new tribunal. He

appeared. "I demand of you," said Jeffreys, "a direct and positive answer. Why did not you suspend Dr.

The Bishop requested a copy of the Commission in order that he might know by what authority he was thus

interrogated. "If you mean," said Jeffreys, "to dispute our authority, I shall take another course with you. As

to the Commission, I do not doubt that you have seen it. At all events you may see it in any coffeehouse for a

penny." The insolence of the Chancellor's reply appears to have shocked the other Commissioners, and he

was forced to make some awkward apologies. He then returned to the point from which he had started.

"This," he said, "is not a court in which written charges are exhibited. Our proceedings are summary, and by

word of mouth. The question is a plain one. Why did you not obey the King?" With some difficulty Compton

obtained a brief delay, and the assistance of counsel. When the case had been heard, it was evident to all men

that the Bishop had done only what he was bound to do. The Treasurer, the Chief Justice, and Sprat were for

acquittal. The King's wrath was moved. It seemed that his Ecclesiastical Commission would fail him as his

Tory Parliament had failed him. He offered Rochester a simple choice, to pronounce the Bishop guilty, or to

quit the Treasury. Rochester was base enough to yield. Compton was suspended from all spiritual functions;

and the charge of his great diocese was committed to his judges, Sprat and Crewe. He continued, however, to

reside in his palace and to receive his revenues; for it was known that, had any attempt been made to deprive

him of his temporalities, he would have put himself under the protection of the common law; and Herbert

himself declared that, at common law, judgment must be given against the crown. This consideration induced

the King to pause. Only a few weeks had elapsed since he had packed the courts of Westminster Hall in order

to obtain a decision in favour of his dispensing power. He now found that, unless he packed them again, he

should not be able to obtain a decision in favour of the proceedings of his Ecclesiastical Commission. He

determined, therefore, to postpone for a short time the confiscation of the freehold property of refractory

The temper of the nation was indeed such as might well make him hesitate. During some months discontent

had been steadily and rapidly increasing. The celebration of the Roman Catholic worship had long been

prohibited by Act of Parliament. During several generations no Roman Catholic clergyman had dared to

exhibit himself in any public place with the badges of his office. Against the regular clergy, and against the

restless and subtle Jesuits by name, had been enacted a succession of rigorous statutes. Every Jesuit who set

foot in this country was liable to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. A reward was offered for his detection. He

was not allowed to take advantage of the general rule, that men are not bound to accuse themselves. Whoever

was suspected of being a Jesuit might be interrogated, and, if he refused to answer, might be sent to prison for

life.103 These laws, though they had not, except when there was supposed to be some peculiar danger, been

strictly executed, and though they had never prevented Jesuits from resorting to England, had made disguise

necessary. But all disguise was now thrown off. Injudicious members of the King's Church, encouraged by

him, took a pride in defying statutes which were still of undoubted validity, and feelings which had a stronger

hold of the national mind than at any former period. Roman Catholic chapels rose all over the country.

Cowls, girdles of ropes, and strings of beads constantly appeared in the, streets, and astonished a population,

the oldest of whom had never seen a conventual garb except on the stage. A convent rose at Clerkenwell on

the site of the ancient cloister of Saint John. The Franciscans occupied a mansion in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The

Carmelites were quartered in the City. A society of Benedictine monks was lodged in Saint James's Palace. In

the Savoy a spacious house, including a church and a school, was built for the Jesuits.104 The skill and care

with which those fathers had, during several generations, conducted the education of youth, had drawn forth

reluctant praises from the wisest Protestants. Bacon had pronounced the mode of instruction followed in the

Jesuit colleges to be the best yet known in the world, and had warmly expressed his regret that so admirable a

system of intellectual and moral discipline should be subservient to the interests of a corrupt religion.105 It

was not improbable that the new academy in the Savoy might, under royal patronage, prove a formidable

rival to the great foundations of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester. Indeed, soon after the school was

opened, the classes consisted of four hundred boys, about one half of whom were Protestants. The Protestant

pupils were not required to attend mass: but there could be no doubt that the influence of able preceptors,

devoted to the Roman Catholic Church, and versed in all the arts which win the confidence and affection of

These things produced great excitement among the populace, which is always more moved by what

impresses the senses than by what is addressed to the reason. Thousands of rude and ignorant men, to whom

the dispensing power and the Ecclesiastical Commission were words without a meaning, saw with dismay

and indignation a Jesuit college rising on the banks of the Thames, friars in hoods and gowns walking in the

Strand, and crowds of devotees pressing in at the doors of temples where homage was paid to graven images.

Riots broke out in several parts of the country. At Coventry and Worcester the Roman Catholic worship was

violently interrupted.106 At Bristol the rabble, countenanced, it was said, by the magistrates, exhibited a

profane and indecent pageant, in which the Virgin Mary was represented by a buffoon, and in which a mock

host was carried in procession. The garrison was called out to disperse the mob. The mob, then and ever since

one of the fiercest in the kingdom, resisted. Blows were exchanged, and serious hurts inflicted.107 The

agitation was great in the capital, and greater in the City, properly so called, than at Westminster. For the

people of Westminster had been accustomed to see among them the private chapels of Roman Catholic

Ambassadors: but the City had not, within living memory, been polluted by any idolatrous exhibition. Now,

however, the resident of the Elector Palatine, encouraged by the King, fitted up a chapel in Lime Street. The

heads of the corporation, though men selected for office on account of their known Toryism, protested

against this proceeding, which, as they said, the ablest gentlemen of the long robe regarded as illegal. The

Lord Mayor was ordered to appear before the Privy Council. "Take heed what you do," said the King. "Obey

me; and do not trouble yourself either about gentlemen of the long robe or gentlemen of the short robe." The

Chancellor took up the word, and reprimanded the unfortunate magistrate with the genuine eloquence of the

Old Bailey bar. The chapel was opened. All the neighbourhood was soon in commotion. Great crowds

assembled in Cheapside to attack the new mass house. The priests were insulted. A crucifix was taken out of

the building and set up on the parish pump. The Lord Mayor came to quell the tumult, but was received with

cries of "No wooden gods." The trainbands were ordered to disperse the crowd: but they shared in the popular

feeling; and murmurs were heard from the ranks, "We cannot in conscience fight for Popery."108

The Elector Palatine was, like James, a sincere and zealous Catholic, and was, like James, the ruler of a

Protestant people; but the two princes resembled each other little in temper and understanding. The Elector

had promised to respect the rights of the Church which he found established in his dominions. He had strictly

kept his word, and had not suffered himself to be provoked to any violence by the indiscretion of preachers

who, in their antipathy to his faith, occasionally forgot the respect which they owed to his person.109 He

learned, with concern, that great offence had been given to the people of London by the injudicious act of his

representative, and, much to his honour, declared that he would forego the privilege to which, as a sovereign

prince, he was entitled, rather than endanger the peace of a great city. "I, too," he wrote to James, "have

Protestant subjects; and I know with how much caution and delicacy it is necessary that a Catholic prince so

situated should act." James, instead of expressing gratitude for this humane and considerate conduct, turned

the letter into ridicule before the foreign ministers. It was determined that the Elector should have a chapel in

the City whether he would or not, and that, if the trainbands refused to do their duty, their place should be

The effect of these disturbances on trade was serious. The Dutch minister informed the States General that

the business of the Exchange was at a stand. The Commissioners of the Customs reported to the King that,

during the month which followed the opening of Lime Street Chapel, the receipt in the port of the Thames

had fallen off by some thousands of pounds.111 Several Aldermen, who, though zealous royalists appointed

under the new charter, were deeply interested in the commercial prosperity of their city, and loved neither

Popery nor martial law, tendered their resignations. But the King was resolved not to yield. He formed a

camp on Hounslow Heath, and collected there, within a circumference of about two miles and a half, fourteen

battalions of foot and thirtytwo squadrons of horse, amounting to thirteen thousand fighting men.

Twentysix pieces of artillery, and many wains laden with arms and ammunition, were dragged from the

Tower through the City to Hounslow.112 The Londoners saw this great force assembled in their

neighbourhood with a terror which familiarity soon diminished. A visit to Hounslow became their favourite

amusement on holidays. The camp presented the appearance of a vast fair. Mingled with the musketeers and

dragoons, a multitude of fine gentlemen and ladies from Soho Square, sharpers and painted women from

Whitefriars, invalids in sedans, monks in hoods and gowns, lacqueys in rich liveries, pedlars, orange girls,

mischievous apprentices and gaping clowns, was constantly passing and repassing through the long lanes of

tents. From some pavilions were heard the noises of drunken revelry, from others the curses of gamblers. In

truth the place was merely a gay suburb of the capital. The King, as was amply proved two years later, had

greatly miscalculated. He had forgotten that vicinity operates in more ways than one. He had hoped that his

army would overawe London: but the result of his policy was that the feelings and opinions of London took

Scarcely indeed had the encampment been formed when there were rumours of quarrels between the

Protestant and Popish soldiers.114 A little tract, entitled A humble and hearty Address to all English

Protestants in the Army, had been actively circulated through the ranks. The writer vehemently exhorted the

troops to use their arms in defence, not of the mass book, but of the Bible, of the Great Charter, and of the

Petition of Right. He was a man already under the frown of power. His character was remarkable, and his

His name was Samuel Johnson. He was a priest of the Church of England, and had been chaplain to Lord

Russell. Johnson was one of those persons who are mortally hated by their opponents, and less loved than

respected by their allies. His morals were pure, his religious feelings ardent, his learning and abilities not

contemptible, his judgment weak, his temper acrimonious, turbulent, and unconquerably stubborn. His

profession made him peculiarly odious to the zealous supporters of monarchy; for a republican in holy orders

was a strange and almost an unnatural being. During the late reign Johnson had published a book entitled

Julian the Apostate. The object of this work was to show that the Christians of the fourth century did not hold

the doctrine of nonresistance. It was easy to produce passages from Chrysostom and Jerome written in a spirit

very different from that of the Anglican divines who preached against the Exclusion Bill. Johnson, however,

went further. He attempted to revive the odious imputation which had, for very obvious reasons, been thrown

by Libanius on the Christian soldiers of Julian, and insinuated that the dart which slew the imperial renegade

came, not from the enemy, but from some Rumbold or Ferguson in the Roman ranks. A hot controversy

followed. Whig and Tory disputants wrangled fiercely about an obscure passage, in which Gregory of

Nazianzus praises a pious Bishop who was going to bastinado somebody. The Whigs maintained that the

holy man was going to bastinado the Emperor; the Tories that, at the worst, he was only going to bastinado a

captain of the guard. Johnson prepared a reply to his assailants, in which he drew an elaborate parallel

between Julian and James, then Duke of York, Julian had, during many years, pretended to abhor idolatry,

while in heart an idolater. Julian had, to serve a turn, occasionally affected respect for the rights of

conscience. Julian had punished cities which were zealous for the true religion, by taking away their

municipal privileges. Julian had, by his flatterers, been called the Just. James was provoked beyond

endurance. Johnson was prosecuted for a libel, convicted, and condemned to a fine which he had no means of

paying. He was therefore kept in gaol; and it seemed likely that his confinement would end only with his

Over the room which he occupied in the King's Bench prison lodged another offender whose character well

deserves to be studied. This was Hugh Speke, a young man of good family, but of a singularly base and

depraved nature. His love of mischief and of dark and crooked ways amounted almost to madness. To cause

confusion without being found out was his business and his pastime; and he had a rare skill in using honest

enthusiasts as the instruments of his coldblooded malice. He had attempted, by means of one of his puppets,

to fasten on Charles and James the crime of murdering Essex in the Tower. On this occasion the agency of

Speke had been traced and, though he succeeded in throwing the greater part of the blame on his dupe, he had

not escaped with impunity. He was now a prisoner; but his fortune enabled him to live with comfort; and he

was under so little restraint that he was able to keep up regular communication with one of his confederates

Johnson was the very man for Speke's purposes, zealous and intrepid, a scholar and a practised

controversialist, yet as simple as a child. A close intimacy sprang up between the two fellow prisoners.

Johnson wrote a succession of bitter and vehement treatises which Speke conveyed to the printer. When the

camp was formed at Hounslow, Speke urged Johnson to compose an address which might excite the troops to

mutiny. The paper was instantly drawn up. Many thousands of copies were struck off and brought to Speke's

room, whence they were distributed over the whole country, and especially among the soldiers. A milder

government than that which then ruled England would have been moved to high resentment by such a

provocation. Strict search was made. A subordinate agent who had been employed to circulate the address

saved himself by giving up Johnson; and Johnson was not the man to save himself by giving up Speke. An

information was filed, and a conviction obtained without difficulty. Julian Johnson, as he was popularly

called, was sentenced to stand thrice in the pillory, and to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. The Judge,

Sir Francis Withins, told the criminal to be thankful for the great lenity of the Attorney General, who might

have treated the case as one of high treason. "I owe him no thanks," answered Johnson, dauntlessly. "Am I,

whose only crime is that I have defended the Church and the laws, to be grateful for being scourged like a

dog, while Popish scribblers are suffered daily to insult the Church and to violate the laws with impunity?"

The energy with which he spoke was such that both the Judges and the crown lawyers thought it necessary to

vindicate themselves, and protested that they knew of no Popish publications such as those to which the

prisoner alluded. He instantly drew from his pocket some Roman Catholic books and trinkets which were

then freely exposed for sale under the royal patronage, read aloud the titles of the books, and threw a rosary

across the table to the King's counsel. "And now," he cried with a loud voice, "I lay this information before

God, before this court, and before the English people. We shall soon see whether Mr. Attorney will do his

It was resolved that, before the punishment was inflicted, Johnson should be degraded from the priesthood.

The prelates who had been charged by the Ecclesiastical Commission with the care of the diocese of London

cited him before them in the chapter house of Saint Paul's Cathedral. The manner in which he went through

the ceremony made a deep impression on many minds. When he was stripped of his sacred robe he

exclaimed, "You are taking away my gown because I have tried to keep your gowns on your backs." The only

part of the formalities which seemed to distress him was the plucking of the Bible out of his hand. He made a

faint struggle to retain the sacred book, kissed it, and burst into tears. "You cannot," he said, "deprive me of

the hopes which I owe to it." Some attempts were made to obtain a remission of the flogging. A Roman

Catholic priest offered to intercede in consideration of a bribe of two hundred pounds. The money was raised;

"Mr. Johnson," said the King, "has the spirit of a martyr; and it is fit that he should be one." William the

Third said, a few years later, of one of the most acrimonious and intrepid Jacobites, "He has set his heart on

being a martyr, and I have set mine on disappointing him." These two speeches would alone suffice to

The day appointed for the flogging came. A whip of nine lashes was used. Three hundred and seventeen

stripes were inflicted; but the sufferer never winced. He afterwards said that the pain was cruel, but that, as he

was dragged at the tail of the cart, he remembered how patiently the cross had been borne up Mount Calvary,

and was so much supported by the thought that, but for the fear of incurring the suspicion of vain glory, he

would have sung a psalm with as firm and cheerful a voice as if he had been worshipping God in the

congregation. It is impossible not to wish that so much heroism had been less alloyed by intemperance and

Among the clergy of the Church of England Johnson found no sympathy. He had attempted to justify

rebellion; he had even hinted approbation of regicide; and they still, in spite of much provocation, clung to

the doctrine of nonresistance. But they saw with alarm and concern the progress of what they considered as a

noxious superstition, and, while they abjured all thought of defending their religion by the sword, betook

themselves manfully to weapons of a different kind. To preach against the errors of Popery was now regarded

by them as a point of duty and a point of honour. The London clergy, who were then in abilities and influence

decidedly at the head of their profession, set an example which was bravely followed by their ruder brethren

all over the country. Had only a few bold men taken this freedom, they would probably have been at once

cited before the Ecclesiastical Commission; but it was hardly possible to punish an offence which was

committed every Sunday by thousands of divines, from Berwick to Penzance. The presses of the capital, of

Oxford, and of Cambridge, never rested. The act which subjected literature to a censorship did not seriously

impede the exertions of Protestant controversialists; for it contained a proviso in favour of the two

Universities, and authorised the publication of theological works licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It

was therefore out of the power of the government to silence the defenders of the established religion. They

were a numerous, an intrepid, and a well appointed band of combatants. Among them were eloquent

declaimers, expert dialecticians, scholars deeply read in the writings of the fathers and in all parts of

ecclesiastical history. Some of them, at a later period, turned against one another the formidable arms which

they had wielded against the common enemy, and by their fierce contentions and insolent triumphs brought

reproach on the Church which they had saved. But at present they formed an united phalanx. In the van

appeared a rank of steady and skilful veterans, Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Sherlock, Prideaux, Whitby, Patrick,

Tenison, Wake. The rear was brought up by the most distinguished bachelors of arts who were studying for

deacon's orders. Conspicuous amongst the recruits whom Cambridge sent to the field was a distinguished

pupil of the great Newton, Henry Wharton, who had, a few months before, been senior wrangler of his year,

and whose early death was soon after deplored by men of all parties as an irreparable loss to letters.117

Oxford was not less proud of a youth, whose great powers, first essayed in this conflict, afterwards troubled

the Church and the State during forty eventful years, Francis Atterbury. By such men as these every question

in issue between the Papists and the Protestants was debated, sometimes in a popular style which boys and

women could comprehend, sometimes with the utmost subtlety of logic, and sometimes with an immense

display of learning. The pretensions of the Holy See, the authority of tradition, purgatory, transubstantiation,

the sacrifice of the mass, the adoration of the host, the denial of the cup to the laity, confession, penance,

indulgences, extreme unction, the invocation of saints, the adoration of images, the celibacy of the clergy, the

monastic vows, the practice of celebrating public worship in a tongue unknown to the multitude, the

corruptions of the court of Rome, the history of the Reformation, the characters of the chief reformers, were

copiously discussed. Great numbers of absurd legends about miracles wrought by saints and relics were

translated from the Italian and published as specimens of the priestcraft by which the greater part of

Christendom had been fooled. Of the tracts put forth on these subjects by Anglican divines during the short

reign of James the Second many have probably perished. Those which may still be found in our great

The Roman Catholics did not yield the victory without a struggle. One of them, named Henry Hills, had been

appointed printer to the royal household and chapel, and had been placed by the King at the head of a great

office in London from which theological tracts came forth by hundreds. Obadiah Walker's press was not less

active at Oxford. But, with the exception of some bad translations of Bossuet's admirable works, these

establishments put forth nothing of the smallest value. It was indeed impossible for any intelligent and candid

Roman Catholic to deny that the champions of his Church were, in every talent and acquirement, completely

overmatched. The ablest of them would not, on the other side, have been considered as of the third rate.

Many of them, even when they had something to say, knew not how to say it. They had been excluded by

their religion from English schools and universities; nor had they ever, till the accession of James, found

England an agreeable, or even a safe, residence. They had therefore passed the greater part of their lives on

the Continent, and had almost unlearned their mother tongue. When they preached, their outlandish accent

moved the derision of the audience. They spelt like washerwomen. Their diction was disfigured by foreign

idioms; and, when they meant to be eloquent, they imitated, as well as they could, what was considered as

fine writing in those Italian academies where rhetoric had then reached the last stage of corruption.

Disputants labouring under these disadvantages would scarcely, even with truth on their side, have been able

to make head against men whose style is eminently distinguished by simple purity and grace.119

The situation of England in the year 1686 cannot be better described than in the words of the French

Ambassador. "The discontent," he wrote, "is great and general: but the fear of incurring still worse evils

restrains all who have anything to lose. The King openly expresses his joy at finding himself in a situation to

strike bold strokes. He likes to be complimented on this subject. He has talked to me about it, and has assured

Meanwhile in other parts of the empire events of grave importance had taken place. The situation of the

episcopalian Protestants of Scotland differed widely from that in which their English brethren stood. In the

south of the island the religion of the state was the religion of the people, and had a strength altogether

independent of the strength derived from the support of the government. The sincere conformists were far

more numerous than the Papists and the Protestant Dissenters taken together. The Established Church of

Scotland was the Church of a small minority. The majority of the lowland population was firmly attached to

the Presbyterian discipline. Prelacy was abhorred by the great body of Scottish Protestants, both as an

unscriptural and as a foreign institution. It was regarded by the disciples of Knox as a relic of the

abominations of Babylon the Great. It painfully reminded a people proud of the memory of Wallace and

Bruce that Scotland, since her sovereigns had succeeded to a fairer inheritance, had been independent in

name only. The episcopal polity was also closely associated in the public mind with all the evils produced by

twentyfive years of corrupt and cruel maladministration. Nevertheless this polity stood, though on a narrow

basis and amidst fearful storms, tottering indeed, yet upheld by the civil magistrate, and leaning for support,

whenever danger became serious, on the power of England. The records of the Scottish Parliament were thick

set with laws denouncing vengeance on those who in any direction strayed from the prescribed pale. By an

Act passed in the time of Knox, and breathing his spirit, it was a high crime to hear mass, and the third

offence was capital.121 An Act recently passed, at the instance of James, made it death to preach in any

Presbyterian conventicle whatever, and even to attend such a conventicle in the open air.122 The Eucharist

was not, as in England, degraded into a civil test; but no person could hold any office, could sit in Parliament,

or could even vote for a member of Parliament, without subscribing, under the sanction of an oath, a

declaration which condemned in the strongest terms the principles both of the Papists and of the

In the Privy Council of Scotland there were two parties corresponding to the two parties which were

contending against each other at Whitehall. William Douglas, Duke of Queensberry, was Lord Treasurer, and

had, during some years, been considered as first minister. He was nearly connected by affinity, by similarity

of opinions, and by similarity of temper, with the Treasurer of England. Both were Tories: both were men of

hot temper and strong prejudices; both were ready to support their master in any attack on the civil liberties of

his people; but both were sincerely attached to the Established Church. Queensberry had early notified to the

court that, if any innovation affecting that Church were contemplated, to such innovation he could be no

party. But among his colleagues were several men not less unprincipled than Sunderland. In truth the Council

chamber at Edinburgh had been, during a quarter of a century, a seminary of all public and private vices; and

some of the politicians whose character had been formed there had a peculiar hardness of heart and forehead

to which Westminster, even in that bad age, could hardly show anything quite equal. The Chancellor, James

Drummond, Earl of Perth, and his brother, the Secretary of State, John Lord Melfort, were bent on

supplanting Queensberry. The Chancellor had already an unquestionable title to the royal favour. He had

brought into use a little steel thumbscrew which gave such exquisite torment that it had wrung confessions

even out of men on whom His Majesty's favourite boot had been tried in vain.124 But it was well known that

even barbarity was not so sure a way to the heart of James as apostasy. To apostasy, therefore, Perth and

Melfort resorted with a certain audacious baseness which no English statesman could hope to emulate. They

declared that the papers found in the strong box of Charles the Second had converted them both to the true

faith; and they began to confess and to hear mass.125 How little conscience had to do with Perth's change of

religion he amply proved by taking to wife, a few weeks later, in direct defiance of the laws of the Church

which he had just joined, a lady who was his cousin german, without waiting for a dispensation. When the

good Pope learned this, he said, with scorn and indignation which well became him, that this was a strange

sort of conversion.126 But James was more easily satisfied. The apostates presented themselves at Whitehall,

and there received such assurances of his favour, that they ventured to bring direct charges against the

Treasurer. Those charges, however, were so evidently frivolous that James was forced to acquit the accused

minister; and many thought that the Chancellor had ruined himself by his malignant eagerness to ruin his

rival. There were a few, however, who judged more correctly. Halifax, to whom Perth expressed some

apprehensions, answered with a sneer that there was no danger. "Be of good cheer, my Lord; thy faith hath

made thee whole." The prediction was correct. Perth and Melfort went back to Edinburgh, the real heads of

the government of their country.127 Another member of the Scottish Privy Council, Alexander Stuart, Earl of

Murray, the descendant and heir of the Regent, abjured the religion of which his illustrious ancestor had been

the foremost champion, and declared himself a member of the Church of Rome. Devoted as Queensberry had

always been to the cause of prerogative, he could not stand his ground against competitors who were willing

to pay such a price for the favour of the court. He had to endure a succession of mortifications and

humiliations similar to those which, about the same time, began to embitter the life of his friend Rochester.

Royal letters came down authorising Papists to hold offices without taking the test. The clergy were strictly

charged not to reflect on the Roman Catholic religion in their discourses. The Chancellor took on himself to

send the macers of the Privy Council round to the few printers and booksellers who could then be found in

Edinburgh, charging them not to publish any work without his license. It was well understood that this order

was intended to prevent the circulation of Protestant treatises. One honest stationer told the messengers that

he had in his shop a book which reflected in very coarse terms on Popery, and begged to know whether he

might sell it. They asked to see it; and he showed them a copy of the Bible.128 A cargo of images, beads,

crosses and censers arrived at Leith directed to Lord Perth. The importation of such articles had long been

considered as illegal; but now the officers of the customs allowed the superstitious garments and trinkets to

pass.129 In a short time it was known that a Popish chapel had been fitted up in the Chancellor's house, and

that mass was regularly said there. The mob rose. The mansion where the idolatrous rites were celebrated was

fiercely attacked. The iron bars which protected the windows were wrenched off. Lady Perth and some of her

female friends were pelted with mud. One rioter was seized, and ordered by the Privy Council to be whipped.

His fellows rescued him and beat the hangman. The city was all night in confusion. The students of the

University mingled with the crowd and animated the tumult. Zealous burghers drank the health of the college

lads and confusion to Papists, and encouraged each other to face the troops. The troops were already under

arms. They were received with a shower of stones, which wounded an officer. Orders were given to fire; and

several citizens were killed. The disturbance was serious; but the Drummonds, inflamed by resentment and

ambition, exaggerated it strangely. Queensberry observed that their reports would lead any person, who had

not been a witness of the tumult, to believe that a sedition as formidable as that of Masaniello had been raging

at Edinburgh. They in return accused the Treasurer, not only of extenuating the crime of the insurgents, but of

having himself prompted it, and did all in their power to obtain evidence of his guilt. One of the ringleaders,

who had been taken, was offered a pardon if he would own that Queensberry had set him on; but the same

religious enthusiasm, which had impelled the unhappy prisoner to criminal violence, prevented him from

purchasing his life by a calumny. He and several of his accomplices were hanged. A soldier, who was

accused of exclaiming, during the affray, that he should like to run his sword through a Papist, was shot; and

Edinburgh was again quiet: but the sufferers were regarded as martyrs; and the Popish Chancellor became an

The King was much incensed. The news of the tumult reached him when the Queen, assisted by the Jesuits,

had just triumphed over Lady Dorchester and her Protestant allies. The malecontents should find, he declared,

that the only effect of the resistance offered to his will was to make him more and more resolute.131 He sent

orders to the Scottish Council to punish the guilty with the utmost severity, and to make unsparing use of the

boot.132 He pretended to be fully convinced of the Treasurer's innocence, and wrote to that minister in

gracious words; but the gracious words were accompanied by ungracious acts. The Scottish Treasury was put

into commission in spite of the earnest remonstrances of Rochester, who probably saw his own fate

prefigured in that of his kinsman.133 Queensberry was, indeed, named First Commissioner, and was made

President of the Privy Council: but his fall, though thus broken, was still a fall. He was also removed from the

government of the castle of Edinburgh, and was succeeded in that confidential post by the Duke of Gordon, a

And now a letter arrived from London, fully explaining to the Scottish Privy Council the intentions of the

King. What he wanted was that the Roman Catholics should be exempted from all laws imposing penalties

and disabilities on account of nonconformity, but that the persecution of the Covenanters should go on

without mitigation.135 This scheme encountered strenuous opposition in the Council. Some members were

unwilling to see the existing laws relaxed. Others, who were by no means averse to some relaxation, yet felt

that it would he monstrous to admit Roman Catholics to the highest honours of the state, and yet to leave

unrepealed the Act which made it death to attend a Presbyterian conventicle. The answer of the board was,

therefore, less obsequious than usual. The King in reply sharply reprimanded his undutiful Councillors, and

ordered three of them, the Duke of Hamilton, Sir George Lockhart, and General Drummond, to attend him at

Westminster. Hamilton's abilities and knowledge, though by no means such as would have sufficed to raise

an obscure man to eminence, appeared highly respectable in one who was premier peer of Scotland. Lockhart

had long been regarded as one of the first jurists, logicians, and orators that his country had produced, and

enjoyed also that sort of consideration which is derived from large possessions; for his estate was such as at

that time very few Scottish nobles possessed.136 He had been lately appointed President of the Court of

Session. Drummond, a younger brother of Perth and Melfort, was commander of the forces in Scotland. He

was a loose and profane man: but a sense of honour which his two kinsmen wanted restrained him from a

public apostasy. He lived and died, in the significant phrase of one of his countrymen, a bad Christian, but a

James was pleased by the dutiful language which the three Councillors used when first they appeared before

him. He spoke highly of them to Barillon, and particularly extolled Lockhart as the ablest and most eloquent

Scotchman living. They soon proved, however, less tractable than had been expected; and it was rumoured at

court that they had been perverted by the company which they had kept in London. Hamilton lived much with

zealous churchmen; and it might be feared that Lockhart, who was related to the Wharton family, had fallen

into still worse society. In truth it was natural that statesmen fresh from a country where opposition in any

other form than that of insurrection and assassination had long been almost unknown, and where all that was

not lawless fury was abject submission, should have been struck by the earnest and stubborn, yet sober,

discontent which pervaded England, and should have been emboldened to try the experiment of constitutional

resistance to the royal will. They indeed declared themselves willing to grant large relief to the Roman

Catholics; but on two conditions; first, that similar indulgence should be extended to the Calvinistic sectaries;

and, secondly, that the King should bind himself by a solemn promise not to attempt anything to the prejudice

Both conditions were highly distasteful to James. He reluctantly agreed, however, after a dispute which lasted

several days, that some indulgence should be granted to the Presbyterians but he would by no means consent

to allow them the full liberty which he demanded for members of his own communion.138 To the second

condition proposed by the three Scottish Councillors he positively refused to listen. The Protestant religion,

he said, was false and he would not give any guarantee that he would not use his power to the prejudice of a

false religion. The altercation was long, and was not brought to a conclusion satisfactory to either party.139

The time fixed for the meeting of the Scottish Estates drew near; and it was necessary that the three

Councillors should leave London to attend their parliamentary duty at Edinburgh. On this occasion another

affront was offered to Queensberry. In the late session he had held the office of Lord High Commissioner,

and had in that capacity represented the majesty of the absent King. This dignity, the greatest to which a

On the twentyninth of April the Parliament met at Edinburgh. A letter from the King was read. He exhorted

the Estates to give relief to his Roman Catholic subjects, and offered in return a free trade with England and

an amnesty for political offences. A committee was appointed to draw up an answer. That committee, though

named by Murray, and composed of Privy Councillors and courtiers, framed a reply, full indeed of dutiful

and respectful expressions, yet clearly indicating a determination to refuse what the King demanded. The

Estates, it was said, would go as far as their consciences would allow to meet His Majesty's wishes respecting

his subjects of the Roman Catholic religion. These expressions were far from satisfying the Chancellor; yet,

such as they were, he was forced to content himself with them, and even had some difficulty in persuading

the Parliament to adopt them. Objection was taken by some zealous Protestants to the mention made of the

Roman Catholic religion. There was no such religion. There was an idolatrous apostasy, which the laws

punished with the halter, and to which it did not become Christian men to give flattering titles. To call such a

superstition Catholic was to give up the whole question which was at issue between Rome and the reformed

Churches. The offer of a free trade with England was treated as an insult. "Our fathers," said one orator, "sold

their King for southern gold; and we still lie under the reproach of that foul bargain. Let it not be said of us

that we have sold our God!" Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall, one of the Senators of the College of Justice,

suggested the words, "the persons commonly called Roman Catholics." "Would you nickname His Majesty?"

exclaimed the Chancellor. The answer drawn by the committee was carried; but a large and respectable

minority voted against the proposed words as too courtly.140 It was remarked that the representatives of the

towns were, almost to a man, against the government. Hitherto those members had been of small account in

the Parliament, and had generally, been considered as the retainers of powerful noblemen. They now showed,

for the first time, an independence, a resolution, and a spirit of combination which alarmed the court.141

The answer was so unpleasing to James that he did not suffer it to be printed in the Gazette. Soon he learned

that a law, such as he wished to see passed, would not even be brought in. The Lords of Articles, whose

business was to draw up the acts on which the Estates were afterwards to deliberate, were virtually nominated

by himself. Yet even the Lords of Articles proved refractory. When they met, the three Privy Councillors who

had lately returned from London took the lead in opposition to the royal will. Hamilton declared plainly that

he could not do what was asked. He was a faithful and loyal subject; but there was a limit imposed by

conscience. "Conscience!" said the Chancellor: "conscience is a vague word, which signifies any thing or

nothing." Lockhart, who sate in Parliament as representative of the great county of Lanark, struck in. "If

conscience," he said, "be a word without meaning, we will change it for another phrase which, I hope, means

something. For conscience let us put the fundamental laws of Scotland." These words raised a fierce debate.

General Drummond, who represented Perthshire, declared that he agreed with Hamilton and Lockhart. Most

It was plain that, even in the Committee of Articles, James could not command a majority. He was mortified

and irritated by the tidings. He held warm and menacing language, and punished some of his mutinous

servants, in the hope that the rest would take warning. Several persons were dismissed from the Council

board. Several were deprived of pensions, which formed an important part of their income. Sir George

Mackenzie of Rosehaugh was the most distinguished victim. He had long held the office of Lord Advocate,

and had taken such a part in the persecution of the Covenanters that to this day he holds, in the estimation of

the austere and godly peasantry of Scotland, a place not far removed from the unenviable eminence occupied

by Claverhouse. The legal attainments of Mackenzie were not of the highest order: but, as a scholar, a wit,

and an orator, he stood high in the opinion of his countrymen; and his renown had spread even to the

coffeehouses of London and the cloisters of Oxford. The remains of his forensic speeches prove him to have

been a man of parts, but are somewhat disfigured by what he doubtless considered as Ciceronian graces,

interjections which show more art than passion, and elaborate amplifications, in which epithet rises above

epithet in wearisome climax. He had now, for the first time, been found scrupulous. He was, therefore, in

spite of all his claims on the gratitude of the government, deprived of his office. He retired into the country,

and soon after went up to London for the purpose of clearing himself, but was refused admission to the royal

presence.143 While the King was thus trying to terrify the Lords of Articles into submission, the popular

voice encouraged them to persist. The utmost exertions of the Chancellor could not prevent the national

sentiment from expressing itself through the pulpit and the press. One tract, written with such boldness and

acrimony that no printer dared to put it in type, was widely circulated in manuscript. The papers which

appeared on the other side of the question had much less effect, though they were disseminated at the public

charge, and though the Scottish defenders of the government were assisted by an English auxiliary of great

note, Lestrange, who had been sent down to Edinburgh, and had apartments in Holyrood House.144

At length, after three weeks of debate, the Lords of Articles came to a decision. They proposed merely that

Roman Catholics should be permitted to worship God in private houses without incurring any penalty; and it

soon appeared that, far as this measure was from coming up to the King's demands and expectations, the

Estates either would not pass it at all, or would pass it with great restrictions and modifications.

While the contest lasted the anxiety in London was intense. Every report, every line, from Edinburgh was

eagerly devoured. One day the story ran that Hamilton had given way and that the government would carry

every point. Then came intelligence that the opposition had rallied and was more obstinate than ever. At the

most critical moment orders were sent to the postoffice that the bags from Scotland should be transmitted to

Whitehall. During a whole week not a single private letter from beyond the Tweed was delivered in London.

In our age such an interruption of communication would throw the whole island into confusion: but there was

then so little trade and correspondence between England and Scotland that the inconvenience was probably

much smaller than has been often occasioned in our own time by a short delay in the arrival of the Indian

mail. While the ordinary channels of information were thus closed, the crowd in the galleries of Whitehall

observed with attention the countenances of the King and his ministers. It was noticed, with great satisfaction,

that, after every express from the North, the enemies of the Protestant religion looked more and more

gloomy. At length, to the general joy, it was announced that the struggle was over, that the government had

been unable to carry its measures, and that the Lord High Commissioner had adjourned the Parliament.145

If James had not been proof to all warning, these events would have sufficed to warn him. A few months

before this time the most obsequious of English Parliaments had refused to submit to his pleasure. But the

most obsequious of English Parliaments might be regarded as an independent and high spirited assembly

when compared with any Parliament that had ever sate in Scotland; and the servile spirit of Scottish

Parliaments was always to be found in the highest perfection, extracted and condensed, among the Lords of

Articles. Yet even the Lords of Articles had been refractory. It was plain that all those classes, all those

institutions, which, up to this year, had been considered as the strongest supports of monarchical power,

must, if the King persisted in his insane policy, be reckoned as parts of the strength of the opposition. All

these signs, however, were lost upon him. To every expostulation he had one answer: he would never give

way; for concession had ruined his father; and his unconquerable firmness was loudly applauded by the

He now proclaimed that he had been only too gracious when he had condescended to ask the assent of the

Scottish Estates to his wishes. His prerogative would enable him not only to protect those whom he favoured,

but to punish those who had crossed him. He was confident that, in Scotland, his dispensing power would not

be questioned by any court of law. There was a Scottish Act of Supremacy which gave to the sovereign such

a control over the Church as might have satisfied Henry the Eighth. Accordingly Papists were admitted in

crowds to offices and honours. The Bishop of Dunkeld, who, as a Lord of Parliament, had opposed the

government, was arbitrarily ejected from his see, and a successor was appointed. Queensberry was stripped of

all his employments, and was ordered to remain at Edinburgh till the accounts of the Treasury during his

administration had been examined and approved.146 As the representatives of the towns had been found the

most unmanageable part of the Parliament, it was determined to make a revolution in every burgh throughout

the kingdom. A similar change had recently been effected in England by judicial sentences: but in Scotland a

simple mandate of the prince was thought sufficient. All elections of magistrates and of town councils were

prohibited; and the King assumed to himself the right of filling up the chief municipal offices.147 In a formal

letter to the Privy Council he announced his intention to fit up a Roman Catholic chapel in his palace of

Holyrood; and he gave orders that the Judges should be directed to treat all the laws against Papists as null,

on pain of his high displeasure. He however comforted the Protestant Episcopalians by assuring them that,

though he was determined to protect the Roman Catholic Church against them, he was equally determined to

protect them against any encroachment on the part of the fanatics. To this communication Perth proposed an

answer couched in the most servile terms. The Council now contained many Papists; the Protestant members

who still had seats had been cowed by the King's obstinacy and severity; and only a few faint murmurs were

heard. Hamilton threw out against the dispensing power some hints which he made haste to explain away.

Lockhart said that he would lose his head rather than sign such a letter as the Chancellor had drawn, but took

care to say this in a whisper which was heard only by friends. Perth's words were adopted with inconsiderable

modifications; and the royal commands were obeyed; but a sullen discontent spread through that minority of

the Scottish nation by the aid of which the government had hitherto held the majority down.148

When the historian of this troubled reign turns to Ireland, his task becomes peculiarly difficult and delicate.

His steps,to borrow the fine image used on a similar occasion by a Roman poet,are on the thin crust of

ashes, beneath which the lava is still glowing. The seventeenth century has, in that unhappy country, left to

the nineteenth a fatal heritage of malignant passions. No amnesty for the mutual wrongs inflicted by the

Saxon defenders of Londonderry, and by the Celtic defenders of Limerick, has ever been granted from the

heart by either race. To this day a more than Spartan haughtiness alloys the many noble qualities which

characterize the children of the victors, while a Helot feeling, compounded of awe and hatred, is but too often

discernible in the children of the vanquished. Neither of the hostile castes can justly be absolved from blame;

but the chief blame is due to that shortsighted and headstrong prince who, placed in a situation in which he

might have reconciled them, employed all his power to inflame their animosity, and at length forced them to

The grievances under which the members of his Church laboured in Ireland differed widely from those which

he was attempting to remove in England and Scotland. The Irish Statute Book, afterwards polluted by

intolerance as barbarous as that of the dark ages, then contained scarce a single enactment, and not a single

stringent enactment, imposing any penalty on Papists as such. On our side of Saint George's Channel every

priest who received a neophyte into the bosom of the Church of Rome was liable to be hanged, drawn, and

quartered. On the other side he incurred no such danger. A Jesuit who landed at Dover took his life in his

hand; but he walked the streets of Dublin in security. Here no man could hold office, or even earn his

livelihood as a barrister or a schoolmaster, without previously taking the oath of supremacy, but in Ireland a

public functionary was not held to be under the necessity of taking that oath unless it were formally tendered

to him.149 It therefore did not exclude from employment any person whom the government wished to

promote. The sacramental test and the declaration against transubstantiation were unknown nor was either

It might seem, therefore, that the Irish Roman Catholic was in a situation which his English and Scottish

brethren in the faith might well envy. In fact, however, his condition was more pitiable and irritating than

theirs. For, though not persecuted as a Roman Catholic, he was oppressed as an Irishman. In his country the

same line of demarcation which separated religions separated races; and he was of the conquered, the

subjugated, the degraded race. On the same soil dwelt two populations, locally intermixed, morally and

politically sundered. The difference of religion was by no means the only difference, and was perhaps not

even the chief difference, which existed between them. They sprang from different stocks. They spoke

different languages. They had different national characters as strongly opposed as any two national characters

in Europe. They were in widely different stages of civilisation. Between two such populations there could be

little sympathy; and centuries of calamities and wrongs had generated a strong antipathy. The relation in

which the minority stood to the majority resembled the relation in which the followers of William the

Conqueror stood to the Saxon churls, or the relation in which the followers of Cortes stood to the Indians of

The appellation of Irish was then given exclusively to the Celts and to those families which, though not of

Celtic origin, had in the course of ages degenerated into Celtic manners. These people, probably somewhat

under a million in number, had, with few exceptions, adhered to the Church of Rome. Among them resided

about two hundred thousand colonists, proud of their Saxon blood and of their Protestant faith.150

The great preponderance of numbers on one side was more than compensated by a great superiority of

intelligence, vigour, and organization on the other. The English settlers seem to have been, in knowledge,

energy, and perseverance, rather above than below the average level of the population of the mother country.

The aboriginal peasantry, on the contrary, were in an almost savage state. They never worked till they felt the

sting of hunger. They were content with accommodation inferior to that which, in happier countries, was

provided for domestic cattle. Already the potato, a root which can be cultivated with scarcely any art,

industry, or capital, and which cannot be long stored, had become the food of the common people.151 From a

people so fed diligence and forethought were not to be expected. Even within a few miles of Dublin, the

traveller, on a soil the richest and most verdant in the world, saw with disgust the miserable burrows out of

The aboriginal aristocracy retained in no common measure the pride of birth, but had lost the influence which

is derived from wealth and power. Their lands had been divided by Cromwell among his followers. A

portion, indeed, of the vast territory which he had confiscated had, after the restoration of the House of Stuart,

been given back to the ancient proprietors. But much the greater part was still held by English emigrants

under the guarantee of an Act of Parliament. This act had been in force a quarter of a century; and under it

mortgages, settlements, sales, and leases without number had been made. The old Irish gentry were scattered

over the whole world. Descendants of Milesian chieftains swarmed in all the courts and camps of the

Continent. Those despoiled proprietors who still remained in their native land, brooded gloomily over their

losses, pined for the opulence and dignity of which they had been deprived, and cherished wild hopes of

another revolution. A person of this class was described by his countrymen as a gentleman who would be rich

if justice were done, as a gentleman who had a fine estate if he could only get it.153 He seldom betook

himself to any peaceful calling. Trade, indeed, he thought a far more disgraceful resource than marauding.

Sometimes he turned freebooter. Sometimes he contrived, in defiance of the law, to live by coshering, that is

to say, by quartering himself on the old tenants of his family, who, wretched as was their own condition,

could not refuse a portion of their pittance to one whom they still regarded as their rightful lord.154 The

native gentleman who had been so fortunate as to keep or to regain some of his land too often lived like the

petty prince of a savage tribe, and indemnified himself for the humiliations which the dominant race made

him suffer by governing his vassals despotically, by keeping a rude haram, and by maddening or stupefying

himself daily with strong drink.155 Politically he was insignificant. No statute, indeed, excluded him from

the House of Commons: but he had almost as little chance of obtaining a seat there as a man of colour has of

being chosen a Senator of the United States. In fact only one Papist had been returned to the Irish Parliament

since the Restoration. The whole legislative and executive power was in the hands of the colonists; and the

ascendency of the ruling caste was upheld by a standing army of seven thousand men, on whose zeal for what

On a close scrutiny it would have been found that neither the Irishry nor the Englishry formed a perfectly

homogeneous body. The distinction between those Irish who were of Celtic blood, and those Irish who

sprang from the followers of Strongbow and De Burgh, was not altogether effaced. The Fitzes sometimes

permitted themselves to speak with scorn of the Os and Macs; and the Os and Macs sometimes repaid that

scorn with aversion. In the preceding generation one of the most powerful of the O'Neills refused to pay any

mark of respect to a Roman Catholic gentleman of old Norman descent. "They say that the family has been

here four hundred years. No matter. I hate the clown as if he had come yesterday."157 It seems, however, that

such feelings were rare, and that the feud which had long raged between the aboriginal Celts and the

degenerate English had nearly given place to the fiercer feud which separated both races from the modern and

The colony had its own internal disputes, both national and religious. The majority was English; but a large

minority came from the south of Scotland. One half of the settlers belonged to the Established Church; the

other half were Dissenters. But in Ireland Scot and Southron were strongly bound together by their common

Saxon origin. Churchman and Presbyterian were strongly bound together by their common Protestantism. All

the colonists had a common language and a common pecuniary interest. They were surrounded by common

enemies, and could be safe only by means of common precautions and exertions. The few penal laws,

therefore, which had been made in Ireland against Protestant Nonconformists, were a dead letter.158 The

bigotry of the most sturdy churchman would not bear exportation across St. George's Channel. As soon as the

Cavalier arrived in Ireland, and found that, without the hearty and courageous assistance of his Puritan

neighbours, he and all his family would run imminent risk of being murdered by Popish marauders, his hatred

of Puritanism, in spite of himself, began to languish and die away. It was remarked by eminent men of both

parties that a Protestant who, in Ireland, was called a high Tory would in England have been considered as a

The Protestant Nonconformists, on their side, endured, with more patience than could have been expected,

the sight of the most absurd ecclesiastical establishment that the world has ever seen. Four Archbishops and

eighteen Bishops were employed in looking after about a fifth part of the number of churchmen who

inhabited the single diocese of London. Of the parochial clergy a large proportion were pluralists and resided

at a distance from their cures. There were some who drew from their benefices incomes of little less than a

thousand a year, without ever performing any spiritual function. Yet this monstrous institution was much less

disliked by the Puritans settled in Ireland than the Church of England by the English sectaries. For in Ireland

religious divisions were subordinate to national divisions; and the Presbyterian, while, as a theologian, he

could not but condemn the established hierarchy, yet looked on that hierarchy with a sort of complacency

when he considered it as a sumptuous and ostentatious trophy of the victory achieved by the great race from

Thus the grievances of the Irish Roman Catholic had hardly anything in common with the grievances of the

English Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic of Lancashire or Staffordshire had only to turn Protestant; and

he was at once, in all respects, on a level with his neighbours: but, if the Roman Catholics of Munster and

Connaught had turned Protestants, they would still have continued to be a subject people. Whatever evils the

Roman Catholic suffered in England were the effects of harsh legislation, and might have been remedied by a

more liberal legislation. But between the two populations which inhabited Ireland there was an inequality

which legislation had not caused and could not remove. The dominion which one of those populations

exercised over the other was the dominion of wealth over poverty, of knowledge over ignorance, of civilised

James himself seemed, at the commencement of his reign, to be perfectly aware of these truths. The

distractions of Ireland, he said, arose, not from the differences between the Catholics and the Protestants, but

from the differences between the Irish and the English.161 The consequences which he should have drawn

from this just proposition were sufficiently obvious; but unhappily for himself and for Ireland he failed to

If only national animosity could be allayed, there could be little doubt that religious animosity, not being kept

alive, as in England, by cruel penal acts and stringent test acts, would of itself fade away. To allay a national

animosity such as that which the two races inhabiting Ireland felt for each other could not be the work of a

few years. Yet it was a work to which a wise and good prince might have contributed much; and James would

have undertaken that work with advantages such as none of his predecessors or successors possessed. At once

an Englishman and a Roman Catholic, he belonged half to the ruling and half to the subject caste, and was

therefore peculiarly qualified to be a mediator between them. Nor is it difficult to trace the course which he

ought to have pursued. He ought to have determined that the existing settlement of landed property should be

inviolable; and he ought to have announced that determination in such a manner as effectually to quiet the

anxiety of the new proprietors, and to extinguish any wild hopes which the old proprietors might entertain.

Whether, in the great transfer of estates, injustice had or had not been committed, was immaterial. That

transfer, just or unjust, had taken place so long ago, that to reverse it would be to unfix the foundations of

society. There must be a time of limitation to all rights. After thirtyfive years of actual possession, after

twentyfive years of possession solemnly guaranteed by statute, after innumerable leases and releases,

mortgages and devises, it was too late to search for flaws in titles. Nevertheless something might have been

done to heal the lacerated feelings and to raise the fallen fortunes of the Irish gentry. The colonists were in a

thriving condition. They had greatly improved their property by building, planting, and fencing. The rents

had almost doubled within a few years; trade was brisk; and the revenue, amounting to about three hundred

thousand pounds a year, more than defrayed all the charges of the local government, and afforded a surplus

which was remitted to England. There was no doubt that the next Parliament which should meet at Dublin,

though representing almost exclusively the English interest, would, in return for the King's promise to

maintain that interest in all its legal rights, willingly grant to him a very considerable sum for the purpose of

indemnifying, at least in part, such native families as had been wrongfully despoiled. It was thus that in our

own time the French government put an end to the disputes engendered by the most extensive confiscation

that ever took place in Europe. And thus, if James had been guided by the advice of his most loyal Protestant

counsellors, he would have at least greatly mitigated one of the chief evils which afflicted Ireland.162

Having done this, he should have laboured to reconcile the hostile races to each other by impartially

protecting the rights and restraining the excesses of both. He should have punished with equal severity the

native who indulged in the license of barbarism, and the colonist who abused the strength of civilisation. As

far as the legitimate authority of the crown extended,and in Ireland it extended far,no man who was

qualified for office by integrity and ability should have been considered as disqualified by extraction or by

creed for any public trust. It is probable that a Roman Catholic King, with an ample revenue absolutely at his

disposal, would, without much difficulty, have secured the cooperation of the Roman Catholic prelates and

priests in the great work of reconciliation. Much, however, must still have been left to the healing influence

of time. The native race would still have had to learn from the colonists industry and forethought, the arts of

life, and the language of England. There could not be equality between men who lived in houses and men

who lived in sties, between men who were fed on bread and men who were fed on potatoes, between men

who spoke the noble tongue of great philosophers and poets and men who, with a perverted pride, boasted

that they could not writhe their mouths into chattering such a jargon as that in which the Advancement of

Learning and the Paradise Lost were written.163 Yet it is not unreasonable to believe that, if the gentle policy

which has been described had been steadily followed by the government, all distinctions would gradually

have been effaced, and that there would now have been no more trace of the hostility which has been the

curse of Ireland than there is of the equally deadly hostility which once raged between the Saxons and the

Unhappily James, instead of becoming a mediator became the fiercest and most reckless of partisans. Instead

of allaying the animosity of the two populations, he inflamed it to a height before unknown. He determined to

reverse their relative position, and to put the Protestant colonists under the feet of the Popish Celts. To be of

the established religion, to be of the English blood, was, in his view, a disqualification for civil and military

employment. He meditated the design of again confiscating and again portioning out the soil of half the

island, and showed his inclination so clearly that one class was soon agitated by terrors which he afterwards

vainly wished to soothe, and the other by hopes which he afterwards vainly wished to restrain. But this was

the smallest part of his guilt and madness. He deliberately resolved, not merely to give to the aboriginal

inhabitants of Ireland the entire possession of their own country, but also to use them as his instruments for

setting up arbitrary government in England. The event was such as might have been foreseen. The colonists

turned to bay with the stubborn hardihood of their race. The mother country justly regarded their cause as her

own. Then came a desperate struggle for a tremendous stake. Everything dear to nations was wagered on both

sides: nor can we justly blame either the Irishman or the Englishman for obeying, in that extremity, the law of

selfpreservation. The contest was terrible, but short. The weaker went down. His fate was cruel; and yet for

the cruelty with which he was treated there was, not indeed a defence, but an excuse: for, though he suffered

all that tyranny could inflict, he suffered nothing that he would not himself have inflicted. The effect of the

insane attempt to subjugate England by means of Ireland was that the Irish became hewers of wood and

drawers of water to the English. The old proprietors, by their effort to recover what they had lost, lost the

greater part of what they had retained. The momentary ascendency of Popery produced such a series of

barbarous laws against Popery as made the statute book of Ireland a proverb of infamy throughout

We have seen that one of his first acts, after he became King, was to recall Ormond from Ireland. Ormond

was the head of the English interest in that kingdom: he was firmly attached to the Protestant religion; and his

power far exceeded that of an ordinary Lord Lieutenant, first, because he was in rank and wealth the greatest

of the colonists, and, secondly, because he was not only the chief of the civil administration, but also

commander of the forces. The King was not at that time disposed to commit the government wholly to Irish

hands. He had indeed been heard to say that a native viceroy would soon become an independent

sovereign.164 For the present, therefore, he determined to divide the power which Ormond had possessed, to

entrust the civil administration to an English and Protestant Lord Lieutenant, and to give the command of the

army to an Irish and Roman Catholic General. The Lord Lieutenant was Clarendon; the General was

Tyrconnel sprang, as has already been said, from one of those degenerate families of the Pale which were

popularly classed with the aboriginal population of Ireland. He sometimes, indeed, in his rants, talked with

Norman haughtiness of the Celtic barbarians:165 but all his sympathies were really with the natives. The

Protestant colonists he hated; and they returned his hatred. Clarendon's inclinations were very different: but

he was, from temper, interest, and principle, an obsequious courtier. His spirit was mean; his circumstances

were embarrassed; and his mind had been deeply imbued with the political doctrines which the Church of

England had in that age too assiduously taught. His abilities, however, were not contemptible; and, under a

About three quarters of a year elapsed between the recall of Ormond and the arrival of Clarendon at Dublin.

During that interval the King was represented by a board of Lords Justices: but the military administration

was in Tyrconnel's hands. Already the designs of the court began gradually to unfold themselves. A royal

order came from Whitehall for disarming the population. This order Tyrconnel strictly executed as respected

the English. Though the country was infested by predatory bands, a Protestant gentleman could scarcely

obtain permission to keep a brace of pistols. The native peasantry, on the other hand, were suffered to retain

their weapons.166 The joy of the colonists was therefore great, when at length, in December 1685, Tyrconnel

was summoned to London and Clarendon set out for Dublin. But it soon appeared that the government was

really directed, not at Dublin, but in London. Every mail that crossed St. George's Channel brought tidings of

the boundless influence which Tyrconnel exercised on Irish affairs. It was said that he was to be a Marquess,

that he was to be a Duke, that he was to have the command of the forces, that he was to be entrusted with the

task of remodelling the army and the courts of justice.167 Clarendon was bitterly mortified at finding himself

a subordinate in ember of that administration of which he had expected to be the head. He complained that

whatever he did was misrepresented by his detractors, and that the gravest resolutions touching the country

which he governed were adopted at Westminster, made known to the public, discussed at coffee houses,

communicated in hundreds of private letters, some weeks before one hint had been given to the Lord

Lieutenant. His own personal dignity, he said, mattered little: but it was no light thing that the representative

of the majesty of the throne should be made an object of contempt to the people.168 Panic spread fast among

the English when they found that the viceroy, their fellow countryman and fellow Protestant, was unable to

extend to them the protection which they had expected from him. They began to know by bitter experience

what it is to be a subject caste. They were harassed by the natives with accusations of treason and sedition.

This Protestant had corresponded with Monmouth: that Protestant had said something disrespectful of the

King four or five years ago, when the Exclusion Bill was under discussion; and the evidence of the most

infamous of mankind was ready to substantiate every charge. The Lord Lieutenant expressed his

apprehension that, if these practices were not stopped, there would soon be at Dublin a reign of terror similar

to that which he had seen in London, when every man held his life and honour at the mercy of Oates and

Clarendon was soon informed, by a concise despatch from Sunderland, that it had been resolved to make

without delay a complete change in both the civil and the military government of Ireland, and to bring a large

number of Roman Catholics instantly into office. His Majesty, it was most ungraciously added, had taken

counsel on these matters with persons more competent to advise him than his inexperienced Lord Lieutenant

Before this letter reached the viceroy the intelligence which it contained had, through many channels, arrived

in Ireland. The terror of the colonists was extreme. Outnumbered as they were by the native population, their

condition would be pitiable indeed if the native population were to be armed against them with the whole

power of the state; and nothing less than this was threatened. The English inhabitants of Dublin passed each

other in the streets with dejected looks. On the Exchange business was suspended. Landowners hastened to

sell their estates for whatever could be got, and to remit the purchase money to England. Traders began to call

in their debts and to make preparations for retiring from business. The alarm soon affected the revenue.171

Clarendon attempted to inspire the dismayed settlers with a confidence which he was himself far from

feeling. He assured them that their property would be held sacred, and that, to his certain knowledge, the

King was fully determined to maintain the act of settlement which guaranteed their right to the soil. But his

letters to England were in a very different strain. He ventured even to expostulate with the King, and, without

blaming His Majesty's intention of employing Roman Catholics, expressed a strong opinion that the Roman

The reply of James was dry and cold. He declared that he had no intention of depriving the English colonists

of their land, but that he regarded a large portion of them as his enemies, and that, since he consented to leave

so much property in the hands of his enemies, it was the more necessary that the civil and military

Accordingly several Roman Catholics were sworn of the Privy Council; and orders were sent to corporations

to admit Roman Catholics to municipal advantages.174 Many officers of the army were arbitrarily deprived

of their commissions and of their bread. It was to no purpose that the Lord Lieutenant pleaded the cause of

some whom he knew to be good soldiers and loyal subjects. Among them were old Cavaliers, who had fought

bravely for monarchy, and who bore the marks of honourable wounds. Their places were supplied by men

who had no recommendation but their religion. Of the new Captains and Lieutenants, it was said, some had

been cowherds, some footmen, some noted marauders; some had been so used to wear brogues that they

stumbled and shuffled about strangely in their military jack boots. Not a few of the officers who were

discarded took refuge in the Dutch service, and enjoyed, four years later, the pleasure of driving their

The distress and alarm of Clarendon were increased by news which reached him through private channels.

Without his approbation, without his knowledge, preparations were making for arming and drilling the whole

Celtic population of the country of which he was the nominal governor. Tyrconnel from London directed the

design; and the prelates of his Church were his agents. Every priest had been instructed to prepare an exact

list of all his male parishioners capable of bearing arms, and to forward it to his Bishop.176

It had already been rumoured that Tyrconnel would soon return to Dublin armed with extraordinary and

independent powers; and the rumour gathered strength daily. The Lord Lieutenant, whom no insult could

drive to resign the pomp and emoluments of his place, declared that he should submit cheerfully to the royal

pleasure, and approve himself in all things a faithful and obedient subject. He had never, he said, in his life,

had any difference with Tyrconnel, and he trusted that no difference would now arise.177 Clarendon appears

not to have recollected that there had once been a plot to ruin the fame of his innocent sister, and that in that

plot Tyrconnel had borne a chief part. This is not exactly one of the injuries which high spirited men most

readily pardon. But, in the wicked court where the Hydes had long been pushing their fortunes, such injuries

were easily forgiven and forgotten, not from magnanimity or Christian charity, but from mere baseness and

want of moral sensibility. In June 1686, Tyrconnel came. His commission authorised him only to command

the troops, but he brought with him royal instructions touching all parts of the administration, and at once

took the real government of the island into his own hands. On the day after his arrival he explicitly said that

commissions must be largely given to Roman Catholic officers, and that room must be made for them by

dismissing more Protestants. He pushed on the remodelling of the army eagerly and indefatigably. It was

indeed the only part of the functions of a Commander in Chief which he was competent to perform; for,

though courageous in brawls and duels, he knew nothing of military duty. At the very first review which he

held, it was evident to all who were near to him that he did not know how to draw up a regiment.178 To turn

Englishmen out and to put Irishmen in was, in his view, the beginning and the end of the administration of

war. He had the insolence to cashier the Captain of the Lord Lieutenant's own Body Guard: nor was

Clarendon aware of what had happened till he saw a Roman Catholic, whose face was quite unknown to him,

escorting the state coach.179 The change was not confined to the officers alone. The ranks were completely

broken up and recomposed. Four or five hundred soldiers were turned out of a single regiment chiefly on the

ground that they were below the proper stature. Yet the most unpractised eye at once perceived that they were

taller and better made men than their successors, whose wild and squalid appearance disgusted the

beholders.180 Orders were given to the new officers that no man of the Protestant religion was to be suffered

to enlist. The recruiting parties, instead of beating their drums for volunteers at fairs and markets, as had been

the old practice, repaired to places to which the Roman Catholics were in the habit of making pilgrimages for

purposes of devotion. In a few weeks the General had introduced more than two thousand natives into the

ranks; and the people about him confidently affirmed that by Christmas day not a man of English race would

On all questions which arose in the Privy Council, Tyrconnel showed similar violence and partiality. John

Keating, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, a man distinguished by ability, integrity, and loyalty,

represented with great mildness that perfect equality was all that the General could reasonably ask for his

own Church. The King, he said, evidently meant that no man fit for public trust should be excluded because

he was a Roman Catholic, and that no man unfit for public trust should be admitted because he was a

Protestant. Tyrconnel immediately began to curse and swear. "I do not know what to say to that; I would have

all Catholics in."182 The most judicious Irishmen of his own religious persuasion were dismayed at his

rashness, and ventured to remonstrate with him; but he drove them from him with imprecations.183 His

brutality was such that many thought him mad. Yet it was less strange than the shameless volubility with

which he uttered falsehoods. He had long before earned the nickname of Lying Dick Talbot; and, at

Whitehall, any wild fiction was commonly designated as one of Dick Talbot's truths. He now daily proved

that he was well entitled to this unenviable reputation. Indeed in him mendacity was almost a disease. He

would, after giving orders for the dismission of English officers, take them into his closet, assure them of his

confidence and friendship, and implore heaven to confound him, sink him, blast him, if he did not take good

care of their interests. Sometimes those to whom he had thus perjured himself learned, before the day closed,

On his arrival, though he swore savagely at the Act of Settlement, and called the English interest a foul thing,

a roguish thing, and a damned thing, he yet intended to be convinced that the distribution of property could

not, after the lapse of so many years, be altered.185 But, when he had been a few weeks at Dublin, his

language changed. He began to harangue vehemently at the Council board on the necessity of giving back the

land to the old owners. He had not, however, as yet, obtained his master's sanction to this fatal project.

National feeling still struggled feebly against superstition in the mind of James. He was an Englishman: he

was an English King; and he could not, without some misgivings, consent to the destruction of the greatest

colony that England had ever planted. The English Roman Catholics with whom he was in the habit of taking

counsel were almost unanimous in favour of the Act of Settlement. Not only the honest and moderate Powis,

but the dissolute and headstrong Dover, gave judicious and patriotic advice. Tyrconnel could hardly hope to

counteract at a distance the effect which such advice must produce on the royal mind. He determined to plead

the cause of his caste in person; and accordingly he set out, at the end of August, for England.

His presence and his absence were equally dreaded by the Lord Lieutenant. It was, indeed, painful to be daily

browbeaten by an enemy: but it was not less painful to know that an enemy was daily breathing calumny and

evil counsel in the royal ear. Clarendon was overwhelmed by manifold vexations. He made a progress

through the country, and found that he was everywhere treated by the Irish population with contempt. The

Roman Catholic priests exhorted their congregations to withhold from him all marks of honour. The native

gentry, instead of coming to pay their respects to him, remained at their houses. The native peasantry

everywhere sang Erse songs in praise of Tyrconnel, who would, they doubted not, soon reappear to complete

the humiliation of their oppressors.186 The viceroy had scarcely returned to Dublin, from his unsatisfactory

tour, when he received letters which informed him that he had incurred the King's serious displeasure. His

Majestyso these letters ran expected his servants not only to do what he commanded, but to do it from

the heart, and with a cheerful countenance. The Lord Lieutenant had not, indeed, refused to cooperate in the

reform of the army and of the civil administration; but his cooperation had been reluctant and perfunctory: his

looks had betrayed his feelings; and everybody saw that he disapproved of the policy which he was employed

to carry into effect.187 In great anguish of mind he wrote to defend himself; but he was sternly told that his

defence was not satisfactory. He then, in the most abject terms, declared that he would not attempt to justify

himself, that he acquiesced in the royal judgment, be it what it might, that he prostrated himself in the dust,

that he implored pardon, that of all penitents he was the most sincere, that he should think it glorious to die in

his Sovereign's cause, but found it impossible to live under his Sovereign's displeasure. Nor was this mere

interested hypocrisy, but, at least in part, unaffected slavishness and poverty of spirit; for in confidential

letters, not meant for the royal eye, he bemoaned himself to his family in the same strain. He was miserable;

he was crushed; the wrath of the King was insupportable; if that wrath could not be mitigated, life would not

be worth having.188 The poor man's terror increased when he learned that it had been determined at

Whitehall to recall him, and to appoint, as his successor, his rival and calumniator, Tyrconnel.189 Then for a

time the prospect seemed to clear; the King was in better humour; and during a few days Clarendon flattered

himself that his brother's intercession had prevailed, and that the crisis was passed.190

In truth the crisis was only beginning. While Clarendon was trying to lean on Rochester, Rochester was

unable longer to support himself. As in Ireland the elder brother, though retaining the guard of honour, the

sword of state, and the title of Excellency, had really been superseded by the Commander of the Forces, so in

England, the younger brother, though holding the white staff, and walking, by virtue of his high office, before

the greatest hereditary nobles, was fast sinking into a mere financial clerk. The Parliament was again

prorogued to a distant day, in opposition to the Treasurer's known wishes. He was not even told that there

was to be another prorogation, but was left to learn the news from the Gazette. The real direction of affairs

had passed to the cabal which dined with Sunderland on Fridays. The cabinet met only to hear the despatches

from foreign courts read: nor did those despatches contain anything which was not known on the Royal

Exchange; for all the English Envoys had received orders to put into the official letters only the common talk

of antechambers, and to reserve important secrets for private communications which were addressed to James

himself, to Sunderland, or to Petre.191 Yet the victorious faction was not content. The King was assured by

those whom he most trusted that the obstinacy with which the nation opposed his designs was really to be

imputed to Rochester. How could the people believe that their Sovereign was unalterably resolved to

persevere in the course on which he had entered, when they saw at his right hand, ostensibly first in power

and trust among his counsellors, a man who notoriously regarded that course with strong disapprobation?

Every step which had been taken with the object of humbling the Church of England, and of elevating the

Church of Rome, had been opposed by the Treasurer. True it was that, when he had found opposition vain, he

had gloomily submitted, nay, that he had sometimes even assisted in carrying into effect the very plans

against which he had most earnestly contended. True it was that, though he disliked the Ecclesiastical

Commission, he had consented to be a Commissioner. True it was that he had, while declaring that he could

see nothing blamable in the conduct of the Bishop of London, voted sullenly and reluctantly for the sentence

of deprivation. But this was not enough. A prince, engaged in an enterprise so important and arduous as that

on which James was bent, had a right to expect from his first minister, not unwilling and ungracious

acquiescence, but zealous and strenuous cooperation. While such advice was daily given to James by those in

whom he reposed confidence, he received, by the penny post, many anonymous letters filled with calumnies

against the Lord Treasurer. This mode of attack had been contrived by Tyrconnel, and was in perfect

The King hesitated. He seems, indeed, to have really regarded his brother in law with personal kindness, the

effect of near affinity, of long and familiar intercourse, and of many mutual good offices. It seemed probable

that, as long as Rochester continued to submit himself, though tardily and with murmurs, to the royal

pleasure, he would continue to be in name prime minister. Sunderland, therefore, with exquisite cunning,

suggested to his master the propriety of asking the only proof of obedience which it was quite certain that

Rochester never would give. At present,such was the language of the artful Secretary,it was impossible

to consult with the first of the King's servants respecting the object nearest to the King's heart. It was

lamentable to think that religious prejudices should, at such a conjuncture, deprive the government of such

valuable assistance. Perhaps those prejudices might not prove insurmountable. Then the deceiver whispered

that, to his knowledge, Rochester had of late had some misgivings about the points in dispute between the

Protestants and Catholics.193 This was enough. The King eagerly caught at the hint. He began to flatter

himself that he might at once escape from the disagreeable necessity of removing a friend, and secure an able

coadjutor for the great work which was in progress. He was also elated by the hope that he might have the

merit and the glory of saving a fellow creature from perdition. He seems, indeed, about this time, to have

been seized with an unusually violent fit of zeal for his religion; and this is the more remarkable, because he

had just relapsed, after a short interval of selfrestraint, into debauchery which all Christian divines condemn

as sinful, and which, in an elderly man married to an agreeable young wife, is regarded even by people of the

world as disreputable. Lady Dorchester had returned from Dublin, and was again the King's mistress. Her

return was politically of no importance. She had learned by experience the folly of attempting to save her

lover from the destruction to which he was running headlong. She therefore suffered the Jesuits to guide his

political conduct and they, in return, suffered her to wheedle him out of money; She was, however, only one

of several abandoned women who at this time shared, with his beloved Church, the dominion over his

mind.194 He seems to have determined to make some amends for neglecting the welfare of his own soul by

taking care of the souls of others. He set himself, therefore, to labour, with real good will, but with the good

will of a coarse, stern, and arbitrary mind, for the conversion of his kinsman. Every audience which the

Treasurer obtained was spent in arguments about the authority of the Church and the worship of images.

Rochester was firmly resolved not to abjure his religion; but he had no scruple about employing in

selfdefence artifices as discreditable as those which had been used against him. He affected to speak like a

man whose mind was not made up, professed himself desirous to be enlightened if he was in error, borrowed

Popish books, and listened with civility to Popish divines. He had several interviews with Leyburn, the Vicar

Apostolic, with Godden, the chaplain and almoner of the Queen Dowager, and with Bonaventure Giffard, a

theologian trained to polemics in the schools of Douay. It was agreed that there should be a formal

disputation between these doctors and some Protestant clergymen. The King told Rochester to choose any

ministers of the Established Church, with two exceptions. The proscribed persons were Tillotson and

Stillingfleet. Tillotson, the most popular preacher of that age, and in manners the most inoffensive of men,

had been much connected with some leading Whigs; and Stillingfleet, who was renowned as a consummate

master of all the weapons of controversy, had given still deeper offence by publishing an answer to the papers

which had been found in the strong box of Charles the Second. Rochester took the two royal chaplains who

happened to be in waiting. One of them was Simon Patrick, whose commentaries on the Bible still form a

part of theological libraries; the other was Jane, a vehement Tory, who had assisted in drawing up that decree

by which the University of Oxford had solemnly adopted the worst follies of Filmer. The conference took

place at Whitehall on the thirtieth of November. Rochester, who did not wish it to be known that he had even

consented to hear the arguments of Popish priests, stipulated for secrecy. No auditor was suffered to be

present except the King. The subject discussed was the real presence. The Roman Catholic divines took on

themselves the burden of the proof. Patrick and Jane said little; nor was it necessary that they should say

much; for the Earl himself undertook to defend the doctrine of his Church, and, as was his habit, soon

warmed with conflict, lost his temper, and asked with great vehemence whether it was expected that he

should change his religion on such frivolous grounds. Then he remembered how much he was risking, began

again to dissemble, complimented the disputants on their skill and learning, and asked time to consider what

Slow as James was, he could not but see that this was mere trifling. He told Barillon that Rochester's

language was not that of a man honestly desirous of arriving at the truth. Still the King did not like to propose

directly to his brother in law the simple choice, apostasy or dismissal: but, three days after the conference,

Barillon waited on the Treasurer, and, with much circumlocution and many expressions of friendly concern,

broke the unpleasant truth. "Do you mean," said Rochester, bewildered by the involved and ceremonious

phrases in which the intimation was made, "that, if I do not turn Catholic, the consequence will be that I shall

lose my place?" "I say nothing about consequences," answered the wary diplomatist. "I only come as a friend

to express a hope that you will take care to keep your place." "But surely," said Rochester, "the plain meaning

of all this is that I must turn Catholic or go out." He put many questions for the purpose of ascertaining

whether the communication was made by authority, but could extort only vague and mysterious replies. At

last, affecting a confidence which he was far from feeling, he declared that Barillon must have been imposed

upon by idle or malicious reports. "I tell you," he said, "that the King will not dismiss me, and I will not

resign. I know him: he knows me; and I fear nobody." The Frenchman answered that he was charmed, that he

was ravished to hear it, and that his only motive for interfering was a sincere anxiety for the prosperity and

dignity of his excellent friend the Treasurer. And thus the two statesmen parted, each flattering himself that

Meanwhile, in spite of all injunctions of secrecy, the news that the Lord Treasurer had consented to be

instructed in the doctrines of Popery had spread fast through London. Patrick and Jane had been seen going in

at that mysterious door which led to Chiffinch's apartments. Some Roman Catholics about the court had,

indiscreetly or artfully, told all, and more than all, that they knew. The Tory churchmen waited anxiously for

fuller information. They were mortified to think that their leader should even have pretended to waver in his

opinion; but they could not believe that he would stoop to be a renegade. The unfortunate minister, tortured at

once by his fierce passions and his low desires, annoyed by the censures of the public, annoyed by the hints

which he had received from Barillon, afraid of losing character, afraid of losing office, repaired to the royal

closet. He was determined to keep his place, if it could be kept by any villany but one. He would pretend to

be shaken in his religious opinions, and to be half a convert: he would promise to give strenuous support to

that policy which he had hitherto opposed: but, if he were driven to extremity, he would refuse to change his

religion. He began, therefore, by telling the King that the business in which His Majesty took so much

interest was not sleeping, that Jane and Giffard were engaged in consulting books on the points in dispute

between the Churches, and that, when these researches were over, it would be desirable to have another

conference. Then he complained bitterly that all the town was apprised of what ought to have been carefully

concealed, and that some persons, who, from their station, might be supposed to be well informed, reported

strange things as to the royal intentions. "It is whispered," he said, "that, if I do not do as your Majesty would

have me, I shall not be suffered to continue in my present station." The King said, with some general

expressions of kindness, that it was difficult to prevent people from talking, and that loose reports were not to

be regarded. These vague phrases were not likely to quiet the perturbed mind of the minister. His agitation

became violent, and he began to plead for his place as if he had been pleading for his life. "Your Majesty sees

that I do all in my power to obey you. Indeed I will do all that I can to obey you in every thing. I will serve

you in your own way. Nay," he cried, in an agony of baseness, "I will do what I can to believe as you would

have me. But do not let me be told, while I am trying to bring my mind to this, that, if I find it impossible to

comply, I must lose all. For I must needs tell your Majesty that there are other considerations." "Oh, you must

needs," exclaimed the King, with an oath. For a single word of honest and manly sound, escaping in the midst

of all this abject supplication, was sufficient to move his anger. "I hope, sir," said poor Rochester, "that I do

not offend you. Surely your Majesty could not think well of me if I did not say so." The King recollected

himself protested that he was not offended, and advised the Treasurer to disregard idle rumours, and to confer

After this conversation, a fortnight elapsed before the decisive blow fell. That fortnight Rochester passed in

intriguing and imploring. He attempted to interest in his favour those Roman Catholics who had the greatest

influence at court. He could not, he said, renounce his own religion: but, with that single reservation, he

would do all that they could desire. Indeed, if he might only keep his place, they should find that he could be

more useful to them as a Protestant than as one of their own communion.198 His wife, who was on a sick

bed, had already, it was said, solicited the honour of a visit from the much injured Queen, and had attempted

to work on Her Majesty's feelings of compassion.199 But the Hydes abased themselves in vain. Petre

regarded them with peculiar malevolence, and was bent on their ruin.200 On the evening of the seventeenth

of December the Earl was called into the royal closet. James was unusually discomposed, and even shed

tears. The occasion, indeed, could not but call up some recollections which might well soften even a hard

heart. He expressed his regret that his duty made it impossible for him to indulge his private partialities. It

was absolutely necessary, he said, that those who had the chief direction of his affairs should partake his

opinions and feelings. He owned that he had very great personal obligations to Rochester, and that no fault

could be found with the way in which the financial business had lately been done: but the office of Lord

Treasurer was of such high importance that, in general, it ought not to be entrusted to a single person, and

could not safely be entrusted by a Roman Catholic King to a person zealous for the Church of England.

"Think better of it, my Lord," he continued. "Read again the papers from my brother's box. I will give you a

little more time for consideration, if you desire it." Rochester saw that all was over, and that the wisest course

left to him was to make his retreat with as much money and as much credit as possible. He succeeded in both

objects. He obtained a pension of four thousand pounds a year for two lives on the post office. He had made

great sums out of the estates of traitors, and carried with him in particular Grey's bond for forty thousand

pounds, and a grant of all the estate which the crown had in Grey's extensive property.201 No person had

ever quitted office on terms so advantageous. To the applause of the sincere friends of the Established Church

Rochester had, indeed, very slender claims. To save his place he had sate in that tribunal which had been

illegally created for the purpose of persecuting her. To save his place he had given a dishonest vote for

degrading one of her most eminent ministers, had affected to doubt her orthodoxy, had listened with the

outward show of docility to teachers who called her schismatical and heretical, and had offered to cooperate

strenuously with her deadliest enemies in their designs against her. The highest praise to which he was

entitled was this, that he had shrunk from the exceeding wickedness and baseness of publicly abjuring, for

lucre, the religion in which he had been brought up, which he believed to be true, and of which he had long

made an ostentatious profession. Yet he was extolled by the great body of Churchmen as if he had been the

bravest and purest of martyrs. The Old and New Testaments, the Martyrologies of Eusebius and of Fox, were

ransacked to find parallels for his heroic piety. He was Daniel in the den of lions, Shadrach in the fiery

furnace, Peter in the dungeon of Herod, Paul at the bar of Nero, Ignatius in the amphitheatre, Latimer at the

stake. Among the many facts which prove that the standard of honour and virtue among the public men of

that age was low, the admiration excited by Rochester's constancy is, perhaps, the most decisive.

In his fall he dragged down Clarendon. On the seventh of January 1687, the Gazette announced to the people

of London that the Treasury was put into commission. On the eighth arrived at Dublin a despatch formally

signifying that in a month Tyrconnel would assume the government of Ireland. It was not without great

difficulty that this man had surmounted the numerous impediments which stood in the way of his ambition. It

was well known that the extermination of the English colony in Ireland was the object on which his heart was

set. He had, therefore, to overcome some scruples in the royal mind. He had to surmount the opposition, not

merely of all the Protestant members of the government, not merely of the moderate and respectable heads of

the Roman Catholic body, but even of several members of the jesuitical cabal.202 Sunderland shrank from

the thought of an Irish revolution, religious, political, and social. To the Queen Tyrconnel was personally an

object of aversion. Powis was therefore suggested as the man best qualified for the viceroyalty. He was of

illustrious birth: he was a sincere Roman Catholic: and yet he was generally allowed by candid Protestants to

be an honest man and a good Englishman. All opposition, however, yielded to Tyrconnel's energy and

cunning. He fawned, bullied, and bribed indefatigably. Petre's help was secured by flattery. Sunderland was

plied at once with promises and menaces. An immense price was offered for his support, no less than an

annuity of five thousand pounds a year from Ireland, redeemable by payment of fifty thousand pounds down.

If this proposal were rejected, Tyrconnel threatened to let the King know that the Lord President had, at the

Friday dinners, described His Majesty as a fool who must be governed either by a woman or by a priest.

Sunderland, pale and trembling, offered to procure for Tyrconnel supreme military command, enormous

appointments, anything but the viceroyalty: but all compromise was rejected; and it was necessary to yield.

Mary of Modena herself was not free from suspicion of corruption. There was in London a renowned chain of

pearls which was valued at ten thousand pounds. It had belonged to Prince Rupert; and by him it had been left

to Margaret Hughes, a courtesan who, towards the close of his life, had exercised a boundless empire over

him. Tyrconnel loudly boasted that with this chain he had purchased the support of the Queen. There were

those, however, who suspected that this story was one of Dick Talbot's truths, and that it had no more

foundation than the calumnies which, twentysix years before, he had invented to blacken the fame of Anne

Hyde. To the Roman Catholic courtiers generally he spoke of the uncertain tenure by which they held offices,

honours, and emoluments. The King might die tomorrow, and might leave them at the mercy of a hostile

government and a hostile rabble. But, if the old faith could be made dominant in Ireland, if the Protestant

interest in that country could be destroyed, there would still be, in the worst event, an asylum at hand to

which they might retreat, and where they might either negotiate or defend themselves with advantage. A

Popish priest was hired with the promise of the mitre of Waterford to preach at Saint James's against the Act

of Settlement; and his sermon, though heard with deep disgust by the English part of the auditory, was not

without its effect. The struggle which patriotism had for a time maintained against bigotry in the royal mind

was at an end. "There is work to be done in Ireland," said James, "which no Englishman will do."203

All obstacles were at length removed; and in February 1687, Tyrconnel began to rule his native country with

the power and appointments of Lord Lieutenant, but with the humbler title of Lord Deputy.

His arrival spread dismay through the whole English population. Clarendon was accompanied, or speedily

followed, across St. George's Channel, by a large proportion of the most respectable inhabitants of Dublin,

gentlemen, tradesmen, and artificers. It was said that fifteen hundred families emigrated in a few days. The

panic was not unreasonable. The work of putting the colonists down under the feet of the natives went rapidly

on. In a short time almost every Privy Councillor, Judge, Sheriff, Mayor, Alderman, and Justice of the Peace

was a Celt and a Roman Catholic. It seemed that things would soon be ripe for a general election, and that a

House of Commons bent on abrogating the Act of Settlement would easily be assembled.204 Those who had

lately been the lords of the island now cried out, in the bitterness of their souls, that they had become a prey

and a laughingstock to their own serfs and menials; that houses were burnt and cattle stolen with impunity;

that the new soldiers roamed the country, pillaging, insulting, ravishing, maiming, tossing one Protestant in a

blanket, tying up another by the hair and scourging him; that to appeal to the law was vain; that Irish Judges,

Sheriffs, juries, and witnesses were all in a league to save Irish criminals; and that, even without an Act of

Parliament, the whole soil would soon change hands; for that, in every action of ejectment tried under the

administration of Tyrconnel, judgment had been given for the native against the Englishman.205

While Clarendon was at Dublin the Privy Seal had been in the hands of Commissioners. His friends hoped

that it would, on his return to London, be again delivered to him. But the King and the Jesuitical cabal had

determined that the disgrace of the Hydes should be complete. Lord Arundell of Wardour, a Roman Catholic,

received the Privy Seal. Bellasyse, a Roman Catholic, was made First Lord of the Treasury; and Dover,

another Roman Catholic, had a seat at the board. The appointment of a ruined gambler to such a trust would

alone have sufficed to disgust the public. The dissolute Etherege, who then resided at Ratisbon as English

envoy, could not refrain from expressing, with a sneer, his hope that his old boon companion, Dover, would

keep the King's money better than his own. In order that the finances might not be ruined by incapable and

inexperienced Papists, the obsequious, diligent and silent Godolphin was named a Commissioner of the

The dismission of the two brothers is a great epoch in the reign of James. From that time it was clear that

what he really wanted was not liberty of conscience for the members of his own church, but liberty to

persecute the members of other churches. Pretending to abhor tests, he had himself imposed a test. He

thought it hard, he thought it monstrous, that able and loyal men should be excluded from the public service

solely for being Roman Catholics. Yet he had himself turned out of office a Treasurer, whom he admitted to

be both loyal and able, solely for being a Protestant. The cry was that a general proscription was at hand, and

that every public functionary must make up his mind to lose his soul or to lose his place.207 Who indeed

could hope to stand where the Hydes had fallen? They were the brothers in law of the King, the uncles and

natural guardians of his children, his friends from early youth, his steady adherents in adversity and peril, his

obsequious servants since he had been on the throne. Their sole crime was their religion; and for this crime

they had been discarded. In great perturbation men began to look round for help; and soon all eyes were fixed

on one whom a rare concurrence both of personal qualities and of fortuitous circumstances pointed out as the

William, Prince of Orange; his AppearanceHis early Life and EducationHis Theological OpinionsHis

Military Qualifications His Love of Danger; his bad HealthColdness of his Manners and Strength of his

Emotions; his Friendship for BentinckMary, Princess of OrangeGilbert BurnetHe brings about a

good Understanding between the Prince and PrincessRelations between William and English PartiesHis

Feelings towards EnglandHis Feelings towards Holland and FranceHis Policy consistent

throughoutTreaty of AugsburgWilliam becomes the Head of the English OppositionMordaunt

proposes to William a Descent on EnglandWilliam rejects the AdviceDiscontent in England after the

Fall of the HydesConversions to Popery; Peterborough; SalisburyWycherley; Tindal;

HainesDrydenThe Hind and PantherChange in the Policy of the Court towards the Puritans Partial

Toleration granted in ScotlandClosetingIt is unsuccessfulAdmiral Herbert_Declaration of

Indulgence Feeling of the Protestant DissentersFeeling of the Church of EnglandThe Court and the

ChurchLetter to a Dissenter; Conduct of the DissentersSome of the Dissenters side with the Court;

Care; AlsopRosewell; LobbVennThe Majority of the Puritans are against the Court; Baxter;

Howe,BanyanKiffinThe Prince and Princess of Orange hostile to the Declaration of Indulgence

Their Views respecting the English Roman Catholics vindicated Enmity of James to BurnetMission of

NottinghamHalifaxDevonshireEdward Russell; Compton; HerbertChurchillLady Churchill and

the Princess AnneDykvelt returns to the Hague with Letters from many eminent Englishmen Zulestein's

MissionGrowing Enmity between James and William Influence of the Dutch PressCorrespondence

THE place which William Henry, Prince of Orange Nassau, occupies in the history of England and of

mankind is so great that it may be desirable to portray with some minuteness the strong lineaments of his

He was now in his thirtyseventh year. But both in body and in mind he was older than other men of the

same age. Indeed it might be said that he had never been young. His external appearance is almost as well

known to us as to his own captains and counsellors. Sculptors, painters, and medallists exerted their utmost

skill in the work of transmitting his features to posterity; and his features were such as no artist could fail to

seize, and such as, once seen, could never be forgotten. His name at once calls up before us a slender and

feeble frame, a lofty and ample forehead, a nose curved like the beak of an eagle, an eye rivalling that of an

eagle in brightness and keenness, a thoughtful and somewhat sullen brow, a firm and somewhat peevish

mouth, a cheek pale, thin, and deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. That pensive, severe, and solemn

aspect could scarcely have belonged to a happy or a goodhumoured man. But it indicates in a manner not to

be mistaken capacity equal to the most arduous enterprises, and fortitude not to be shaken by reverses or

Nature had largely endowed William with the qualities of a great ruler; and education had developed those

qualities in no common degree. With strong natural sense, and rare force of will, he found himself, when first

his mind began to open, a fatherless and motherless child, the chief of a great but depressed and disheartened

party, and the heir to vast and indefinite pretensions, which excited the dread and aversion of the oligarchy

then supreme in the United Provinces. The common people, fondly attached during a century to his house,

indicated, whenever they saw him, in a manner not to be mistaken, that they regarded him as their rightful

head. The able and experienced ministers of the republic, mortal enemies of his name, came every day to pay

their feigned civilities to him, and to observe the progress of his mind. The first movements of his ambition

were carefully watched: every unguarded word uttered by him was noted down; nor had he near him any

adviser on whose judgment reliance could be placed. He was scarcely fifteen years old when all the

domestics who were attached to his interest, or who enjoyed any share of his confidence, were removed from

under his roof by the jealous government. He remonstrated with energy beyond his years, but in vain.

Vigilant observers saw the tears more than once rise in the eyes of the young state prisoner. His health,

naturally delicate, sank for a time under the emotions which his desolate situation had produced. Such

situations bewilder and unnerve the weak, but call forth all the strength of the strong. Surrounded by snares in

which an ordinary youth would have perished, William learned to tread at once warily and firmly. Long

before he reached manhood he knew how to keep secrets, how to baffle curiosity by dry and guarded

answers, how to conceal all passions under the same show of grave tranquillity. Meanwhile he made little

proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplishments. The manners of the Dutch nobility of that age wanted

the grace which was found in the highest perfection among the gentlemen of France, and which, in an inferior

degree, embellished the Court of England; and his manners were altogether Dutch. Even his countrymen

thought him blunt. To foreigners he often seemed churlish. In his intercourse with the world in general he

appeared ignorant or negligent of those arts which double the value of a favour and take away the sting of a

refusal. He was little interested in letters or science. The discoveries of Newton and Leibnitz, the poems of

Dryden and Boileau, were unknown to him. Dramatic performances tired him; and he was glad to turn away

from the stage and to talk about public affairs, while Orestes was raving, or while Tartuffe was pressing

Elmira's hand. He had indeed some talent for sarcasm, and not seldom employed, quite unconsciously, a

natural rhetoric, quaint, indeed, but vigorous and original. He did not, however, in the least affect the

character of a wit or of an orator. His attention had been confined to those studies which form strenuous and

sagacious men of business. From a child he listened with interest when high questions of alliance, finance,

and war were discussed. Of geometry he learned as much as was necessary for the construction of a ravelin or

a hornwork. Of languages, by the help of a memory singularly powerful, he learned as much as was necessary

to enable him to comprehend and answer without assistance everything that was said to him, and every letter

which he received. The Dutch was his own tongue. He understood Latin, Italian, and Spanish. He spoke and

wrote French, English, and German, inelegantly, it is true, and inexactly, but fluently and intelligibly. No

qualification could be more important to a man whose life was to be passed in organizing great alliances, and

One class of philosophical questions had been forced on his attention by circumstances, and seems to have

interested him more than might have been expected from his general character. Among the Protestants of the

United Provinces, as among the Protestants of our island, there were two great religious parties which almost

exactly coincided with two great political parties. The chiefs of the municipal oligarchy were Arminians, and

were commonly regarded by the multitude as little better than Papists. The princes of Orange had generally

been the patrons of the Calvinistic divinity, and owed no small part of their popularity to their zeal for the

doctrines of election and final perseverance, a zeal not always enlightened by knowledge or tempered by

humanity. William had been carefully instructed from a child in the theological system to which his family

was attached, and regarded that system with even more than the partiality which men generally feel for a

hereditary faith. He had ruminated on the great enigmas which had been discussed in the Synod of Dort, and

had found in the austere and inflexible logic of the Genevese school something which suited his intellect and

his temper. That example of intolerance indeed which some of his predecessors had set he never imitated. For

all persecution he felt a fixed aversion, which he avowed, not only where the avowal was obviously politic,

but on occasions where it seemed that his interest would have been promoted by dissimulation or by silence.

His theological opinions, however, were even more decided than those of his ancestors. The tenet of

predestination was the keystone of his religion. He often declared that, if he were to abandon that tenet, he

must abandon with it all belief in a superintending Providence, and must become a mere Epicurean. Except in

this single instance, all the sap of his vigorous mind was early drawn away from the speculative to the

practical. The faculties which are necessary for the conduct of important business ripened in him at a time of

life when they have scarcely begun to blossom in ordinary men. Since Octavius the world had seen no such

instance of precocious statesmanship. Skilful diplomatists were surprised to hear the weighty observations

which at seventeen the Prince made on public affairs, and still more surprised to see a lad, in situations in

which he might have been expected to betray strong passion, preserve a composure as imperturbable as their

own. At eighteen he sate among the fathers of the commonwealth, grave, discreet, and judicious as the oldest

among them. At twentyone, in a day of gloom and terror, he was placed at the head of the administration. At

twentythree be was renowned throughout Europe as a soldier and a politician. He had put domestic factions

under his feet: he was the soul of a mighty coalition; and he had contended with honour in the field against

His personal tastes were those rather of a warrior than of a statesman: but he, like his greatgrandfather, the

silent prince who founded the Batavian commonwealth, occupies a far higher place among statesmen than

among warriors. The event of battles, indeed, is not an unfailing test of the abilities of a commander; and it

would be peculiarly unjust to apply this test to William: for it was his fortune to be almost always opposed to

captains who were consummate masters of their art, and to troops far superior in discipline to his own. Yet

there is reason to believe that he was by no means equal, as a general in the field, to some who ranked far

below him in intellectual powers. To those whom he trusted he spoke on this subject with the magnanimous

frankness of a man who had done great things, and who could well afford to acknowledge some deficiencies.

He had never, he said, served an apprenticeship to the military profession. He had been placed, while still a

boy, at the head of an army. Among his officers there had been none competent to instruct him. His own

blunders and their consequences had been his only lessons. "I would give," he once exclaimed, "a good part

of my estates to have served a few campaigns under the Prince of Conde before I had to command against

him." It is not improbable that the circumstance which prevented William from attaining any eminent

dexterity in strategy may have been favourable to the general vigour of his intellect. If his battles were not

those of a great tactician, they entitled him to be called a great man. No disaster could for one moment

deprive him of his firmness or of the entire possession of all his faculties. His defeats were repaired with such

marvellous celerity that, before his enemies had sung the Te Deum, he was again ready for conflict; nor did

his adverse fortune ever deprive him of the respect and confidence of his soldiers. That respect and

confidence he owed in no small measure to his personal courage. Courage, in the degree which is necessary

to carry a soldier without disgrace through a campaign, is possessed, or might, under proper training, be

acquired, by the great majority of men. But courage like that of William is rare indeed. He was proved by

every test; by war, by wounds, by painful and depressing maladies, by raging seas, by the imminent and

constant risk of assassination, a risk which has shaken very strong nerves, a risk which severely tried even the

adamantine fortitude of Cromwell. Yet none could ever discover what that thing was which the Prince of

Orange feared. His advisers could with difficulty induce him to take any precaution against the pistols and

daggers of conspirators.209 Old sailors were amazed at the composure which he preserved amidst roaring

breakers on a perilous coast. In battle his bravery made him conspicuous even among tens of thousands of

brave warriors, drew forth the generous applause of hostile armies, and was never questioned even by the

injustice of hostile factions. During his first campaigns he exposed himself like a man who sought for death,

was always foremost in the charge and last in the retreat, fought, sword in hand, in the thickest press, and,

with a musket ball in his arm and the blood streaming over his cuirass, still stood his ground and waved his

hat under the hottest fire. His friends adjured him to take more care of a life invaluable to his country; and his

most illustrious antagonist, the great Conde, remarked, after the bloody day of Seneff that the Prince of

Orange had in all things borne himself like an old general, except in exposing himself like a young soldier.

William denied that he was guilty of temerity. It was, he said, from a sense of duty and on a cool calculation

of what the public interest required that he was always at the post of danger. The troops which he

commanded had been little used to war, and shrank from a close encounter with the veteran soldiery of

France. It was necessary that their leader should show them how battles were to be won. And in truth more

than one day which had seemed hopelessly lost was retrieved by the hardihood with which he rallied his

broken battalions and cut down with his own hand the cowards who set the example of flight. Sometimes,

however, it seemed that he had a strange pleasure in venturing his person. It was remarked that his spirits

were never so high and his manners never so gracious and easy as amidst the tumult and carnage of a battle.

Even in his pastimes he liked the excitement of danger. Cards, chess, and billiards gave him no pleasure. The

chase was his favourite recreation; and he loved it most when it was most hazardous. His leaps were

sometimes such that his boldest companions did not like to follow him. He seems even to have thought the

most hardy field sports of England effeminate, and to have pined in the Great Park of Windsor for the game

which he had been used to drive to bay in the forests of Guelders, wolves, and wild boars, and huge stags

The audacity of his spirit was the more remarkable because his physical organization was unusually delicate.

From a child he had been weak and sickly. In the prime of manhood his complaints had been aggravated by a

severe attack of small pox. He was asthmatic and consumptive. His slender frame was shaken by a constant

hoarse cough. He could not sleep unless his head was propped by several pillows, and could scarcely draw

his breath in any but the purest air. Cruel headaches frequently tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued him. The

physicians constantly kept up the hopes of his enemies by fixing some date beyond which, if there were

anything certain in medical science, it was impossible that his broken constitution could hold out. Yet,

through a life which was one long disease, the force of his mind never failed, on any great occasion, to bear

He was born with violent passions and quick sensibilities: but the strength of his emotions was not suspected

by the world. From the multitude his joy and his grief, his affection and his resentment, were hidden by a

phlegmatic serenity, which made him pass for the most coldblooded of mankind. Those who brought him

good news could seldom detect any sign of pleasure. Those who saw him after a defeat looked in vain for any

trace of vexation. He praised and reprimanded, rewarded and punished, with the stern tranquillity of a

Mohawk chief: but those who knew him well and saw him near were aware that under all this ice a fierce fire

was constantly burning. It was seldom that anger deprived him of power over himself. But when he was

really enraged the first outbreak of his passion was terrible. It was indeed scarcely safe to approach him. On

these rare occasions, however, as soon as he regained his self command, he made such ample reparation to

those whom he had wronged as tempted them to wish that he would go into a fury again. His affection was as

impetuous as his wrath. Where he loved, he loved with the whole energy of his strong mind. When death

separated him from what he loved, the few who witnessed his agonies trembled for his reason and his life. To

a very small circle of intimate friends, on whose fidelity and secrecy he could absolutely depend, he was a

different man from the reserved and stoical William whom the multitude supposed to be destitute of human

feelings. He was kind, cordial, open, even convivial and jocose, would sit at table many hours, and would

bear his full share in festive conversation. Highest in his favour stood a gentleman of his household named

Bentinck, sprung from a noble Batavian race, and destined to be the founder of one of the great patrician

houses of England. The fidelity of Bentinck had been tried by no common test. It was while the United

Provinces were struggling for existence against the French power that the young Prince on whom all their

hopes were fixed was seized by the small pox. That disease had been fatal to many members of his family,

and at first wore, in his case, a peculiarly malignant aspect. The public consternation was great. The streets of

the Hague were crowded from daybreak to sunset by persons anxiously asking how his Highness was. At

length his complaint took a favourable turn. His escape was attributed partly to his own singular equanimity,

and partly to the intrepid and indefatigable friendship of Bentinck. From the hands of Bentinck alone William

took food and medicine. By Bentinck alone William was lifted from his bed and laid down in it. "Whether

Bentinck slept or not while I was ill," said William to Temple, with great tenderness, "I know not. But this I

know, that, through sixteen days and nights, I never once called for anything but that Bentinck was instantly

at my side." Before the faithful servant had entirely performed his task, he had himself caught the contagion.

Still, however, he bore up against drowsiness and fever till his master was pronounced convalescent. Then, at

length, Bentinck asked leave to go home. It was time: for his limbs would no longer support him. He was in

great danger, but recovered, and, as soon as he left his bed, hastened to the army, where, during many sharp

campaigns, he was ever found, as he had been in peril of a different kind, close to William's side.

Such was the origin of a friendship as warm and pure as any that ancient or modern history records. The

descendants of Bentinck still preserve many letters written by William to their ancestor: and it is not too

much to say that no person who has not studied those letters can form a correct notion of the Prince's

character. He whom even his admirers generally accounted the most distant and frigid of men here forgets all

distinctions of rank, and pours out all his thoughts with the ingenuousness of a schoolboy. He imparts without

reserve secrets of the highest moment. He explains with perfect simplicity vast designs affecting all the

governments of Europe. Mingled with his communications on such subjects are other communications of a

very different, but perhaps not of a less interesting kind. All his adventures, all his personal feelings, his long

runs after enormous stags, his carousals on St. Hubert's day, the growth of his plantations, the failure of his

melons, the state of his stud, his wish to procure an easy pad nag for his wife, his vexation at learning that one

of his household, after ruining a girl of good family, refused to marry her, his fits of sea sickness, his coughs,

his headaches, his devotional moods, his gratitude for the divine protection after a great escape, his struggles

to submit himself to the divine will after a disaster, are described with an amiable garrulity hardly to have

been expected from the most discreet and sedate statesman of the age. Still more remarkable is the careless

effusion of his tenderness, and the brotherly interest which he takes in his friend's domestic felicity. When an

heir is born to Bentinck, "he will live, I hope," says William, "to be as good a fellow as you are; and, if I

should have a son, our children will love each other, I hope, as we have done."211 Through life he continues

to regard the little Bentincks with paternal kindness. He calls them by endearing diminutives: he takes charge

of them in their father's absence, and, though vexed at being forced to refuse them any pleasure, will not

suffer them to go on a hunting party, where there would be risk of a push from a stag's horn, or to sit up late

at a riotous supper.212 When their mother is taken ill during her husband's absence, William, in the midst of

business of the highest moment, finds time to send off several expresses in one day with short notes

containing intelligence of her state.213 On one occasion, when she is pronounced out of danger after a severe

attack, the Prince breaks forth into fervent expressions of gratitude to God. "I write," he says, "with tears of

joy in my eyes."214 There is a singular charm in such letters, penned by a man whose irresistible energy and

inflexible firmness extorted the respect of his enemies, whose cold and ungracious demeanour repelled the

attachment of almost all his partisans, and whose mind was occupied by gigantic schemes which have

His kindness was not misplaced. Bentinck was early pronounced by Temple to be the best and truest servant

that ever prince had the good fortune to possess, and continued through life to merit that honourable

character. The friends were indeed made for each other. William wanted neither a guide nor a flatterer.

Having a firm and just reliance on his own judgment, he was not partial to counsellors who dealt much in

suggestions and objections. At the same time he had too much discernment, and too much elevation of mind,

to be gratified by sycophancy. The confidant of such a prince ought to be a man, not of inventive genius or

commanding spirit, but brave and faithful, capable of executing orders punctually, of keeping secrets

inviolably, of observing facts vigilantly, and of reporting them truly; and such a man was Bentinck.

William was not less fortunate in marriage than in friendship. Yet his marriage had not at first promised much

domestic happiness. His choice had been determined chiefly by political considerations: nor did it seem likely

that any strong affection would grow up between a handsome girl of sixteen, well disposed indeed, and

naturally intelligent, but ignorant and simple, and a bridegroom who, though he had not completed his

twentyeighth year, was in constitution older than her father, whose manner was chilling, and whose head

was constantly occupied by public business or by field sports. For a time William was a negligent husband.

He was indeed drawn away from his wife by other women, particularly by one of her ladies, Elizabeth

Villiers, who, though destitute of personal attractions, and disfigured by a hideous squint, possessed talents

which well fitted her to partake his cares.215 He was indeed ashamed of his errors, and spared no pains to

conceal them: but, in spite of all his precautions, Mary well knew that he was not strictly faithful to her. Spies

and talebearers, encouraged by her father, did their best to inflame her resentment. A man of a very different

character, the excellent Ken, who was her chaplain at the Hague during some months, was so much incensed

by her wrongs that he, with more zeal than discretion, threatened to reprimand her husband severely.216 She,

however, bore her injuries with a meekness and patience which deserved, and gradually obtained, William's

esteem and gratitude. Yet there still remained one cause of estrangement. A time would probably come when

the Princess, who had been educated only to work embroidery, to play on the spinet, and to read the Bible and

the Whole Duty of Man, would be the chief of a great monarchy, and would hold the balance of Europe,

while her lord, ambitious, versed in affairs, and bent on great enterprises, would find in the British

government no place marked out for him, and would hold power only from her bounty and during her

pleasure. It is not strange that a man so fond of authority as William, and so conscious of a genius for

command, should have strongly felt that jealousy which, during a few hours of royalty, put dissension

between Guildford Dudley and the Lady Jane, and which produced a rupture still more tragical between

Darnley and the Queen of Scots. The Princess of Orange had not the faintest suspicion of her husband's

feelings. Her preceptor, Bishop Compton, had instructed her carefully in religion, and had especially guarded

her mind against the arts of Roman Catholic divines, but had left her profoundly ignorant of the English

constitution and of her own position. She knew that her marriage vow bound her to obey her husband; and it

had never occurred to her that the relation in which they stood to each other might one day be inverted. She

had been nine years married before she discovered the cause of William's discontent; nor would she ever

have learned it from himself. In general his temper inclined him rather to brood over his griefs than to give

utterance to them; and in this particular case his lips were sealed by a very natural delicacy. At length a

complete explanation and reconciliation were brought about by the agency of Gilbert Burnet.

The fame of Burnet has been attacked with singular malice and pertinacity. The attack began early in his life,

and is still carried on with undiminished vigour, though he has now been more than a century and a quarter in

his grave. He is indeed as fair a mark as factious animosity and petulant wit could desire. The faults of his

understanding and temper lie on the surface, and cannot be missed. They were not the faults which are

ordinarily considered as belonging to his country. Alone among the many Scotchmen who have raised

themselves to distinction and prosperity in England, he had that character which satirists, novelists, and

dramatists have agreed to ascribe to Irish adventurers. His high animal spirits, his boastfulness, his

undissembled vanity, his propensity to blunder, his provoking indiscretion, his unabashed audacity, afforded

inexhaustible subjects of ridicule to the Tories. Nor did his enemies omit to compliment him, sometimes with

more pleasantry than delicacy, on the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his calves, and his success in

matrimonial projects on amorous and opulent widows. Yet Burnet, though open in many respects to ridicule,

and even to serious censure, was no contemptible man. His parts were quick, his industry unwearied, his

reading various and most extensive. He was at once a historian, an antiquary, a theologian, a preacher, a

pamphleteer, a debater, and an active political leader; and in every one of these characters made himself

conspicuous among able competitors. The many spirited tracts which he wrote on passing events are now

known only to the curious: but his History of his own Times, his History of the Reformation, his Exposition

of the Articles, his Discourse of Pastoral Care, his Life of Hale, his Life of Wilmot, are still reprinted, nor is

any good private library without them. Against such a fact as this all the efforts of detractors are vain. A

writer, whose voluminous works, in several branches of literature, find numerous readers a hundred and thirty

years after his death, may have had great faults, but must also have had great merits: and Burnet had great

merits, a fertile and vigorous mind, and a style, far indeed removed from faultless purity, but always clear,

often lively, and sometimes rising to solemn and fervid eloquence. In the pulpit the effect of his discourses,

which were delivered without any note, was heightened by a noble figure and by pathetic action. He was

often interrupted by the deep hum of his audience; and when, after preaching out the hour glass, which in

those days was part of the furniture of the pulpit, he held it up in his hand, the congregation clamorously

encouraged him to go on till the sand had run off once more.217 In his moral character, as in his intellect,

great blemishes were more than compensated by great excellence. Though often misled by prejudice and

passion, he was emphatically an honest man. Though he was not secure from the seductions of vanity, his

spirit was raised high above the influence either of cupidity or of fear. His nature was kind, generous,

grateful, forgiving.218 His religious zeal, though steady and ardent, was in general restrained by humanity,

and by a respect for the rights of conscience. Strongly attached to what he regarded as the spirit of

Christianity, he looked with indifference on rites, names, and forms of ecclesiastical polity, and was by no

means disposed to be severe even on infidels and heretics whose lives were pure, and whose errors appeared

to be the effect rather of some perversion of the understanding than of the depravity of the heart. But, like

many other good men of that age, he regarded the case of the Church of Rome as an exception to all ordinary

Burnet had during some years had an European reputation. His History of the Reformation had been received

with loud applause by all Protestants, and had been felt by the Roman Catholics as a severe blow. The

greatest Doctor that the Church of Rome has produced since the schism of the sixteenth century, Bossuet,

Bishop of Meaux, was engaged in framing an elaborate reply. Burnet had been honoured by a vote of thanks

from one of the zealous Parliaments which had sate during the excitement of the Popish plot, and had been

exhorted, in the name of the Commons of England, to continue his historical researches. He had been

admitted to familiar conversation both with Charles and James, had lived on terms of close intimacy with

several distinguished statesmen, particularly with Halifax, and had been the spiritual guide of some persons

of the highest note. He had reclaimed from atheism and from licentiousness one of the most brilliant

libertines of the age, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Lord Stafford, the victim of Oates, had, though a

Roman Catholic, been edified in his last hours by Burnet's exhortations touching those points on which all

Christians agree. A few years later a more illustrious sufferer, Lord Russell, had been accompanied by Burnet

from the Tower to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The court had neglected no means of gaining so active

and able a divine. Neither royal blandishments nor promises of valuable preferment had been spared. But

Burnet, though infected in early youth by those servile doctrines which were commonly held by the clergy of

that age, had become on conviction a Whig; and he firmly adhered through all vicissitudes to his principles.

He had, however, no part in that conspiracy which brought so much disgrace and calamity on the Whig party,

and not only abhorred the murderous designs of Goodenough and Ferguson, but was of opinion that even his

beloved and honoured friend Russell, had gone to unjustifiable lengths against the government. A time at

length arrived when innocence was not a sufficient protection. Burnet, though not guilty of any legal offence,

was pursued by the vengeance of the court. He retired to the Continent, and, after passing about a year in

those wanderings through Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, of which he has left us an agreeable narrative,

reached the Hague in the summer of 1686, and was received there with kindness and respect. He had many

free conversations with the Princess on politics and religion, and soon became her spiritual director and

confidential adviser. William proved a much more gracious host than could have been expected. For of all

faults officiousness and indiscretion were the most offensive to him: and Burnet was allowed even by friends

and admirers to be the most officious and indiscreet of mankind. But the sagacious Prince perceived that this

pushing, talkative divine, who was always blabbing secrets, asking impertinent questions, obtruding unasked

advice, was nevertheless an upright, courageous and able man, well acquainted with the temper and the views

of British sects and factions. The fame of Burnet's eloquence and erudition was also widely spread. William

was not himself a reading man. But he had now been many years at the head of the Dutch administration, in

an age when the Dutch press was one of the most formidable engines by which the public mind of Europe

was moved, and, though he had no taste for literary pleasures, was far too wise and too observant to be

ignorant of the value of literary assistance. He was aware that a popular pamphlet might sometimes be of as

much service as a victory in the field. He also felt the importance of having always near him some person

well informed as to the civil and ecclesiastical polity of our island: and Burnet was eminently qualified to be

of use as a living dictionary of British affairs. For his knowledge, though not always accurate, was of

immense extent and there were in England and Scotland few eminent men of any political or religious party

with whom he had not conversed. He was therefore admitted to as large a share of favour and confidence as

was granted to any but those who composed the very small inmost knot of the Prince's private friends. When

the Doctor took liberties, which was not seldom the case, his patron became more than usually cold and

sullen, and sometimes uttered a short dry sarcasm which would have struck dumb any person of ordinary

assurance. In spite of such occurrences, however, the amity between this singular pair continued, with some

temporary interruptions, till it was dissolved by death. Indeed, it was not easy to wound Burnet's feelings. His

selfcomplacency, his animal spirits, and his want of tact, were such that, though he frequently gave offence,

All the peculiarities of his character fitted him to be the peacemaker between William and Mary. When

persons who ought to esteem and love each other are kept asunder, as often happens, by some cause which

three words of frank explanation would remove, they are fortunate if they possess an indiscreet friend who

blurts out the whole truth. Burnet plainly told the Princess what the feeling was which preyed upon her

husband's mind. She learned for the first time, with no small astonishment, that, when she became Queen of

England, William would not share her throne. She warmly declared that there was no proof of conjugal

submission and affection which she was not ready to give. Burnet, with many apologies and with solemn

protestations that no human being had put words into his mouth, informed her that the remedy was in her own

hands. She might easily, when the crown devolved on her, induce her Parliament not only to give the regal

title to her husband, but even to transfer to him by a legislative act the administration of the government.

"But," he added, "your Royal Highness ought to consider well before you announce any such resolution. For

it is a resolution which, having once been announced, cannot safely or easily be retracted." "I want no time

for consideration," answered Mary. "It is enough that I have an opportunity of showing my regard for the

Prince. Tell him what I say; and bring him to me that he may hear it from my own lips." Burnet went in quest

of William; but William was many miles off after a stag. It was not till the next day that the decisive

interview took place. "I did not know till yesterday," said Mary, "that there was such a difference between the

laws of England and the laws of God. But I now promise you that you shall always bear rule: and, in return, I

ask only this, that, as I shall observe the precept which enjoins wives to obey their husbands, you will observe

that which enjoins husbands to love their wives." Her generous affection completely gained the heart of

William. From that time till the sad day when he was carried away in fits from her dying bed, there was entire

friendship and confidence between them. Many of her letters to him are extant; and they contain abundant

evidence that this man, unamiable as he was in the eyes of the multitude, had succeeded in inspiring a

beautiful and virtuous woman, born his superior, with a passion fond even to idolatry.

The service which Burnet had rendered to his country was of high moment. A time had arrived at which it

was important to the public safety that there should be entire concord between the Prince and Princess.

Till after the suppression of the Western insurrection grave causes of dissension had separated William both

from Whigs and Tories. He had seen with displeasure the attempts of the Whigs to strip the executive

government of some powers which he thought necessary to its efficiency and dignity. He had seen with still

deeper displeasure the countenance given by a large section of that party to the pretensions of Monmouth.

The opposition, it seemed, wished first to make the crown of England not worth the wearing, and then to

place it on the head of a bastard and impostor. At the same time the Prince's religious system differed widely

from that which was the badge of the Tories. They were Arminians and Prelatists. They looked down on the

Protestant Churches of the Continent, and regarded every line of their own liturgy and rubric as scarcely less

sacred than the gospels. His opinions touching the metaphysics of theology were Calvinistic. His opinions

respecting ecclesiastical polity and modes of worship were latitudinarian. He owned that episcopacy was a

lawful and convenient form of church government; but he spoke with sharpness and scorn of the bigotry of

those who thought episcopal ordination essential to a Christian society. He had no scruple about the

vestments and gestures prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer. But he avowed that he should like the

rites of the Church of England better if they reminded him less of the rites of the Church of Rome. He had

been heard to utter an ominous growl when first he saw, in his wife's private chapel, an altar decked after the

Anglican fashion, and had not seemed well pleased at finding her with Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity in her

He therefore long observed the contest between the English factions attentively, but without feeling a strong

predilection for either side. Nor in truth did he ever, to the end of his life, become either a Whig or a Tory. He

wanted that which is the common groundwork of both characters; for he never became an Englishman. He

saved England, it is true; but he never loved her, and he never obtained her love. To him she was always a

land of exile, visited with reluctance and quitted with delight. Even when he rendered to her those services of

which, at this day, we feel the happy effects, her welfare was not his chief object. Whatever patriotic feeling

he had was for Holland. There was the stately tomb where slept the great politician whose blood, whose

name, whose temperament, and whose genius he had inherited. There the very sound of his title was a spell

which had, through three generations, called forth the affectionate enthusiasm of boors and artisans. The

Dutch language was the language of his nursery. Among the Dutch gentry he had chosen his early friends.

The amusements, the architecture, the landscape of his native country, had taken hold on his heart. To her he

turned with constant fondness from a prouder and fairer rival. In the gallery of Whitehall he pined for the

familiar House in the Wood at the Hague, and never was so happy as when he could quit the magnificence of

Windsor for his far humbler seat at Loo. During his splendid banishment it was his consolation to create

round him, by building, planting, and digging, a scene which might remind him of the formal piles of red

brick, of the long canals, and of the symmetrical flower beds amidst which his early life had been passed. Yet

even his affection for the land of his birth was subordinate to another feeling which early became supreme in

his soul, which mixed itself with all his passions, which impelled him to marvellous enterprises, which

supported him when sinking under mortification, pain, sickness, and sorrow, which, towards the close of his

career, seemed during a short time to languish, but which soon broke forth again fiercer than ever, and

continued to animate him even while the prayer for the departing was read at his bedside. That feeling was

enmity to France, and to the magnificent King who, in more than one sense, represented France, and who to

virtues and accomplishments eminently French joined in large measure that unquiet, unscrupulous, and

vainglorious ambition which has repeatedly drawn on France the resentment of Europe.

It is not difficult to trace the progress of the sentiment which gradually possessed itself of William's whole

soul. When he was little more than a boy his country had been attacked by Lewis in ostentatious defiance of

justice and public law, had been overrun, had been desolated, had been given up to every excess of rapacity,

licentiousness, and cruelty. The Dutch had in dismay humbled themselves before the conqueror, and had

implored mercy. They had been told in reply that, if they desired peace, they must resign their independence

and do annual homage to the House of Bourbon. The injured nation, driven to despair, had opened its dykes

and had called in the sea as an ally against the French tyranny. It was in the agony of that conflict, when

peasants were flying in terror before the invaders, when hundreds of fair gardens and pleasure houses were

buried beneath the waves, when the deliberations of the States were interrupted by the fainting and the loud

weeping of ancient senators who could not bear the thought of surviving the freedom and glory of their native

land, that William had been called to the head of affairs. For a time it seemed to him that resistance was

hopeless. He looked round for succour, and looked in vain. Spain was unnerved, Germany distracted,

England corrupted. Nothing seemed left to the young Stadtholder but to perish sword in hand, or to be the

Aeneas of a great emigration, and to create another Holland in countries beyond the reach of the tyranny of

France. No obstacle would then remain to check the progress of the House of Bourbon. A few years, and that

House might add to its dominions Loraine and Flanders, Castile and Aragon, Naples and Milan, Mexico and

Peru. Lewis might wear the imperial crown, might place a prince of his family on the throne of Poland, might

be sole master of Europe from the Scythian deserts to the Atlantic Ocean, and of America from regions north

of the Tropic of Cancer to regions south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Such was the prospect which lay before

William when first he entered on public life, and which never ceased to haunt him till his latest day. The

French monarchy was to him what the Roman republic was to Hannibal, what the Ottoman power was to

Scanderbeg, what the southern domination was to Wallace. Religion gave her sanction to that intense and

unquenchable animosity. Hundreds of Calvinistic preachers proclaimed that the same power which had set

apart Samson from the womb to be the scourge of the Philistine, and which had called Gideon from the

threshing floor to smite the Midianite, had raised up William of Orange to be the champion of all free nations

and of all pure Churches; nor was this notion without influence on his own mind. To the confidence which

the heroic fatalist placed in his high destiny and in his sacred cause is to be partly attributed his singular

indifference to danger. He had a great work to do; and till it was done nothing could harm him. Therefore it

was that, in spite of the prognostications of physicians, he recovered from maladies which seemed hopeless,

that bands of assassins conspired in vain against his life, that the open skiff to which he trusted himself on a

starless night, on a raging ocean, and near a treacherous shore, brought him safe to land, and that, on twenty

fields of battle, the cannon balls passed him by to right and left. The ardour and perseverance with which he

devoted himself to his mission have scarcely any parallel in history. In comparison with his great object he

held the lives of other men as cheap as his own. It was but too much the habit, even of the most humane and

generous soldiers of that age, to think very lightly of the bloodshed and devastation inseparable from great

martial exploits; and the heart of William was steeled, not only by professional insensibility, but by that

sterner insensibility which is the effect of a sense of duty. Three great coalitions, three long and bloody wars

in which all Europe from the Vistula to the Western Ocean was in arms, are to be ascribed to his

unconquerable energy. When in 1678 the States General, exhausted and disheartened, were desirious of

repose, his voice was still against sheathing the sword. If peace was made, it was made only because he could

not breathe into other men a spirit as fierce and determined as his own. At the very last moment, in the hope

of breaking off the negotiation which he knew to be all but concluded, he fought one of the most bloody and

obstinate battles of that age. From the day on which the treaty of Nimeguen was signed, he began to meditate

a second coalition. His contest with Lewis, transferred from the field to the cabinet, was soon exasperated by

a private feud. In talents, temper, manners and opinions, the rivals were diametrically opposed to each other.

Lewis, polite and dignified, profuse and voluptuous, fond of display and averse from danger, a munificent

patron of arts and letters, and a cruel persecutor of Calvinists, presented a remarkable contrast to William,

simple in tastes, ungracious in demeanour, indefatigable and intrepid in war, regardless of all the ornamental

branches of knowledge, and firmly attached to the theology of Geneva. The enemies did not long observe

those courtesies which men of their rank, even when opposed to each other at the head of armies, seldom

neglect. William, indeed, went through the form of tendering his best services to Lewis. But this civility was

rated at its true value, and requited with a dry reprimand. The great King affected contempt for the petty

Prince who was the servant of a confederacy of trading towns; and to every mark of contempt the dauntless

Stadtholder replied by a fresh defiance. William took his title, a title which the events of the preceding

century had made one of the most illustrious in Europe, from a city which lies on the banks of the Rhone not

far from Avignon, and which, like Avignon, though inclosed on every side by the French territory, was

properly a fief not of the French but of the Imperial Crown. Lewis, with that ostentatious contempt of public

law which was characteristic of him, occupied Orange, dismantled the fortifications, and confiscated the

revenues. William declared aloud at his table before many persons that he would make the most Christian

King repent the outrage, and, when questioned about these words by the Count of Avaux, positively refused

either to retract them or to explain them away. The quarrel was carried so far that the French minister could

not venture to present himself at the drawing room of the Princess for fear of receiving some affront.220

The feeling with which William regarded France explains the whole of his policy towards England. His

public spirit was an European public spirit. The chief object of his care was not our island, not even his native

Holland, but the great community of nations threatened with subjugation by one too powerful member. Those

who commit the error of considering him as an English statesman must necessarily see his whole life in a

false light, and will be unable to discover any principle, good or bad, Whig or Tory, to which his most

important acts can be referred. But, when we consider him as a man whose especial task was to join a crowd

of feeble, divided and dispirited states in firm and energetic union against a common enemy, when we

consider him as a man in whose eyes England was important chiefly because, without her, the great coalition

which he projected must be incomplete, we shall be forced to admit that no long career recorded in history

has been more uniform from the beginning to the close than that of this great Prince.221

The clue of which we are now possessed will enable us to track without difficulty the course, in reality

consistent, though in appearance sometimes tortuous, which he pursued towards our domestic factions. He

clearly saw what had not escaped persons far inferior to him in sagacity, that the enterprise on which his

whole soul was intent would probably be successful if England were on his side, would be of uncertain issue

if England were neutral, and would be hopeless if England acted as she had acted in the days of the Cabal. He

saw not less clearly that between the foreign policy and the domestic policy of the English government there

was a close connection; that the sovereign of this country, acting in harmony with the legislature, must

always have a great sway in the affairs of Christendom, and must also have an obvious interest in opposing

the undue aggrandisement of any continental potentate; that, on the other hand, the sovereign, distrusted and

thwarted by the legislature, could be of little weight in European politics, and that the whole of that little

weight would be thrown into the wrong scale. The Prince's first wish therefore was that there should be

concord between the throne and the Parliament. How that concord should be established, and on which side

concessions should be made, were, in his view, questions of secondary importance. He would have been best

pleased, no doubt, to see a complete reconciliation effected without the sacrifice of one tittle of the

prerogative. For in the integrity of that prerogative he had a reversionary interest; and he was, by nature, at

least as covetous of power and as impatient of restraint as any of the Stuarts. But there was no flower of the

crown which he was not prepared to sacrifice, even after the crown had been placed on his own head, if he

could only be convinced that such a sacrifice was indispensably necessary to his great design. In the days of

the Popish plot, therefore, though he disapproved of the violence with which the opposition attacked the royal

authority, he exhorted the government to give way. The conduct of the Commons, he said, as respected

domestic affairs, was most unreasonable but while the Commons were discontented the liberties of Europe

could never be safe; and to that paramount consideration every other consideration ought to yield. On these

principles he acted when the Exclusion Bill had thrown the nation into convulsions. There is no reason to

believe that he encouraged the opposition to bring forward that bill or to reject the offers of compromise

which were repeatedly made from the throne. But when it became clear that, unless that bill were carried,

there would be a serious breach between the Commons and the court, he indicated very intelligibly, though

with decorous reserve, his opinion that the representatives of the people ought to be conciliated at any price.

When a violent and rapid reflux of public feeling had left the Whig party for a time utterly helpless, he

attempted to attain his grand object by a new road perhaps more agreeable to his temper than that which he

had previously tried. In the altered temper of the nation there was little chance that any Parliament disposed

to cross the wishes of the sovereign would be elected. Charles was for a time master. To gain Charles,

therefore, was the Prince's first wish. In the summer of 1683, almost at the moment at which the detection of

the Rye House Plot made the discomfiture of the Whigs and the triumph of the King complete, events took

place elsewhere which William could not behold without extreme anxiety and alarm. The Turkish armies

advanced to the suburbs of Vienna. The great Austrian monarchy, on the support of which the Prince had

reckoned, seemed to be on the point of destruction. Bentinck was therefore sent in haste from the Hague to

London, was charged to omit nothing which might be necessary to conciliate the English court, and was

particularly instructed to express in the strongest terms the horror with which his master regarded the Whig

During the eighteen months which followed, there was some hope that the influence of Halifax would

prevail, and that the court of Whitehall would return to the policy of the Triple Alliance. To that hope

William fondly clung. He spared no effort to propitiate Charles. The hospitality which Monmouth found at

the Hague is chiefly to be ascribed to the Prince's anxiety to gratify the real wishes of Monmouth's father. As

soon as Charles died, William, still adhering unchangeably to his object, again changed his course. He had

sheltered Monmouth to please the late King. That the present King might have no reason to complain

Monmouth was dismissed. We have seen that, when the Western insurrection broke out, the British regiments

in the Dutch service were, by the active exertions of the Prince, sent over to their own country on the first

requisition. Indeed William even offered to command in person against the rebels; and that the offer was

made in perfect sincerity cannot be doubted by those who have perused his confidential letters to

The Prince was evidently at this time inclined to hope that the great plan to which in his mind everything else

was subordinate might obtain the approbation and support of his father in law. The high tone which James

was then holding towards France, the readiness with which he consented to a defensive alliance with the

United Provinces, the inclination which he showed to connect himself with the House of Austria, encouraged

this expectation. But in a short time the prospect was darkened. The disgrace of Halifax, the breach between

James and the Parliament, the prorogation: the announcement distinctly made by the King to the foreign

ministers that continental politics should no longer divert his attention from internal measures tending to

strengthen his prerogative and to promote the interest of his Church, put an end to the delusion. It was plain

that, when the European crisis came, England would, if James were her master, either remain inactive or act

in conjunction with France. And the European crisis was drawing near. The House of Austria had, by a

succession of victories, been secured from danger on the side of Turkey, and was no longer under the

necessity of submitting patiently to the encroachments and insults of Lewis. Accordingly, in July 1686, a

treaty was signed at Augsburg by which the Princes of the Empire bound themselves closely together for the

purpose of mutual defence. The Kings of Spain and Sweden were parties to this compact, the King of Spain

as sovereign of the provinces contained in the circle of Burgundy, and the King of Sweden as Duke of

Pomerania. The confederates declared that they had no intention to attack and no wish to offend any power,

but that they were determined to tolerate no infraction of those rights which the Germanic body held under

the sanction of public law and public faith. They pledged themselves to stand by each other in case of need,

and fixed the amount of force which each member of the league was to furnish if it should be necessary to

repel aggression.223 The name of William did not appear in this instrument: but all men knew that it was his

work, and foresaw that he would in no long time be again the captain of a coalition against France. Between

him and the vassal of France there could, in such circumstances, be no cordial good will. There was no open

rupture, no interchange of menaces or reproaches. But the father in law and the son in law were separated

At the very time at which the Prince was thus estranged from the English court, the causes which had hitherto

produced a coolness between him and the two great sections of the English people disappeared. A large

portion, perhaps a numerical majority, of the Whigs had favoured the pretensions of Monmouth: but

Monmouth was now no more. The Tories, on the other hand, had entertained apprehensions that the interests

of the Anglican Church might not be safe under the rule of a man bred among Dutch Presbyterians, and well

known to hold latitudinarian opinions about robes, ceremonies, and Bishops: but, since that beloved Church

had been threatened by far more formidable dangers from a very different quarter, these apprehensions had

lost almost all their power. Thus, at the same moment, both the great parties began to fix their hopes and their

affections on the same leader. Old republicans could not refuse their confidence to one who had worthily

filled, during many years, the highest magistracy of a republic. Old royalists conceived that they acted

according to their principles in paying profound respect to a prince so near to the throne. At this conjuncture

it was of the highest moment that there should be entire union between William and Mary. A

misunderstanding between the presumptive heiress of the crown and her husband must have produced a

schism in that vast mass which was from all quarters gathering round one common rallying point. Happily all

risk of such misunderstanding was averted in the critical instant by the interposition of Burnet; and the Prince

became the unquestioned chief of the whole of that party which was opposed to the government, a party

There is not the least reason to believe that he at this time meditated the great enterprise to which a stern

necessity afterwards drove him. He was aware that the public mind of England, though heated by grievances,

was by no means ripe for revolution. He would doubtless gladly have avoided the scandal which must be the

effect of a mortal quarrel between persons bound together by the closest ties of consanguinity and affinity.

Even his ambition made him unwilling to owe to violence that greatness which might be his in the ordinary

course of nature and of law. For he well knew that, if the crown descended to his wife regularly, all its

prerogatives would descend unimpaired with it, and that, if it were obtained by election, it must be taken

subject to such conditions as the electors might think fit to impose. He meant, therefore, as it appears, to wait

with patience for the day when he might govern by an undisputed title, and to content himself in the

meantime with exercising a great influence on English affairs, as first Prince of the blood, and as head of the

party which was decidedly preponderant in the nation, and which was certain whenever a Parliament should

Already, it is true, he had been urged by an adviser, less sagacious and more impetuous than himself, to try a

bolder course. This adviser was the young Lord Mordaunt. That age had produced no more inventive genius,

and no more daring spirit. But, if a design was splendid, Mordaunt seldom inquired whether it were

practicable. His life was a wild romance made up of mysterious intrigues, both political and amorous, of

violent and rapid changes of scene and fortune, and of victories resembling those of Amadis and Launcelot

rather than those of Luxemburg and Eugene. The episodes interspersed in this strange story were of a piece

with the main plot. Among them were midnight encounters with generous robbers, and rescues of noble and

beautiful ladies from ravishers. Mordaunt, having distinguished himself by the eloquence and audacity with

which, in the House of Lords, he had opposed the court, repaired, soon after the prorogation, to the Hague,

and strongly recommended an immediate descent on England. He had persuaded himself that it would be as

easy to surprise three great kingdoms as he long afterwards found it to surprise Barcelona. William listened,

meditated, and replied, in general terms, that he took a great interest in English affairs, and would keep his

attention fixed on them.224 Whatever his purpose had been, it is not likely that he would have chosen a rash

and vainglorious knight errant for his confidant. Between the two men there was nothing in common except

personal courage, which rose in both to the height of fabulous heroism. Mordaunt wanted merely to enjoy the

excitement of conflict, and to make men stare. William had one great end ever before him. Towards that end

he was impelled by a strong passion which appeared to him under the guise of a sacred duty. Towards that

end he toiled with a patience resembling, as he once said, the patience with which he had seen a boatman on a

canal, strain against an adverse eddy, often swept back, but never ceasing to pull, and content if, by the labour

of hours, a few yards could be gained.225 Exploits which brought the Prince no nearer to his object, however

glorious they might be in the estimation of the vulgar, were in his judgment boyish vanities, and no part of

He determined to reject Mordaunt's advice; and there can be no doubt that the determination was wise. Had

William, in 1686, or even in 1687, attempted to do what he did with such signal success in 1688, it is

probable that many Whigs would have risen in arms at his call. But he would have found that the nation was

not yet prepared to welcome an armed deliverer from a foreign country, and that the Church had not yet been

provoked and insulted into forgetfulness of the tenet which had long been her peculiar boast. The old

Cavaliers would have flocked to the royal standard. There would probably have been in all the three

kingdoms a civil war as long and fierce as that of the preceding generation. While that war was raging in the

British Isles, what might not Lewis attempt on the Continent? And what hope would there be for Holland,

William therefore contented himself for the present with taking measures to unite and animate that mighty

opposition of which he had become the head. This was not difficult. The fall of the Hydes had excited

throughout England strange alarm and indignation: Men felt that the question now was, not whether

Protestantism should be dominant, but whether it should be tolerated. The Treasurer had been succeeded by a

board, of which a Papist was the head. The Privy Seal had been entrusted to a Papist. The Lord Lieutenant of

Ireland had been succeeded by a man who had absolutely no claim to high place except that he was a Papist.

The last person whom a government having in view the general interests of the empire would have sent to

Dublin as Deputy was Tyrconnel. His brutal manners made him unfit to represent the majesty of the crown.

The feebleness of his understanding and the violence of his temper made him unfit to conduct grave business

of state. The deadly animosity which he felt towards the possessors of the greater part of the soil of Ireland

made him especially unfit to rule that kingdom. But the intemperance of his bigotry was thought amply to

atone for the intemperance of all his other passions; and, in consideration of the hatred which he bore to the

reformed faith, he was suffered to indulge without restraint his hatred of the English name. This, then, was

the real meaning of his Majesty's respect for the rights of conscience. He wished his Parliament to remove all

the disabilities which had been imposed on Papists, merely in order that he might himself impose disabilities

equally galling on Protestants. It was plain that, under such a prince, apostasy was the only road to greatness.

It was a road, however, which few ventured to take. For the spirit of the nation was thoroughly roused; and

every renegade had to endure such an amount of public scorn and detestation, as cannot be altogether unfelt

It is true that several remarkable conversions had recently taken place; but they were such as did little credit

to the Church of Rome. Two men of high rank had joined her communion; Henry Mordaunt, Earl of

Peterborough, and James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. But Peterborough, who had been an active soldier, courtier,

and negotiator, was now broken down by years and infirmities; and those who saw him totter about the

galleries of Whitehall, leaning on a stick and swathed up in flannels and plasters, comforted themselves for

his defection by remarking that he had not changed his religion till he had outlived his faculties.226 Salisbury

was foolish to a proverb. His figure was so bloated by sensual indulgence as to be almost incapable of

moving, and this sluggish body was the abode of an equally sluggish mind. He was represented in popular

lampoons as a man made to be duped, as a man who had hitherto been the prey of gamesters, and who might

as well be the prey of friars. A pasquinade, which, about the time of Rochester's retirement, was fixed on the

door of Salisbury House in the Strand, described in coarse terms the horror with which the wise Robert Cecil,

if he could rise from his grave, would see to what a creature his honours had descended.227

These were the highest in station among the proselytes of James. There were other renegades of a very

different kind, needy men of parts who were destitute of principle and of all sense of personal dignity. There

is reason to believe that among these was William Wycherley, the most licentious and hardhearted writer of a

singularly licentious and hardhearted school.228 It is certain that Matthew Tindal, who, at a later period,

acquired great notoriety by writing against Christianity, was at this time received into the bosom of the

infallible Church, a fact which, as may easily be supposed, the divines with whom he was subsequently

engaged in controversy did not suffer to sink into oblivion.229 A still more infamous apostate was Joseph

Haines, whose name is now almost forgotten, but who was well known in his own time as an adventurer of

versatile parts, sharper, coiner, false witness, sham bail, dancing master, buffoon, poet, comedian. Some of

his prologues and epilogues were much admired by his contemporaries; and his merit as an actor was

universally acknowledged. This man professed himself a Roman Catholic, and went to Italy in the retinue of

Castelmaine, but was soon dismissed for misconduct. If any credit is due to a tradition which was long

preserved in the green room, Haines had the impudence to affirm that the Virgin Mary had appeared to him

and called him to repentance. After the Revolution, he attempted to make his peace with the town by a

penance more scandalous than his offence. One night, before he acted in a farce, he appeared on the stage in a

white sheet with a torch in his hand, and recited some profane and indecent doggerel, which he called his

With the name of Haines was joined, in many libels the name of a more illustrious renegade, John Dryden.

Dryden was now approaching the decline of life. After many successes and many failures, he had at length

attained, by general consent, the first place among living English poets. His claims on the gratitude of James

were superior to those of any man of letters in the kingdom. But James cared little for verses and much for

money. From the day of his accession he set himself to make small economical reforms, such as bring on a

government the reproach of meanness without producing any perceptible relief to the finances. One of the

victims of his injudicious parsimony was the Poet Laureate. Orders were given that, in the new patent which

the demise of the crown made necessary, the annual butt of sack, originally granted to Jonson, and continued

to Jonson's successors, should be omitted.231 This was the only notice which the King, during the first year

of his reign, deigned to bestow on the mighty satirist who, in the very crisis of the great struggle of the

Exclusion Bill, had spread terror through the Whig ranks. Dryden was poor and impatient of poverty. He

knew little and cared little about religion. If any sentiment was deeply fixed in him, that sentiment was an

aversion to priests of all persuasions, Levites, Augurs, Muftis, Roman Catholic divines, Presbyterian divines,

divines of the Church of England. He was not naturally a man of high spirit; and his pursuits had been by no

means such as were likely to give elevation or delicacy to his mind. He had, during many years, earned his

daily bread by pandaring to the vicious taste of the pit, and by grossly flattering rich and noble patrons.

Selfrespect and a fine sense of the becoming were not to be expected from one who had led a life of

mendicancy and adulation. Finding that, if he continued to call himself a Protestant, his services would be

overlooked, he declared himself a Papist. The King's parsimony instantly relaxed. Dryden was gratified with

a pension of a hundred pounds a year, and was employed to defend his new religion both in prose and verse.

Two eminent men, Samuel Johnson and Walter Scott, have done their best to persuade themselves and others

that this memorable conversion was sincere. It was natural that they should be desirous to remove a

disgraceful stain from the memory of one whose genius they justly admired, and with whose political feelings

they strongly sympathized; but the impartial historian must with regret pronounce a very different judgment.

There will always be a strong presumption against the sincerity of a conversion by which the convert is

directly a gainer. In the case of Dryden there is nothing to countervail this presumption. His theological

writings abundantly prove that he had never sought with diligence and anxiety to learn the truth, and that his

knowledge both of the Church which he quitted and of the Church which he entered was of the most

superficial kind. Nor was his subsequent conduct that of a man whom a strong sense of duty had constrained

to take a step of awful importance. Had he been such a man, the same conviction which had led him to join

the Church of Rome would surely have prevented him from violating grossly and habitually rules which that

Church, in common with every other Christian society, recognises as binding. There would have been a

marked distinction between his earlier and his later compositions. He would have looked back with remorse

on a literary life of near thirty years, during which his rare powers of diction and versification had been

systematically employed in spreading moral corruption. Not a line tending to make virtue contemptible, or to

inflame licentious desire, would thenceforward have proceeded from his pen. The truth unhappily is that the

dramas which he wrote after his pretended conversion are in no respect less impure or profane than those of

his youth. Even when he professed to translate he constantly wandered from his originals in search of images

which, if he had found them in his originals, he ought to have shunned. What was bad became worse in his

versions. What was innocent contracted a taint from passing through his mind. He made the grossest satires

of Juvenal more gross, interpolated loose descriptions in the tales of Boccaccio, and polluted the sweet and

limpid poetry of the Georgics with filth which would have moved the loathing of Virgil.

The help of Dryden was welcome to those Roman Catholic divines who were painfully sustaining a conflict

against all that was most illustrious in the Established Church. They could not disguise from themselves the

fact that their style, disfigured with foreign idioms which had been picked up at Rome and Douay, appeared

to little advantage when compared with the eloquence of Tillotson and Sherlock. It seemed that it was no

light thing to have secured the cooperation of the greatest living master of the English language. The first

service which he was required to perform in return for his pension was to defend his Church in prose against

Stillingfleet. But the art of saying things well is useless to a man who has nothing to say; and this was

Dryden's case. He soon found himself unequally paired with an antagonist whose whole life had been one

long training for controversy. The veteran gladiator disarmed the novice, inflicted a few contemptuous

scratches, and turned away to encounter more formidable combatants. Dryden then betook himself to a

weapon at which he was not likely to find his match. He retired for a time from the bustle of coffeehouses

and theatres to a quiet retreat in Huntingdonshire, and there composed, with unwonted care and labour, his

celebrated poem on the points in dispute between the Churches of Rome and England. The Church of Rome

he represented under the similitude of a milkwhite hind, ever in peril of death, yet fated not to die. The beasts

of the field were bent on her destruction. The quaking hare, indeed, observed a timorous neutrality: but the

Socinian fox, the Presbyterian wolf, the Independent bear, the Anabaptist boar, glared fiercely at the spotless

creature. Yet she could venture to drink with them at the common watering place under the protection of her

friend, the kingly lion. The Church of England was typified by the panther, spotted indeed, but beautiful, too

beautiful for a beast of prey. The hind and the panther, equally hated by the ferocious population of the forest,

conferred apart on their common danger. They then proceeded to discuss the points on which they differed,

and, while wagging their tails and licking their jaws, held a long dialogue touching the real presence, the

authority of Popes and Councils, the penal laws, the Test Act, Oates's perjuries, Butler's unrequited services

to the Cavalier party, Stillingfleet's pamphlets, and Burnet's broad shoulders and fortunate matrimonial

The absurdity of this plan is obvious. In truth the allegory could not be preserved unbroken through ten lines

together. No art of execution could redeem the faults of such a design. Yet the Fable of the Hind and Panther

is undoubtedly the most valuable addition which was made to English literature during the short and troubled

reign of James the Second. In none of Dryden's works can be found passages more pathetic and magnificent,

The poem appeared with every advantage which royal patronage could give. A superb edition was printed for

Scotland at the Roman Catholic press established in Holyrood House. But men were in no humour to be

charmed by the transparent style and melodious numbers of the apostate. The disgust excited by his venality,

the alarm excited by the policy of which he was the eulogist, were not to be sung to sleep. The just

indignation of the public was inflamed by many who were smarting from his ridicule, and by many who were

envious of his renown. In spite of all the restraints under which the press lay, attacks on his life and writings

appeared daily. Sometimes he was Bayes, sometimes Poet Squab. He was reminded that in his youth he had

paid to the House of Cromwell the same servile court which he was now paying to the House of Stuart. One

set of his assailants maliciously reprinted the sarcastic verses which he had written against Popery in days

when he could have got nothing by being a Papist. Of the many satirical pieces which appeared on this

occasion, the most successful was the joint work of two young men who had lately completed their studies at

Cambridge, and had been welcomed as promising novices in the literary coffeehouses of London, Charles

Montague and Matthew Prior. Montague was of noble descent: the origin of Prior was so obscure that no

biographer has been able to trace it: but both the adventurers were poor and aspiring; both had keen and

vigorous minds; both afterwards climbed high; both united in a remarkable degree the love of letters with

skill in those departments of business for which men of letters generally have a strong distaste. Of the fifty

poets whose lives Johnson has written, Montague and Prior were the only two who were distinguished by an

intimate knowledge of trade and finance. Soon their paths diverged widely. Their early friendship was

dissolved. One of them became the chief of the Whig party, and was impeached by the Tories. The other was

entrusted with all the mysteries of Tory diplomacy, and was long kept close prisoner by the Whigs. At length,

after many eventful years, the associates, so long parted, were reunited in Westminster Abbey.

Whoever has read the tale of the Hind and Panther with attention must have perceived that, while that work

was in progress, a great alteration took place in the views of those who used Dryden as their interpreter. At

first the Church of England is mentioned with tenderness and respect, and is exhorted to ally herself with the

Roman Catholics against the Puritan sects: but at the close of the poem, and in the preface, which was written

after the poem had been finished, the Protestant Dissenters are invited to make common cause with the

This change in the language of the court poet was indicative of a great change in the policy of the court. The

original purpose of James had been to obtain for the Church of which he was a member, not only complete

immunity from all penalties and from all civil disabilities, but also an ample share of ecclesiastical and

academical endowments, and at the same time to enforce with rigour the laws against the Puritan sects. All

the special dispensations which he had granted had been granted to Roman Catholics. All the laws which

bore hardest on the Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, had been for a time severely executed by him.

While Hales commanded a regiment, while Powis sate at the Council board, while Massey held a deanery,

while breviaries and mass books were printed at Oxford under a royal license, while the host was publicly

exposed in London under the protection of the pikes and muskets of the footguards, while friars and monks

walked the streets of London in their robes, Baxter was in gaol; Howe was in exile; the Five Mile Act and the

Conventicle Act were in full vigour; Puritan writers were compelled to resort to foreign or to secret presses;

Puritan congregations could meet only by night or in waste places, and Puritan ministers were forced to

preach in the garb of colliers or of sailors. In Scotland the King, while he spared no exertion to extort from

the Estates full relief for Roman Catholics, had demanded and obtained new statutes of unprecedented

severity against the Presbyterians. His conduct to the exiled Huguenots had not less clearly indicated his

feelings. We have seen that, when the public munificence had placed in his hands a large sum for the relief of

those unhappy men, he, in violation of every law of hospitality and good faith, required them to renounce the

Calvinistic ritual to which they were strongly attached, and to conform to the Church of England, before he

would dole out to them any portion of the alms which had been entrusted to his care.

Such had been his policy as long as he could cherish, any hope that the Church of England would consent to

share ascendency with the Church of Rome. That hope at one time amounted to confidence. The enthusiasm

with which the Tories had hailed his accession, the elections, the dutiful language and ample grants of his

Parliament, the suppression of the Western insurrection, the complete prostration of the party which had

attempted to exclude him from the crown, elated him beyond the bounds of reason. He felt an assurance that

every obstacle would give way before his power and his resolution. His Parliament withstood him. He tried

the effects of frowns and menaces. Frowns and menaces failed. He tried the effect of prorogation. From the

day of the prorogation the opposition to his designs had been growing stronger and stronger. It seemed clear

that, if he effected his purpose, he must effect it in defiance of that great party which had given such signal

proofs of fidelity to his office, to his family, and to his person. The whole Anglican priesthood, the whole

Cavalier gentry, were against him. In vain had he, by virtue of his ecclesiastical supremacy, enjoined the

clergy to abstain from discussing controverted points. Every parish in the nation was warned every Sunday

against the errors of Rome; and these warnings were only the more effective, because they were accompanied

by professions of reverence for the Sovereign, and of a determination to endure with patience whatever it

might be his pleasure to inflict. The royalist knights and esquires who, through fortyfive years of war and

faction, had stood so manfully by the throne, now expressed, in no measured phrase, their resolution to stand

as manfully by the Church. Dull as was the intellect of James, despotic as was his temper, he felt that he must

change his course. He could not safely venture to outrage all his Protestant subjects at once. If he could bring

himself to make concessions to the party which predominated in both Houses, if he could bring himself to

leave to the established religion all its dignities, emoluments, and privileges unimpaired, he might still break

up Presbyterian meetings, and fill the gaols with Baptist preachers. But if he was determined to plunder the

hierarchy, he must make up his mind to forego the luxury of persecuting the Dissenters. If he was

henceforward to be at feud with his old friends, he must make a truce with his old enemies. He could

overpower the Anglican Church only by forming against her an extensive coalition, including sects which,

though they differed in doctrine and government far more widely from each other than from her, might yet be

induced, by their common jealousy of her greatness, and by their common dread of her intolerance, to

This plan seemed to him to have one strong recommendation. If he could only succeed in conciliating the

Protestant Nonconformists he might flatter himself that he was secure against all chance of rebellion.

According to the Anglican divines, no subject could by any provocation be justified in withstanding the

Lord's anointed by force. The theory of the Puritan sectaries was very different. Those sectaries had no

scruple about smiting tyrants with the sword of Gideon. Many of them did not shrink from using the dagger

of Ehud. They were probably even now meditating another Western insurrection, or another Rye House Plot.

James, therefore, conceived that he might safely persecute the Church if he could only gain the Dissenters.

The party whose principles afforded him no guarantee would be attached to him by interest. The party whose

Influenced by such considerations as these, James, from the time at which he parted in anger with his

Parliament, began to meditate a general league of all Nonconformists, Catholic and Protestant, against the

established religion. So early as Christmas 1685, the agents of the United Provinces informed the States

General that the plan of a general toleration had been arranged and would soon be disclosed.232 The reports

which had reached the Dutch embassy proved to be premature. The separatists appear, however, to have been

treated with more lenity during the year 1686 than during the year 1685. But it was only by slow degrees and

after many struggles that the King could prevail on himself to form an alliance with all that he most abhorred.

He had to overcome an animosity, not slight or capricious, not of recent origin or hasty growth, but hereditary

in his line, strengthened by great wrongs inflicted and suffered through a hundred and twenty eventful years,

and intertwined with all his feelings, religious, political, domestic, and personal. Four generations of Stuarts

had waged a war to the death with four generations of Puritans; and, through that long war, there had been no

Stuart who had hated the Puritans so much, or who had been so much hated by them, as himself. They had

tried to blast his honour and to exclude him from his birthright; they had called him incendiary, cutthroat,

poisoner; they had driven him from the Admiralty and the Privy Council; they had repeatedly chased him into

banishment; they had plotted his assassination; they had risen against him in arms by thousands. He had

avenged himself on them by havoc such as England had never before seen. Their heads and quarters were still

rotting on poles in all the market places of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire. Aged women held in high honour

among the sectaries for piety and charity had, for offences which no good prince would have thought

deserving even of a severe reprimand, been beheaded and burned alive. Such had been, even in England, the

relations between the King and the Puritans; and in Scotland the tyranny of the King and the fury of the

Puritans had been such as Englishmen could hardly conceive. To forget an enmity so long and so deadly was

The conflict in the royal mind did not escape the eye of Barillon. At the end of January, 1687, he sent a

remarkable letter to Versailles. The King,such was the substance of this document,had almost

convinced himself that he could not obtain entire liberty for Roman Catholics and yet maintain the laws

against Protestant Dissenters. He leaned, therefore, to the plan of a general indulgence; but at heart he would

be far better pleased if he could, even now, divide his protection and favour between the Church of Rome and

A very few days after this despatch had been written, James made his first hesitating and ungracious

advances towards the Puritans. He had determined to begin with Scotland, where his power to dispense with

acts of parliament had been admitted by the obsequious Estates. On the twelfth of February, accordingly, was

published at Edinburgh a proclamation granting relief to scrupulous consciences.234 This proclamation fully

proves the correctness of Barillon's judgment. Even in the very act of making concessions to the

Presbyterians, James could not conceal the loathing with which he regarded them. The toleration given to the

Catholics was complete. The Quakers had little reason to complain. But the indulgence vouchsafed to the

Presbyterians, who constituted the great body of the Scottish people, was clogged by conditions which made

it almost worthless. For the old test, which excluded Catholics and Presbyterians alike from office, was

substituted a new test, which admitted the Catholics, but excluded most of the Presbyterians. The Catholics

were allowed to build chapels, and even to carry the host in procession anywhere except in the high streets of

royal burghs: the Quakers were suffered to assemble in public edifices: but the Presbyterians were interdicted

from worshipping God anywhere but in private dwellings: they were not to presume to build meeting houses:

they were not even to use a barn or an outhouse for religious exercises: and it was distinctly notified to them

that, if they dared to hold conventicles in the open air, the law, which denounced death against both preachers

and hearers, should be enforced without mercy. Any Catholic priest might say mass: any Quaker might

harangue his brethren: but the Privy Council was directed to see that no Presbyterian minister presumed to

preach without a special license from the government. Every line of this instrument, and of the letters by

which it was accompanied, shows how much it cost the King to relax in the smallest degree the rigour with

There is reason, indeed, to believe that, when he published this proclamation, he had by no means fully made

up his mind to a coalition with the Puritans, and that his object was to grant just so much favour to them as

might suffice to frighten the Churchmen into submission. He therefore waited a month, in order to see what

effect the edict put forth at Edinburgh would produce in England. That month he employed assiduously, by

Petre's advice, in what was called closeting. London was very full. It was expected that the Parliament would

shortly meet for the dispatch of business; and many members were in town. The King set himself to canvass

them man by man. He flattered himself that zealous Tories,and of such, with few exceptions, the House of

Commons consisted,would find it difficult to resist his earnest request, addressed to them, not collectively,

but separately, not from the throne, but in the familiarity of conversation. The members, therefore, who came

to pay their duty at Whitehall were taken aside, and honoured with long private interviews. The King pressed

them, as they were loyal gentlemen, to gratify him in the one thing on which his heart was fixed. The

question, he said, touched his personal honour. The laws enacted in the late reign by factious Parliaments

against the Roman Catholics had really been aimed at himself. Those laws had put a stigma on him, had

driven him from the Admiralty, had driven him from the Council Board. He had a right to expect that in the

repeal of those laws all who loved and reverenced him would concur. When he found his hearers obdurate to

exhortation, he resorted to intimidation and corruption. Those who refused to pleasure him in this matter were

plainly told that they must not expect any mark of his favour. Penurious as he was, he opened and distributed

his hoards. Several of those who had been invited to confer with him left his bedchamber carrying with them

money received from the royal hand. The Judges, who were at this time on their spring circuits, were directed

by the King to see those members who remained in the country, and to ascertain the intentions of each. The

result of this investigation was, that a great majority of the House of Commons seemed fully determined to

oppose the measures of the court.236 Among those whose firmness excited general admiration was Arthur

Herbert, brother of the Chief Justice, member for Dover, Master of the Robes, and Rear Admiral of England.

Arthur Herbert was much loved by the sailors, and was reputed one of the best of the aristocratical class of

naval officers. It had been generally supposed that he would readily comply with the royal wishes: for he was

heedless of religion; he was fond of pleasure and expense; he had no private estate; his places brought him in

four thousand pounds a year; and he had long been reckoned among the most devoted personal adherents of

James. When, however, the Rear Admiral was closeted, and required to promise that he would vote for the

repeal of the Test Act, his answer was, that his honour and conscience would not permit him to give any such

pledge. "Nobody doubts your honour," said the King; "but a man who lives as you do ought not to talk about

his conscience." To this reproach, a reproach which came with a bad grace from the lover of Catharine

Sedley, Herbert manfully replied, "I have my faults, sir: but I could name people who talk much more about

conscience than I am in the habit of doing, and yet lead lives as loose as mine." He was dismissed from all his

places; and the account of what he had disbursed and received as Master of the Robes was scrutinised with

It was now evident that all hope of an alliance between the Churches of England and of Rome, for the

purpose of sharing offices and emoluments, and of crushing the Puritan sects, must be abandoned. Nothing

remained but to try a coalition between the Church of Rome and the Puritan sects against the Church of

On the eighteenth of March the King informed the Privy Council that he had determined to prorogue the

Parliament till the end of November, and to grant, by his own authority, entire liberty of conscience to all his

subjects.238 On the fourth of April appeared the memorable Declaration of Indulgence.

In this Declaration the King avowed that it was his earnest wish to see his people members of that Church to

which he himself belonged. But, since that could not be, he announced his intention to protect them in the

free exercise of their religion. He repeated all those phrases which, eight years before, when he was himself

an oppressed man, had been familiar to his lips, but which he had ceased to use from the day on which a turn

of fortune had put it into his power to be an oppressor. He had long been convinced, he said, that conscience

was not to be forced, that persecution was unfavourable to population and to trade, and that it never attained

the ends which persecutors had in view. He repeated his promise, already often repeated and often violated,

that he would protect the Established Church in the enjoyment of her legal rights. He then proceeded to

annul, by his own sole authority, a long series of statutes. He suspended all penal laws against all classes of

Nonconformists. He authorised both Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters to perform their worship

publicly. He forbade his subjects, on pain of his highest displeasure, to molest any religious assembly. He

also abrogated all those acts which imposed any religious test as a qualification for any civil or military

That the Declaration of Indulgence was unconstitutional is a point on which both the great English parties

have always been entirely agreed. Every person capable of reasoning on a political question must perceive

that a monarch who is competent to issue such a declaration is nothing less than an absolute monarch. Nor is

it possible to urge in defence of this act of James those pleas by which many arbitrary acts of the Stuarts have

been vindicated or excused. It cannot be said that he mistook the bounds of his prerogative because they had

not been accurately ascertained. For the truth is that he trespassed with a recent landmark full in his view.

Fifteen years before that time, a Declaration of Indulgence had been put forth by his brother with the advice

of the Cabal. That Declaration, when compared with the Declaration of James, might be called modest and

cautious. The Declaration of Charles dispensed only with penal laws. The Declaration of James dispensed

also with all religious tests. The Declaration of Charles permitted the Roman Catholics to celebrate their

worship in private dwellings only. Under the Declaration of James they might build and decorate temples,

and even walk in procession along Fleet Street with crosses, images, and censers. Yet the Declaration of

Charles had been pronounced illegal in the most formal manner. The Commons had resolved that the King

had no power to dispense with statutes in matters ecclesiastical. Charles had ordered the obnoxious

instrument to be cancelled in his presence, had torn off the seal with his own hand, and had, both by message

under his sign manual, and with his own lips from his throne in full Parliament, distinctly promised the two

Houses that the step which had given so much offence should never be drawn into precedent. The two Houses

had then, without one dissentient voice, joined in thanking him for this compliance with their wishes. No

constitutional question had ever been decided more deliberately, more clearly, or with more harmonious

The defenders of James have frequently pleaded in his excuse the judgment of the Court of King's Bench, on

the information collusively laid against Sir Edward Hales: but the plea is of no value. That judgment James

had notoriously obtained by solicitation, by threats, by dismissing scrupulous magistrates, and by placing on

the bench other magistrates more courtly. And yet that judgment, though generally regarded by the bar and by

the nation as unconstitutional, went only to this extent, that the Sovereign might, for special reasons of state,

grant to individuals by name exemptions from disabling statutes. That he could by one sweeping edict

authorise all his subjects to disobey whole volumes of laws, no tribunal had ventured, in the face of the

Such, however, was the position of parties that James's Declaration of Indulgence, though the most audacious

of all the attacks made by the Stuarts on public freedom, was well calculated to please that very portion of the

community by which all the other attacks of the Stuarts on public freedom had been most strenuously

resisted. It could scarcely be hoped that the Protestant Nonconformist, separated from his countrymen by a

harsh code harshly enforced, would be inclined to dispute the validity of a decree which relieved him from

intolerable grievances. A cool and philosophical observer would undoubtedly have pronounced that all the

evil arising from all the intolerant laws which Parliaments had framed was not to be compared to the evil

which would be produced by a transfer of the legislative power from the Parliament to the Sovereign. But

such coolness and philosophy are not to be expected from men who are smarting under present pain, and who

are tempted by the offer of immediate ease. A Puritan divine, could not indeed deny that the dispensing

power now claimed by the crown was inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the constitution. But he

might perhaps be excused if he asked, What was the constitution to him? The Act of Uniformity had ejected

him, in spite of royal promises, from a benefice which was his freehold, and had reduced him to beggary and

dependence. The Five Mile Act had banished him from his dwelling, from his relations, from his friends,

from almost all places of public resort. Under the Conventicle Act his goods had been distrained; and he had

been flung into one noisome gaol after another among highwaymen and housebreakers. Out of prison he had

constantly had the officers of justice on his track; he had been forced to pay hushmoney to informers; he had

stolen, in ignominious disguises, through windows and trapdoors, to meet his flock, and had, while pouring

the baptismal water, or distributing the eucharistic bread, been anxiously listening for the signal that the

tipstaves were approaching. Was it not mockery to call on a man thus plundered and oppressed to suffer

martyrdom for the property and liberty of his plunderers and oppressors? The Declaration, despotic as it

might seem to his prosperous neighbours, brought deliverance to him. He was called upon to make his

choice, not between freedom and slavery, but between two yokes; and he might not unnaturally think the

While thoughts like these were working in the minds of many Dissenters, the Anglican party was in

amazement and terror. This new turn in affairs was indeed alarming. The House of Stuart leagued with

republican and regicide sects against the old Cavaliers of England; Popery leagued with Puritanism against an

ecclesiastical system with which the Puritans had no quarrel, except that it had retained too much that was

Popish, these were portents which confounded all the calculations of statesmen. The Church was then to be

attacked at once on every side and the attack was to be under the direction of him who, by her constitution,

was her head. She might well be struck with surprise and dismay. And mingled with surprise and dismay

came other bitter feelings; resentment against the perjured Prince whom she had served too well, and remorse

for the cruelties in which he had been her accomplice, and for which he was now, as it seemed, about to be

her punisher. Her chastisement was just. She reaped that which she had sown. After the Restoration, when her

power was at the height, she had breathed nothing hut vengeance. She had encouraged, urged, almost

compelled the Stuarts to requite with perfidious ingratitude the recent services of the Presbyterians. Had she,

in that season of her prosperity, pleaded, as became her, for her enemies, she might now, in her distress, have

found them her friends. Perhaps it was not yet too late. Perhaps she might still be able to turn the tactics of

her faithless oppressor against himself. There was among the Anglican clergy a moderate party which had

always felt kindly towards the Protestant Dissenters. That party was not large; but the abilities, acquirements,

and virtues of those who belonged to it made it respectable. It had been regarded with little favour by the

highest ecclesiastical dignitaries, and had been mercilessly reviled by bigots of the school of Laud but, from

the day on which the Declaration of Indulgence appeared to the day on which the power of James ceased to

inspire terror, the whole Church seemed to be animated by the spirit, and guided by the counsels, of the

Then followed an auction, the strangest that history has recorded. On one side the King, on the other the

Church, began to bid eagerly against each other for the favour of those whom tip to that time King and

Church had combined to oppress. The Protestant Dissenters, who, a few months before, had been a despised

and proscribed class, now held the balance of power. The harshness with which they had been treated was

universally condemned. The court tried to throw all the blame on the hierarchy. The hierarchy flung it back

on the court. The King declared that he had unwillingly persecuted the separatists only because his affairs had

been in such a state that he could not venture to disoblige the established clergy. The established clergy

protested that they had borne a part in severity uncongenial to their feelings only from deference to the

authority of the King. The King got together a collection of stories about rectors and vicars who had by

threats of prosecution wrung money out of Protestant Dissenters. He talked on this subject much and

publicly, threatened to institute an inquiry which would exhibit the parsons in their true character to the

whole world, and actually issued several commissions empowering agents on whom he thought that he could

depend to ascertain the amount of the sums extorted in different parts of the country by professors of the

dominant religion from sectaries. The advocates of the Church, on the other hand, cited instances of honest

parish priests who had been reprimanded and menaced by the court for recommending toleration in the pulpit,

and for refusing to spy out and hunt down little congregations of Nonconformists. The King asserted that

some of the Churchmen whom he had closeted had offered to make large concessions to the Catholics, on

condition that the persecution of the Puritans might go on. The accused Churchmen vehemently denied the

truth of this charge; and alleged that, if they would have complied with what he demanded for his own

religion, he would most gladly have suffered them to indemnify themselves by harassing and pillaging

The court had changed its face. The scarf and cassock could hardly appear there without calling forth sneers

and malicious whispers. Maids of honour forbore to giggle, and Lords of the Bedchamber bowed low, when

the Puritanical visage and the Puritanical garb, so long the favourite subjects of mockery in fashionable

circles, were seen in the galleries. Taunton, which had been during two generations the stronghold of the

Roundhead party in the West, which had twice resolutely repelled the armies of Charles the First, which had

risen as one man to support Monmouth, and which had been turned into a shambles by Kirke and Jeffreys,

seemed to have suddenly succeeded to the place which Oxford had once occupied in the royal favour.241 The

King constrained himself to show even fawning courtesy to eminent Dissenters. To some he offered money,

to some municipal honours, to some pardons for their relations and friends who, having been implicated in

the Rye House Plot, or having joined the standard of Monmouth, were now wandering on the Continent, or

toiling among the sugar canes of Barbadoes. He affected even to sympathize with the kindness which the

English Puritans felt for their foreign brethren. A second and a third proclamation were published at

Edinburgh, which greatly extended the nugatory toleration granted to the Presbyterians by the edict of

February.242 The banished Huguenots, on whom the King had frowned during many months, and whom he

had defrauded of the alms contributed by the nation, were now relieved and caressed. An Order in Council

was issued, appealing again in their behalf to the public liberality. The rule which required them to qualify

themselves for the receipt of charity, by conforming to the Anglican worship, seems to have been at this time

silently abrogated; and the defenders of the King's policy had the effrontery to affirm that this rule, which, as

we know from the best evidence, was really devised by himself in concert with Barillon, had been adopted at

While the King was thus courting his old adversaries, the friends of the Church were not less active. Of the

acrimony and scorn with which prelates and priests had, since the Restoration, been in the habit of treating

the sectaries scarcely a trace was discernible. Those who had lately been designated as schismatics and

fanatics were now dear fellow Protestants, weak brethren it might be, but still brethren, whose scruples were

entitled to tender regard. If they would but be true at this crisis to the cause of the English constitution and of

the reformed religion, their generosity should be speedily and largely rewarded. They should have, instead of

an indulgence which was of no legal validity, a real indulgence, secured by Act of Parliament. Nay, many

Churchmen, who had hitherto been distinguished by their inflexible attachment to every gesture and every

word prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer, now declared themselves favourable, not only to toleration,

but even to comprehension. The dispute, they said, about surplices and attitudes, had too long divided those

who were agreed as to the essentials of religion. When the struggle for life and death against the common

enemy was over, it would be found that the Anglican clergy would be ready to make every fair concession. If

the Dissenters would demand only what was reasonable, not only civil but ecclesiastical dignities would be

open to them; and Baxter and Howe would be able, without any stain on their honour or their conscience, to

Of the numerous pamphlets in which the cause of the Court and the cause of the Church were at this time

eagerly and anxiously pleaded before the Puritan, now, by a strange turn of fortune, the arbiter of the fate of

his persecutors, one only is still remembered, the Letter to a Dissenter. In this masterly little tract, all the

arguments which could convince a Nonconformist that it was his duty and his interest to prefer an alliance

with the Church to an alliance with the Court were condensed into the smallest compass, arranged in the most

perspicuous order, illustrated with lively wit, and enforced by an eloquence earnest indeed, yet never in its

utmost vehemence transgressing the limits of exact good sense and good breeding. The effect of this paper

was immense; for, as it was only a single sheet, more than twenty thousand copies were circulated by the

post; and there was no corner of the kingdom in which the effect was not felt. Twentyfour answers were

published, but the town pronounced that they were all bad, and that Lestrange's was the worst of the

twentyfour.244 The government was greatly irritated, and spared no pains to discover the author of the

Letter: but it was found impossible to procure legal evidence against him. Some imagined that they

recognised the sentiments and diction of Temple.245 But in truth that amplitude and acuteness of intellect,

that vivacity of fancy, that terse and energetic style, that placid dignity, half courtly half philosophical, which

the utmost excitement of conflict could not for a moment derange, belonged to Halifax, and to Halifax alone.

The Dissenters wavered; nor is it any reproach to them that they did so. They were suffering, and the King

had given them relief. Some eminent pastors had emerged from confinement; others had ventured to return

from exile. Congregations, which had hitherto met only by stealth and in darkness, now assembled at

noonday, and sang psalms aloud in the hearing of magistrates, churchwardens, and constables. Modest

buildings for the worship of God after the Puritan fashion began to rise all over England. An observant

traveller will still remark the date of 1687 on some of the oldest meeting houses. Nevertheless the offers of

the Church were, to a prudent Dissenter, far more attractive than those of the King. The Declaration was, in

the eye of the law, a nullity. It suspended the penal statutes against nonconformity only for so long a time as

the fundamental principles of the constitution and the rightful authority of the legislature should remain

suspended. What was the value of privileges which must be held by a tenure at once so ignominious and so

insecure? There might soon be a demise of the crown. A sovereign attached to the established religion might

sit on the throne. A Parliament composed of Churchmen might be assembled. How deplorable would then be

the situation of Dissenters who had been in league with Jesuits against the constitution. The Church offered

an indulgence very different from that granted by James, an indulgence as valid and as sacred as the Great

Charter. Both the contending parties promised religious liberty to the separatist: but one party required him to

purchase it by sacrificing civil liberty; the other party invited him to enjoy civil and religious liberty together.

For these reasons, even if it could be believed that the Court was sincere, a Dissenter might reasonably have

determined to cast in his lot with the Church. But what guarantee was there for the sincerity of the Court? All

men knew what the conduct of James had been tip to that very time. It was not impossible, indeed, that a

persecutor might be convinced by argument and by experience of the advantages of toleration. But James did

not pretend to have been recently convinced. On the contrary, he omitted no opportunity of protesting that he

had, during many years, been, on principle, adverse to all intolerance. Yet, within a few months, he had

persecuted men, women, young girls, to the death for their religion. Had he been acting against light and

against the convictions of his conscience then? Or was he uttering a deliberate falsehood now? From this

dilemma there was no escape; and either of the two suppositions was fatal to the King's character for honesty.

It was notorious also that he had been completely subjugated by the Jesuits. Only a few days before the

publication of the Indulgence, that Order had been honoured, in spite of the well known wishes of the Holy

See, with a new mark of his confidence and approbation. His confessor, Father Mansuete, a Franciscan,

whose mild temper and irreproachable life commanded general respect, but who had long been hated by

Tyrconnel and Petre, had been discarded. The vacant place had been filled by an Englishman named Warner,

who had apostatized from the religion of his country and had turned Jesuit. To the moderate Roman Catholics

and to the Nuncio this change was far from agreeable. By every Protestant it was regarded as a proof that the

dominion of the Jesuits over the royal mind was absolute.246 Whatever praises those fathers might justly

claim, flattery itself could not ascribe to them either wide liberality or strict veracity. That they had never

scrupled, when the interest of their Order was at stake, to call in the aid of the civil sword, or to violate the

laws of truth and of good faith, had been proclaimed to the world, not only by Protestant accusers, but by men

whose virtue and genius were the glory of the Church of Rome. It was incredible that a devoted disciple of

the Jesuits should be on principle zealous for freedom of conscience: but it was neither incredible nor

improbable that he might think himself justified in disguising his real sentiments, in order to render a service

to his religion. It was certain that the King at heart preferred the Churchmen to the Puritans. It was certain

that, while he had any hope of gaining the Churchmen, he had never shown the smallest kindness to the

Puritans. Could it then be doubted that, if the Churchmen would even now comply with his wishes, he would

willingly sacrifice the Puritans? His word, repeatedly pledged, had not restrained him from invading the legal

rights of that clergy which had given such signal proofs of affection and fidelity to his house. What security

then could his word afford to sects divided from him by the recollection of a thousand inexpiable wounds

When the first agitation produced by the publication of the Indulgence had subsided, it appeared that a breach

had taken place in the Puritan party. The minority, headed by a few busy men whose judgment was defective

or was biassed by interest, supported the King. Henry Care, who had long been the bitterest and most active

pamphleteer among the Nonconformists, and who had, in the days of the Popish plot, assailed James with the

utmost fury in a weekly journal entitled the Packet of Advice from Rome, was now as loud in adulation, as he

had formerly been in calumny and insult.247 The chief agent who was employed by the government to

manage the Presbyterians was Vincent Alsop, a divine of some note both as a preacher and as a writer. His

son, who had incurred the penalties of treason, received a pardon; and the whole influence of the father was

thus engaged on the side of the Court.248 With Alsop was joined Thomas Rosewell. Rosewell had, during

that persecution of the Dissenters which followed the detection of the Rye House Plot, been falsely accused

of preaching against the government, had been tried for his life by Jeffreys, and had, in defiance of the

clearest evidence, been convicted by a packed jury. The injustice of the verdict was so gross that the very

courtiers cried shame. One Tory gentleman who had heard the trial went instantly to Charles, and declared

that the neck of the most loyal subject in England would not be safe if Rosewell suffered. The jurymen

themselves were stung by remorse when they thought over what they had done, and exerted themselves to

save the life of the prisoner. At length a pardon was granted; but Rosewell remained bound under heavy

recognisances to good behaviour during life, and to periodical appearance in the Court of King's Bench. His

recognisances were now discharged by the royal command; and in this way his services were secured.249

The business of gaining the Independents was principally intrusted to one of their ministers named Stephen

Lobb. Lobb was a weak, violent, and ambitious man. He had gone such lengths in opposition to the

government, that he had been by name proscribed in several proclamations. He now made his peace, and

went as far in servility as he had ever done in faction. He joined the Jesuitical cabal, and eagerly

recommended measures from which the wisest and most honest Roman Catholics recoiled. It was remarked

that he was constantly at the palace and frequently in the closet, that he lived with a splendour to which the

Puritan divines were little accustomed, and that he was perpetually surrounded by suitors imploring his

With Lobb was closely connected William Penn. Penn had never been a strongheaded man: the life which he

had been leading during two years had not a little impaired his moral sensibility; and, if his conscience ever

reproached him, he comforted himself by repeating that he had a good and noble end in view, and that he was

By the influence of these men, and of others less conspicuous, addresses of thanks to the King were procured

from several bodies of Dissenters. Tory writers have with justice remarked that the language of these

compositions was as fulsomely servile as anything that could be found in the most florid eulogies pronounced

by Bishops on the Stuarts. But, on close inquiry, it will appear that the disgrace belongs to but a small part of

the Puritan party. There was scarcely a market town in England without at least a knot of separatists. No

exertion was spared to induce them to express their gratitude for the Indulgence. Circular letters, imploring

them to sign, were sent to every corner of the kingdom in such numbers that the mail bags, it was sportively

said, were too heavy for the posthorses. Yet all the addresses which could be obtained from all the

Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists scattered over England did not in six months amount to sixty; nor is

The great body of Protestant Nonconformists, firmly attached to civil liberty, and distrusting the promises of

the King and of the Jesuits, steadily refused to return thanks for a favour which, it might well be suspected,

concealed a snare. This was the temper of all the most illustrious chiefs of the party. One of these was Baxter.

He had, as we have seen, been brought to trial soon after the accession of James, had been brutally insulted

by Jeffreys, and had been convicted by a jury, such as the courtly Sheriffs of those times were in the habit of

selecting. Baxter had been about a year and a half in prison when the court began to think seriously of gaining

the Nonconformists. He was not only set at liberty, but was informed that, if he chose to reside in London, he

might do so without fearing that the Five Mile Act would be enforced against him. The government probably

hoped that the recollection of past sufferings and the sense of present ease would produce the same effect on

him as on Rosewell and Lobb. The hope was disappointed. Baxter was neither to be corrupted nor to be

deceived. He refused to join in an address of thanks for the Indulgence, and exerted all his influence to

If any man stood higher than Baxter in the estimation of the Protestant Dissenters, that man was John Howe.

Howe had, like Baxter, been personally a gainer by the recent change of policy. The same tyranny which had

flung Baxter into gaol had driven Howe into banishment; and, soon after Baxter had been let out of the King's

Bench prison, Howe returned from Utrecht to England. It was expected at Whitehall that Howe would exert

in favour of the court all the authority which he possessed over his brethren. The King himself condescended

to ask the help of the subject whom he had oppressed. Howe appears to have hesitated: but the influence of

the Hampdens, with whom he was on terms of close intimacy, kept him steady to the cause of the

constitution. A meeting of Presbyterian ministers was held at his house, to consider the state of affairs, and to

determine on the course to be adopted. There was great anxiety at the palace to know the result. Two royal

messengers were in attendance during the discussion. They carried back the unwelcome news that Howe had

declared himself decidedly adverse to the dispensing power, and that he had, after long debate, carried with

To the names of Baxter and Howe must be added the name of a man far below them in station and in

acquired knowledge, but in virtue their equal, and in genius their superior, John Bunyan. Bunyan had been

bred a tinker, and had served as a private soldier in the parliamentary army. Early in his life he had been

fearfully tortured by remorse for his youthful sins, the worst of which seem, however, to have been such as

the world thinks venial. His keen sensibility and his powerful imagination made his internal conflicts

singularly terrible. He fancied that he was under sentence of reprobation, that he had committed blasphemy

against the Holy Ghost, that he had sold Christ, that he was actually possessed by a demon. Sometimes loud

voices from heaven cried out to warn him. Sometimes fiends whispered impious suggestions in his ear. He

saw visions of distant mountain tops, on which the sun shone brightly, hut from which he was separated by a

waste of snow. He felt the Devil behind him pulling his clothes. He thought that the brand of Cain had been

set upon him. He feared that he was about to burst asunder like Judas. His mental agony disordered his

health. One day he shook like a man in the palsy. On another day he felt a fire within his breast. It is difficult

to understand how he survived sufferings so intense, and so long continued. At length the clouds broke. From

the depths of despair, the penitent passed to a state of serene felicity. An irresistible impulse now urged him

to impart to others the blessing of which he was himself possessed.254 He joined the Baptists, and became a

preacher and writer. His education had been that of a mechanic. He knew no language but the English, as it

was spoken by the common people. He had studied no great model of composition, with the exception, an

important exception undoubtedly, of our noble translation of the Bible. His spelling was bad. He frequently

transgressed the rules of grammar. Yet his native force of genius, and his experimental knowledge of all the

religious passions, from despair to ecstasy, amply supplied in him the want of learning. His rude oratory

roused and melted hearers who listened without interest to the laboured discourses of great logicians and

Hebraists. His works were widely circulated among the humbler classes. One of them, the Pilgrim's Progress,

was, in his own lifetime, translated into several foreign languages. It was, however, scarcely known to the

learned and polite, and had been, during near a century, the delight of pious cottagers and artisans before it

was publicly commended by any man of high literary eminence. At length critics condescended to inquire

where the secret of so wide and so durable a popularity lay. They were compelled to own that the ignorant

multitude had judged more correctly than the learned, and that the despised little book was really a

masterpiece. Bunyan is indeed as decidedly the first of allegorists, as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or

Shakspeare the first of dramatists. Other allegorists have shown equal ingenuity but no other allegorist has

ever been able to touch the heart, and to make abstractions objects of terror, of pity, and of love.255

It may be doubted whether any English Dissenter had suffered more severely under the penal laws than John

Bunyan. Of the twenty seven years which had elapsed since the Restoration, he had passed twelve in

confinement. He still persisted in preaching; but, that he might preach, he was under the necessity of

disguising himself like a carter. He was often introduced into meetings through back doors, with a smock

frock on his back, and a whip in his hand. If he had thought only of his own ease and safety, he would have

hailed the Indulgence with delight. He was now, at length, free to pray and exhort in open day. His

congregation rapidly increased, thousands hung upon his words; and at Bedford, where he ordinarily resided,

money was plentifully contributed to build a meeting house for him. His influence among the common

people was such that the government would willingly have bestowed on him some municipal office: but his

vigorous understanding and his stout English heart were proof against all delusion and all temptation. He felt

assured that the proffered toleration was merely a bait intended to lure the Puritan party to destruction; nor

would he, by accepting a place for which he was not legally qualified, recognise the validity of the dispensing

power. One of the last acts of his virtuous life was to decline an interview to which he was invited by an

Great as was the authority of Bunyan with the Baptists, that of William Kiffin was still greater. Kiffin was the

first man among them in wealth and station. He was in the habit of exercising his spiritual gifts at their

meetings: but he did not live by preaching. He traded largely; his credit on the Exchange of London stood

high; and he had accumulated an ample fortune. Perhaps no man could, at that conjuncture, have rendered

more valuable services to the Court. But between him and the Court was interposed the remembrance of one

terrible event. He was the grandfather of the two Hewlings, those gallant youths who, of all the victims of the

Bloody Assizes, had been the most generally lamented. For the sad fate of one of them James was in a

peculiar manner responsible. Jeffreys had respited the younger brother. The poor lad's sister had been ushered

by Churchill into the royal presence, and had begged for mercy; but the King's heart had been obdurate. The

misery of the whole family had been great: but Kiffin was most to be pitied. He was seventy years old when

he was left desolate, the survivor of those who should have survived him. The heartless and venal sycophants

of Whitehall, judging by themselves, thought that the old man would be easily propitiated by an Alderman's

gown, and by some compensation in money for the property which his grandsons had forfeited. Penn was

employed in the work of seduction, but to no purpose. The King determined to try what effect his own

civilities would produce. Kiffin was ordered to attend at the palace. He found a brilliant circle of noblemen

and gentlemen assembled. James immediately came to him, spoke to him very graciously, and concluded by

saying, "I have put you down, Mr. Kiffin, for an Alderman of London." The old man looked fixedly at the

King, burst into tears, and made answer, "Sir, I am worn out: I am unfit to serve your Majesty or the City.

And, sir, the death of my poor boys broke my heart. That wound is as fresh as ever. I shall carry it to my

grave." The King stood silent for a minute in some confusion, and then said, "Mr. Kiffin, I will find a balsam

for that sore." Assuredly James did not mean to say anything cruel or insolent: on the contrary, he seems to

have been in an unusually gentle mood. Yet no speech that is recorded of him gives so unfavourable a notion

of his character as these few words. They are the words of a hardhearted and lowminded man, unable to

conceive any laceration of the affections for which a place or a pension would not be a full compensation.257

That section of the dissenting body which was favourable to the King's new policy had from the first been a

minority, and soon began to diminish. For the Nonconformists perceived in no long time that their spiritual

privileges had been abridged rather than extended by the Indulgence. The chief characteristic of the Puritan

was abhorrence of the peculiarities of the Church of Rome. He had quitted the Church of England only

because he conceived that she too much resembled her superb and voluptuous sister, the sorceress of the

golden cup and of the scarlet robe. He now found that one of the implied conditions of that alliance which

some of his pastors had formed with the Court was that the religion of the Court should be respectfully and

tenderly treated. He soon began to regret the days of persecution. While the penal laws were enforced, he had

heard the words of life in secret and at his peril: but still he had heard them. When the brethren were

assembled in the inner chamber, when the sentinels had been posted, when the doors had been locked, when

the preacher, in the garb of a butcher or a drayman, had come in over the tiles, then at least God was truly

worshipped. No portion of divine truth was suppressed or softened down for any worldly object. All the

distinctive doctrines of the Puritan theology were fully, and even coarsely, set forth. To the Church of Rome

no quarter was given. The Beast, the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, the mystical Jezebel, the mystical Babylon,

were the phrases ordinarily employed to describe that august and fascinating superstition. Such had been once

the style of Alsop, of Lobb, of Rosewell, and of other ministers who had of late been well received at the

palace: but such was now their style no longer. Divines who aspired to a high place in the King's favour and

confidence could not venture to speak with asperity of the King's religion. Congregations therefore

complained loudly that, since the appearance of the Declaration which purported to give them entire freedom

of conscience, they had never once heard the Gospel boldly and faithfully preached. Formerly they had been

forced to snatch their spiritual nutriment by stealth; but, when they had snatched it, they had found it

seasoned exactly to their taste. They were now at liberty to feed: but their food had lost all its savour. They

met by daylight, and in commodious edifices: but they heard discourses far less to their taste than they would

have heard from the rector. At the parish church the will worship and idolatry of Rome were every Sunday

attacked with energy: but, at the meeting house, the pastor, who had a few months before reviled the

established clergy as little better than Papists, now carefully abstained from censuring Popery, or conveyed

his censures in language too delicate to shock even the ears of Father Petre. Nor was it possible to assign any

creditable reason for this change. The Roman Catholic doctrines had undergone no alteration. Within living

memory never had Roman Catholic priests been so active in the work of making proselytes: never had so

many Roman Catholic publications issued from the press; never had the attention of all who cared about

religion been so closely fixed on the dispute between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. What could be

thought of the sincerity of theologians who had never been weary of railing at Popery when Popery was

comparatively harmless and helpless, and who now, when a time of real danger to the reformed faith had

arrived, studiously avoided tittering one word which could give offence to a Jesuit? Their conduct was indeed

easily explained. It was known that some of them had obtained pardons. It was suspected that others had

obtained money. Their prototype might be found in that weak apostle who from fear denied the Master to

whom he had boastfully professed the firmest attachment, or in that baser apostle who sold his Lord for a

Thus the dissenting ministers who had been gained by the Court were rapidly losing the influence which they

had once possessed over their brethren. On the other hand, the sectaries found themselves attracted by a

strong religious sympathy towards those prelates and priests of the Church of England who, spite of royal

mandates, of threats, and of promises, were waging vigorous war with the Church of Rome. The Anglican

body and the Puritan body, so long separated by a mortal enmity, were daily drawing nearer to each other,

and every step which they made towards union increased the influence of him who was their common head.

William was in all things fitted to be a mediator between these two great sections of the English nation. He

could not be said to be a member of either. Yet neither, when in a reasonable mood, could refuse to regard

him as a friend. His system of theology agreed with that of the Puritans. At the same time, he regarded

episcopacy not indeed as a divine institution, but as a perfectly lawful and an eminently useful form of church

government. Questions respecting postures, robes, festivals and liturgies, he considered as of no vital

importance. A simple worship, such as that to which he had been early accustomed, would have been most to

his personal taste. But he was prepared to conform to any ritual which might be acceptable to the nation, and

insisted only that he should not be required to persecute his brother Protestants whose consciences did not

permit them to follow his example. Two years earlier he would have been pronounced by numerous bigots on

both sides a mere Laodicean, neither cold nor hot, and fit only to be spewed out. But the zeal which had

inflamed Churchmen against Dissenters and Dissenters against Churchmen had been so tempered by common

adversity and danger that the lukewarmness which had once been imputed to him as a crime was now

All men were anxious to know what he thought of the Declaration of Indulgence. For a time hopes were

entertained at Whitehall that his known respect for the rights of conscience would at least prevent him from

publicly expressing disapprobation of a policy which had a specious show of liberality. Penn sent copious

disquisitions to the Hague, and even went thither, in the hope that his eloquence, of which he had a high

opinion, would prove irresistible. But, though he harangued on his favourite theme with a copiousness which

tired his hearers out, and though he assured them that the approach of a golden age of religious liberty had

been revealed to him by a man who was permitted to converse with angels, no impression was made on the

Prince.259 "You ask me," said William to one of the King's agents, "to countenance an attack on my own

religion. I cannot with a safe conscience do it, and I will not, no, not for the crown of England, nor for the

empire of the world." These words were reported to the King and disturbed him greatly.260 He wrote urgent

letters with his own hand. Sometimes he took the tone of an injured man. He was the head of the royal

family, he was as such entitled to expect the obedience of the younger branches and it was very hard that he

was to be crossed in a matter on which his heart was set. At other times a bait which was thought irresistible

was offered. If William would but give way on this one point, the English government would, in return,

cooperate with him strenuously against France. He was not to be so deluded. He knew that James, without the

support of a Parliament, would, even if not unwilling, be unable to render effectual service to the common

cause of Europe; and there could be no doubt that, if a Parliament were assembled, the first demand of both

The Princess assented to all that was suggested by her husband. Their joint opinion was conveyed to the King

in firm but temperate terms. They declared that they deeply regretted the course which His Majesty had

adopted. They were convinced that he had usurped a prerogative which did not by law belong to him. Against

that usurpation they protested, not only as friends to civil liberty, but as members of the royal house, who had

a deep interest in maintaining the rights of that crown which they might one day wear. For experience had

shown that in England arbitrary government could not fail to produce a reaction even more pernicious than

itself; and it might reasonably be feared that the nation, alarmed and incensed by the prospect of despotism,

might conceive a disgust even for constitutional monarchy. The advice, therefore, which they tendered to the

King was that he would in all things govern according to law. They readily admitted that the law might with

advantage be altered by competent authority, and that some part of his Declaration well deserved to be

embodied in an Act of Parliament. They were not persecutors. They should with pleasure see Roman

Catholics as well as Protestant Dissenters relieved in a proper manner from all penal statutes. They should

with pleasure see Protestant Dissenters admitted in a proper manner to civil office. At that point their

Highnesses must stop. They could not but entertain grave apprehensions that, if Roman Catholics were made

capable of public trust, great evil would ensue; and it was intimated not obscurely that these apprehensions

The opinion expressed by the Prince and Princess respecting the disabilities to which the Roman Catholics

were subject was that of almost all the statesmen and philosophers who were then zealous for political and

religious freedom. In our age, on the contrary, enlightened men have often pronounced, with regret, that, on

this one point, William appears to disadvantage when compared with his father in law. The truth is that some

considerations which are necessary to the forming of a correct judgment seem to have escaped the notice of

There are two opposite errors into which those who study the annals of our country are in constant danger of

falling, the error of judging the present by the past, and the error of judging the past by the present. The

former is the error of minds prone to reverence whatever is old, the latter of minds readily attracted by

whatever is new. The former error may perpetually be observed in the reasonings of conservative politicians

on the questions of their own day. The latter error perpetually infects the speculations of writers of the liberal

school when they discuss the transactions of an earlier age. The former error is the more pernicious in a

It is not easy for any person who, in our time, undertakes to treat of the revolution which overthrew the

Stuarts, to preserve with steadiness the happy mean between these two extremes. The question whether

members of the Roman Catholic Church could be safely admitted to Parliament and to office convulsed our

country during the reign of James the Second, was set at rest by his downfall, and, having slept during more

than a century, was revived by that great stirring of the human mind which followed, the meeting of the

National Assembly of France. During thirty years the contest went on in both Houses of Parliament, in every

constituent body, in every social circle. It destroyed administrations, broke up parties, made all government in

one part of the empire impossible, and at length brought us to the verge of civil war. Even when the struggle

had terminated, the passions to which it had given birth still continued to rage. It was scarcely possible for

any man whose mind was under the influence of those passions to see the events of the years 1687 and 1688

One class of politicians, starting from the true proposition that the Revolution had been a great blessing to our

country, arrived at the false conclusion that no test which the statesmen of the Revolution had thought

necessary for the protection of our religion and our freedom could be safely abolished. Another class, starting

from the true proposition that the disabilities imposed on the Roman Catholics had long been productive of

nothing but mischief, arrived at the false conclusion that there never could have been a time when those

disabilities could have been useful and necessary. The former fallacy pervaded the speeches of the acute and

learned Eldon. The latter was not altogether without influence even on an intellect so calm and philosophical

Perhaps, however, it will be found on examination that we may vindicate the course which was unanimously

approved by all the great English statesmen of the seventeenth century, without questioning the wisdom of

the course which was as unanimously approved by all the great English statesmen of our own time.

Undoubtedly it is an evil that any citizen should be excluded from civil employment on account of his

religious opinions: but a choice between evils is sometimes all that is left to human wisdom. A nation may be

placed in such a situation that the majority must either impose disabilities or submit to them, and that what

would, under ordinary circumstances, be justly condemned as persecution, may fall within the bounds of

According to the constitution of the realm, James possessed the right of naming almost all public

functionaries, political, judicial, ecclesiastical, military, and naval. In the exercise of this right he was not, as

our sovereigns now are, under the necessity of acting in conformity with the advice of ministers approved by

the House of Commons. It was evident therefore that, unless he were strictly bound by law to bestow office

on none but Protestants, it would be in his power to bestow office on none but Roman Catholics. The Roman

Catholics were few in number; and among them was not a single man whose services could be seriously

missed by the commonwealth. The proportion which they bore to the population of England was very much

smaller than at present. For at present a constant stream of emigration runs from Ireland to our great towns:

but in the seventeenth century there was not even in London an Irish colony. Fortynine fiftieths of the

inhabitants of the kingdom, fortynine fiftieths of the property of the kingdom, almost all the political, legal,

and military ability and knowledge to be found in the kingdom, were Protestant. Nevertheless the King, under

a strong infatuation, had determined to use his vast patronage as a means of making proselytes. To be of his

Church was, in his view, the first of all qualifications for office. To be of the national Church was a positive

disqualification. He reprobated, it is true, in language which has been applauded by some credulous friends of

religious liberty, the monstrous injustice of that test which excluded a small minority of the nation from

public trust: but he was at the same time instituting a test which excluded the majority. He thought it hard that

a man who was a good financier and a loyal subject should be excluded from the post of Lord Treasurer

merely for being a Papist. But he had himself turned out a Lord Treasurer whom he admitted to be a good

financier and a loyal subject merely for being a Protestant. He had repeatedly and distinctly declared his

resolution never to put the white staff in the hands of any heretic. With many other great offices of state he

had dealt in the same way. Already the Lord President, the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord Chamberlain, the

Groom of the Stole, the First Lord of the Treasury, a Secretary of State, the Lord High Commissioner of

Scotland, the Chancellor of Scotland, the Secretary of Scotland, were, or pretended to be, Roman Catholics.

Most of these functionaries had been bred Churchmen, and had been guilty of apostasy, open or secret, in

order to obtain or to keep their high places. Every Protestant who still held an important post in the

government held it in constant uncertainty and fear. It would be endless to recount the situations of a lower

rank which were filled by the favoured class. Roman Catholics already swarmed in every department of the

public service. They were Lords Lieutenants, Deputy Lieutenants, judges, justices of the Peace,

Commissioners of the Customs, Envoys to foreign courts, Colonels of regiments, Governors of fortresses.

The share which in a few months they had obtained of the temporal patronage of the crown was much more

than ten times as great as they would have had under an impartial system. Yet this was not the worst. They

were made rulers of the Church of England. Men who had assured the King that they held his faith sate in the

High Commission, and exercised supreme jurisdiction in spiritual things over all the prelates and priests of

the established religion. Ecclesiastical benefices of great dignity had been bestowed, some on avowed

Papists, and some on half concealed Papists. And all this had been done while the laws against Popery were

still unrepealed, and while James had still a strong interest in affecting respect for the rights of conscience.

What then was his conduct likely to be, if his subjects consented to free him, by a legislative act, from even

the shadow of restraint? Is it possible to doubt that Protestants would have been as effectually excluded from

employment, by a strictly legal use of the royal prerogative, as ever Roman Catholics had been by Act of

How obstinately James was determined to bestow on the members of his own Church a share of patronage

altogether out of proportion to their numbers and importance is proved by the instructions which, in exile and

old age, he drew up for the guidance of his son. It is impossible to read without mingled pity and derision

those effusions of a mind on which all the discipline of experience and adversity had been exhausted in vain.

The Pretender is advised if ever he should reign in England, to make a partition of offices, and carefully to

reserve for the members of the Church of Rome a portion which might have sufficed for them if they had

been one half instead of one fiftieth part of the nation. One Secretary of State, one Commissioner of the

Treasury, the Secretary at War, the majority of the great dignitaries of the household, the majority of the

officers of the army, are always to be Catholics. Such were the designs of James after his perverse bigotry

had drawn on him a punishment which had appalled the whole world. Is it then possible to doubt what his

conduct would have been if his people, deluded by the empty name of religious liberty, had suffered him to

Even Penn, intemperate and undiscerning as was his zeal for the Declaration, seems to have felt that the

partiality with which honours and emoluments were heaped on Roman Catholics, might not unnaturally

excite the jealousy of the nation. He owned that, if the Test Act were repealed, the Protestants were entitled to

an equivalent, and went so far as to suggest several equivalents. During some weeks the word equivalent,

then lately imported from France, was in the mouths of all the coffeehouse orators, but at length a few pages

of keen logic and polished sarcasm written by Halifax put an end to these idle projects. One of Penn's

schemes was that a law should be passed dividing the patronage of the crown into three equal parts; and that

to one only of those parts members of the Church of Rome should be admitted. Even under such an

arrangement the members of the Church of Rome would have obtained near twenty times their fair portion of

official appointments; and yet there is no reason to believe that even to such an arrangement the King would

have consented. But, had he consented, what guarantee could he give that he would adhere to his bargain?

The dilemma propounded by Halifax was unanswerable. If laws are binding on you, observe the law which

now exists. If laws are not binding on you, it is idle to offer us a law as a security.262

It is clear, therefore, that the point at issue was not whether secular offices should be thrown open to all sects

indifferently. While James was King it was inevitable that there should be exclusion; and the only question

was who should be excluded, Papists or Protestants, the few or the many, a hundred thousand Englishmen or

Such are the weighty arguments by which the conduct of the Prince of Orange towards the English Roman

Catholics may be reconciled with the principles of religious liberty. These arguments, it will be observed,

have no reference to any part of the Roman Catholic theology. It will also be observed that they ceased to

have any force when the crown had been settled on a race of Protestant sovereigns, and when the power of

the House of Commons in the state had become so decidedly preponderant that no sovereign, whatever might

have been his opinions or his inclinations, could have imitated the example of James. The nation, however,

after its terrors, its struggles, its narrow escape, was in a suspicious and vindictive mood. Means of defence

therefore which necessity had once justified, and which necessity alone could justify, were obstinately used

long after the necessity had ceased to exist, and were not abandoned till vulgar prejudice had maintained a

contest of many years against reason. But in the time of James reason and vulgar prejudice were on the same

side. The fanatical and ignorant wished to exclude the Roman Catholic from office because he worshipped

stocks and stones, because he had the mark of the Beast, because he had burned down London, because he

had strangled Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey; and the most judicious and tolerant statesman, while smiling at the

delusions which imposed on the populace, was led, by a very different road, to the same conclusion.

The great object of William now was to unite in one body the numerous sections of the community which

regarded him as their common head. In this work he had several able and trusty coadjutors, among whom two

The services of Burnet indeed it was necessary to employ with some caution. The kindness with which he had

been welcomed at the Hague had excited the rage of James. Mary received from her father two letters filled

with invectives against the insolent and seditious divine whom she protected. But these accusations had so

little effect on her that she sent back answers dictated by Burnet himself. At length, in January 1687, the King

had recourse to stronger measures. Skelton, who had represented the English government in the United

Provinces, was removed to Paris, and was succeeded by Albeville, the weakest and basest of all the members

of the Jesuitical cabal. Money was Albeville's one object; and he took it from all who offered it. He was paid

at once by France and by Holland. Nay, he stooped below even the miserable dignity of corruption, and

accepted bribes so small that they seemed better suited to a porter or a lacquey than to an Envoy who had

been honoured with an English baronetcy and a foreign marquisate. On one occasion he pocketed very

complacently a gratuity of fifty pistoles as the price of a service which he had rendered to the States General.

This man had it in charge to demand that Burnet should no longer be countenanced at the Hague. William,

who was not inclined to part with a valuable friend, answered at first with his usual coldness; "I am not

aware, sir, that, since the Doctor has been here, he has done or said anything of which His Majesty can justly

complain." But James was peremptory; the time for an open rupture had not arrived; and it was necessary to

give way. During more than eighteen months Burnet never came into the presence of either the Prince or the

Princess: but he resided near them; he was fully informed of all that was passing; his advice was constantly

asked; his pen was employed on all important occasions; and many of the sharpest and most effective tracts

The rage of James flamed high. He had always been more than sufficiently prone to the angry passions. But

none of his enemies, not even those who had conspired against his life, not even those who had attempted by

perjury to load him with the guilt of treason and assassination, had ever been regarded by him with such

animosity as he now felt for Burnet. His Majesty railed daily at the Doctor in unkingly language, and

meditated plans of unlawful revenge. Even blood would not slake that frantic hatred. The insolent divine

must be tortured before he was permitted to die. Fortunately he was by birth a Scot; and in Scotland, before

he was gibbeted in the Grassmarket, his legs might be dislocated in the boot. Proceedings were accordingly

instituted against him at Edinburgh: but he had been naturalised in Holland: he had married a woman of

fortune who was a native of that province: and it was certain that his adopted country would not deliver him

up. It was therefore determined to kidnap him. Ruffians were hired with great sums of money for this perilous

and infamous service. An order for three thousand pounds on this account was actually drawn up for

signature in the office of the Secretary of State. Lewis was apprised of the design, and took a warm interest in

it. He would lend, he said, his best assistance to convey the villain to England, and would undertake that the

ministers of the vengeance of James should find a secure asylum in France. Burnet was well aware of his

danger: but timidity was not among his faults. He published a courageous answer to the charges which had

been brought against him at Edinburgh. He knew, he said, that it was intended to execute him without a trial:

but his trust was in the King of Kings, to whom innocent blood would not cry in vain, even against the

mightiest princes of the earth. He gave a farewell dinner to some friends, and, after the meal, took solemn

leave of them, as a man who was doomed to death, and with whom they could no longer safely converse.

Nevertheless he continued to show himself in all the public places of the Hague so boldly that his friends

While Burnet was William's secretary for English affairs in Holland, Dykvelt had been not less usefully

employed in London. Dykvelt was one of a remarkable class of public men who, having been bred to politics

in the noble school of John De Witt, had, after the fall of that great minister, thought that they should best

discharge their duty to the commonwealth by rallying round the Prince of Orange. Of the diplomatists in the

service of the United Provinces none was, in dexterity, temper, and manners, superior to Dykvelt. In

knowledge of English affairs none seems to have been his equal. A pretence was found for despatching him,

early in the year 1687, to England on a special mission with credentials from the States General. But in truth

his embassy was not to the government, but to the opposition; and his conduct was guided by private

Dykvelt reported that James was bitterly mortified by the conduct of the Prince and Princess. "My nephew's

duty," said the King, "is to strengthen my hands. But he has always taken a pleasure in crossing me." Dykvelt

answered that in matters of private concern His Highness had shown, and was ready to show, the greatest

deference to the King's wishes; but that it was scarcely reasonable to expect the aid of a Protestant prince

against the Protestant religion.265 The King was silenced, but not appeased. He saw, with ill humour which

he could not disguise, that Dykvelt was mustering and drilling all the various divisions of the opposition with

a skill which would have been creditable to the ablest English statesman, and which was marvellous in a

foreigner. The clergy were told that they would find the Prince a friend to episcopacy and to the Book of

Common Prayer. The Nonconformists were encouraged to expect from him, not only toleration, but also

comprehension. Even the Roman Catholics were conciliated; and some of the most respectable among them

declared, to the King's face, that they were satisfied with what Dykvelt proposed, and that they would rather

have a toleration, secured by statute, than an illegal and precarious ascendency.266 The chiefs of all the

important sections of the nation had frequent conferences in the presence of the dexterous Envoy. At these

meetings the sense of the Tory party was chiefly spoken by the Earls of Danby and Nottingham. Though

more than eight years had elapsed since Danby had fallen from power, his name was still great among the old

Cavaliers of England; and many even of those Whigs who had formerly persecuted him were now disposed to

admit that he had suffered for faults not his own, and that his zeal for the prerogative, though it had often

misled him, had been tempered by two feelings which did him honour, zeal for the established religion, and

zeal for the dignity and independence of his country. He was also highly esteemed at the Hague, where it was

never forgotten that he was the person who, in spite of the influence of France and of the Papists, had induced

Daniel Finch, Earl of Nottingham, a nobleman whose name will frequently recur in the history of three

eventful reigns, sprang from a family of unrivalled forensic eminence. One of his kinsmen had borne the seal

of Charles the First, had prostituted eminent parts and learning to evil purposes, and had been pursued by the

vengeance of the Commons of England with Falkland at their head. A more honourable renown had in the

succeeding generation been obtained by Heneage Finch. He had immediately after the Restoration been

appointed Solicitor General. He had subsequently risen to be Attorney General, Lord Keeper, Lord

Chancellor, Baron Finch, and Earl of Nottingham. Through this prosperous career he had always held the

prerogative as high as he honestly or decently could; but he had never been concerned in any machinations

against the fundamental laws of the realm. In the midst of a corrupt court he had kept his personal integrity

unsullied. He had enjoyed high fame as an orator, though his diction, formed on models anterior to the civil

wars, was, towards the close of his life, pronounced stiff and pedantic by the wits of the rising generation. In

Westminster Hall he is still mentioned with respect as the man who first educed out of the chaos anciently

called by the name of equity a new system of jurisprudence, as regular and complete as that which is

administered by the judges of the Common Law.267 A considerable part of the moral and intellectual

character of this great magistrate had descended with the title of Nottingham to his eldest son. This son, Earl

Daniel, was an honourable and virtuous man. Though enslaved by some absurd prejudices, and though liable

to strange fits of caprice, he cannot be accused of having deviated from the path of right in search either of

unlawful gain or of unlawful pleasure. Like his father he was a distinguished speaker, impressive, but prolix,

and too monotonously solemn. The person of the orator was in perfect harmony with his oratory. His attitude

was rigidly erecthis complexion so dark that he might have passed for a native of a warmer climate than

ours; and his harsh features were composed to an expression resembling that of a chief mourner at a funeral.

It was commonly said that he looked rather like a Spanish grandee than like an English gentleman. The

nicknames of Dismal, Don Dismallo, and Don Diego, were fastened on him by jesters, and are not yet

forgotten. He had paid much attention to the science by which his family had been raised to greatness, and

was, for a man born to rank and wealth, wonderfully well read in the laws of his country. He was a devoted

son of the Church, and showed his respect for her in two ways not usual among those Lords who in his time

boasted that they were her especial friends, by writing tracts in defence of her dogmas, and by shaping his

private life according to her precepts. Like other zealous churchmen, he had, till recently, been a strenuous

supporter of monarchical authority. But to the policy which had been pursued since the suppression of the

Western insurrection he was bitterly hostile, and not the less so because his younger brother Heneage had

been turned out of the office of Solicitor General for refusing to defend the King's dispensing power.268

With these two great Tory Earls was now united Halifax, the accomplished chief of the Trimmers. Over the

mind of Nottingham indeed Halifax appears to have had at this time a great ascendency. Between Halifax and

Danby there was an enmity which began in the court of Charles, and which, at a later period, disturbed the

court of William, but which, like many other enmities, remained suspended during the tyranny of James. The

foes frequently met in the councils held by Dykvelt, and agreed in expressing dislike of the policy of the

government and reverence for the Prince of Orange. The different characters of the two statesmen appeared

strongly in their dealings with the Dutch envoy. Halifax showed an admirable talent for disquisition, but

shrank from coming to any bold and irrevocable decision. Danby far less subtle and eloquent, displayed more

Several eminent Whigs were in constant communication with Dykvelt: but the heads of the great houses of

Cavendish and Russell could not take quite so active and prominent a part as might have been expected from

their station and their opinions, The fame and fortunes of Devonshire were at that moment under a cloud. He

had an unfortunate quarrel with the court, arising, not from a public and honourable cause, but from a private

brawl in which even his warmest friends could not pronounce him altogether blameless. He had gone to

Whitehall to pay his duty, and had there been insulted by a man named Colepepper, one of a set of bravoes

who invested the perlieus of the court, and who attempted to curry favour with the government by affronting

members of the opposition. The King himself expressed great indignation at the manner in which one of his

most distinguished peers had been treated under the royal roof; and Devonshire was pacified by an intimation

that the offender should never again be admitted into the palace. The interdict, however, was soon taken off.

The Earl's resentment revived. His servants took up his cause. Hostilities such as seemed to belong to a ruder

age disturbed the streets of Westminster. The time of the Privy Council was occupied by the criminations and

recriminations of the adverse parties. Colepepper's wife declared that she and her husband went in danger of

their lives, and that their house had been assaulted by ruffians in the Cavendish livery. Devonshire replied

that he had been fired at from Colepepper's windows. This was vehemently denied. A pistol, it was owned,

loaded with gunpowder, had been discharged. But this had been done in a moment of terror merely for the

purpose of alarming the Guards. While this feud was at the height the Earl met Colepepper in the

drawingroom at Whitehall, and fancied that he saw triumph and defiance in the bully's countenance. Nothing

unseemly passed in the royal sight; but, as soon as the enemies had left the presence chamber, Devonshire

proposed that they should instantly decide their dispute with their swords. The challenge was refused. Then

the high spirited peer forgot the respect which he owed to the place where he stood and to his own character,

and struck Colepepper in the face with a cane. All classes agreed in condemning this act as most indiscreet

and indecent; nor could Devonshire himself, when he had cooled, think of it without vexation and shame. The

government, however, with its usual folly, treated him so severely that in a short time the public sympathy

was all on his side. A criminal information was filed in the King's Bench. The defendant took his stand on the

privileges of the peerage but on this point a decision was promptly given against him nor is it possible to

deny that the decision, whether it were or were not according to the technical rules of English law, was in

strict conformity with the great principles on which all laws ought to be framed. Nothing was then left to him

but to plead guilty. The tribunal had, by successive dismissions, been reduced to such complete subjection,

that the government which had instituted the prosecution was allowed to prescribe the punishment. The

judges waited in a body on Jeffreys, who insisted that they should impose a fine of not less than thirty

thousand pounds. Thirty thousand pounds, when compared with the revenues of the English grandees of that

age, may be considered as equivalent to a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in the nineteenth century. In the

presence of the Chancellor not a word of disapprobation was tittered: but, when the judges had retired, Sir

John Powell, in whom all the little honesty of the bench was concentrated, muttered that the proposed penalty

was enormous, and that one tenth part would be amply sufficient. His brethren did not agree with him; nor

did he, on this occasion, show the courage by which, on a memorable day some months later, he signally

retrieved his fame. The Earl was accordingly condemned to a fine of thirty thousand pounds, and to

imprisonment till payment should be made. Such a sum could not then be raised at a day's notice even by the

greatest of the nobility. The sentence of imprisonment, however, was more easily pronounced than executed.

Devonshire had retired to Chatsworth, where he was employed in turning the old Gothic mansion of his

family into an edifice worthy of Palladio. The Peak was in those days almost as rude a district as Connemara

now is, and the Sheriff found, or pretended, that it was difficult to arrest the lord of so wild a region in the

midst of a devoted household and tenantry. Some days were thus gained: but at last both the Earl and the

Sheriff were lodged in prison. Meanwhile a crowd of intercessors exerted their influence. The story ran that

the Countess Dowager of Devonshire had obtained admittance to the royal closet, that she had reminded

James how her brother in law, the gallant Charles Cavendish, had fallen at Gainsborough fighting for the

crown, and that she had produced notes, written by Charles the First and Charles the Second, in

acknowledgment of great sums lent by her Lord during the civil troubles. Those loans had never been repaid,

and, with the interest, amounted, it was said, to more even than the immense fine which the Court of King's

Bench had imposed. There was another consideration which seems to have had more weight with the King

than the memory of former services. It might be necessary to call a Parliament. Whenever that event took

place it was believed that Devonshire would bring a writ of error. The point on which he meant to appeal

from the judgment of the King's Bench related to the privileges of peerage. The tribunal before which the

appeal must come was the House of Peers. On such an occasion the court could not be certain of the support

even of the most courtly nobles. There was little doubt that the sentence would be annulled, and that, by

grasping at too much, the government would lose all. James was therefore disposed to a compromise.

Devonshire was informed that, if he would give a bond for the whole fine, and thus preclude himself from the

advantage which he might derive from a writ of error, he should be set at liberty. Whether the bond should he

enforced or not would depend on his subsequent conduct. If he would support the dispensing power nothing

would be exacted from him. If he was bent on popularity he must pay thirty thousand pounds for it. He

refused, during some time, to consent to these terms; but confinement was insupportable to him. He signed

the bond, and was let out of prison: but, though he consented to lay this heavy burden on his estate, nothing

could induce him to promise that he would abandon his principles and his party. He was still entrusted with

all the secrets of the opposition: but during some months his political friends thought it best for himself and

The Earl of Bedford had never recovered from the effects of the great calamity which, four years before, had

almost broken his heart. From private as well as from public feelings he was adverse to the court: but he was

not active in concerting measures against it. His place in the meetings of the malecontents was supplied by

his nephew. This was the celebrated Edward Russell, a man of undoubted courage and capacity, but of loose

principles and turbulent temper. He was a sailor, had distinguished himself in his profession, and had in the

late reign held an office in the palace. But all the ties which bound him to the royal family had been sundered

by the death of his cousin William. The daring, unquiet, and vindictive seaman now sate in the councils

called by the Dutch envoy as the representative of the boldest and most eager section of the opposition, of

those men who, under the names of Roundheads, Exclusionists, and Whigs, had maintained with various

fortune a contest of five and forty years against three successive Kings. This party, lately prostrate and almost

extinct, but now again full of life and rapidly rising to ascendency, was troubled by none of the scruples

which still impeded the movements of Tories and Trimmers, and was prepared to draw the sword against the

tyrant on the first day on which the sword could be drawn with reasonable hope of success.

Three men are yet to be mentioned with whom Dykvelt was in confidential communication, and by whose

help he hoped to secure the good will of three great professions. Bishop Compton was the agent employed to

manage the clergy: Admiral Herbert undertook to exert all his influence over the navy; and an interest was

The conduct of Compton and Herbert requires no explanation. Having, in all things secular, served the crown

with zeal and fidelity, they had incurred the royal displeasure by refusing to be employed as tools for the

destruction of their own religion. Both of them had learned by experience how soon James forgot obligations,

and how bitterly he remembered what it pleased him to consider as wrongs. The Bishop had by an illegal

sentence been suspended from his episcopal functions. The Admiral had in one hour been reduced from

opulence to penury. The situation of Churchill was widely different. He had been raised by the royal bounty

from obscurity to eminence, and from poverty to wealth. Having started in life a needy ensign, he was now,

in his thirtyseventh year, a Major General, a peer of Scotland, a peer of England: he commanded a troop of

Life Guards: he had been appointed to several honourable and lucrative offices; and as yet there was no sign

that he had lost any part of the favour to which he owed so much. He was bound to James, not only by the

common obligations of allegiance, but by military honour, by personal gratitude, and, as appeared to

superficial observers, by the strongest ties of interest. But Churchill himself was no superficial observer. He

knew exactly what his interest really was. If his master were once at full liberty to employ Papists, not a

single Protestant would be employed. For a time a few highly favoured servants of the crown might possibly

be exempted from the general proscription in the hope that they would be induced to change their religion.

But even these would, after a short respite, fall one by one, as Rochester had already fallen. Churchill might

indeed secure himself from this danger, and might raise himself still higher in the royal favour, by

conforming to the Church of Rome; and it might seem that one who was not less distinguished by avarice and

baseness than by capacity and valour was not likely to be shocked at the thought of hearing amass. But so

inconsistent is human nature that there are tender spots even in seared consciences. And thus this man, who

had owed his rise to his sister's dishonour, who had been kept by the most profuse, imperious, and shameless

of harlots, and whose public life, to those who can look steadily through the dazzling blaze of genius and

glory, will appear a prodigy of turpitude, believed implicitly in the religion which he had learned as a boy,

and shuddered at the thought of formally abjuring it. A terrible alternative was before him. The earthly evil

which he most dreaded was poverty. The one crime from which his heart recoiled was apostasy. And, if the

designs of the court succeeded, he could not doubt that between poverty and apostasy he must soon make his

choice. He therefore determined to cross those designs; and it soon appeared that there was no guilt and no

disgrace which he was not ready to incur, in order to escape from the necessity of parting either with his

It was not only as a military commander, high in rank, and distinguished by skill and courage, that Churchill

was able to render services to the opposition. It was, if not absolutely essential, yet most important, to the

success of William's plans that his sister in law, who, in the order of succession to the English throne, stood

between his wife and himself, should act in cordial union with him. All his difficulties would have been

greatly augmented if Anne had declared herself favourable to the Indulgence. Which side she might take

depended on the will of others. For her understanding was sluggish; and, though there was latent in her

character a hereditary wilfulness and stubbornness which, many years later, great power and great

provocations developed, she was as yet a willing slave to a nature far more vivacious and imperious than her

own. The person by whom she was absolutely governed was the wife of Churchill, a woman who afterwards

The name of this celebrated favourite was Sarah Jennings. Her elder sister, Frances, had been distinguished

by beauty and levity even among the crowd of beautiful faces and light characters which adorned and

disgraced Whitehall during the wild carnival of the Restoration. On one occasion Frances dressed herself like

an orange girl and cried fruit about the streets.271 Sober people predicted that a girl of so little discretion and

delicacy would not easily find a husband. She was however twice married, and was now the wife of

Tyrconnel. Baron, less regularly beautiful, was perhaps more attractive. Her face was expressive: her form

wanted no feminine charm; and the profusion of her fine hair, not yet disguised by powder according to that

barbarous fashion which she lived to see introduced, was the delight of numerous admirers. Among the

gallants who sued for her favour, Colonel Churchill, young, handsome, graceful, insinuating, eloquent and

brave, obtained the preference. He must have been enamoured indeed. For he had little property except the

annuity which he had bought with the infamous wages bestowed on him by the Duchess of Cleveland: he was

insatiable of riches: Sarah was poor; and a plain girl with a large fortune was proposed to him. His love, after

a struggle, prevailed over his avarice: marriage only strengthened his passion; and, to the last hour of his life,

Sarah enjoyed the pleasure and distinction of being the one human being who was able to mislead that

farsighted and surefooted judgment, who was fervently loved by that cold heart, and who was servilely feared

In a worldly sense the fidelity of Churchill's love was amply rewarded. His bride, though slenderly portioned,

brought with her a dowry which, judiciously employed, made him at length a Duke of England, a Prince of

the Empire, the captain general of a great coalition, the arbiter between mighty princes, and, what he valued

more, the wealthiest subject in Europe. She had been brought up from childhood with the Princess Anne; and

a close friendship had arisen between the girls. In character they resembled each other very little. Anne was

slow and taciturn. To those whom she loved she was meek. The form which her anger assumed was

sullenness. She had a strong sense of religion, and was attached even with bigotry to the rites and government

of the Church of England. Sarah was lively and voluble, domineered over those whom she regarded with

most kindness, and, when she was offended, vented her rage in tears and tempestuous reproaches. To sanctity

she made no pretence, and, indeed, narrowly escaped the imputation of irreligion. She was not yet what she

became when one class of vices had been fully developed in her by prosperity, and another by adversity,

when her brain had been turned by success and flattery, when her heart had been ulcerated by disasters and

mortifications. She lived to be that most odious and miserable of human beings, an ancient crone at war with

her whole kind, at war with her own children and grandchildren, great indeed and rich, but valuing greatness

and riches chiefly because they enabled her to brave public opinion and to indulge without restraint her hatred

to the living and the dead. In the reign of James she was regarded as nothing worse than a fine highspirited

young woman, who could now and then be cross and arbitrary, but whose flaws of temper might well be

It is a common observation that differences of taste, understanding, and disposition, are no impediments to

friendship, and that the closest intimacies often exist between minds each of which supplies what is wanting

to the other. Lady Churchill was loved and even worshipped by Anne. The Princess could not live apart from

the object of her romantic fondness. She married, and was a faithful and even an affectionate wife. But Prince

George, a dull man whose chief pleasures were derived from his dinner and his bottle, acquired over her no

influence comparable to that exercised by her female friend, and soon gave himself up with stupid patience to

the dominion of that vehement and commanding spirit by which his wife was governed. Children were born

to the royal pair: and Anne was by no means without the feelings of a mother. But the tenderness which she

felt for her offspring was languid when compared with her devotion to the companion of her early years. At

length the Princess became impatient of the restraint which etiquette imposed on her. She could not bear to

hear the words Madam and Royal Highness from the lips of one who was more to her than a sister. Such

words were indeed necessary in the gallery or the drawingroom; but they were disused in the closet. Anne

was Mrs. Morley: Lady Churchill was Mrs. Freeman; and under these childish names was carried on during

twenty years a correspondence on which at last the fate of administrations and dynasties depended. But as yet

Anne had no political power and little patronage. Her friend attended her as first Lady of the Bedchamber,

with a salary of only four hundred pounds a year. There is reason, however, to believe that, even at this time,

Churchill was able to gratify his ruling passion by means of his wife's influence. The Princess, though her

income was large and her tastes simple, contracted debts which her father, not without some murmurs,

discharged; and it was rumoured that her embarrassments had been caused by her prodigal bounty to her

At length the time had arrived when this singular friendship was to exercise a great influence on public

affairs. What part Anne would take in the contest which distracted England was matter of deep anxiety. Filial

duty was on one side. The interests of the religion to which she was sincerely attached were on the other. A

less inert nature might well have remained long in suspense when drawn in opposite directions by motives so

strong and so respectable. But the influence of the Churchills decided the question; and their patroness

became an important member of that extensive league of which the Prince of Orange was the head.

In June 1687 Dykvelt returned to the Hague. He presented to the States General a royal epistle filled with

eulogies of his conduct during his residence in London. These eulogies however were merely formal. James,

in private communications written with his own hand, bitterly complained that the Envoy had lived in close

intimacy with the most factious men in the realm, and had encouraged them in all their evil purposes. Dykvelt

carried with him also a packet of letters from the most eminent of those with whom he had conferred during

his stay in England. The writers generally expressed unbounded reverence and affection for William, and

referred him to the bearer for fuller information as to their views. Halifax discussed the state and prospects of

the country with his usual subtlety and vivacity, but took care not to pledge himself to any perilous line of

conduct. Danby wrote in a bolder and more determined tone, and could not refrain from slily sneering at the

fears and scruples of his accomplished rival. But the most remarkable letter was from Churchill. It was

written with that natural eloquence which, illiterate as he was, he never wanted on great occasions, and with

an air of magnanimity which, perfidious as he was, he could with singular dexterity assume. The Princess

Anne, he said, had commanded him to assure her illustrious relatives at the Hague that she was fully resolved

by God's help rather to lose her life than to be guilty of apostasy. As for himself, his places and the royal

favour were as nothing to him in comparison with his religion. He concluded by declaring in lofty language

that, though he could not pretend to have lived the life of a saint, he should be found ready, on occasion, to

Dykvelt's mission had succeeded so well that a pretence was soon found for sending another agent to

continue the work which had been so auspiciously commenced. The new Envoy, afterwards the founder of a

noble English house which became extinct in our own time, was an illegitimate cousin german of William;

and bore a title taken from the lordship of Zulestein. Zulestein's relationship to the House of Orange gave him

importance in the public eye. His bearing was that of a gallant soldier. He was indeed in diplomatic talents

and knowledge far inferior to Dykvelt: but even this inferiority had its advantages. A military man, who had

never appeared to trouble himself about political affairs, could, without exciting any suspicion, hold with the

English aristocracy an intercourse which, if he had been a noted master of state craft, would have been

jealously watched. Zulestein, after a short absence, returned to his country charged with letters and verbal

messages not less important than those which had been entrusted to his predecessor. A regular

correspondence was from this time established between the Prince and the opposition. Agents of various

ranks passed and repassed between the Thames and the Hague. Among these a Scotchman, of some parts and

great activity, named Johnstone, was the most useful. He was cousin of Burnet, and son of an eminent

covenanter who had, soon after the Restoration, been put to death for treason, and who was honoured by his

The estrangement between the King of England and the Prince of Orange became daily more complete. A

serious dispute had arisen concerning the six British regiments which were in the pay of the United

Provinces. The King wished to put these regiments under the command of Roman Catholic officers. The

Prince resolutely opposed this design. The King had recourse to his favourite commonplaces about toleration.

The Prince replied that he only followed his Majesty's example. It was notorious that loyal and able men had

been turned out of office in England merely for being Protestants. It was then surely competent to the

Stadtholder and the States General to withhold high public trusts from Papists. This answer provoked James

to such a degree that, in his rage, he lost sight of veracity and common sense. It was false, he vehemently

said, that he had ever turned out any body on religious grounds. And if he had, what was that to the Prince or

to the States? Were they his masters? Were they to sit in judgment on the conduct of foreign sovereigns?

From that time he became desirous to recall his subjects who were in the Dutch service. By bringing them

over to England he should, he conceived, at once strengthen himself, and weaken his worst enemies. But

there were financial difficulties which it was impossible for him to overlook. The number of troops already in

his service was as great as his revenue, though large beyond all precedent and though parsimoniously

administered, would support. If the battalions now in Holland were added to the existing establishment, the

Treasury would be bankrupt. Perhaps Lewis might be induced to take them into his service. They would in

that case be removed from a country where they were exposed to the corrupting influence of a republican

government and a Calvinistic worship, and would be placed in a country where none ventured to dispute the

mandates of the sovereign or the doctrines of the true Church. The soldiers would soon unlearn every

political and religious heresy. Their native prince might always, at short notice, command their help, and

A negotiation on this subject was opened between Whitehall and Versailles. Lewis had as many soldiers as he

wanted; and, had it been otherwise, he would not have been disposed to take Englishmen into his service; for

the pay of England, low as it must seem to our generation, was much higher than the pay of France. At the

same time, it was a great object to deprive William of so fine a brigade. After some weeks of correspondence,

Barillon was authorised to promise that, if James would recall the British troops from Holland, Lewis would

bear the charge of supporting two thousand of them in England. This offer was accepted by James with warm

expressions of gratitude. Having made these arrangements, he requested the States General to send back the

six regiments. The States General, completely governed by William, answered that such a demand, in such

circumstances, was not authorised by the existing treaties, and positively refused to comply. It is remarkable

that Amsterdam, which had voted for keeping these troops in Holland when James needed their help against

the Western insurgents, now contended vehemently that his request ought to be granted. On both occasions,

the sole object of those who ruled that great city was to cross the Prince of Orange.274

The Dutch arms, however, were scarcely so formidable to James as the Dutch presses. English books and

pamphlets against his government were daily printed at the Hague; nor could any vigilance prevent copies

from being smuggled, by tens of thousands, into the counties bordering on the German Ocean. Among these

publications, one was distinguished by its importance, and by the immense effect which it produced. The

opinion which the Prince and Princess of Orange held respecting the Indulgence was well known to all who

were conversant with public affairs. But, as no official announcement of that opinion had appeared, many

persons who had not access to good private sources of information were deceived or perplexed by the

confidence with which the partisans of the Court asserted that their Highnesses approved of the King's late

acts. To contradict those assertions publicly would have been a simple and obvious course, if the sole object

of William had been to strengthen his interest in England. But he considered England chiefly as an instrument

necessary to the execution of his great European design. Towards that design he hoped to obtain the

cooperation of both branches of the House of Austria, of the Italian princes, and even of the Sovereign

Pontiff. There was reason to fear that any declaration which was satisfactory to British Protestants would

excite alarm and disgust at Madrid, Vienna, Turin, and Rome. For this reason the Prince long abstained from

formally expressing his sentiments. At length it was represented to him that his continued silence had excited

much uneasiness and distrust among his wellwishers, and that it was time to speak out. He therefore

A Scotch Whig, named James Stewart, had fled, some years before, to Holland, in order to avoid the boot and

the gallows, and had become intimate with the Grand Pensionary Fagel, who enjoyed a large share of the

Stadtholder's confidence and favour. By Stewart had been drawn up the violent and acrimonious manifesto of

Argyle. When the Indulgence appeared, Stewart conceived that he had an opportunity of obtaining, not only

pardon, but reward. He offered his services to the government of which he had been the enemy: they were

accepted; and he addressed to Fagel a letter, purporting to have been written by the direction of James. In that

letter the Pensionary was exhorted to use all his influence with the Prince and Princess, for the purpose of

inducing them to support their father's policy. After some delay Fagel transmitted a reply, deeply meditated,

and drawn up with exquisite art. No person who studies that remarkable document can fail to perceive that,

though it is framed in a manner well calculated to reassure and delight English Protestants, it contains not a

word which could give offence, even at the Vatican. It was announced that William and Mary would, with

pleasure, assist in abolishing every law which made any Englishman liable to punishment for his religious

opinions. But between punishments and disabilities a distinction was taken. To admit Roman Catholics to

office would, in the judgment of their Highnesses, be neither for the general interest of England nor even for

the interest of the Roman Catholics themselves. This manifesto was translated into several languages, and

circulated widely on the Continent. Of the English version, carefully prepared by Burnet, near fifty thousand

copies were introduced into the eastern shires, and rapidly distributed over the whole kingdom. No state

paper was ever more completely successful. The Protestants of our island applauded the manly firmness with

which William declared that he could not consent to entrust Papists with any share in the government. The

Roman Catholic princes, on the other hand, were pleased by the mild and temperate style in which his

resolution was expressed, and by the hope which he held out that, under his administration, no member of

It is probable that the Pope himself was among those who read this celebrated letter with pleasure. He had

some months before dismissed Castelmaine in a manner which showed little regard for the feelings of

Castelmaine's master. Innocent thoroughly disliked the whole domestic and foreign policy of the English

government. He saw that the unjust and impolitic measures of the Jesuitical cabal were far more likely to

make the penal laws perpetual than to bring about an abolition of the test. His quarrel with the court of

Versailles was every day becoming more and more serious; nor could he, either in his character of temporal

prince or in his character of Sovereign Pontiff, feel cordial friendship for a vassal of that court. Castelmaine

was ill qualified to remove these disgusts. He was indeed well acquainted with Rome, and was, for a layman,

deeply read in theological controversy.275 But he had none of the address which his post required; and, even

had he been a diplomatist of the greatest ability, there was a circumstance which would have disqualified him

for the particular mission on which he had been sent. He was known all over Europe as the husband of the

most shameless of women; and he was known in no other way. It was impossible to speak to him or of him

without remembering in what manner the very title by which he was called had been acquired. This

circumstance would have mattered little if he had been accredited to some dissolute court, such as that in

which the Marchioness of Montespan had lately been dominant. But there was an obvious impropriety in

sending him on an embassy rather of a spiritual than of a secular nature to a pontiff of primitive austerity. The

Protestants all over Europe sneered; and Innocent, already unfavourably disposed to the English government,

considered the compliment which had been paid him, at so much risk and at so heavy a cost, as little better

than an affront. The salary of the Ambassador was fixed at a hundred pounds a week. Castelmaine

complained that this was too little. Thrice the sum, he said, would hardly suffice. For at Rome the ministers

of all the great continental powers exerted themselves to surpass one another in splendour, under the eyes of a

people whom the habit of seeing magnificent buildings, decorations, and ceremonies had made fastidious. He

always declared that he had been a loser by his mission. He was accompanied by several young gentlemen of

the best Roman Catholic families in England, Ratcliffes, Arundells and Tichbornes. At Rome he was lodged

in the palace of the house of Pamfili on the south of the stately Place of Navona. He was early admitted to a

private interview with Innocent: but the public audience was long delayed. Indeed Castelmaine's preparations

for that great occasion were so sumptuous that, though commenced at Easter 1686, they were not complete

till the following November; and in November the Pope had, or pretended to have, an attack of gout which

caused another postponement. In January 1687, at length, the solemn introduction and homage were

performed with unusual pomp. The state coaches, which had been built at Rome for the pageant, were so

superb that they were thought worthy to be transmitted to posterity in fine engravings and to be celebrated by

poets in several languages.276 The front of the Ambassador's palace was decorated on this great day with

absurd allegorical paintings of gigantic size. There was Saint George with his foot on the neck of Titus Cares,

and Hercules with his club crushing College, the Protestant joiner, who in vain attempted to defend himself

with his flail. After this public appearance Castelmaine invited all the persons of note then assembled at

Rome to a banquet in that gay and splendid gallery which is adorned with paintings of subjects from the

Aeneid by Peter of Cortona. The whole city crowded to the show; and it was with difficulty that a company

of Swiss guards could keep order among the spectators. The nobles of the Pontifical state in return gave

costly entertainments to the Ambassador; and poets and wits were employed to lavish on him and on his

master insipid and hyperbolical adulation such as flourishes most when genius and taste are in the deepest

decay. Foremost among the flatterers was a crowned head. More than thirty years had elapsed since Christina,

the daughter of the great Gustavus, had voluntarily descended from the Swedish throne. After long

wanderings, in the course of which she had committed many follies and crimes, she had finally taken up her

abode at Rome, where she busied herself with astrological calculations and with the intrigues of the conclave,

and amused herself with pictures, gems, manuscripts, and medals. She now composed some Italian stanzas in

honour of the English prince who, sprung, like herself, from a race of Kings heretofore regarded as the

champions of the Reformation, had, like herself, been reconciled to the ancient Church. A splendid assembly

met in her palace. Her verses, set to music, were sung with universal applause: and one of her literary

dependents pronounced an oration on the same subject in a style so florid that it seems to have offended the

taste of the English hearers. The Jesuits, hostile to the Pope, devoted to the interests of France and disposed to

pay every honour to James, received the English embassy with the utmost pomp in that princely house where

the remains of Ignatius Loyola lie enshrined in lazulite and gold. Sculpture, painting, poetry, and eloquence

were employed to compliment the strangers: but all these arts had sunk into deep degeneracy. There was a

great display of turgid and impure Latinity unworthy of so erudite an order; and some of the inscriptions

which adorned the walls had a fault more serious than even a bad style. It was said in one place that James

had sent his brother as his messenger to heaven, and in another that James had furnished the wings with

which his brother had soared to a higher region. There was a still more unfortunate distich, which at the time

attracted little notice, but which, a few months later, was remembered and malignantly interpreted. "O King,"

said the poet, "cease to sigh for a son. Though nature may refuse your wish, the stars will find a way to grant

In the midst of these festivities Castelmaine had to suffer cruel mortifications and humiliations. The Pope

treated him with extreme coldness and reserve. As often as the Ambassador pressed for an answer to the

request which he had been instructed to make in favour of Petre, Innocent was taken with a violent fit of

coughing, which put an end to the conversation. The fame of these singular audiences spread over Rome.

Pasquin was not silent. All the curious and tattling population of the idlest of cities, the Jesuits and the

prelates of the French faction only excepted, laughed at Castelmaine's discomfiture. His temper, naturally

unamiable, was soon exasperated to violence; and he circulated a memorial reflecting on the Pope. He had

now put himself in the wrong. The sagacious Italian had got the advantage, and took care to keep it. He

positively declared that the rule which excluded Jesuits from ecclesiastical preferment should not be relaxed

in favour of Father Petre. Castelmaine, much provoked, threatened to leave Rome. Innocent replied, with a

meek impertinence which was the more provoking because it could scarcely be distinguished from simplicity,

that his Excellency might go if he liked. "But if we must lose him," added the venerable Pontiff, "I hope that

he will take care of his health on the road. English people do not know how dangerous it is in this country to

travel in the heat of the day. The best way is to start before dawn, and to take some rest at noon." With this

salutary advice and with a string of beads, the unfortunate Ambassador was dismissed. In a few months

appeared, both in the Italian and in the English tongue, a pompous history of the mission, magnificently

printed in folio, and illustrated with plates. The frontispiece, to the great scandal of all Protestants,

represented Castelmaine in the robes of a Peer, with his coronet in his hand, kissing the toe of Innocent.277

Consecration of the Nuncio at Saint James's Palace; his public ReceptionThe Duke of

SomersetDissolution of the Parliament; Military Offences illegally punishedProceedings of the High

Commission; the UniversitiesProceedings against the University of CambridgeThe Earl of

MulgraveState of OxfordMagdalene College, OxfordAnthony Farmer recommended by the King for

PresidentElection of the PresidentThe Fellows of Magdalene cited before the High

CommissionParker recommended as President; the CharterhouseThe Royal ProgressThe King at

Oxford; he reprimands the Fellows of MagdalenePenn attempts to mediateSpecial Ecclesiastical

Commissioners sent to Oxford Protest of HoughParkerEjection of the FellowsMagdalene College

turned into a Popish SeminaryResentment of the Clergy Schemes of the Jesuitical Cabal respecting the

SuccessionScheme of James and Tyrconnel for preventing the Princess of Orange from succeeding to the

Kingdom of IrelandThe Queen pregnant; general IncredulityFeeling of the Constituent Bodies, and of

the Peers James determines to pack a ParliamentThe Board of Regulators Many Lords Lieutenants

dismissed; the Earl of OxfordThe Earl of ShrewsburyThe Earl of DorsetQuestions put to the

Magistrates Their Answers; Failure of the King's PlansList of Sheriffs Character of the Roman

Catholic Country GentlemenFeeling of the Dissenters; Regulation of CorporationsInquisition in all the

Public DepartmentsDismission of SawyerWilliams Solicitor GeneralSecond Declaration of

Indulgence; the Clergy ordered to read itThey hesitate; Patriotism of the Protestant Nonconformists of

LondonConsultation of the London Clergy Consultation at Lambeth PalacePetition of the Seven

Bishops presented to the KingThe London Clergy disobey the Royal Order Hesitation of the

GovernmentIt is determined to prosecute the Bishops for a LibelThey are examined by the Privy

CouncilThey are committed to the TowerBirth of the PretenderHe is generally believed to be

supposititiousThe Bishops brought before the King's Bench and bailedAgitation of the public Mind

Uneasiness of SunderlandHe professes himself a Roman Catholic Trial of the BishopsThe Verdict;

THE marked discourtesy of the Pope might well have irritated the meekest of princes. But the only effect

which it produced on James was to make him more lavish of caresses and compliments. While Castelmaine,

his whole soul festered with angry passions, was on his road back to England, the Nuncio was loaded with

honours which his own judgment would have led him to reject. He had, by a fiction often used in the Church

of Rome, been lately raised to the episcopal dignity without having the charge of any see. He was called

Archbishop of Amasia, a city of Pontus, the birthplace of Strabo and Mithridates. James insisted that the

ceremony of consecration should be performed in the chapel of Saint James's Palace. The Vicar Apostolic

Leyburn and two Irish prelates officiated. The doors were thrown open to the public; and it was remarked that

some of those Puritans who had recently turned courtiers were among the spectators. In the evening Adda,

wearing the robes of his new office, joined the circle in the Queen's apartments. James fell on his knees in the

presence of the whole court and implored a blessing. In spite of the restraint imposed by etiquette, the

astonishment and disgust of the bystanders could not be concealed.278 It was long indeed since an English

sovereign had knelt to mortal man; and those who saw the strange sight could not but think of that day of

In a short time a still more ostentatious pageant was performed in honour of the Holy See. It was determined

that the Nuncio should go to court in solemn procession. Some persons on whose obedience the King had

counted showed, on this occasion, for the first time, signs of a mutinous spirit. Among these the most

conspicuous was the second temporal peer of the realm, Charles Seymour, commonly called the proud Duke

of Somerset. He was in truth a man in whom the pride of birth and rank amounted almost to a disease. The

fortune which he had inherited was not adequate to the high place which he held among the English

aristocracy: but he had become possessed of the greatest estate in England by his marriage with the daughter

and heiress of the last Percy who wore the ancient coronet of Northumberland. Somerset was only in his

twentyfifth year, and was very little known to the public, He was a Lord of the King's Bedchamber, and

colonel of one of the regiments which had been raised at the time of the Western insurrection. He had not

scrupled to carry the sword of state into the royal chapel on days of festival: but he now resolutely refused to

swell the pomp of the Nuncio. Some members of his family implored him not to draw on himself the royal

displeasure: but their intreaties produced no effect. The King himself expostulated. "I thought, my Lord," said

he, "that I was doing you a great honour in appointing you to escort the minister of the first of all crowned

heads." "Sir," said the Duke, "I am advised that I cannot obey your Majesty without breaking the law." "I will

make you fear me as well as the law," answered the King, insolently. "Do you not know that I am above the

law?" "Your Majesty may be above the law," replied Somerset; "but I am not; and, while I obey the law, I

fear nothing." The King turned away in high displeasure, and Somerset was instantly dismissed from his

On one point, however, James showed some prudence. He did not venture to parade the Papal Envoy in state

before the vast population of the capital. The ceremony was performed, on the third of July 1687, at Windsor.

Great multitudes flocked to the little town. The visitors were so numerous that there was neither food nor

lodging for them; and many persons of quality sate the whole day in their carriages waiting for the exhibition.

At length, late in the afternoon, the Knight Marshal's men appeared on horseback. Then came a long train of

running footmen; and then, in a royal coach, appeared Adda, robed in purple, with a brilliant cross on his

breast. He was followed by the equipages of the principal courtiers and ministers of state. In his train the

crowd recognised with disgust the arms and liveries of Crewe, Bishop of Durham, and of Cartwright, Bishop

On the following day appeared in the Gazette a proclamation dissolving that Parliament which of all the

Meanwhile new difficulties had arisen in Westminster Hall. Only a few months had elapsed since some

Judges had been turned out and others put in for the purpose of obtaining a decision favourable to the crown

The King had scarcely formed that army on which he chiefly depended for the accomplishing of his designs

when he found that he could not himself control it. When war was actually raging in the kingdom a mutineer

or a deserter might be tried by a military tribunal and executed by the Provost Marshal. But there was now

profound peace. The common law of England, having sprung up in an age when all men bore arms

occasionally and none constantly, recognised no distinction, in time of peace, between a soldier and any other

subject; nor was there any Act resembling that by which the authority necessary for the government of

regular troops is now annually confided to the Sovereign. Some old statutes indeed made desertion felony in

certain specified cases. But those statutes were applicable only to soldiers serving the King in actual war, and

could not without the grossest disingenuousness be so strained as to include the case of a man who, in a time

of profound tranquillity at home and abroad, should become tired of the camp at Hounslow and should go

back to his native village. The government appears to have had no hold on such a man, except the hold which

master bakers and master tailors have on their journeymen. He and his officers were, in the eye of the law, on

a level. If he swore at them he might be fined for an oath. If he struck them he might be prosecuted for assault

and battery. In truth the regular army was under less restraint than the militia. For the militia was a body

established by an Act of Parliament, and it had been provided by that Act that slight punishments might be

It does not appear that, during the reign of Charles the Second, the practical inconvenience arising from this

state of the law had been much felt. The explanation may perhaps be that, till the last year of his reign, the

force which he maintained in England consisted chiefly of household troops, whose pay was so high that

dismission from the service would have been felt by most of them as a great calamity. The stipend of a

private in the Life Guards was a provision for the younger son of a gentleman. Even the Foot Guards were

paid about as high as manufacturers in a prosperous season, and were therefore in a situation which the great

body of the labouring population might regard with envy. The return of the garrison of Tangier and the

raising of the new regiments had made a great change. There were now in England many thousands of

soldiers, each of whom received only eightpence a day. The dread of dismission was not sufficient to keep

them to their duty: and corporal punishment their officers could not legally inflict. James had therefore one

plain choice before him, to let his army dissolve itself, or to induce the judges to pronounce that the law was

It was peculiarly important to secure the cooperation of two courts; the court of King's Bench, which was the

first criminal tribunal in the realm, and the court of gaol delivery which sate at the Old Bailey, and which had

jurisdiction over offences committed in the capital. In both these courts there were great difficulties. Herbert,

Chief Justice of the King's Bench, servile as he had hitherto been, would go no further. Resistance still more

sturdy was to be expected from Sir John Holt, who, as Recorder of the City of London, occupied the bench at

the Old Bailey. Holt was an eminently learned and clear headed lawyer: he was an upright and courageous

man; and, though he had never been factious, his political opinions had a tinge of Whiggism. All obstacles,

however, disappeared before the royal will. Holt was turned out of the recordership. Herbert and another

Judge were removed from the King's Bench; and the vacant places were filled by persons in whom the

government could confide. It was indeed necessary to go very low down in the legal profession before men

could be found willing to render such services as were now required. The new Chief justice, Sir Robert

Wright, was ignorant to a proverb; yet ignorance was not his worst fault. His vices had ruined him. He had

resorted to infamous ways of raising money, and had, on one occasion, made a false affidavit in order to

obtain possession of five hundred pounds. Poor, dissolute, and shameless, he had become one of the parasites

of Jeffreys, who promoted him and insulted him. Such was the man who was now selected by James to be

Lord Chief justice of England. One Richard Allibone, who was even more ignorant of the law than Wright,

and who, as a Roman Catholic, was incapable of holding office, was appointed a puisne judge of the King's

Bench. Sir Bartholomew Shower, equally notorious as a servile Tory and a tedious orator, became Recorder

of London. When these changes had been made, several deserters were brought to trial. They were convicted

in the face of the letter and of the spirit of the law. Some received sentence of death at the bar of the King's

Bench, some at the Old Bailey. They were hanged in sight of the regiments to which they had belonged; and

care was taken that the executions should be announced in the London Gazette, which very seldom noticed

It may well be believed, that the law, so grossly insulted by courts which derived from it all their authority,

and which were in the habit of looking to it as their guide, would be little respected by a tribunal which had

originated in tyrannical caprice. The new High Commission had, during the first months of its existence,

merely inhibited clergymen from exercising spiritual functions. The rights of property had remained

untouched. But, early in the year 1687, it was determined to strike at freehold interests, and to impress on

every Anglican priest and prelate the conviction that, if he refused to lend his aid for the purpose of

destroying the Church of which he was a minister, he would in an hour be reduced to beggary.

It would have been prudent to try the first experiment on some obscure individual. But the government was

under an infatuation such as, in a more simple age, would have been called judicial. War was therefore at

once declared against the two most venerable corporations of the realm, the Universities of Oxford and

The power of those bodies has during many ages been great; but it was at the height during the latter part of

the seventeenth century. None of the neighbouring countries could boast of such splendid and opulent seats of

learning. The schools of Edinburgh and Glasgow, of Leyden and Utrecht, of Louvain and Leipzig, of Padua

and Bologna, seemed mean to scholars who had been educated in the magnificent foundations of Wykeham

and Wolsey, of Henry the Sixth and Henry the Eighth. Literature and science were, in the academical system

of England, surrounded with pomp, armed with magistracy, and closely allied with all the most august

institutions of the state. To be the Chancellor of an University was a distinction eagerly sought by the

magnates of the realm. To represent an University in Parliament was a favourite object of the ambition of

statesmen. Nobles and even princes were proud to receive from an University the privilege of wearing the

doctoral scarlet. The curious were attracted to the Universities by ancient buildings rich with the tracery of

the middle ages, by modern buildings which exhibited the highest skill of Jones and Wren, by noble halls and

chapels, by museums, by botanical gardens, and by the only great public libraries which the kingdom then

contained. The state which Oxford especially displayed on solemn occasions rivalled that of sovereign

princes. When her Chancellor, the venerable Duke of Ormond, sate in his embroidered mantle on his throne

under the painted ceiling of the Sheldonian theatre, surrounded by hundreds of graduates robed according to

their rank, while the noblest youths of England were solemnly presented to him as candidates for academical

honours, he made an appearance scarcely less regal than that which his master made in the Banqueting House

of Whitehall. At the Universities had been formed the minds of almost all the eminent clergymen, lawyers,

physicians, wits, poets, and orators of the land, and of a large proportion of the nobility and of the opulent

gentry. It is also to be observed that the connection between the scholar and the school did not terminate with

his residence. He often continued to be through life a member of the academical body, and to vote as such at

all important elections. He therefore regarded his old haunts by the Cam and the Isis with even more than the

affection which educated men ordinarily feel for the place of their education. There was no corner of England

in which both Universities had not grateful and zealous sons. Any attack on the honour or interests of either

Cambridge or Oxford was certain to excite the resentment of a powerful, active, and intelligent class scattered

The resident graduates, as a body, were perhaps not superior positively to the resident graduates of our time:

but they occupied a far higher position as compared with the rest of the community. For Cambridge and

Oxford were then the only two provincial towns in the kingdom in which could be found a large number of

men whose understandings had been highly cultivated. Even the capital felt great respect for the authority of

the Universities, not only on questions of divinity, of natural philosophy, and of classical antiquity, but also

on points on which capitals generally claim the right of deciding in the last resort. From Will's coffee house,

and from the pit of the theatre royal in Drury Lane, an appeal lay to the two great national seats of taste and

learning. Plays which had been enthusiastically applauded in London were not thought out of danger till they

had undergone the more severe judgment of audiences familiar with Sophocles and Terence.283

The great moral and intellectual influence of the English Universities had been strenuously exerted on the

side of the crown. The head quarters of Charles the First had been at Oxford; and the silver tankards and

salvers of all the colleges had been melted down to supply his military chest. Cambridge was not less loyally

disposed. She had sent a large part of her plate to the royal camp; and the rest would have followed had not

the town been seized by the troops of the Parliament. Both Universities had been treated with extreme

severity by the victorious Puritans. Both had hailed the restoration with delight. Both had steadily opposed

the Exclusion Bill. Both had expressed the deepest horror at the Rye House Plot. Cambridge had not only

deposed her Chancellor Monmouth, but had marked her abhorrence of his treason in a manner unworthy of a

scat of learning, by committing to the flames the canvass on which his pleasing face and figure had been

portrayed by the utmost skill of Kneller.284 Oxford, which lay nearer to the Western insurgents, had given

still stronger proofs of loyalty. The students, under the sanction of their preceptors, had taken arms by

hundreds in defence of hereditary right. Such were the bodies which James now determined to insult and

Several Acts of Parliament, as clear as any that were to be found in the statute book, had provided that no

person should be admitted to any degree in either University without taking the oath of supremacy, and

another oath of similar character called the oath of obedience. Nevertheless, in February 1687, a royal letter

was sent to Cambridge directing that a Benedictine monk, named Alban Francis, should be admitted a Master

The academical functionaries, divided between reverence for the King and reverence for the law, were in

great distress. Messengers were despatched in all haste to the Duke of Albemarle, who had succeeded

Monmouth as Chancellor of the University. He was requested to represent the matter properly to the King.

Meanwhile the Registrar and Bedells waited on Francis, and informed him that, if he would take the oaths

according to law, he should be instantly admitted. He refused to be sworn, remonstrated with the officers of

the University on their disregard of the royal mandate, and, finding them resolute, took horse, and hastened to

The heads of the colleges now assembled in council. The best legal opinions were taken, and were decidedly

in favour of the course which had been pursued. But a second letter from Sunderland, in high and menacing

terms, was already on the road. Albemarle informed the University, with many expressions of concern, that

he had done his best, but that he had been coldly and ungraciously received by the King. The academical

body, alarmed by the royal displeasure, and conscientiously desirous to meet the royal wishes, but determined

not to violate the clear law of the land, submitted the humblest and most respectful explanations, but to no

purpose. In a short time came down a summons citing the Vicechancellor and the Senate to appear before the

new High Commission at Westminster on the twentyfirst of April. The Vicechancellor was to attend in

person; the Senate, which consists of all the Doctors and Masters of the University, was to send deputies.

When the appointed day arrived, a great concourse filled the Council chamber. Jeffreys sate at the head of the

board. Rochester, since the white staff had been taken from him, was no longer a member. In his stead

appeared the Lord Chamberlain, John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave. The fate of this nobleman has, in one

respect, resembled the fate of his colleague Sprat. Mulgrave wrote verses which scarcely ever rose above

absolute mediocrity: but, as he was a man of high note in the political and fashionable world, these verses

found admirers. Time dissolved the charm, but, unfortunately for him, not until his lines had acquired a

prescriptive right to a place in all collections of the works of English poets. To this day accordingly his

insipid essays in rhyme and his paltry songs to Amoretta and Gloriana are reprinted in company with Comus

and Alexander's Feast. The consequence is that our generation knows Mulgrave chiefly as a poetaster, and

despises him as such. In truth however he was, by the acknowledgment of those who neither loved nor

esteemed him, a man distinguished by fine parts, and in parliamentary eloquence inferior to scarcely any

orator of his time. His moral character was entitled to no respect. He was a libertine without that openness of

heart and hand which sometimes makes libertinism amiable, and a haughty aristocrat without that elevation

of sentiment which sometimes makes aristocratical haughtiness respectable. The satirists of the age

nicknamed him Lord Allpride. Yet was his pride compatible with all ignoble vices. Many wondered that a

man who had so exalted a sense of his dignity could be so hard and niggardly in all pecuniary dealings. He

had given deep offence to the royal family by venturing to entertain the hope that he might win the heart and

hand of the Princess Anne. Disappointed in this attempt, he had exerted himself to regain by meanness the

favour which he had forfeited by presumption. His epitaph, written by himself, still informs all who pass

through Westminster Abbey that he lived and died a sceptic in religion; and we learn from the memoirs

which he wrote that one of his favourite subjects of mirth was the Romish superstition. Yet he began, as soon

as James was on the throne, to express a strong inclination towards Popery, and at length in private affected

to be a convert. This abject hypocrisy had been rewarded by a place in the Ecclesiastical Commission.285

Before that formidable tribunal now appeared the Vicechancellor of the University of Cambridge, Doctor

John Pechell. He was a man of no great ability or vigour, but he was accompanied by eight distinguished

academicians, elected by the Senate. One of these was Isaac Newton, Fellow of Trinity College, and

Professor of mathematics. His genius was then in the fullest vigour. The great work, which entitles him to the

highest place among the geometricians and natural philosophers of all ages and of all nations, had been some

time printing under the sanction of the Royal Society, and was almost ready for publication. He was the

steady friend of civil liberty and of the Protestant religion: but his habits by no means fitted him for the

conflicts of active life. He therefore stood modestly silent among the delegates, and left to men more versed

Never was there a clearer case. The law was express. The practice had been almost invariably in conformity

with the law. It might perhaps have happened that, on a day of great solemnity, when many honorary degrees

were conferred, a person who had not taken the oaths might have passed in the crowd. But such an

irregularity, the effect of mere haste and inadvertence, could not be cited as a precedent. Foreign ambassadors

of various religions, and in particular one Mussulman, had been admitted without the oaths. But it might well

be doubted whether such cases fell within the reason and spirit of the Acts of Parliament. It was not even

pretended that any person to whom the oaths had been tendered and who had refused them had ever taken a

degree; and this was the situation in which Francis stood. The delegates offered to prove that, in the late

reign, several royal mandates had been treated as nullities because the persons recommended had not chosen

to qualify according to law, and that, on such occasions, the government had always acquiesced in the

propriety of the course taken by the University. But Jeffreys would hear nothing. He soon found out that the

Vice chancellor was weak, ignorant, and timid, and therefore gave a loose to all that insolence which had

long been the terror of the Old Bailey. The unfortunate Doctor, unaccustomed to such a presence and to such

treatment, was soon harassed and scared into helpless agitation. When other academicians who were more

capable of defending their cause attempted to speak they were rudely silenced. "You are not Vicechancellor.

When you are, you may talk. Till then it will become you to hold your peace." The defendants were thrust out

of the court without a hearing. In a short time they were called in, again, and informed that the

Commissioners had determined to deprive Pechell of the Vicechancellorship, and to suspend him from all the

emoluments to which he was entitled as Master of a college, emoluments which were strictly of the nature of

freehold property. "As for you," said Jeffreys to the delegates, "most of you are divines. I will therefore send

you home with a text of scripture, 'Go your way and sin no more, lest a worse thing happen to you.'"286

These proceedings might seem sufficiently unjust and violent. But the King had already begun to treat Oxford

with such rigour that the rigour shown towards Cambridge might, by comparison, be called lenity. Already

University College had been turned by Obadiah Walker into a Roman Catholic seminary. Already Christ

Church was governed by a Roman Catholic Dean. Mass was already said daily in both those colleges. The

tranquil and majestic city, so long the stronghold of monarchical principles, was agitated by passions which it

had never before known. The undergraduates, with the connivance of those who were in authority over them,

hooted the members of Walker's congregation, and chanted satirical ditties under his windows. Some

fragments of the serenades which then disturbed the High Street have been preserved. The burden of one

When the actors came down to Oxford, the public feeling was expressed still more strongly. Howard's

Committee was performed. This play, written soon after the Restoration, exhibited the Puritans in an odious

and contemptible light, and had therefore been, during a quarter of a century, a favourite with Oxonian

audiences. It was now a greater favourite than ever; for, by a lucky coincidence, one of the most conspicuous

characters was an old hypocrite named Obadiah. The audience shouted with delight when, in the last scene,

Obadiah was dragged in with a halter round his neck; and the acclamations redoubled when one of the

players, departing from the written text of the comedy, proclaimed that Obadiah should be hanged because he

had changed his religion. The King was much provoked by this insult. So mutinous indeed was the temper of

the University that one of the newly raised regiments, the same which is now called the Second Dragoon

These events ought to have convinced James that he had entered on a course which must lead him to his ruin.

To the clamours of London he had been long accustomed. They had been raised against him, sometimes

unjustly, and sometimes vainly. He had repeatedly braved them, and might brave them still. But that Oxford,

the scat of loyalty, the head quarters of the Cavalier army, the place where his father and brother had held

their court when they thought themselves insecure in their stormy capital, the place where the writings of the

great republican teachers had recently been committed to the flames, should now be in a ferment of

discontent, that those highspirited youths who a few months before had eagerly volunteered to march against

the Western insurgents should now be with difficulty kept down by sword and carbine, these were signs full

of evil omen to the House of Stuart. The warning, however, was lost on the dull, stubborn, selfwilled tyrant.

He was resolved to transfer to his own Church all the wealthiest and most splendid foundations of England. It

was to no purpose that the best and wisest of his Roman Catholic counsellors remonstrated. They represented

to him that he had it in his power to render a great service to the cause of his religion without violating the

rights of property. A grant of two thousand pounds a year from his privy purse would support a Jesuit college

at Oxford. Such a sum he might easily spare. Such a college, provided with able, learned, and zealous

teachers, would be a formidable rival to the old academical institutions, which exhibited but too many

symptoms of the languor almost inseparable from opulence and security. King James's College would soon

be, by the confession even of Protestants, the first place of education in the island, as respected both science

and moral discipline. This would be the most effectual and the least invidious method by which the Church of

England could be humbled and the Church of Rome exalted. The Earl of Ailesbury, one of the most devoted

servants of the royal family, declared that, though a Protestant, and by no means rich, he would himself

contribute a thousand pounds towards this design, rather than that his master should violate the rights of

property, and break faith with the Established Church.288 The scheme, however, found no favour in the sight

of the King. It was indeed ill suited in more ways than one, to his ungentle nature. For to bend and break the

spirits of men gave him pleasure; and to part with his money gave him pain. What he had not the generosity

to do at his own expense he determined to do at the expense of others. When once he was engaged, pride and

obstinacy prevented him from receding; and he was at length led, step by step, to acts of Turkish tyranny, to

acts which impressed the nation with a conviction that the estate of a Protestant English freeholder under a

Roman Catholic King must be as insecure as that of a Greek under Moslem domination.

Magdalene College at Oxford, founded in the fifteenth century by William of Waynflete, Bishop of

Winchester and Lord High Chancellor, was one of the most remarkable of our academical institutions. A

graceful tower, on the summit of which a Latin hymn was annually chanted by choristers at the dawn of May

day, caught far off the eye of the traveller who came from London. As he approached he found that this tower

rose from an embattled pile, low and irregular, yet singularly venerable, which, embowered in verdure,

overhung the slugish waters of the Cherwell. He passed through a gateway overhung by a noble oriel289, and

found himself in a spacious cloister adorned with emblems of virtues and vices, rudely carved in grey stone

by the masons of the fifteenth century. The table of the society was plentifully spread in a stately refectory

hung with paintings, and rich with fantastic carving. The service of the Church was performed morning and

evening in a chapel which had suffered much violence from the Reformers, and much from the Puritans, but

which was, under every disadvantage, a building of eminent beauty, and which has, in our own time, been

restored with rare taste and skill. The spacious gardens along the river side were remarkable for the size of

the trees, among which towered conspicuous one of the vegetable wonders of the island, a gigantic oak, older

The statutes of the society ordained that the Kings of England and Princes of Wales should be lodged in

Magdalene. Edward the Fourth had inhabited the building while it was still unfinished. Richard the Third had

held his court there, had heard disputations in the hall, had feasted there royally, and had mended the cheer of

his hosts by a present of fat bucks from his forests. Two heirs apparent of the crown who had been

prematurely snatched away, Arthur the elder brother of Henry the Eighth, and Henry the elder brother of

Charles the First, had been members of the college. Another prince of the blood, the last and best of the

Roman Catholic Archbishops of Canterbury, the gentle Reginald Pole, had studied there. In the time of the

civil war Magdalene had been true to the cause of the crown. There Rupert had fixed his quarters; and, before

some of his most daring enterprises, his trumpets had been heard sounding to horse through those quiet

cloisters. Most of the Fellows were divines, and could aid the King only by their prayers and their pecuniary

contributions. But one member of the body, a Doctor of Civil Law, raised a troop of undergraduates, and fell

fighting bravely at their head against the soldiers of Essex. When hostilities had terminated, and the

Roundheads were masters of England, six sevenths of the members of the foundation refused to make any

submission to usurped authority. They were consequently ejected from their dwellings and deprived of their

revenues. After the Restoration the survivors returned to their pleasant abode. They had now been succeeded

by a new generation which inherited their opinions and their spirit. During the Western rebellion such

Magdalene men as were not disqualified by their age or profession for the use of arms had eagerly

volunteered to fight for the crown. It would be difficult to name any corporation in the kingdom which had

The society consisted of a President, of forty Fellows, of thirty scholars called Demies, and of a train of

chaplains, clerks, and choristers. At the time of the general visitation in the reign of Henry the Eighth the

revenues were far greater than those of any similar institution in the realm, greater by nearly one half than

those of the magnificent foundation of Henry the Sixth at Cambridge, and considerably more than double

those which William of Wykeham had settled on his college at Oxford. In the days of James the Second the

riches of Magdalene were immense, and were exaggerated by report. The college was popularly said to be

wealthier than the wealthiest abbeys of the Continent. When the leases fell in,so ran the vulgar

rumour,the rents would be raised to the prodigious sum of forty thousand pounds a year.291

The Fellows were, by the statutes which their founder had drawn up, empowered to select their own President

from among persons who were, or had been, Fellows either of their society or of New College. This power

had generally been exercised with freedom. But in some instances royal letters had been received

recommending to the choice of the corporation qualified persons who were in favour at court; and on such

occasions it had been the practice to show respect to the wishes of the sovereign.

In March 1687, the President of the college died. One of the Fellows, Doctor Thomas Smith, popularly

nicknamed Rabbi Smith, a distinguished traveller, bookcollector, antiquary, and orientalist, who had been

chaplain to the embassy at Constantinople, and had been employed to collate the Alexandrian manuscript,

aspired to the vacant post. He conceived that he had some claims on the favour of the government as a man of

learning and as a zealous Tory. His loyalty was in truth as fervent and as steadfast as was to be found in the

whole Church of England. He had long been intimately acquainted with Parker, Bishop of Oxford, and hoped

to obtain by the interest of that prelate a royal letter to the college. Parker promised to do his best, but soon

reported that he had found difficulties. "The King," he said, "will recommend no person who is not a friend to

His Majesty's religion. What can you do to pleasure him as to that matter?" Smith answered that, if he

became President, he would exert himself to promote learning, true Christianity, and loyalty. "That will not

do," said the Bishop. "If so," said Smith manfully, "let who will be President: I can promise nothing more."

The election had been fixed for the thirteenth of April, and the Fellows were summoned to attend. It was

rumoured that a royal letter would come down recommending one Anthony Farmer to the vacant place. This

man's life had been a series of shameful acts. He had been a member of the University of Cambridge, and had

escaped expulsion only by a timely retreat. He had then joined the Dissenters. Then he had gone to Oxford,

had entered himself at Magdalene, and had soon become notorious there for every kind of vice. He generally

reeled into his college at night speechless with liquor. He was celebrated for having headed a disgraceful riot

at Abingdon. He had been a constant frequenter of noted haunts of libertines. At length he had turned pandar,

had exceeded even the ordinary vileness of his vile calling, and had received money from dissolute young

gentlemen commoners for services such as it is not good that history should record. This wretch, however,

had pretended to turn Papist. His apostasy atoned for all his vices; and, though still a youth, he was selected

to rule a grave and religious society in which the scandal given by his depravity was still fresh.

As a Roman Catholic he was disqualified for academical office by the general law of the land. Never having

been a Fellow of Magdalene College or of New College, he was disqualified for the vacant presidency by a

special ordinance of William of Waynflete. William of Waynflete had also enjoined those who partook of his

bounty to have a particular regard to moral character in choosing their head; and, even if he had left no such

injunction, a body chiefly composed of divines could not with decency entrust such a man as Farmer with the

The Fellows respectfully represented to the King the difficulty in which they should be placed, if, as was

rumoured, Farmer should be recommended to them, and begged that, if it were His Majesty's pleasure to

interfere in the election, some person for whom they could legally and conscientiously vote might be

proposed. Of this dutiful request no notice was taken. The royal letter arrived. It was brought down by one of

the Fellows who had lately turned Papist, Robert Charnock, a man of parts and spirit, but of a violent and

restless temper, which impelled him a few years later to an atrocious crime and to a terrible fate. On the

thirteenth of April the society met in the chapel. Some hope was still entertained that the King might be

moved by the remonstrance which had been addressed to him. The assembly therefore adjourned till the

fifteenth, which was the last day on which, by the constitution of the college, the election could take place.

The fifteenth of April came. Again the Fellows repaired to their chapel. No answer had arrived from

Whitehall. Two or three of the Seniors, among whom was Smith, were inclined to postpone the election once

more rather than take a step which might give offence to the King. But the language of the statutes was clear.

Those statutes the members of the foundation had sworn to observe. The general opinion was that there ought

to be no further delay. A hot debate followed. The electors were too much excited to take their seats; and the

whole choir was in a tumult. Those who were for proceeding appealed to their oaths and to the rules laid

down by the founder whose bread they had eaten. The King, they truly said, had no right to force on them

even a qualified candidate. Some expressions unpleasing to Tory ears were dropped in the course of the

dispute; and Smith was provoked into exclaiming that the spirit of Ferguson had possessed his brethren. It

was at length resolved by a great majority that it was necessary to proceed immediately to the election.

Charnock left the chapel. The other Fellows, having first received the sacrament, proceeded to give their

voices. The choice fell on John Hough, a man of eminent virtue and prudence, who, having borne persecution

with fortitude and prosperity with meekness, having risen to high honours and having modestly declined

honours higher still, died in extreme old age yet in full vigour of mind, more than fiftysix years after this

The society hastened to acquaint the King with the circumstances which had made it necessary to elect a

President without further delay, and requested the Duke of Ormond, as patron of the whole University, and

the Bishop of Winchester, as visitor of Magdalene College, to undertake the office of intercessors: but the

Early in June the Fellows were cited to appear before the High Commission at Whitehall. Five of them,

deputed by the rest, obeyed the summons. Jeffreys treated them after his usual fashion. When one of them, a

grave Doctor named Fairfax, hinted some doubt as to the validity of the Commission, the Chancellor began to

roar like a wild beast. "Who is this man? What commission has he to be impudent here? Seize him. Put him

into a dark room. What does he do without a keeper? He is under my care as a lunatic. I wonder that nobody

has applied to me for the custody of him." But when this storm had spent its force, and the depositions

concerning the moral character of the King's nominee had been read, none of the Commissioners had the

front to pronounce that such a man could properly be made the head of a great college. Obadiah Walker and

the other Oxonian Papists who were in attendance to support their proselyte were utterly confounded. The

Commission pronounced Hough's election void, and suspended Fairfax from his fellowship: but about Farmer

no more was said; and, in the month of August, arrived a royal letter recommending Parker, Bishop of

Parker was not an avowed Papist. Still there was an objection to him which, even if the presidency had been

vacant, would have been decisive: for he had never been a Fellow of either New College or Magdalene. But

the presidency was not vacant: Hough had been duly elected; and all the members of the college were bound

by oath to support him in his office. They therefore, with many expressions of loyalty and concern, excused

While Oxford was thus opposing a firm resistance to tyranny, a stand not less resolute was made in another

quarter. James had, some time before, commanded the trustees of the Charterhouse, men of the first rank and

consideration in the kingdom, to admit a Roman Catholic named Popham into the hospital which was under

their care. The Master of the house, Thomas Burnet, a clergyman of distinguished genius, learning, and

virtue, had the courage to represent to them, though the ferocious Jeffreys sate at the board, that what was

required of them was contrary both to the will of the founder and to an Act of Parliament. "What is that to the

purpose?" said a courtier who was one of the governors. "It is very much to the purpose, I think," answered a

voice, feeble with age and sorrow, yet not to be heard without respect by any assembly, the voice of the

venerable Ormond. "An Act of Parliament," continued the patriarch of the Cavalier party, "is, in my

judgment, no light thing." The question was put whether Popham should be admitted, and it was determined

to reject him. The Chancellor, who could not well case himself by cursing and swearing at Ormond, flung

away in a rage, and was followed by some of the minority. The consequence was that there was not a quorum

The next meeting took place only two days after the High Commission had pronounced sentence of

deprivation against Hough, and of suspension against Fairfax. A second mandate under the Great Seal was

laid before the trustees: but the tyrannical manner in which Magdalene College had been treated had roused

instead of subduing their spirit. They drew up a letter to Sunderland in which they requested him to inform

the King that they could not, in this matter, obey His Majesty without breaking the law and betraying their

There can be little doubt that, had ordinary signatures been appended to this document, the King would have

taken some violent course. But even he was daunted by the great names of Ormond, Halifax, Danby, and

Nottingham, the chiefs of all the sections of that great party to which he owed his crown. He therefore

contented himself with directing Jeffreys to consider what course ought to be taken. It was announced at one

time that a proceeding would be instituted in the King's Bench, at another that the Ecclesiastical Commission

The summer was now far advanced; and the King set out on a progress, the longest and the most splendid that

had been known for many years. From Windsor he went on the sixteenth of August to Portsmouth, walked

round the fortifications, touched some scrofulous people, and then proceeded in one of his yachts to

Southampton. From Southampton he travelled to Bath, where he remained a few days, and where he left the

Queen. When he departed, he was attended by the High Sheriff of Somersetshire and by a large body of

gentlemen to the frontier of the county, where the High Sheriff of Gloucestershire, with a not less splendid

retinue, was in attendance. The Duke of Beaufort soon met the royal coaches, and conducted them to

Badminton, where a banquet worthy of the fame which his splendid housekeeping had won for him was

prepared. In the afternoon the cavalcade proceeded to Gloucester. It was greeted two miles from the city by

the Bishop and clergy. At the South Gate the Mayor waited with the keys. The bells rang and the conduits

flowed with wine as the King passed through the streets to the close which encircles the venerable Cathedral.

He lay that night at the deanery, and on the following morning set out for Worcester. From Worcester he

went to Ludlow, Shrewsbury, and Chester, and was everywhere received with outward signs of joy and

respect, which he was weak enough to consider as proofs that the discontent excited by his measures had

subsided, and that an easy Victory was before him. Barillon, more sagacious, informed Lewis that the King of

England was under a delusion that the progress had done no real good, and that those very gentlemen of

Worcestershire and Shropshire who had thought it their duty to receive their Sovereign and their guest with

every mark of honour would be found as refractory as ever when the question of the test should come on.293

On the road the royal train was joined by two courtiers who in temper and opinions differed widely from each

other. Penn was at Chester on a pastoral tour. His popularity and authority among his brethren had greatly

declined since he had become a tool of the King and of the Jesuits.294 He was, however, most graciously

received by James, and, on the Sunday, was permitted to harangue in the tennis court, while Cartwright

preached in the Cathedral, and while the King heard mass at an altar which had been decked in the Shire Hall.

It is said, indeed, that His Majesty deigned to look into the tennis court and to listen with decency to his

The furious Tyrconnel had crossed the sea from Dublin to give an account of his administration. All the most

respectable English Catholics looked coldly on him as on an enemy of their race and a scandal to their

religion. But he was cordially welcomed by his master, and dismissed with assurances of undiminished

confidence and steady support. James expressed his delight at learning that in a short time the whole

government of Ireland would be in Roman Catholic hands. The English colonists had already been stripped of

all political power. Nothing remained but to strip them of their property; and this last outrage was deferred

From Cheshire the King turned southward, and, in the full belief that the Fellows of Magdalene College,

however mutinous they might be, would not dare to disobey a command uttered by his own lips, directed his

course towards Oxford. By the way he made some little excursions to places which peculiarly interested him,

as a King, a brother, and a son. He visited the hospitable roof of Boscobel and the remains of the oak so

conspicuous in the history of his house. He rode over the field of Edgehill, where the Cavaliers first crossed

swords with the soldiers of the Parliament. On the third of September he dined in great state at the palace of

Woodstock, an ancient and renowned mansion, of which not a stone is now to be seen, but of which the site is

still marked on the turf of Blenheim Park by two sycamores which grow near the stately bridge. In the

evening he reached Oxford. He was received there with the wonted honours. The students in their academical

garb were ranged to welcome him on the right hand and on the left, from the entrance of the city to the great

gate of Christ Church. He lodged at the deanery, where, among other accommodations, he found a chapel

fitted up for the celebration of the Mass.297 On the day after his arrival, the Fellows of Magdalene College

were ordered to attend him. When they appeared before him he treated them with an insolence such as had

never been shown to their predecessors by the Puritan visitors. "You have not dealt with me like gentlemen,"

he exclaimed. "You have been unmannerly as well as undutiful." They fell on their knees and tendered a

petition. He would not look at it. "Is this your Church of England loyalty? I could not have believed that so

many clergymen of the Church of England would have been concerned in such a business. Go home. Get you

gone. I am King. I will be obeyed. Go to your chapel this instant; and admit the Bishop of Oxford. Let those

who refuse look to it. They shall feel the whole weight of my hand. They shall know what it is to incur the

displeasure of their Sovereign." The Fellows, still kneeling before him, again offered him their petition. He

angrily flung it down. "Get you gone, I tell you. I will receive nothing from you till you have admitted the

They retired and instantly assembled in their chapel. The question was propounded whether they would

comply with His Majesty's command. Smith was absent. Charnock alone answered in the affirmative. The

other Fellows who were at the meeting declared that in all things lawful they were ready to obey the King,

The King, greatly incensed and mortified by his defeat, quitted Oxford and rejoined the Queen at Bath. His

obstinacy and violence had brought him into an embarrassing position. He had trusted too much to the effect

of his frowns and angry tones, and had rashly staked, not merely the credit of his administration, but his

personal dignity, on the issue of the contest. Could he yield to subjects whom he had menaced with raised

voice and furious gestures? Yet could he venture to eject in one day a crowd of respectable clergymen from

their homes, because they had discharged what the whole nation regarded as a sacred duty? Perhaps there

might be an escape from this dilemma. Perhaps the college might still be terrified, caressed, or bribed into

submission. The agency of Penn was employed. He had too much good feeling to approve of the violent and

unjust proceedings of the government, and even ventured to express part of what he thought. James was, as

usual, obstinate in the wrong. The courtly Quaker, therefore, did his best to seduce the college from the path

of right. He first tried intimidation. Ruin, he said, impended over the society. The King was highly incensed.

The case might be a hard one. Most people thought it so. But every child knew that His Majesty loved to

have his own way and could not bear to be thwarted. Penn, therefore, exhorted the Fellows not to rely on the

goodness of their cause, but to submit, or at least to temporise. Such counsel came strangely from one who

had himself been expelled from the University for raising a riot about the surplice, who had run the risk of

being disinherited rather than take off his hat to the princes of the blood, and who had been more than once

sent to prison for haranguing in conventicles. He did not succeed in frightening the Magdalene men. In

answer to his alarming hints he was reminded that in the last generation thirtyfour out of the forty Fellows

had cheerfully left their beloved cloisters and gardens, their hall and their chapel, and had gone forth not

knowing where they should find a meal or a bed, rather than violate the oath of allegiance. The King now

wished them to violate another oath. He should find that the old spirit was not extinct.

Then Penn tried a gentler tone. He had an interview with Hough and with some of the Fellows, and, after

many professions of sympathy and friendship, began to hint at a compromise. The King could not bear to be

crossed. The college must give way. Parker must be admitted. But he was in very bad health. All his

preferments would soon be vacant. "Doctor Hough," said Penn, "may then be Bishop of Oxford. How should

you like that, gentlemen?" Penn had passed his life in declaiming against a hireling ministry. He held that he

was bound to refuse the payment of tithes, and this even when he had bought land chargeable with tithes, and

hallowed the value of the tithes in the purchase money. According to his own principles, he would have

committed a great sin if he had interfered for the purpose of obtaining a benefice on the most honourable

terms for the most pious divine. Yet to such a degree had his manners been corrupted by evil

communications, and his understanding obscured by inordinate zeal for a single object, that he did not scruple

to become a broker in simony of a peculiarly discreditable kind, and to use a bishopric as a bait to tempt a

divine to perjury. Hough replied with civil contempt that he wanted nothing from the crown but common

justice. "We stand," he said, "on our statutes and our oaths: but, even setting aside our statutes and oaths, we

feel that we have our religion to defend. The Papists have robbed us of University College. They have robbed

us of Christ Church. The fight is now for Magdalene. They will soon have all the rest."

Penn was foolish enough to answer that he really believed that the Papists would now be content.

"University," he said, "is a pleasant college. Christ Church is a noble place. Magdalene is a fine building. The

situation is convenient. The walks by the river are delightful. If the Roman Catholics are reasonable they will

be satisfied with these." This absurd avowal would alone have made it impossible for Hough and his brethren

to yield. The negotiation was broken off; and the King hastened to make the disobedient know, as he had

A special commission was directed to Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, to Wright, Chief justice of the King's

Bench, and to Sir Thomas Jenner, a Baron of the Exchequer, appointing them to exercise visitatorial

jurisdiction over the college. On the twentieth of October they arrived at Oxford, escorted by three troops of

cavalry with drawn swords. On the following morning the Commissioners took their seats in the hall of

Magdalene. Cartwright pronounced a loyal oration which, a few years before, would have called forth the

acclamations of an Oxonian audience, but which was now heard with sullen indignation. A long dispute

followed. The President defended his rights with skill, temper, and resolution. He professed great respect for

the royal authority. But he steadily maintained that he had by the laws of England a freehold interest in the

house and revenues annexed to the presidency. Of that interest he could not be deprived by an arbitrary

mandate of the Sovereign. "Will you submit", said the Bishop, "to our visitation?" "I submit to it," said

Hough with great dexterity, "so far as it is consistent with the laws, and no farther." "Will you deliver up the

key of your lodgings?" said Cartwright. Hough remained silent. The question was repeated; and Hough

returned a mild but resolute refusal. The Commissioners pronounced him an intruder, and charged the

Fellows no longer to recognise his authority, and to assist at the admission of the Bishop of Oxford. Charneck

eagerly promised obedience; Smith returned an evasive answer: but the great body of the members of the

And now Hough himself craved permission to address a few words to the Commissioners. They consented

with much civility, perhaps expecting from the calmness and suavity of his manner that he would make some

concession. "My Lords," said he, "you have this day deprived me of my freehold: I hereby protest against all

your proceedings as illegal, unjust, and null; and I appeal from you to our sovereign Lord the King in his

courts of justice." A loud murmur of applause arose from the gownsmen who filled the hall. The

Commissioners were furious. Search was made for the offenders, but in vain. Then the rage of the whole

board was turned against Hough. "Do not think to huff us, sir," cried Jenner, punning on the President's name.

"I will uphold His Majesty's authority," said Wright, "while I have breath in my body. All this comes of your

popular protest. You have broken the peace. You shall answer it in the King's Bench. I bind you over in one

thousand pounds to appear there next term. I will see whether the civil power cannot manage you. If that is

not enough, you shall have the military too." In truth Oxford was in a state which made the Commissioners

not a little uneasy. The soldiers were ordered to have their carbines loaded. It was said that an express was

sent to London for the purpose of hastening the arrival of more troops. No disturbance however took place.

The Bishop of Oxford was quietly installed by proxy: but only two members of Magdalene College attended

the ceremony. Many signs showed that the spirit of resistance had spread to the common people. The porter

of the college threw down his keys. The butler refused to scratch Hough's name out of the buttery book, and

was instantly dismissed. No blacksmith could be found in the whole city who would force the lock of the

President's lodgings. It was necessary for the Commissioners to employ their own servants, who broke open

the door with iron bars. The sermons which on the following Sunday were preached in the University church

were full of reflections such as stung Cartwright to the quick, though such as he could not discreetly resent.

And here, if James had not been infatuated, the matter might have stopped. The Fellows in general were not

inclined to carry their resistance further. They were of opinion that, by refusing to assist in the admission of

the intruder, they had sufficiently proved their respect for their statutes and oaths, and that, since he was now

in actual possession, they might justifiably submit to him as their head, till he should be removed by sentence

of a competent court. Only one Fellow, Doctor Fairfax, refused to yield even to this extent. The

Commissioners would gladly have compromised the dispute on these terms; and during a few hours there was

a truce which many thought likely to end in an amicable arrangement: but soon all was again in confusion.

The Fellows found that the popular voice loudly accused them of pusillanimity. The townsmen already talked

ironically of a Magdalene conscience, and exclaimed that the brave Hough and the honest Fairfax had been

betrayed and abandoned. Still more annoying were the sneers of Obadiah Walker and his brother renegades.

This then, said those apostates, was the end of all the big words in which the society had declared itself

resolved to stand by its lawful President and by its Protestant faith. While the Fellows, bitterly annoyed by

the public censure, were regretting the modified submission which they had consented to make, they learned

that this submission was by no means satisfactory to the King. It was not enough, he said, that they offered to

obey the Bishop of Oxford as President in fact. They must distinctly admit the Commission and all that had

been done under it to be legal. They must acknowledge that they had acted undutifully; they must declare

themselves penitent; they must promise to behave better in future, must implore His Majesty's pardon, and

lay themselves at his feet. Two Fellows of whom the King had no complaint to make, Charnock and Smith,

Even James never committed a grosser error. The Fellows, already angry with themselves for having

conceded so much, and galled by the censure of the world, eagerly caught at the opportunity which was now

offered them of regaining the public esteem. With one voice they declared that they would never ask pardon

for being in the right, or admit that the visitation of their college and the deprivation of their President had

Then the King, as he had threatened, laid on them the whole weight of his hand. They were by one sweeping

edict condemned to expulsion. Yet this punishment was not deemed sufficient. It was known that many

noblemen and gentlemen who possessed church patronage would be disposed to provide for men who had

suffered so much for the laws of England or men and for the Protestant religion. The High Commission

therefore pronounced the ejected Fellows incapable of ever holding any church preferment. Such of them as

were not yet in holy orders were pronounced incapable of receiving the clerical character. James might enjoy

the thought that he had reduced many of them from a situation in which they were surrounded by comforts,

But all these severities produced an effect directly the opposite of that which he had anticipated. The spirit of

Englishmen, that sturdy spirit which no King of the House of Stuart could ever be taught by experience to

understand, swelled up high and strong against injustice. Oxford, the quiet scat of learning and loyalty, was in

a state resembling that of the City of London on the morning after the attempt of Charles the First to seize the

five members. The Vicechancellor had been asked to dine with the Commissioners on the day of the

expulsion. He refused. "My taste," he said, "differs from that of Colonel Kirke. I cannot eat my meals with

appetite under a gallows." The scholars refused to pull off their caps to the new rulers of Magdalene College.

Smith was nicknamed Doctor Roguery, and was publicly insulted in a coffeehouse. When Charnock

summoned the Demies to perform their academical exercises before him, they answered that they were

deprived of their lawful governors and would submit to no usurped authority. They assembled apart both for

study and for divine service. Attempts were made to corrupt them by offers of the lucrative fellowships which

had just been declared vacant: but one undergraduate after another manfully answered that his conscience

would not suffer him to profit by injustice. One lad who was induced to take a fellowship was turned out of

the hall by the rest. Youths were invited from other colleges, but with small success. The richest foundation

in the kingdom seemed to have lost all attractions for needy students. Meanwhile, in London and all over the

country, money was collected for the support of the ejected Fellows. The Princess of Orange, to the great joy

of all Protestants, subscribed two hundred pounds. Still, however, the King held on his course. The expulsion

of the Fellows was soon followed by the expulsion of a crowd of Demies. All this time the new President was

fast sinking under bodily and mental disease. He had made a last feeble effort to serve the government by

publishing, at the very time when the college was in a state of open rebellion against his authority, a defence

of the Declaration of Indulgence, or rather a defence of the doctrine of transubstantiation. This piece called

forth many answers, and particularly one from Burnet, written with extraordinary vigour and acrimony. A

few weeks after the expulsion of the Demies, Parker died in the house of which he had violently taken

possession. Men said that his heart was broken by remorse and shame. He lies in the beautiful antechapel of

Then the King's whole plan was carried into full effect. The college was turned into a Popish seminary.

Bonaventure Giffard, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Madura, was appointed President. The Roman Catholic

service was performed in the chapel. In one day twelve Roman Catholics were admitted Fellows. Some

servile Protestants applied for fellowships, but met with refusals. Smith, an enthusiast in loyalty, but still a

sincere member of the Anglican Church, could not bear to see the altered aspect of the house. He absented

himself; he was ordered to return into residence: he disobeyed: he was expelled; and the work of spoliation

The nature of the academical system of England is such that no event which seriously affects the interests and

honour of either University can fail to excite a strong feeling throughout the country. Every successive blow,

therefore, which fell on Magdalene College, was felt to the extremities of the kingdom. In the coffeehouses of

London, in the Inns of Court, in the closes of all the Cathedral towns, in parsonages and manor houses

scattered over the remotest shires, pity for the sufferers and indignation against the government went on

growing. The protest of Hough was everywhere applauded: the forcing of his door was everywhere

mentioned with abhorrence: and at length the sentence of deprivation fulminated against the Fellows

dissolved those ties, once so close and dear, which had bound the Church of England to the House of Stuart.

Bitter resentment and cruel apprehension took the place of love and confidence. There was no prebendary, no

rector, no vicar, whose mind was not haunted by the thought that, however quiet his temper, however obscure

his situation, he might, in a few months, be driven from his dwelling by an arbitrary edict to beg in a ragged

cassock with his wife and children, while his freehold, secured to him by laws of immemorial antiquity and

by the royal word, was occupied by some apostate. This then was the reward of that heroic loyalty never once

found wanting through the vicissitudes of fifty tempestuous years. It was for this that the clergy had endured

spoliation and persecution in the cause of Charles the First. It was for this that they had supported Charles the

Second in his hard contest with the Whig opposition. It was for this that they had stood in the front of the

battle against those who sought to despoil James of his birthright. To their fidelity alone their oppressor owed

the power which he was now employing to their ruin. They had long been in the habit of recounting in

acrimonious language all that they had suffered at the hand of the Puritan in the day of his power. Yet for the

Puritan there was some excuse. He was an avowed enemy: he had wrongs to avenge; and even he, while

remodelling the ecclesiastical constitution of the country, and ejecting all who would not subscribe his

Covenant, had not been altogether without compassion. He had at least granted to those whose benefices he

seized a pittance sufficient to support life. But the hatred felt by the King towards that Church which had

saved him from exile and placed him on a throne was not to be so easily satiated. Nothing but the utter ruin of

his victims would content him. It was not enough that they were expelled from their homes and stripped of

their revenues. They found every walk of life towards which men of their habits could look for a subsistence

closed against them with malignant care, and nothing left to them but the precarious and degrading resource

The Anglican clergy therefore, and that portion of the laity which was strongly attached to Protestant

episcopacy, now regarded the King with those feelings which injustice aggravated by ingratitude naturally

excites. Yet had the Churchman still many scruples of conscience and honour to surmount before he could

bring himself to oppose the government by force. He had been taught that passive obedience was enjoined

without restriction or exception by the divine law. He had professed this opinion ostentatiously. He had

treated with contempt the suggestion that an extreme case might possibly arise which would justify a people

in drawing the sword against regal tyranny. Both principle and shame therefore restrained him from imitating

the example of the rebellious Roundheads, while any hope of a peaceful and legal deliverance remained; and

such a hope might reasonably be cherished as long as the Princess of Orange stood next in succession to the

crown. If he would but endure with patience this trial of his faith, the laws of nature would soon do for him

what he could not, without sin and dishonour, do for himself. The wrongs of the Church would be redressed,

her property and dignity would be fenced by new guarantees; and those wicked ministers who had injured

The event to which the Church of England looked forward as to an honourable and peaceful termination of

her troubles was one of which even the most reckless members of the Jesuitical cabal could not think without

painful apprehensions. If their master should die, leaving them no better security against the penal laws than a

Declaration which the general voice of the nation pronounced to be a nullity, if a Parliament, animated by the

same spirit which had prevailed in the Parliament of Charles the Second, should assemble round the throne of

a Protestant sovereign, was it not probable that a terrible retribution would be exacted, that the old laws

against Popery would be rigidly enforced, and that new laws still more severe would be added to the statute

book? The evil counsellors had long been tormented by these gloomy apprehensions, and some of them had

contemplated strange and desperate remedies. James had scarcely mounted the throne when it began to be

whispered about Whitehall that, if the Lady Anne would turn Roman Catholic, it might not be impossible,

with the help of Lewis, to transfer to her the birthright of her elder sister. At the French embassy this scheme

was warmly approved; and Bonrepaux gave it as his opinion that the assent of James would be easily

obtained.299 Soon, however, it became manifest that Anne was unalterably attached to the Established

Church. All thought of making her Queen was therefore relinquished. Nevertheless, a small knot of fanatics

still continued to cherish a wild hope that they might be able to change the order of succession. The plan

formed by these men was set forth in a minute of which a rude French translation has been preserved. It was

to be hoped, they said, that the King might be able to establish the true faith without resorting to extremities;

but, in the worst event, he might leave his crown at the disposal of Lewis. It was better for Englishmen to be

the vassals of France than the slaves of the Devil.300 This extraordinary document was handed about from

Jesuit to Jesuit, and from courtier to courtier, till some eminent Roman Catholics, in whom bigotry had not

extinguished patriotism, furnished the Dutch Ambassador with a copy. He put the paper into the hands of

James. James, greatly agitated, pronounced it a vile forgery contrived by some pamphleteer in Holland. The

Dutch minister resolutely answered that he could prove the contrary by the testimony of several distinguished

members of His Majesty's own Church, nay, that there would be no difficulty in pointing out the writer, who,

after all, had written only what many priests and many busy politicians said every day in the galleries of the

palace. The King did not think it expedient to ask who the writer was, but, abandoning the charge of forgery,

protested, with great vehemence and solemnity, that no thought of disinheriting his eldest daughter had ever

crossed his mind. "Nobody," he said, "ever dared to hint such a thing to me. I never would listen to it. God

does not command us to propagate the true religion by injustice and this would be the foulest, the most

unnatural injustice."301 Notwithstanding all these professions, Barillon, a few days later, reported to his court

that James had begun to listen to suggestions respecting a change in the order of succession, that the question

was doubtless a delicate one, but that there was reason to hope that, with time and management, a way might

be found to settle the crown on some Roman Catholic to the exclusion of the two Princesses.302 During

many months this subject continued to be discussed by the fiercest and most extravagant Papists about the

It is not probable however that James ever meant to take a course so insane. He must have known that

England would never bear for a single day the yoke of an usurper who was also a Papist, and that any attempt

to set aside the Lady Mary would have been withstood to the death, both by all those who had supported the

Exclusion Bill, and by all those who had opposed it. There is however no doubt that the King was an

accomplice in a plot less absurd, but not less unjustifiable, against the rights of his children. Tyrconnel had,

with his master's approbation, made arrangements for separating Ireland from the empire, and for placing her

under the protection of Lewis, as soon as the crown should devolve on a Protestant sovereign. Bonrepaux had

been consulted, had imparted the design to his court, and had been instructed to assure Tyrconnel that France

would lend effectual aid to the accomplishment of this great project.304 These transactions, which, though

perhaps not in all parts accurately known at the Hague, were strongly suspected there, must not be left out of

the account if we would pass a just judgment on the course taken a few months later by the Princess of

Orange. Those who pronounce her guilty of a breach of filial duty must admit that her fault was at least

greatly extenuated by her wrongs. If, to serve the cause of her religion, she broke through the most sacred ties

of consanguinity, she only followed her father's example. She did not assist to depose him till he had

Scarcely had Bonrepaux been informed that Lewis had resolved to assist the enterprise of Tyrconnel when all

thoughts of that enterprise were abandoned. James had caught the first glimpse of a hope which delighted and

Before the end of October 1687 the great news began to be whispered. It was observed that Her Majesty had

absented herself from some public ceremonies, on the plea of indisposition. It was said that many relics,

supposed to possess extraordinary virtue, had been hung about her. Soon the story made its way from the

palace to the coffeehouses of the capital, and spread fast over the country. By a very small minority the

rumour was welcomed with joy. The great body of the nation listened with mingled derision and fear. There

The King had but just completed his fiftyfourth year. The Queen was in the summer of life. She had already

borne four children who had died young; and long afterwards she was delivered of another child whom

nobody had any interest in treating as supposititious, and who was therefore never said to be so. As, however,

five years had elapsed since her last pregnancy, the people, under the influence of that delusion which leads

men to believe what they wish, had ceased to entertain any apprehension that she would give an heir to the

throne. On the other hand, nothing seemed more natural and probable than that the Jesuits should have

contrived a pious fraud. It was certain that they must consider the accession of the Princess of Orange as one

of the greatest calamities which could befall their Church. It was equally certain that they would not be very

scrupulous about doing whatever might be necessary to save their Church from a great calamity. In books

written by eminent members of the Society, and licensed by its rulers, it was distinctly laid down that means

even more shocking to all notions of justice and humanity than the introduction of a spurious heir into a

family might lawfully be employed for ends less important than the conversion of a heretical kingdom. It had

got abroad that some of the King's advisers, and even the King himself, had meditated schemes for

defrauding the Lady Mary, either wholly or in part, of her rightful inheritance. A suspicion, not indeed well

founded, but by no means so absurd as is commonly supposed, took possession of the public mind. The folly

of some Roman Catholics confirmed the vulgar prejudice. They spoke of the auspicious event as strange, as

miraculous, as an exertion of the same Divine power which had made Sarah proud and happy in Isaac, and

had given Samuel to the prayers of Hannah. Mary's mother, the Duchess of Modena, had lately died. A short

time before her death, she had, it was said, implored the Virgin of Loretto, with fervent vows and rich

offerings, to bestow a son on James. The King himself had, in the preceding August, turned aside from his

progress to visit the Holy Well, and had there besought Saint Winifred to obtain for him that boon without

which his great designs for the propagation of the true faith could be but imperfectly executed. The imprudent

zealots who dwelt on these tales foretold with confidence that the unborn infant would be a boy, and offered

to back their opinion by laying twenty guineas to one. Heaven, they affirmed, would not have interfered but

for a great end. One fanatic announced that the Queen would give birth to twins, of whom the elder would be

King of England, and the younger Pope of Rome. Mary could not conceal the delight with which she heard

this prophecy; and her ladies found that they could not gratify her more than by talking of it. The Roman

Catholics would have acted more wisely if they had spoken of the pregnancy as of a natural event, and if they

had borne with moderation their unexpected good fortune. Their insolent triumph excited the popular

indignation. Their predictions strengthened the popular suspicions. From the Prince and Princess of Denmark

down to porters and laundresses nobody alluded to the promised birth without a sneer. The wits of London

described the new miracle in rhymes which, it may well be supposed, were not the most delicate. The rough

country squires roared with laughter if they met with any person simple enough to believe that the Queen was

really likely to be again a mother. A royal proclamation appeared commanding the clergy to read a form of

prayer and thanksgiving which had been prepared for this joyful occasion by Crewe and Sprat. The clergy

obeyed: but it was observed that the congregations made no responses and showed no signs of reverence.

Soon in all the coffeehouses was handed about a brutal lampoon on the courtly prelates whose pens the King

had employed. Mother East had also her full share of abuse. Into that homely monosyllable our ancestors had

The new hope which elated the King's spirits was mingled with many fears. Something more than the birth of

a Prince of Wales was necessary to the success of the plans formed by the Jesuitical party. It was not very

likely that James would live till his son should be of age to exercise the regal functions. The law had made no

provision for the case of a minority. The reigning sovereign was not competent to make provision for such a

case by will. The legislature only could supply the defect. If James should die before the defect had been

supplied, leaving a successor of tender years, the supreme power would undoubtedly devolve on Protestants.

Those Tories who held most firmly the doctrine that nothing could justify them in resisting their liege lord

would have no scruple about drawing their swords against a Popish woman who should dare to usurp the

guardianship of the realm and of the infant sovereign. The result of a contest could scarcely be matter of

doubt. The Prince of Orange or his wife, would be Regent. The young King would be placed in the hands of

heretical instructors, whose arts might speedily efface from his mind the impressions which might have been

made on it in the nursery. He might prove another Edward the Sixth; and the blessing granted to the

intercession of the Virgin Mother and of Saint Winifred might be turned into a curse.306 This was a danger

against which nothing but, an Act of Parliament could be a security; and to obtain such an Act was not easy.

Everything seemed to indicate that, if the Houses were convoked, they would come up to Westminster

animated by the spirit of 1640. The event of the county elections could hardly be doubted. The whole body of

freeholders, high and low, clerical and lay, was strongly excited against the government. In the great majority

of those towns where the right of voting depended on the payment of local taxes, or on the occupation of a

tenement, no courtly candidate could dare to show his face. A very large part of the House of Commons was

returned by members of municipal corporations. These corporations had recently been remodelled for the

purpose of destroying the influence of the Whigs and Dissenters. More than a hundred constituent bodies had

been deprived of their charters by tribunals devoted to the crown, or had been induced to avert compulsory

disfranchisement by voluntary surrender. Every Mayor, every Alderman, every Town Clerk, from Berwick to

Helstone, was a Tory and a Churchman: but Tories and Churchmen were now no longer devoted to the

sovereign. The new municipalities were more unmanageable than the old municipalities had ever been, and

would undoubtedly return representatives whose first act would be to impeach all the Popish Privy

In the Lords the prospect was scarcely less gloomy than in the Commons. Among the temporal peers it was

certain that an immense majority would be against the King's measures: and on that episcopal bench, which

seven years before had unanimously supported him against those who had attempted to deprive him of his

birthright, he could now look for support only to four or five sycophants despised by their profession and by

To all men not utterly blinded by passion these difficulties appeared insuperable. The most unscrupulous

slaves of power showed signs of uneasiness. Dryden muttered that the King would only make matters worse

by trying to mend them, and sighed for the golden days of the careless and goodnatured Charles.308 Even

Jeffreys wavered. As long as he was poor, he was perfectly ready to face obloquy and public hatred for lucre.

But he had now, by corruption and extortion, accumulated great riches; and he was more anxious to secure

them than to increase them. His slackness drew on him a sharp reprimand from the royal lips. In dread of

being deprived of the Great Seal, he promised whatever was required of him: but Barillon, in reporting this

circumstance to Lewis, remarked that the King of England could place little reliance on any man who had any

Nevertheless James determined to persevere. The sanction of a Parliament was necessary to his system. The

sanction of a free and lawful Parliament it was evidently impossible to obtain: but it might not be altogether

impossible to bring together by corruption, by intimidation, by violent exertions of prerogative, by fraudulent

distortions of law, an assembly which might call itself a Parliament, and might be willing to register any edict

of the Sovereign. Returning officers must be appointed who would avail themselves of the slightest pretence

to declare the King's friends duly elected. Every placeman, from the highest to the lowest, must be made to

understand that, if he wished to retain his office, he must, at this conjuncture, support the throne by his vote

and interest. The High Commission meanwhile would keep its eye on the clergy. The boroughs, which had

just been remodelled to serve one turn, might be remodelled again to serve another. By such means the King

hoped to obtain a majority in the House of Commons. The Upper House would then be at his mercy. He had

undoubtedly by law the power of creating peers without limit: and this power he was fully determined to use.

He did not wish, and indeed no sovereign can wish, to make the highest honour which is in the gift of the

crown worthless. He cherished the hope that, by calling up some heirs apparent to the assembly in which they

must ultimately sit, and by conferring English titles on some Scotch and Irish Lords, he might be able to

secure a majority without ennobling new men in such numbers as to bring ridicule on the coronet and the

ermine. But there was no extremity to which he was not prepared to go in case of necessity. When in a large

company an opinion was expressed that the peers would prove intractable, "Oh, silly," cried Sunderland,

turning to Churchill, "your troop of guards shall be called up to the House of Lords."310

Having determined to pack a Parliament, James set himself energetically and methodically to the work. A

proclamation appeared in the Gazette, announcing that the King had determined to revise the Commissions of

Peace and of Lieutenancy, and to retain in public employment only such gentlemen as should be disposed to

support his policy.311 A committee of seven Privy Councillors sate at Whitehall, for the purpose of

regulatingsuch was the phrasethe municipal corporations. In this committee Jeffreys alone represented

the Protestant interest. Powis alone represented the moderate Roman Catholics. All the other members

belonged to the Jesuitical faction. Among them was Petre, who had just been sworn of the Council. Till he

took his seat at the board, his elevation had been kept a profound secret from everybody but Sunderland. The

public indignation at this new violation of the law was clamorously expressed; and it was remarked that the

Roman Catholics were even louder in censure than the Protestants. The vain and ambitious Jesuit was now

charged with the business of destroying and reconstructing half the constituent bodies in the kingdom. Under

the committee of Privy Councillors a subcommittee consisting of bustling agents less eminent in rank was

entrusted with the management of details. Local subcommittees of regulators all over the country

The persons on whom James chiefly relied for assistance in his new and arduous enterprise were the Lords

Lieutenants. Every Lord Lieutenant received written orders directing him to go down immediately into his

county. There he was to summon before him all his deputies, and all the justices of the Peace, and to put to

them a series of interrogatories framed for the purpose of ascertaining how they would act at a general

election. He was to take down the answers in writing, and to transmit them to the government. He was to

furnish a list of such Roman Catholics, and such Protestant Dissenters, as might be best qualified for the

bench and for commands in the militia. He was also to examine into the state of all the boroughs in his

county, and to make such reports as might be necessary to guide the operations of the board of regulators. It

was intimated to him that he must himself perform these duties, and that he could not be permitted to delegate

The first effect produced by these orders would have at once sobered a prince less infatuated than James. Half

the Lords Lieutenants of England peremptorily refused to stoop to the odious service which was required of

them. They were immediately dismissed. All those who incurred this glorious disgrace were peers of high

consideration; and all had hitherto been regarded as firm supporters of monarchy. Some names in the list

The noblest subject in England, and indeed, as Englishmen loved to say, the noblest subject in Europe, was

Aubrey de Vere, twentieth and last of the old Earls of Oxford. He derived his title through an uninterrupted

male descent from a time when the families of Howard and Seymour were still obscure, when the Nevilles

and Percies enjoyed only a provincial celebrity, and when even the great name of Plantagenet had not yet

been heard in England. One chief of the house of De Vere had held high command at Hastings: another had

marched, with Godfrey and Tancred, over heaps of slaughtered Moslem, to the sepulchre of Christ. The first

Earl of Oxford had been minister of Henry Beauclerc. The third Earl had been conspicuous among the Lords

who extorted the Great Charter from John. The seventh Earl had fought bravely at Cressy and Pointiers. The

thirteenth Earl had, through many vicissitudes of fortune, been the chief of the party of the Red Rose, and had

led the van on the decisive day of Bosworth. The seventeenth Earl had shone at the court of Elizabeth, and

had won for himself an honourable place among the early masters of English poetry. The nineteenth Earl had

fallen in arms for the Protestant religion and for the liberties of Europe under the walls of Maastricht. His son

Aubrey, in whom closed the longest and most illustrious line of nobles that England has seen, a man of loose

morals, but of inoffensive temper and of courtly manners, was Lord Lieutenant of Essex, and Colonel of the

Blues. His nature was not factious; and his interest inclined him to avoid a rupture with the court; for his

estate was encumbered, and his military command lucrative. He was summoned to the royal closet; and an

explicit declaration of his intentions was demanded from him. "Sir," answered Oxford, "I will stand by your

Majesty against all enemies to the last drop of my blood. But this is matter of conscience, and I cannot

Inferior in antiquity and splendour to the house of De Vere, but to the house of De Vere alone, was the house

of Talbot. Ever since the reign of Edward the Third, the Talbots had sate among the peers of the realm. The

earldom of Shrewsbury had been bestowed, in the fifteenth century, on John Talbot, the antagonist of the

Maid of Orleans. He had been long remembered by his countrymen with tenderness and reverence as one of

the most illustrious of those warriors who had striven to erect a great English empire on the Continent of

Europe. The stubborn courage which he had shown in the midst of disasters had made him an object of

interest greater than more fortunate captains had inspired, and his death had furnished a singularly touching

scene to our early stage. His posterity had, during two centuries, flourished in great honour. The head of the

family at the time of the Restoration was Francis, the eleventh Earl, a Roman Catholic. His death had been

attended by circumstances such as, even in those licentious times which immediately followed the downfall

of the Puritan tyranny, had moved men to horror and pity. The Duke of Buckingham in the course of his

vagrant amours was for a moment attracted by the Countess of Shrewsbury. She was easily won. Her lord

challenged the gallant, and fell. Some said that the abandoned woman witnessed the combat in man's attire,

and others that she clasped her victorious lover to her bosom while his shirt was still dripping with the blood

of her husband. The honours of the murdered man descended to his infant son Charles. As the orphan grew

up to man's estate, it was generally acknowledged that of the young nobility of England none had been so

richly gifted by nature. His person was pleasing, his temper singularly sweet, his parts such as, if he had been

born in a humble rank, might well have raised him to the height of civil greatness. All these advantages he

had so improved that, before he was of age, he was allowed to be one of the finest gentlemen and finest

scholars of his time. His learning is proved by notes which are still extant in his handwriting on books in

almost every department of literature. He spoke French like a gentleman of Lewis's bedchamber, and Italian

like a citizen of Florence. It was impossible that a youth of such parts should not be anxious to understand the

grounds on which his family had refused to conform to the religion of the state. He studied the disputed

points closely, submitted his doubts to priests of his own faith, laid their answers before Tillotson, weighed

the arguments on both sides long and attentively, and, after an investigation which occupied two years,

declared himself a Protestant. The Church of England welcomed the illustrious convert with delight. His

popularity was great, and became greater when it was known that royal solicitations and promises had been

vainly employed to seduce him back to the superstition which he had abjured. The character of the young

Earl did not however develop itself in a manner quite satisfactory to those who had borne the chief part in his

conversion. His morals by no means escaped the contagion of fashionable libertinism. In truth the shock

which had overturned his early prejudices had at the same time unfixed all his opinions, and left him to the

unchecked guidance of his feelings. But, though his principles were unsteady, his impulses were so generous,

his temper so bland, his manners so gracious and easy, that it was impossible not to love him. He was early

called the King of Hearts, and never, through a long, eventful, and chequered life, lost his right to that

name.315 Shrewsbury was Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire and Colonel of one of the regiments of horse

which had been raised in consequence of the Western insurrection. He now refused to act under the board of

None of the English nobles enjoyed a larger measure of public favour than Charles Sackville Earl of Dorset.

He was indeed a remarkable man. In his youth he had been one of the most notorious libertines of the wild

time which followed the Restoration. He had been the terror of the City watch, had passed many nights in the

round house, and had at least once occupied a cell in Newgate. His passion for Betty Morrice, and for Nell

Gwynn, who called him her Charles the First, had given no small amusement and scandal to the town.316

Yet, in the midst of follies and vices, his courageous spirit, his fine understanding, and his natural goodness

of heart, had been conspicuous. Men said that the excesses in which he indulged were common between him

and the whole race of gay young Cavaliers, but that his sympathy with human suffering and the generosity

with which he made reparation to those whom his freaks had injured were all his own. His associates were

astonished by the distinction which the public made between him and them. "He may do what he chooses,"

said Wilmot; "he is never in the wrong." The judgment of the world became still more favourable to Dorset

when he had been sobered by time and marriage. His graceful manners, his brilliant conversation, his soft

heart, his open hand, were universally praised. No day passed, it was said, in which some distressed family

had not reason to bless his name. And yet, with all his goodnature, such was the keenness of his wit that

scoffers whose sarcasm all the town feared stood in craven fear of the sarcasm of Dorset. All political parties

esteemed and caressed him; but politics were not much to his taste. Had he been driven by necessity to exert

himself, he would probably have risen to the highest posts in the state; but he was born to rank so high and

wealth so ample that many of the motives which impel men to engage in public affairs were wanting to him.

He took just so much part in parliamentary and diplomatic business as sufficed to show that he wanted

nothing but inclination to rival Danby and Sunderland, and turned away to pursuits which pleased him better.

Like many other men who, with great natural abilities, are constitutionally and habitually indolent, he became

an intellectual voluptuary, and a master of all those pleasing branches of knowledge which can be acquired

without severe application. He was allowed to be the best judge of painting, of sculpture, of architecture, of

acting, that the court could show. On questions of polite learning his decisions were regarded at all the

coffeehouses as without appeal. More than one clever play which had failed on the first representation was

supported by his single authority against the whole clamour of the pit, and came forth successful from the

second trial. The delicacy of his taste in French composition was extolled by Saint Evremond and La

Fontaine. Such a patron of letters England had never seen. His bounty was bestowed with equal judgment and

liberality, and was confined to no sect or faction. Men of genius, estranged from each other by literary

jealousy or by difference of political opinion, joined in acknowledging his impartial kindness. Dryden owned

that he had been saved from ruin by Dorset's princely generosity. Yet Montague and Prior, who had keenly

satirised Dryden, were introduced by Dorset into public life; and the best comedy of Dryden's mortal enemy,

Shadwell, was written at Dorset's country seat. The munificent Earl might, if such had been his wish, have

been the rival of those of whom he was content to be the benefactor. For the verses which he occasionally

composed, unstudied as they are, exhibit the traces of a genius which, assiduously cultivated, would have

produced something great. In the small volume of his works may be found songs which have the easy vigour

of Suckling, and little satires which sparkle with wit as splendid as that of Butler.317

Dorset was Lord Lieutenant of Sussex: and to Sussex the board of regulators looked with great anxiety: for in

no other county, Cornwall and Wiltshire excepted, were there so many small boroughs. He was ordered to

repair to his post. No person who knew him expected that he would obey. He gave such an answer as became

him, and was informed that his services were no longer needed. The interest which his many noble and

amiable qualities inspired was heightened when it was known that he had received by the post an anonymous

billet telling him that, if he did not promptly comply with the King's wishes, all his wit and popularity should

not save him from assassination. A similar warning was sent to Shrewsbury. Threatening letters were then

much more rare than they afterwards became. It is therefore not strange that the people, excited as they were,

should have been disposed to believe that the best and noblest Englishmen were really marked out for Popish

daggers.318 Just when these letters were the talk of all London, the mutilated corpse of a noted Puritan was

found in the streets. It was soon discovered that the murderer had acted from no religious or political motive.

But the first suspicions of the populace fell on the Papists. The mangled remains were carried in procession to

the house of the Jesuits in the Savoy; and during a few hours the fear and rage of the populace were scarcely

The other dismissions must be more concisely related. The Duke of Somerset, whose regiment had been

taken from him some months before, was now turned out of the lord lieutenancy of the East Riding of

Yorkshire. The North Riding was taken from Viscount Fauconberg, Shropshire from Viscount Newport, and

Lancashire from the Earl of Derby, grandson of that gallant Cavalier who had faced death so bravely, both on

the field of battle and on the scaffold, for the House of Stuart. The Earl of Pembroke, who had recently served

the crown with fidelity and spirit against Monmouth, was displaced in Wiltshire, the Earl of Husband in

Leicestershire, the Earl of Bridgewater in Buckinghamshire, the Earl of Thanet in Cumberland, the Earl of

Northampton in Warwickshire, the Earl of Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and the Earl of Scarsdale in Derbyshire.

Scarsdale was also deprived of a regiment of cavalry, and of an office in the household of the Princess of

Denmark. She made a struggle to retain his services, and yielded only to a peremptory command of her

father. The Earl of Gainsborough was rejected, not only from the lieutenancy of Hampshire, but also from the

government of Portsmouth and the rangership of the New Forest, two places for which he had, only a few

The King could not find Lords of great note, or indeed Protestant Lords of any sort, who would accept the

vacant offices. It was necessary to assign two shires to Jeffreys, a new man whose landed property was small,

and two to Preston who was not even an English peer. The other counties which had been left without

governors were entrusted, with scarcely an exception, to known Roman Catholics, or to courtiers who had

secretly promised the King to declare themselves Roman Catholics as soon as they could do so with

At length the new machinery was put in action; and soon from every corner of the realm arrived the news of

complete and hopeless failure. The catechism by which the Lords Lieutenants had been directed to test the

sentiments of the country gentlemen consisted of three questions. Every magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant

was to be asked, first, whether, if he should be chosen to serve in Parliament, he would vote for a bill framed

on the principles of the Declaration of Indulgence; secondly, whether, as an elector, he would support

candidates who would engage to vote for such a bill and, thirdly, whether, in his private capacity, he would

aid the King's benevolent designs by living in friendship with people of all religious persuasions.321

As soon as the questions got abroad, a form of answer, drawn up with admirable skill, was circulated all over

the kingdom, and was generally adopted. It was to the following effect: "As a member of the House of

Commons, should I have the honour of a seat there, I shall think it my duty carefully to weigh such reasons as

may be adduced in debate for and against a Bill of Indulgence, and then to vote according to my

conscientious conviction. As an elector, I shall give my support to candidates whose notions of the duty of a

representative agree with my own. As a private man, it is my wish to live in peace and charity with every

body." This answer, far more provoking than a direct refusal, because slightly tinged with a sober and

decorous irony which could not well be resented, was all that the emissaries of the court could extract from

most of the country gentlemen. Arguments, promises, threats, were tried in vain. The Duke of Norfolk,

though a Protestant, and though dissatisfied with the proceedings of the government, had consented to

become its agent in two counties. He went first to Surrey, where he soon found that nothing could be

done.322 He then repaired to Norfolk, and returned to inform the King that, of seventy gentlemen of note

who bore office in that great province, only six had held out hopes that they should support the policy of the

court.323 The Duke of Beaufort, whose authority extended over four English shires and over the whole

principality of Wales, came up to Whitehall with an account not less discouraging.324 Rochester was Lord

Lieutenant of Hertfordshire. All his little stock of virtue had been expended in his struggle against the strong

temptation to sell his religion for lucre. He was still bound to the court by a pension of four thousand pounds

a year; and in return for this pension he was willing to perform any service, however illegal or degrading,

provided only that he were not required to go through the forms of a reconciliation with Rome. He had

readily undertaken to manage his county; and he exerted himself, as usual, with indiscreet heat and violence.

But his anger was thrown away on the sturdy squires to whom he addressed himself. They told him with one

voice that they would send up no man to Parliament who would vote for taking away the safeguards of the

Protestant religion.325 The same answer was given to the Chancellor in Buckinghamshire.326 The gentry of

Shropshire, assembled at Ludlow, unanimously refused to fetter themselves by the pledge which the King

demanded of them.327 The Earl of Yarmouth reported from Wiltshire that, of sixty magistrates and Deputy

Lieutenants with whom he had conferred, only seven had given favourable answers, and that even those

seven could not be trusted.328 The renegade Peterborough made no progress in Northamptonshire.329 His

brother renegade Dover was equally unsuccessful in Cambridgeshire.330 Preston brought cold news from

Cumberland and Westmoreland. Dorsetshire and Huntingdonshire were animated by the same spirit. The Earl

of Bath, after a long canvass, returned from the West with gloomy tidings. He had been authorised to make

the most tempting offers to the inhabitants of that region. In particular he had promised that, if proper respect

were shown to the royal wishes, the trade in tin should be freed from the oppressive restrictions under which

it lay. But this lure, which at another time would have proved irresistible, was now slighted. All the justices

and Deputy Lieutenants of Devonshire and Cornwall, without a single dissenting voice, declared that they

would put life and property in jeopardy for the King, but that the Protestant religion was dearer to them than

either life or property. "And, sir," said Bath, "if your Majesty should dismiss all these gentlemen, their

successors would give exactly the same answer."331 If there was any district in which the government might

have hoped for success, that district was Lancashire. Considerable doubts had been felt as to the result of

what was passing there. In no part of the realm had so many opulent and honourable families adhered to the

old religion. The heads of many of those families had already, by virtue of the dispensing power, been made

justices of the Peace and entrusted with commands in the militia. Yet from Lancashire the new Lord

Lieutenant, himself a Roman Catholic, reported that two thirds of his deputies and of the magistrates were

opposed to the court.332 But the proceedings in Hampshire wounded the King's pride still more deeply.

Arabella Churchill had, more than twenty years before, borne him a son, widely renowned, at a later period,

as one of the most skilful captains of Europe. The youth, named James Fitzjames, had as yet given no

promise of the eminence which he afterwards attained: but his manners were so gentle and inoffensive that he

had no enemy except Mary of Modena, who had long hated the child of the concubine with the bitter hatred

of a childless wife. A small part of the Jesuitical faction had, before the pregnancy of the Queen was

announced, seriously thought of setting him up as a competitor of the Princess of Orange.333 When it is

remembered how signally Monmouth, though believed by the populace to be legitimate, and though the

champion of the national religion, had failed in a similar competition, it must seem extraordinary that any

man should have been so much blinded by fanaticism as to think of placing on the throne one who was

universally known to be a Popish bastard. It does not appear that this absurd design was ever countenanced

by the King. The boy, however, was acknowledged; and whatever distinctions a subject, not of the royal

blood, could hope to attain were bestowed on him. He had been created Duke of Berwick; and he was now

loaded with honourable and lucrative employments, taken from those noblemen who had refused to comply

with the royal commands. He succeeded the Earl of Oxford as Colonel of the Blues, and the Earl of

Gainsborough as Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire, Ranger of the New Forest, and Governor of Portsmouth. On

the frontier of Hampshire Berwick expected to have been met, according to custom, by a long cavalcade of

baronets, knights and squires: but not a single person of note appeared to welcome him. He sent out letters

commanding the attendance of the gentry: but only five or six paid the smallest attention to his summons.

The rest did not wait to be dismissed. They declared that they would take no part in the civil or military

government of their county while the King was represented there by a Papist, and voluntarily laid down their

Sunderland, who had been named Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire in the room of the Earl of Northampton,

found some excuse for not going down to face the indignation and contempt of the gentry of that shire; and

his plea was the more readily admitted because the King had, by that time, begun to feel that the spirit of the

It is to be observed that those who displayed this spirit were not the old enemies of the House of Stuart. The

Commissions of Peace and Lieutenancy had long been carefully purged of all republican names. The persons

from whom the court had in vain attempted to extract any promise of support were, with scarcely an

exception, Tories. The elder among them could still show scars given by the swords of Roundheads, and

receipts for plate sent to Charles the First in his distress. The younger had adhered firmly to James against

Shaftesury and Monmouth. Such were the men who were now turned out of office in a mass by the very

prince to whom they had given such signal proofs of fidelity. Dismission however only made them more

resolute. It had become a sacred point of honour among them to stand stoutly by one another in this crisis.

There could be no doubt that, if the suffrage of the freeholders were fairly taken, not a single knight of the

shire favourable to the policy of the government would be returned. Men therefore asked one another, with no

small anxiety, whether the suffrages were likely to be fairly taken. The list of the Sheriffs for the new year

was impatiently expected. It appeared while the Lords Lieutenants were still engaged in their canvass, and

was received with a general cry of alarm and indignation. Most of the functionaries who were to preside at

the county elections were either Roman Catholics or Protestant Dissenters who had expressed their

approbation of the Indulgence.336 For a time the most gloomy apprehensions prevailed: but soon they began

to subside. There was good reason to believe that there was a point beyond which the King could not reckon

on the support even of those Sheriffs who were members of his own Church. Between the Roman Catholic

courtier and the Roman Catholic country gentleman there was very little sympathy. That cabal which

domineered at Whitehall consisted partly of fanatics, who were ready to break through all rules of morality

and to throw the world into confusion for the purpose of propagating their religion, and partly of hypocrites,

who, for lucre, had apostatized from the faith in which they had been brought up, and who now over acted the

zeal characteristic of neophytes. Both the fanatical and the hypocritical courtiers were generally destitute of

all English feeling. In some of them devotion to their Church had extinguished every national sentiment.

Some were Irishmen, whose patriotism consisted in mortal hatred of the Saxon conquerors of Ireland. Some,

again, were traitors, who received regular hire from a foreign power. Some had passed a great part of their

lives abroad, and either were mere cosmopolites, or felt a positive distaste for the manners and institutions of

the country which was now subjected to their rule. Between such men and the lord of a Cheshire or

Staffordshire manor who adhered to the old Church there was scarcely anything in common. He was neither a

fanatic nor a hypocrite. He was a Roman Catholic because his father and grandfather had been so; and he

held his hereditary faith, as men generally hold a hereditary faith, sincerely, but with little enthusiasm. In all

other points he was a mere English squire, and, if he differed from the neighbouring squires, differed from

them by being somewhat more simple and clownish than they. The disabilities under which he lay had

prevented his mind from expanding to the standard, moderate as that standard was, which the minds of

Protestant country gentlemen then ordinarily attained. Excluded, when a boy, from Eton and Westminster,

when a youth, from Oxford and Cambridge, when a man, from Parliament and from the bench of justice, he

generally vegetated as quietly as the elms of the avenue which led to his ancestral grange. His cornfields, his

dairy and his cider press, his greyhounds, his fishing rod and his gun, his ale and his tobacco, occupied

almost all his thoughts. With his neighbours, in spite of his religion, he was generally on good terms. They

knew him to be unambitious and inoffensive. He was almost always of a good old family. He was always a

Cavalier. His peculiar notions were not obtruded, and caused no annoyance. He did not, like a Puritan,

torment himself and others with scruples about everything that was pleasant. On the contrary, he was as keen

a sportsman, and as jolly a boon companion, as any man who had taken the oath of supremacy and the

declaration against transubstantiation. He met his brother squires at the cover, was in with them at the death,

and, when the sport was over, took them home with him to a venison pasty and to October four years in

bottle. The oppressions which he had undergone had not been such as to impel him to any desperate

resolution. Even when his Church was barbarously persecuted, his life and property were in little danger. The

most impudent false witnesses could hardly venture to shock the common sense of mankind by accusing him

of being a conspirator. The Papists whom Oates selected for attack were peers, prelates, Jesuits, Benedictines,

a busy political agent, a lawyer in high practice, a court physician. The Roman Catholic country gentleman,

protected by his obscurity, by his peaceable demeanour, and by the good will of those among whom he lived,

carted his hay or filled his bag with game unmolested, while Coleman and Langhorne, Whitbread and

Pickering, Archbishop Plunkett and Lord Stafford, died by the halter or the axe. An attempt was indeed made

by a knot of villains to bring home a charge of treason to Sir Thomas Gascoigne, an aged Roman Catholic

baronet of Yorkshire: but twelve of the best gentlemen of the West Riding, who knew his way of life, could

not be convinced that their honest old acquaintance had hired cutthroats to murder the King, and, in spite of

charges which did very little honour to the bench, found a verdict of Not Guilty. Sometimes, indeed, the head

of an old and respectable provincial family might reflect with bitterness that he was excluded, on account of

his religion, from places of honour and authority which men of humbler descent and less ample estate were

thought competent to fill: but he was little disposed to risk land and life in a struggle against overwhelming

odds; and his honest English spirit would have shrunk with horror from means such as were contemplated by

the Petres and Tyrconnels. Indeed he would have been as ready as any of his Protestant neighbours to gird on

his sword, and to put pistols in his holsters, for the defence of his native land against an invasion of French or

Irish Papists. Such was the general character of the men to whom James now looked as to his most

trustworthy instruments for the conduct of county elections. He soon found that they were not inclined to

throw away the esteem of their neighbours, and to endanger their beads and their estates, by rendering him an

infamous and criminal service. Several of them refused to be Sheriffs. Of those who accepted the shrievalty

many declared that they would discharge their duty as fairly as if they were members of the Established

If the King could place little confidence even in his Roman Catholic Sheriffs, still less could he rely on the

Puritans. Since the publication of the Declaration several months had elapsed, months crowded with

important events, months of unintermitted controversy. Discussion had opened the eyes of many Dissenters:

but the acts of the government, and especially the severity with which Magdalene College had been treated,

had done more than even the pen of Halifax to alarm and to unite all classes of Protestants. Most of those

sectaries who had been induced to express gratitude for the Indulgence were now ashamed of their error, and

were desirous of making atonement by casting in their lot with the great body of their countrymen.

The consequence of this change in the feeling of the Nonconformists, was that the government found almost

as great difficulty in the towns as in the counties. When the regulators began their work, they had taken it for

granted that every Dissenter who had been induced to express gratitude for the Indulgence would be

favourable to the king's policy. They were therefore confident that they should be able to fill all the municipal

offices in the kingdom with staunch friends. In the new charters a power had been reserved to the crown of

dismissing magistrates at pleasure. This power was now exercised without limit. It was by no means equally

clear that James had the power of appointing new magistrates: but, whether it belonged to him or not, he

determined to assume it. Everywhere, from the Tweed to the Land's End, Tory functionaries were ejected,

and the vacant places were filled with Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists. In the new charter of the

City of London the crown had reserved the power of displacing the masters, wardens, and assistants of all the

companies. Accordingly more than eight hundred citizens of the first consideration, all of them members of

that party which had opposed the Exclusion Bill, were turned out of office by a single edict. In a short time

appeared a supplement to this long list.338 But scarcely had the new officebearers been sworn in when it was

discovered that they were as unmanageable as their predecessors. At Newcastle on Tyne the regulators

appointed a Roman Catholic Mayor and Puritan Alderman. No doubt was entertained that the municipal

body, thus remodelled, would vote an address promising to support the king's measures. The address,

however, was negatived. The mayor went up to London in a fury, and told the king that the Dissenters were

all knaves and rebels, and that in the whole corporation the government could not reckon on more than four

votes.339 At Reading twentyfour Tory aldermen were dismissed. Twentyfour new aldermen were

appointed. Twentythree of these immediately declared against the Indulgence, and were dismissed in their

turn.340 In the course of a few days the borough of Yarmouth was governed by three different sets of

magistrates, all equally hostile to the court.341 These are mere examples of what was passing all over the

kingdom. The Dutch Ambassador informed the States that at many towns the public functionaries had, within

one month, been changed twice, and even thrice, and yet changed in vain.342 From the records of the Privy

Council it appears that the number of regulations, as they were called, exceeded two hundred.343 The

regulators indeed found that, in not a few places, the change had been for the worse. The discontented Tories,

even while murmuring against the king's policy, had constantly expressed respect for his person and his

office, and had disclaimed all thoughts of resistance. Very different was the language of some of the new

members of corporations. It was said that old soldiers of the Commonwealth, who, to their own astonishment

and that of the public, had been made aldermen, gave the agents of the court very distinctly to understand that

blood should flow before Popery and arbitrary power were established in England.344

The regulators found that little or nothing had been gained by what had as yet been done. There was one way,

and one way only, in which they could hope to effect their object. The charters of the boroughs must be

resumed; and other charters must be granted confining the elective franchise to very small constituent bodies

But how was this plan to be carried into effect? In a few of the new charters, indeed, a right of revocation had

been reserved to the crown: but the rest James could get into his hands only by voluntary surrender on the

part of corporations, or by judgment of the King's Bench. Few corporations were now disposed to surrender

their charters voluntarily; and such judgments as would suit the purposes of the government were hardly to be

expected even from such a slave as Wright. The writs of Quo Warranto which had been brought a few years

before for the purpose of crushing the Whig party had been condemned by every impartial man. Yet those

writs had at least the semblance of justice; for they were brought against ancient municipal bodies; and there

were few ancient municipal bodies in which some abuse, sufficient to afford a pretext for a penal proceeding,

had not grown up in the course of ages. But the corporations now to be attacked were still in the innocence of

infancy. The oldest among them had not completed its fifth year. It was impossible that many of them should

have committed offences meriting disfranchisement. The Judges themselves were uneasy. They represented

that what they were required to do was in direct opposition to the plainest principles of law and justice: but all

remonstrance was vain. The boroughs were commanded to surrender their charters. Few complied; and the

course which the King took with those few did not encourage others to trust him. In several towns the right of

voting was taken away from the commonalty, and given to a very small number of persons, who were

required to bind themselves by oath to support the candidates recommended by the government. At

Tewkesbury, for example, the franchise was confined to thirteen persons. Yet even this number was too large.

Hatred and fear had spread so widely through the community that it was scarcely possible to bring together in

any town, by any process of packing, thirteen men on whom the court could absolutely depend. It was

rumoured that the majority of the new constituent body of Tewkesbury was animated by the same sentiment

which was general throughout the nation, and would, when the decisive day should arrive, send true

Protestants to Parliament. The regulators in great wrath threatened to reduce the number of electors to

three.346 Meanwhile the great majority of the boroughs firmly refused to give up their privileges. Barnstaple,

Winchester, and Buckingham, distinguished themselves by the boldness of their opposition. At Oxford the

motion that the city should resign its franchises to the King was negatived by eighty votes to two.347 The

Temple and Westminster Hall were in a ferment with the sudden rush of business from all corners of the

kingdom. Every lawyer in high practice was overwhelmed with the briefs from corporations. Ordinary

litigants complained that their business was neglected.348 It was evident that a considerable time must elapse

before judgment could be given in so great a number of important cases. Tyranny could ill brook this delay.

Nothing was omitted which could terrify the refractory boroughs into submission. At Buckingham some of

the municipal officers had spoken of Jeffreys in language which was not laudatory. They were prosecuted,

and were given to understand that no mercy should be shown to them unless they would ransom themselves

by surrendering their charter.349 At Winchester still more violent measures were adopted. A large body of

troops was marched into the town for the sole purpose of burdening and harassing the inhabitants.350 The

town continued resolute; and the public voice loudly accused the King of imitating the worst crimes of his

brother of France. The dragonades, it was said, had begun. There was indeed reason for alarm. It had

occurred to James that he could not more effectually break the spirit of an obstinate town than by quartering

soldiers on the inhabitants. He must have known that this practice had sixty years before excited formidable

discontents, and had been solemnly pronounced illegal by the Petition of Right, a statute scarcely less

venerated by Englishmen than the Great Charter. But he hoped to obtain from the courts of law a declaration

that even the Petition of Right could not control the prerogative. He actually consulted the Chief justice of the

King's Bench on this subject:351 but the result of the consultation remained secret; and in a very few weeks

the aspect of affairs became such that a fear stronger than even the fear of the royal displeasure began to

While the Lords Lieutenants were questioning the justices of the Peace, while the regulators were

remodelling the boroughs, all the public departments were subjected to a strict inquisition. The palace was

first purified. Every battered old Cavalier, who, in return for blood and lands lost in the royal cause, had

obtained some small place under the Keeper of the Wardrobe or the Master of the Harriers, was called upon

to choose between the King and the Church. The Commissioners of Customs and Excise were ordered to

attend His Majesty at the Treasury. There he demanded from them a promise to support his policy, and

directed them to require a similar promise from all their subordinates.352 One Customhouse officer notified

his submission to the royal will in a way which excited both merriment and compassion. "I have," he said,

"fourteen reasons for obeying His Majesty's commands, a wife and thirteen young children."353 Such

reasons were indeed cogent; yet there were not a few instances in which, even against such reasons, religious

There is reason to believe that the government at this time seriously meditated a blow which would have

reduced many thousands of families to beggary, and would have disturbed the whole social system of every

part of the country. No wine, beer, or coffee could be sold without a license. It was rumoured that every

person holding such a license would shortly be required to enter into the same engagements which had been

imposed on public functionaries, or to relinquish his trade.354 It seems certain that, if such a step had been

taken, the houses of entertainment and of public resort all over the kingdom would have been at once shut up

by hundreds. What effect such an interference with the comfort of all ranks would have produced must be left

to conjecture. The resentment produced by grievances is not always proportioned to their dignity; and it is by

no means improbable that the resumption of licenses might have done what the resumption of charters had

failed to do. Men of fashion would have missed the chocolate house in Saint James's Street, and men of

business the coffee pot, round which they were accustomed to smoke and talk politics, in Change Alley. Half

the clubs would have been wandering in search of shelter. The traveller at nightfall would have found the inn

where he had expected to sup and lodge deserted. The clown would have regretted the hedge alehouse, where

he had been accustomed to take his pot on the bench before the door in summer, and at the chimney corner in

winter. The nation might, perhaps under such provocation, have risen in general rebellion without waiting for

It was not to be expected that a prince who required all the humblest servants of the government to support

his policy on pain of dismission would continue to employ an Attorney General whose aversion to that policy

was no secret. Sawyer had been suffered to retain his situation more than a year and a half after he had

declared against the dispensing power. This extraordinary indulgence he owed to the extreme difficulty which

the government found in supplying his place. It was necessary, for the protection of the pecuniary interests of

the crown, that at least one of the two chief law officers should be a man of ability and knowledge; and it was

by no means easy to induce any barrister of ability and knowledge to put himself in peril by committing

every day acts which the next Parliament would probably treat as high crimes and misdemeanours. It had

been impossible to procure a better Solicitor General than Powis, a man who indeed stuck at nothing, but who

was incompetent to perform the ordinary duties of his post. In these circumstances it was thought desirable

that there should be a division of labour. An Attorney, the value of whose professional talents was much

diminished by his conscientious scruples, was coupled with a Solicitor whose want of scruples made some

amends for his want of talents. When the government wished to enforce the law, recourse was had to Sawyer.

When the government wished to break the law, recourse was had to Powis. This arrangement lasted till the

king obtained the services of an advocate who was at once baser than Powis and abler than Sawyer.

No barrister living had opposed the court with more virulence than William Williams. He had distinguished

himself in the late reign as a Whig and an Exclusionist. When faction was at the height, he had been chosen

Speaker of the House of Commons. After the prorogation of the Oxford Parliament he had commonly been

counsel for the most noisy demagogues who had been accused of sedition. He was allowed to possess

considerable quickness and knowledge. His chief faults were supposed to be rashness and party spirit. It was

not yet suspected that he had faults compared with which rashness and party spirit might well pass for virtues.

The government sought occasion against him, and easily found it. He had published, by order of the House of

Commons, a narrative which Dangerfield had written. This narrative, if published by a private man, would

undoubtedly have been a seditious libel. A criminal information was filed in the King's Bench against

Williams: he pleaded the privileges of Parliament in vain: he was convicted and sentenced to a fine of ten

thousand pounds. A large part of this sum he actually paid: for the rest he gave a bond. The Earl of

Peterborough, who had been injuriously mentioned in Dangerfield's narrative, was encouraged, by the

success of the criminal information, to bring a civil action, and to demand large damages. Williams was

driven to extremity. At this juncture a way of escape presented itself. It was indeed a way which, to a man of

strong principles or high spirit, would have been more dreadful than beggary, imprisonment, or death. He

might sell himself to that government of which he had been the enemy and the victim. He might offer to go

on the forlorn hope in every assault on those liberties and on that religion for which he had professed an

inordinate zeal. He might expiate his Whiggism by performing services from which bigoted Tories, stained

with the blood of Russell and Sidney, shrank in horror. The bargain was struck. The debt still due to the

crown was remitted. Peterborough was induced, by royal mediation, to compromise his action. Sawyer was

dismissed. Powis became Attorney General. Williams was made Solicitor, received the honour of

knighthood, and was soon a favourite. Though in rank he was only the second law officer of the crown, his

abilities, learning, and energy were such that he completely threw his superior into the shade.355

Williams had not been long in office when he was required to bear a chief part in the most memorable state

On the twentyseventh of April 1688, the King put forth a second Declaration of Indulgence. In this paper he

recited at length the Declaration of the preceding April. His past life, he said, ought to have convinced his

people that he was not a person who could easily be induced to depart from any resolution which he had

formed. But, as designing men had attempted to persuade the world that he might be prevailed on to give way

in this matter, he thought it necessary to proclaim that his purpose was immutably fixed, that he was resolved

to employ those only who were prepared to concur in his design, and that he had, in pursuance of that

resolution, dismissed many of his disobedient servants from civil and military employments. He announced

that he meant to hold a Parliament in November at the latest; and he exhorted his subjects to choose

representatives who would assist him in the great work which he had undertaken.356

This Declaration at first produced little sensation. It contained nothing new; and men wondered that the King

should think it worth while to publish a solemn manifesto merely for the purpose of telling them that he had

not changed his mind.357 Perhaps James was nettled by the indifference with which the announcement of his

fixed resolution was received by the public, and thought that his dignity and authority would suffer unless he

without delay did something novel and striking. On the fourth of May, accordingly, he made an Order in

Council that his Declaration of the preceding week should be read, on two successive Sundays at the time of

divine service, by the officiating ministers of all the churches and chapels of the kingdom. In London and in

the suburbs the reading was to take place on the twentieth and twentyseventh of May, in other parts of

England on the third and tenth of June. The Bishops were directed to distribute copies of the Declaration

When it is considered that the clergy of the Established Church, with scarcely an exception, regarded the

Indulgence as a violation of the laws of the realm, as a breach of the plighted faith of the King, and as a fatal

blow levelled at the interest and dignity of their own profession, it will scarcely admit of doubt that the Order

in Council was intended to be felt by them as a cruel affront. It was popularly believed that Petre had avowed

this intention in a coarse metaphor borrowed from the rhetoric of the East. He would, he said, make them eat

dirt, the vilest and most loathsome of all dirt. But, tyrannical and malignant as the mandate was, would the

Anglican priesthood refuse to obey? The King's temper was arbitrary and severe. The proceedings of the

Ecclesiastical Commission were as summary as those of a court martial. Whoever ventured to resist might in

a week be ejected from his parsonage, deprived of his whole income, pronounced incapable of holding any

other spiritual preferment, and left to beg from door to door. If, indeed, the whole body offered an united

opposition to the royal will, it was probable that even James would scarcely venture to punish ten thousand

delinquents at once. But there was not time to form an extensive combination. The Order in Council was

gazetted on the seventh of May. On the twentieth the Declaration was to be read in all the pulpits of London

and the neighbourhood. By no exertion was it possible in that age to ascertain within a fortnight the intentions

of one tenth part of the parochial ministers who were scattered over the kingdom. It was not easy to collect in

so short a time the sense even of the episcopal order. It might also well be apprehended that, if the clergy

refused to read the Declaration, the Protestant Dissenters would misinterpret the refusal, would despair of

obtaining any toleration from the members of the Church of England, and would throw their whole weight

The clergy therefore hesitated; and this hesitation may well be excused: for some eminent laymen, who

possessed a large share of the public confidence, were disposed to recommend submission. They thought that

a general opposition could hardly be expected, and that a partial opposition would be ruinous to individuals,

and of little advantage to the Church and to the nation. Such was the opinion given at this time by Halifax and

Nottingham. The day drew near; and still there was no concert and no formed resolution.359

At this conjuncture the Protestant Dissenters of London won for themselves a title to the lasting gratitude of

their country. They had hitherto been reckoned by the government as part of its strength. A few of their most

active and noisy preachers, corrupted by the favours of the court, had got up addresses in favour of the King's

policy. Others, estranged by the recollection of many cruel wrongs both from the Church of England and

from the House of Stuart, had seen with resentful pleasure the tyrannical prince and the tyrannical hierarchy

separated by a bitter enmity, and bidding against each other for the help of sects lately persecuted and

despised. But this feeling, however natural, had been indulged long enough. The time had come when it was

necessary to make a choice: and the Nonconformists of the City, with a noble spirit, arrayed themselves side

by side with the members of the Church in defence of the fundamental laws of the realm. Baxter, Bates, and

Howe distinguished themselves by their efforts to bring about this coalition: but the generous enthusiasm

which pervaded the whole Puritan body made the task easy. The zeal of the flocks outran that of the pastors.

Those Presbyterian and Independent teachers who showed an inclination to take part with the King against

the ecclesiastical establishment received distinct notice that, unless they changed their conduct, their

congregations would neither hear them nor pay them. Alsop, who had flattered himself that he should be able

to bring over a great body of his disciples to the royal side, found himself on a sudden an object of contempt

and abhorrence to those who had lately revered him as their spiritual guide, sank into a deep melancholy, and

hid himself from the public eye. Deputations waited on several of the London clergy imploring them not to

judge of the dissenting body from the servile adulation which had lately filled the London Gazette, and

exhorting them, placed as they were in the van of this great fight, to play the men for the liberties of England

and for the faith delivered to the Saints. These assurances were received with joy and gratitude. Yet there was

still much anxiety and much difference of opinion among those who had to decide whether, on Sunday the

twentieth, they would or would not obey the King's command. The London clergy, then universally

acknowledged to be the flower of their profession, held a meeting. Fifteen Doctors of Divinity were present.

Tillotson, Dean of Canterbury, the most celebrated preacher of the age, came thither from a sick bed.

Sherlock, Master of the Temple, Patrick, Dean of Peterborough and Rector of the important parish of St.

Paul's, Covent Garden, and Stillingfleet, Archdeacon of London and Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, attended.

The general feeling of the assembly seemed to be that it was, on the whole, advisable to obey the Order in

Council. The dispute began to wax warm, and might have produced fatal consequences, if it had not been

brought to a close by the firmness and wisdom of Doctor Edward Fowler, Vicar of St. Giles's, Cripplegate,

one of a small but remarkable class of divines who united that love of civil liberty which belonged to the

school of Calvin with the theology of the school of Arminius.360 Standing up, Fowler spoke thus: "I must be

plain. The question is so simple that argument can throw no new light on it, and can only beget heat. Let

every man say Yes or No. But I cannot consent to be bound by the vote of the majority. I shall be sorry to

cause a breach of unity. But this Declaration I cannot in conscience read." Tillotson, Patrick, Sherlock, and

Stillingfleet declared that they were of the same mind. The majority yielded to the authority of a minority so

respectable. A resolution by which all present pledged themselves to one another not to read the Declaration

was then drawn up. Patrick was the first who set his hand to it; Fowler was the second. The paper was sent

Meanwhile several of the Bishops were anxiously deliberating as to the course which they should take. On

the twelfth of May a grave and learned company was assembled round the table of the Primate at Lambeth.

Compton, Bishop of London, Turner, Bishop of Ely, White, Bishop of Peterborough, and Tenison, Rector of

St. Martin's parish, were among the guests. The Earl of Clarendon, a zealous and uncompromising friend of

the Church, had been invited. Cartwright, Bishop of Chester, intruded himself on the meeting, probably as a

spy. While he remained, no confidential communication could take place; but, after his departure, the great

question of which all minds were full was propounded and discussed. The general opinion was that the

Declaration ought not to be read. Letters were forthwith written to several of the most respectable prelates of

the province of Canterbury, entreating them to come up without delay to London, and to strengthen the hands

of their metropolitan at this conjuncture.362 As there was little doubt that these letters would be opened if

they passed through the office in Lombard Street, they were sent by horsemen to the nearest country post

towns on the different roads. The Bishop of Winchester, whose loyalty had been so signally proved at

Sedgemoor, though suffering from indisposition, resolved to set out in obedience to the summons, but found

himself unable to bear the motion of a coach. The letter addressed to William Lloyd, Bishop of Norwich,

was, in spite of all precautions, detained by a postmaster; and that prelate, inferior to none of his brethren in

courage and in zeal for the common cause of his order, did not reach London in time.363 His namesake,

William Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph, a pious, honest, and learned man, but of slender judgment, and half

crazed by his persevering endeavours to extract from Daniel and the Revelations some information about the

Pope and the King of France, hastened to the capital and arrived on the sixteenth.364 On the following day

came the excellent Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, Lake, Bishop of Chichester, and Sir John Trelawney,

On the eighteenth a meeting of prelates and of other eminent divines was held at Lambeth. Tillotson,

Tenison, Stillingfleet, Patrick, and Sherlock, were present. Prayers were solemnly read before the

consultation began. After long deliberation, a petition embodying the general sense was written by the

Archbishop with his own hand. It was not drawn up with much felicity of style. Indeed, the cumbrous and

inelegant structure of the sentences brought on Sancroft some raillery, which he bore with less patience than

he showed under much heavier trials. But in substance nothing could be more skilfully framed than this

memorable document. All disloyalty, all intolerance, was earnestly disclaimed. The King was assured that the

Church still was, as she had ever been, faithful to the throne. He was assured also that the Bishops would, in

proper place and time, as Lords of Parliament and members of the Upper House of Convocation, show that

they by no means wanted tenderness for the conscientious scruples of Dissenters. But Parliament had, both in

the late and in the present reign, pronounced that the sovereign was not constitutionally competent to

dispense with statutes in matters ecclesiastical. The Declaration was therefore illegal; and the petitioners

could not, in prudence, honour, or conscience, be parties to the solemn publication of an illegal Declaration in

This paper was signed by the Archbishop and by six of his suffragans, Lloyd of St. Asaph, Turner of Ely,

Lake of Chichester, Ken of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough, and Trelawney of Bristol. The Bishop of

It was now late on Friday evening: and on Sunday morning the Declaration was to be read in the churches of

London. It was necessary to put the paper into the King's hands without delay. The six Bishops set off for

Whitehall. The Archbishop, who had long been forbidden the court, did not accompany them. Lloyd, leaving

his five brethren at the house of Lord Dartmouth in the vicinity of the palace, went to Sunderland, and begged

that minister to read the petition, and to ascertain when the King would be willing to receive it. Sunderland,

afraid of compromising himself, refused to look at the paper, but went immediately to the royal closet. James

directed that the Bishops should be admitted. He had heard from his tool Cartwright that they were disposed

to obey the royal mandate, but that they wished for some little modifications in form, and that they meant to

present a humble request to that effect. His Majesty was therefore in very good humour. When they knelt

before him, he graciously told them to rise, took the paper from Lloyd, and said, "This is my Lord of

Canterbury's hand." "Yes, sir, his own hand," was the answer. James read the petition; he folded it up; and his

countenance grew dark. "This," he said, "is a great surprise to me. I did not expect this from your Church,

especially from some of you. This is a standard of rebellion." The Bishops broke out into passionate

professions of loyalty: but the King, as usual, repeated the same words over and over. "I tell you, this is a

standard of rebellion." "Rebellion!" cried Trelawney, falling on his knees. "For God's sake, sir, do not say so

hard a thing of us. No Trelawney can be a rebel. Remember that my family has fought for the crown.

Remember how I served your Majesty when Monmouth was in the West." "We put down the last rebellion,"

said Lake, "we shall not raise another." "We rebel!" exclaimed Turner; "we are ready to die at your Majesty's

feet." "Sir," said Ken, in a more manly tone, "I hope that you will grant to us that liberty of conscience which

you grant to all mankind." Still James went on. "This is rebellion. This is a standard of rebellion. Did ever a

good Churchman question the dispensing power before? Have not some of you preached for it and written for

it? It is a standard of rebellion. I will have my Declaration published." "We have two duties to perform,"

answered Ken, "our duty to God, and our duty to your Majesty. We honour you, but we fear God." "Have I

deserved this?" said the King, more and more, angry, "I who have been such a friend to your Church! I did

not expect this from some of you. I will be obeyed. My Declaration shall be published. You are trumpeters of

sedition. What do you do here? Go to your dioceses and see that I am obeyed. I will keep this paper. I will not

part with it. I will remember you that have signed it." "God's will be done," said Ken. "God has given me the

dispensing power," said the King, "and I will maintain it. I tell you that there are still seven thousand of your

Church who have not bowed the knee to Baal." The Bishops respectfully retired.365 That very evening the

document which they had put into the hands of the King appeared word for word in print, was laid on the

tables of all the coffeehouses, and was cried about the streets. Everywhere the people rose from their beds,

and came out to stop the hawkers. It was said that the printer cleared a thousand pounds in a few hours by this

penny broadside. This is probably an exaggeration; but it is an exaggeration which proves that the sale was

enormous. How the petition got abroad is still a mystery. Sancroft declared that he had taken every precaution

against publication, and that he knew of no copy except that which he had himself written, and which James

had taken out of Lloyd's hand. The veracity of the Archbishop is beyond all suspicion. It is, however, by no

means improbable that some of the divines who assisted in framing the petition may have remembered so

short a composition accurately, and may have sent it to the press. The prevailing opinion, however, was that

some person about the King had been indiscreet or treacherous.366 Scarcely less sensation was produced by a

short letter which was written with great power of argument and language, printed secretly, and largely

circulated on the same day by the post and by the common carriers. A copy was sent to every clergyman in

the kingdom. The writer did not attempt to disguise the danger which those who disobeyed the royal mandate

would incur: but he set forth in a lively manner the still greater danger of submission. "If we read the

Declaration," said he, "we fall to rise no more. We fall unpitied and despised. We fall amidst the curses of a

nation whom our compliance will have ruined." Some thought that this paper came from Holland. Others

attributed it to Sherlock. But Prideaux, Dean of Norwich, who was a principal agent in distributing it,

The conduct of the prelates was rapturously extolled by the general voice: but some murmurs were heard. It

was said that such grave men, if they thought themselves bound in conscience to remonstrate with the King,

ought to have remonstrated earlier. Was it fair to him to leave him in the dark till within thirty six hours of

the time fixed for the reading of the Declaration? Even if he wished to revoke the Order in Council, it was too

late to do so. The inference seemed to be that the petition was intended, not to move the royal mind, but

merely to inflame the discontents of the people.367 These complaints were utterly groundless. The King had

laid on the Bishops a command new, surprising, and embarrassing. It was their duty to communicate with

each other, and to ascertain as far as possible the sense of the profession of which they were the heads before

they took any step. They were dispersed over the whole kingdom. Some of them were distant from others a

full week's journey. James allowed them only a fortnight to inform themselves, to meet, to deliberate, and to

decide; and he surely had no right to think himself aggrieved because that fortnight was drawing to a close

before he learned their decision. Nor is it true that they did not leave him time to revoke his order if he had

been wise enough to do so. He might have called together his Council on Saturday morning, and before night

it might have been known throughout London and the suburbs that he had yielded to the intreaties of the

fathers of the Church. The Saturday, however, passed over without any sign of relenting on the part of the

In the City and Liberties of London were about a hundred parish churches. In only four of these was the

Order in Council obeyed. At Saint Gregory's the Declaration was read by a divine of the name of Martin. As

soon as he uttered the first words, the whole congregation rose and withdrew. At Saint Matthew's, in Friday

Street, a wretch named Timothy Hall, who had disgraced his gown by acting as broker for the Duchess of

Portsmouth in the sale of pardons, and who now had hopes of obtaining the vacant bishopric of Oxford, was

in like manner left alone in his church. At Serjeant's Inn, in Chancery Lane, the clerk pretended that he had

forgotten to bring a copy; and the Chief justice of the King's Bench, who had attended in order to see that the

royal mandate was obeyed, was forced to content himself with this excuse. Samuel Wesley, the father of John

and Charles Wesley, a curate in London, took for his text that day the noble answer of the three Jews to the

Chaldean tyrant. "Be it known unto thee, O King, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden

image which thou hast set up." Even in the chapel of Saint James's Palace the officiating minister had the

courage to disobey the order. The Westminster boys long remembered what took place that day in the Abbey.

Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, officiated there as Dean. As soon as he began to read the Declaration, murmurs

and the noise of people crowding out of the choir drowned his voice. He trembled so violently that men saw

the paper shake in his hand. Long before he had finished, the place was deserted by all but those whose

Never had the Church been so dear to the nation as on the afternoon of that day. The spirit of dissent seemed

to be extinct. Baxter from his pulpit pronounced an eulogium on the Bishops and parochial clergy. The Dutch

minister, a few hours later, wrote to inform the States General that the Anglican priesthood had risen in the

estimation of the public to an incredible degree. The universal cry of the Nonconformists, he said, was that

they would rather continue to lie under the penal statutes than separate their cause from that of the

Another week of anxiety and agitation passed away. Sunday came again. Again the churches of the capital

were thronged by hundreds of thousands. The Declaration was read nowhere except at the very few places

where it had been read the week before. The minister who had officiated at the chapel in Saint James's Palace

had been turned out of his situation, and a more obsequious divine appeared with the paper in his hand: but

his agitation was so great that he could not articulate. In truth the feeling of the whole nation had now become

such as none but the very best and noblest, or the very worst and basest, of mankind could without much

Even the King stood aghast for a moment at the violence of the tempest which he had raised. What step was

he next to take? He must either advance or recede: and it was impossible to advance without peril, or to

recede without humiliation. At one moment he determined to put forth a second order enjoining the clergy in

high and angry terms to publish his Declaration, and menacing every one who should be refractory with

instant suspension. This order was drawn up and sent to the press, then recalled, then a second time sent to

the press, then recalled a second time.371 A different plan was suggested by some of those who were for

rigorous measures. The prelates who had signed the petition might be cited before the Ecclesiastical

Commission and deprived of their sees. But to this course strong objections were urged in Council. It had

been announced that the Houses would be convoked before the end of the year. The Lords would assuredly

treat the sentence of deprivation as a nullity, would insist that Sancroft and his fellow petitioners should be

summoned to Parliament, and would refuse to acknowledge a new Archbishop of Canterbury or a new

Bishop of Bath and Wells. Thus the session, which at best was likely to be sufficiently stormy, would

commence with a deadly quarrel between the crown and the peers. If therefore it were thought necessary to

punish the Bishops, the punishment ought to be inflicted according to the known course of English law.

Sunderland had from the beginning objected, as far as he dared, to the Order in Council. He now suggested a

course which, though not free from inconveniences, was the most prudent and the most dignified that a series

of errors had left open to the government. The King might with grace and majesty announce to the world that

he was deeply hurt by the undutiful conduct of the Church of England; but that he could not forget all the

services rendered by that Church, in trying times, to his father, to his brother, and to himself; that, as a friend

to the liberty of conscience, he was unwilling to deal severely by men whom conscience, ill informed indeed,

and unreasonably scrupulous, might have prevented from obeying his commands; and that he would therefore

leave the offenders to that punishment which their own reflections would inflict whenever they should calmly

compare their recent acts with the loyal doctrines of which they had so loudly boasted. Not only Powis and

Bellasyse, who had always been for moderate counsels, but even Dover and Arundell, leaned towards this

proposition. Jeffreys, on the other hand, maintained that the government would be disgraced if such

transgressors as the seven Bishops were suffered to escape with a mere reprimand. He did not, however, wish

them to be cited before the Ecclesiastical Commission, in which he sate as chief or rather as sole judge. For

the load of public hatred under which he already lay was too much even for his shameless forehead and

obdurate heart; and he shrank from the responsibility which he would have incurred by pronouncing an

illegal sentence on the rulers of the Church and the favourites of the nation. He therefore recommended a

criminal information. It was accordingly resolved that the Archbishop and the six other petititioners should be

brought before the Court of King's Bench on a charge of seditious libel. That they would be convicted it was

scarcely possible to doubt. The judges and their officers were tools of the court. Since the old charter of the

City of London had been forfeited, scarcely one prisoner whom the government was bent on bringing to

punishment had been absolved by a jury. The refractory prelates would probably be condemned to ruinous

fines and to long imprisonment, and would be glad to ransom themselves by serving, both in and out of

On the twentyseventh of May it was notified to the Bishops that on the eighth of June they must appear

before the King in Council. Why so long an interval was allowed we are not informed. Perhaps James hoped

that some of the offenders, terrified by his displeasure, might submit before the day fixed for the reading of

the Declaration in their dioceses, and might, in order to make their peace with him, persuade their clergy to

Sunday the third of June came; and all parts of England followed the example of the capital. Already the

Bishops of Norwich, Gloucester, Salisbury, Winchester, and Exeter, had signed copies of the petition in token

of their approbation. The Bishop of Worcester had refused to distribute the Declaration among his clergy.

The Bishop of Hereford had distributed it: but it was generally understood that he was overwhelmed by

remorse and shame for having done so. Not one parish priest in fifty complied with the Order in Council. In

the great diocese of Chester, including the county of Lancaster, only three clergymen could be prevailed on

by Cartwright to obey the King. In the diocese of Norwich are many hundreds of parishes. In only four of

these was the Declaration read. The courtly Bishop of Rochester could not overcome the scruples of the

minister of the ordinary of Chatham, who depended on the government for bread. There is still extant a

pathetic letter which this honest priest sent to the Secretary of the Admiralty. "I cannot," he wrote,

"reasonably expect your Honour's protection. God's will be done. I must choose suffering rather than sin."373

On the evening of the eighth of June the seven prelates, furnished by the ablest lawyers in England with full

advice, repaired to the palace, and were called into the Council chamber. Their petition was lying on the

table. The Chancellor took the paper up, showed it to the Archbishop, and said, "Is this the paper which your

Grace wrote, and which the six Bishops present delivered to his Majesty?" Sancroft looked at the paper,

turned to the King, and spoke thus: "Sir, I stand here a culprit. I never was so before. Once I little thought that

I ever should be so. Least of all could I think that I should be charged with any offence against my King: but,

since I am so unhappy as to be in this situation, your Majesty will not be offended if I avail myself of my

lawful right to decline saying anything which may criminate me." "This is mere chicanery," said the King. "I

hope that your Grace will not do so ill a thing as to deny your own hand? "Sir," said Lloyd, whose studies had

been much among the casuists, "all divines agree that a person situated as we are may refuse to answer such a

question." The King, as slow of understanding as quick of temper, could not comprehend what the prelates

meant. He persisted, and was evidently becoming very angry. "Sir," said the Archbishop, "I am not bound to

accuse myself. Nevertheless, if your Majesty positively commands me to answer, I will do so in the

confidence that a just and generous prince will not suffer what I say in obedience to his orders to be brought

in evidence against me." "You must not capitulate with your Sovereign," said the Chancellor. "No," said the

King; "I will not give any such command. If you choose to deny your own hands, I have nothing more to say

The Bishops were repeatedly sent out into the antechamber, and repeatedly called back into the Council

room. At length James positively commanded them to answer the question. He did not expressly engage that

their confession should not be used against them. But they, not unnaturally, supposed that, after what had

passed, such an engagement was implied in his command. Sancroft acknowledged his handwriting; and his

brethren followed his example. They were then interrogated about the meaning of some words in the petition,

and about the letter which had been circulated with so much effect all over the kingdom: but their language

was so guarded that nothing was gained by the examination. The Chancellor then told them that a criminal

information would be exhibited against them in the Court of King's Bench, and called upon them to enter into

recognisances. They refused. They were peers of the realm, they said. They were advised by the best lawyers

in Westminster Hall that no peer could be required to enter into a recognisance in a case of libel; and they

should not think themselves justified in relinquishing the privilege of their order. The King was so absurd as

to think himself personally affronted because they chose, on a legal question, to be guided by legal advice.

"You believe everybody," he said, "rather than me." He was indeed mortified and alarmed. For he had gone

so far that, if they persisted, he had no choice left but to send them to prison; and, though he by no means

foresaw all the consequences of such a step, he foresaw probably enough to disturb him. They were resolute.

A warrant was therefore made out directing the Lieutenant of the Tower to keep them in safe custody, and a

It was known all over London that the Bishops were before the Council. The public anxiety was intense. A

great multitude filled the courts of Whitehall and all the neighbouring streets. Many people were in the habit

of refreshing themselves at the close of a summer day with the cool air of the Thames. But on this evening

the whole river was alive with wherries. When the Seven came forth under a guard, the emotions of the

people broke through all restraint. Thousands fell on their knees and prayed aloud for the men who had, with

the Christian, courage of Ridley and Latimer, confronted a tyrant inflamed by all the bigotry of Mary. Many

dashed into the stream, and, up to their waists in ooze and water, cried to the holy fathers to bless them. All

down the river, from Whitehall to London Bridge, the royal barge passed between lines of boats, from which

arose a shout of "God bless your Lordships." The King, in great alarm, gave orders that the garrison of the

Tower should be doubled, that the Guards should be held ready for action, and that two companies should be

detached from every regiment in the kingdom, and sent up instantly to London. But the force on which he

relied as the means of coercing the people shared all the feelings of the people. The very sentinels who were

under arms at the Traitors' Gate reverently asked for a blessing from the martyrs whom they were to guard.

Sir Edward Hales was Lieutenant of the Tower. He was little inclined to treat his prisoners with kindness. For

he was an apostate from that Church for which they suffered; and he held several lucrative posts by virtue of

that dispensing power against which they had protested. He learned with indignation that his soldiers were

drinking the health of the Bishops. He ordered his officers to see that it was done no more. But the officers

came back with a report that the thing could not be prevented, and that no other health was drunk in the

garrison. Nor was it only by carousing that the troops showed their reverence for the fathers of the Church.

There was such a show of devotion throughout the Tower that pious divines thanked God for bringing good

out of evil, and for making the persecution of His faithful servants the means of saving many souls. All day

the coaches and liveries of the first nobles of England were seen round the prison gates. Thousands of

humbler spectators constantly covered Tower Hill.375 But among the marks of public respect and sympathy

which the prelates received there was one which more than all the rest enraged and alarmed the King. He

learned that a deputation of ten Nonconformist ministers had visited the Tower. He sent for four of these

persons, and himself upbraided them. They courageously answered that they thought it their duty to forget

Scarcely had the gates of the Tower been closed on the prisoners when an event took place which increased

the public excitement. It had been announced that the Queen did not expect to be delivered till July. But, on

the day after the Bishops had appeared before the Council, it was observed that the King seemed to be

anxious about her state. In the evening, however, she sate playing cards at Whitehall till near midnight. Then

she was carried in a sedan to Saint James's Palace, where apartments had been very hastily fitted up for her

reception. Soon messengers were running about in all directions to summon physicians and priests, Lords of

the Council, and Ladies of the Bedchamber. In a few hours many public functionaries and women of rank

were assembled in the Queen's room. There, on the morning of Sunday, the tenth of June, a day long kept

sacred by the too faithful adherents of a bad cause, was born the most unfortunate of princes, destined to

seventyseven years of exile and wandering, of vain projects, of honours more galling than insults, and of

The calamities of the poor child had begun before his birth. The nation over which, according to the ordinary

course of succession, he would have reigned, was fully persuaded that his mother was not really pregnant. By

whatever evidence the fact of his birth had been proved, a considerable number of people would probably

have persisted in maintaining that the Jesuits had practised some skilful sleight of hand: and the evidence,

partly from accident, partly from gross mismanagement, was open to some objections. Many persons of both

sexes were in the royal bedchamber when the child first saw the light but none of them enjoyed any large

measure of public confidence. Of the Privy Councillors present half were Roman Catholics; and those who

called themselves Protestants were generally regarded as traitors to their country and their God. Many of the

women in attendance were French, Italian, and Portuguese. Of the English ladies some were Papists, and

some were the wives of Papists. Some persons who were peculiarly entitled to be present, and whose

testimony would have satisfied all minds accessible to reason, were absent, and for their absence the King

was held responsible. The Princess Anne was, of all the inhabitants of the island, the most deeply interested

in the event. Her sex and her experience qualified her to act as the guardian of her sister's birthright and her

own. She had conceived strong suspicions which were daily confirmed by circumstances trifling or

imaginary. She fancied that the Queen carefully shunned her scrutiny, and ascribed to guilt a reserve which

was perhaps the effect of delicacy.377 In this temper Anne had determined to be present and vigilant when

the critical day should arrive. But she had not thought it necessary to be at her post a month before that day,

and had, in compliance, it was said, with her father's advice, gone to drink the Bath waters. Sancroft, whose

great place made it his duty to attend, and on whose probity the nation placed entire reliance, had a few hours

before been sent to the Tower by James. The Hydes were the proper protectors of the rights of the two

Princesses. The Dutch Ambassador might be regarded as the representative of William, who, as first prince of

the blood and consort of the King's eldest daughter, had a deep interest in what was passing. James never

thought of summoning any member, male or female, of the family of Hyde; nor was the Dutch Ambassador

Posterity has fully acquitted the King of the fraud which his people imputed to him. But it is impossible to

acquit him of folly and perverseness such as explain and excuse the error of his contemporaries. He was

perfectly aware of the suspicions which were abroad.378 He ought to have known that those suspicions

would not be dispelled by the evidence of members of the Church of Rome, or of persons who, though they

might call themselves members of the Church of England, had shown themselves ready to sacrifice the

interests of the Church of England in order to obtain his favour. That he was taken by surprise is true. But he

had twelve hours to make his arrangements. He found no difficulty in crowding St. James's Palace with

bigots and sycophants on whose word the nation placed no reliance. It would have been quite as easy to

procure the attendance of some eminent persons whose attachment to the Princesses and to the established

At a later period, when he had paid dearly for his foolhardy contempt of public opinion, it was the fashion at

Saint Germains to excuse him by throwing the blame on others. Some Jacobites charged Anne with having

purposely kept out of the way. Nay, they were not ashamed to say that Sancroft had provoked the King to

send him to the Tower, in order that the evidence which was to confound the calumnies of the malecontents

might be defective.379 The absurdity of these imputations is palpable. Could Anne or Sancroft possibly have

foreseen that the Queen's calculations would turn out to be erroneous by a whole month? Had those

calculations been correct, Anne would have been back from Bath, and Sancroft would have been out of the

Tower, in ample time for the birth. At all events the maternal uncles of the King's daughters were neither at a

distance nor in a prison. The same messenger who summoned the whole bevy of renegades, Dover,

Peterborough, Murray, Sunderland, and Mulgrave, could just as easily have summoned Clarendon. If they

were Privy Councillors, so was he. His house was in Jermyn Street, not two hundred yards from the chamber

of the Queen. Yet he was left to learn at St. James's Church, from the agitation and whispers of the

congregation, that his niece had ceased to be heiress presumptive of the crown.380 Was it a disqualification

that he was the near kinsman of the Princesses of Orange and Denmark? Or was it a disqualification that he

The cry of the whole nation was that an imposture bad been practised. Papists had, during some months, been

predicting, from, the pulpit and through the press, in prose and verse, in English and Latin, that a Prince of

Wales would be given to the prayers of the Church; and they had now accomplished their own prophecy.

Every witness who could not be corrupted or deceived had been studiously excluded. Anne had been tricked

into visiting Bath. The Primate had, on the very day preceding that which had been fixed for the villainy,

been sent to prison in defiance of the rules of law and of the privileges of peerage. Not a single man or

woman who had the smallest interest in detecting the fraud had been suffered to he present. The Queen had

been removed suddenly and at the dead of night to St. James's Palace, because that building, less

commodious for honest purposes than Whitehall, had some rooms and passages well suited for the purpose of

the Jesuits. There, amidst a circle of zealots who thought nothing a crime that tended to promote the interests

of their Church, and of courtiers who thought nothing a crime that tended to enrich and aggrandise

themselves, a new born child had been introduced into the royal bed, and then handed round in triumph, as

heir of the three kingdoms. Heated by such suspicions, suspicions unjust, it is true, but not altogether

unnatural, men thronged more eagerly than ever to pay their homage to the saintly victims of the tyrant who,

having long foully injured his people, had now filled up the measure of his iniquities by more foully injuring

The Prince of Orange, not himself suspecting any trick, and not aware of the state of public feeling in

England, ordered prayers to be said under his own roof for his little brother in law, and sent Zulestein to

London with a formal message of congratulation. Zulestein, to his amazement, found all the people whom he

met open mouthed about the infamous fraud just committed by the Jesuits, and saw every hour some fresh

pasquinade on the pregnancy and the delivery. He soon wrote to the Hague that not one person in ten

The demeanour of the seven prelates meanwhile strengthened the interest which their situation excited. On

the evening of the Black Friday, as it was called, on which they were committed, they reached their prison

just at the hour of divine service. They instantly hastened to the chapel. It chanced that in the second lesson

were these words: "In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions,

in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments." All zealous Churchmen were delighted by this coincidence, and

remembered how much comfort a similar coincidence had given, near forty years before, to Charles the First

On the evening of the next day, Saturday the ninth, a letter came from Sunderland enjoining the chaplain of

the Tower to read the Declaration during divine service on the following morning. As the time fixed by the

Order in Council for the reading in London had long expired, this proceeding of the government could be

considered only as a personal insult of the meanest and most childish kind to the venerable prisoners. The

chaplain refused to comply: he was dismissed from his situation; and the chapel was shut up.383

The Bishops edified all who approached them by the firmness and cheerfulness with which they endured

confinement, by the modesty and meekness with which they received the applauses and blessings of the

whole nation, and by the loyal attachment which they professed for the persecutor who sought their

destruction. They remained only a week in custody. On Friday the fifteenth of June, the first day of term, they

were brought before the King's Bench. An immense throng awaited their coming. From the landingplace to

the Court of Requests they passed through a lane of spectators who blessed and applauded them. "Friends,"

said the prisoners as they passed, "honour the King; and remember us in your prayers." These humble and

pious expressions moved the hearers, even to tears. When at length the procession had made its way through

the crowd into the presence of the judges, the Attorney General exhibited the information which he had been

commanded to prepare, and moved that the defendants might be ordered to plead. The counsel on the other

side objected that the Bishops had been unlawfully committed, and were therefore not regularly before the

Court. The question whether a peer could be required to enter into recognisances on a charge of libel was

argued at great length, and decided by a majority of judges in favour of the crown. The prisoners then pleaded

Not Guilty. That day fortnight, the twentyninth of June, was fixed for their trial. In the meantime they were

allowed to be at large on their own recognisances. The crown lawyers acted prudently in not requiring

sureties. For Halifax had arranged that twentyone temporal peers of the highest consideration should be

ready to put in bail, three for each defendant; and such a manifestation of the feeling of the nobility would

have been no slight blow to the government. It was also known that one of the most opulent Dissenters of the

The Bishops were now permitted to depart to their own homes. The common people, who did not understand

the nature of the legal proceedings which had taken place in the King's Bench, and who saw that their

favourites had been brought to Westminster Hall in custody and were suffered to go away in freedom,

imagined that the good cause was prospering. Loud acclamations were raised. The steeples of the churches

sent forth joyous peals. Sprat was amazed to hear the bells of his own Abbey ringing merrily. He promptly

silenced them: but his interference caused much angry muttering. The Bishops found it difficult to escape

from the importunate crowd of their wellwishers. Lloyd was detained in Palace Yard by admirers who

struggled to touch his hands and to kiss the skirt of his robe, till Clarendon, with some difficulty, rescued him

and conveyed him home by a bye path. Cartwright, it is said, was so unwise as to mingle with the crowd.

Some person who saw his episcopal habit asked and received his blessing. A bystander cried out, "Do you

know who blessed you?" "Surely," said he who had just been honoured by the benediction, "it was one of the

Seven." "No," said the other "it is the Popish Bishop of Chester." "Popish dog," cried the enraged Protestant;

Such was the concourse, and such the agitation, that the Dutch Ambassador was surprised to see the day close

without an insurrection. The King had been by no means at ease. In order that he might be ready to suppress

any disturbance, he had passed the morning in reviewing several battalions of infantry in Hyde Park. It is,

however, by no means certain that his troops would have stood by him if he had needed their services. When

Sancroft reached Lambeth, in the afternoon, he found the grenadier guards, who were quartered in that

suburb, assembled before the gate of his palace. They formed in two lines on his right and left, and asked his

benediction as he went through them. He with difficulty prevented them from lighting a bonfire in honour of

his return to his dwelling. There were, however, many bonfires that evening in the City. Two Roman

Catholics who were so indiscreet as to beat some boys for joining in these rejoicings were seized by the mob,

Sir Edward Hales now came to demand fees from those who had lately been his prisoners. They refused to

pay anything for the detention which they regarded as illegal to an officer whose commission was, on their

principles, a nullity. The Lieutenant hinted very intelligibly that, if they came into his hands again, they

should be put into heavy irons and should lie on bare stones. "We are under our King's displeasure," was the

answer; "and most deeply do we feel it: but a fellow subject who threatens us does but lose his breath." It is

easy to imagine with what indignation the people, excited as they were, must have learned that a renegade

from the Protestant faith, who held a command in defiance of the fundamental laws of England, had dared to

menace divines of venerable age and dignity with all the barbarities of Lollard's Tower.385

Before the day of trial the agitation had spread to the farthest corners of the island. From Scotland the

Bishops received letters assuring them of the sympathy of the Presbyterians of that country, so long and so

bitterly hostile to prelacy.386 The people of Cornwall, a fierce, bold, and athletic race, among whom there

was a stronger provincial feeling than in any other part of the realm, were greatly moved by the danger of

Trelawney, whom they reverenced less as a ruler of the Church than as the head of an honourable house, and

the heir through twenty descents of ancestors who had been of great note before the Normans had set foot on

English ground. All over the county the peasants chanted a ballad of which the burden is still remembered:

"And shall Trelawney die, and shall Trelawney die? Then thirty thousand Cornish boys will know the reason

The rustics in many parts of the country loudly expressed a strange hope which had never ceased to live in

their hearts. Their Protestant Duke, their beloved Monmouth, would suddenly appear, would lead them to

victory, and would tread down the King and the Jesuits under his feet.388 The ministers were appalled. Even

Jeffreys would gladly have retraced his steps. He charged Clarendon with friendly messages to the Bishops,

and threw on others the blame of the prosecution which he had himself recommended. Sunderland again

ventured to recommend concession. The late auspicious birth, he said, had furnished the King with an

excellent opportunity of withdrawing from a position full of danger and inconvenience without incurring the

reproach of timidity or of caprice. On such happy occasions it had been usual for sovereigns to make the

hearts of subjects glad by acts of clemency; and nothing could be more advantageous to the Prince of Wales

than that he should, while still in his cradle, be the peacemaker between his father and the agitated nation. But

the King's resolution was fixed. "I will go on," be said. "I have been only too indulgent. Indulgence ruined

my father."389 The artful minister found that his advice had been formerly taken only because it had been

shaped to suit the royal temper, and that, from the moment at which he began to counsel well, he began to

counsel in vain. He had shown some signs of slackness in the proceeding against Magdalene College. He had

recently attempted to convince the King that Tyrconnel's scheme of confiscating the property of the English

colonists in Ireland was full of danger, and had, with the help of Powis and Bellasyse, so far succeeded that

the execution of the design had been postponed for another year. But this timidity and scrupulosity had

excited disgust and suspicion in the royal mind.390 The day of retribution had arrived. Sunderland was in the

same situation in which his rival Rochester had been some months before. Each of the two statesmen in turn

experienced the misery of clutching, with an agonizing grasp, power which was perceptibly slipping away.

Each in turn saw his suggestions scornfully rejected. Both endured the pain of reading displeasure and

distrust in the countenance and demeanour of their master; yet both were by their country held responsible for

those crimes and errors from which they had vainly endeavoured to dissuade him. While he suspected them

of trying to win popularity at the expense of his authority and dignity, the public voice loudly accused them

of trying to win his favour at the expense of their own honour and of the general weal. Yet, in spite of

mortifications and humiliations, they both clung to office with the gripe of drowning men. Both attempted to

propitiate the King by affecting a willingness to be reconciled to his Church. But there was a point at which

Rochester was determined to stop. He went to the verge of apostasy: but there he recoiled: and the world, in

consideration of the firmness with which he refused to take the final step, granted him a liberal amnesty for

all former compliances. Sunderland, less scrupulous and less sensible of shame, resolved to atone for his late

moderation, and to recover the royal confidence, by an act which, to a mind impressed with the importance of

religious truth, must have appeared to be one of the most flagitious of crimes, and which even men of the

world regard as the last excess of baseness. About a week before the day fixed for the great trial, it was

publicly announced that he was a Papist. The King talked with delight of this triumph of divine grace.

Courtiers and envoys kept their countenances as well as they could while the renegade protested that he had

been long convinced of the impossibility of finding salvation out of the communion of Rome, and that his

conscience would not let him rest till he had renounced the heresies in which he had been brought up. The

news spread fast. At all the coffeehouses it was told how the prime minister of England, his feet bare, and a

taper in his hand, had repaired to the royal chapel and knocked humbly for admittance; how a priestly voice

from within had demanded who was there, how Sunderland had made answer that a poor sinner who had long

wandered from the true Church implored her to receive and to absolve him; how the doors were opened; and

This scandalous apostasy could not but heighten the interest with which the nation looked forward to the day

when the fate of the seven brave confessors of the English Church was to be decided. To pack a jury was now

the great object of the King. The crown lawyers were ordered to make strict inquiry as to the sentiments of

the persons who were registered in the freeholders' book. Sir Samuel Astry, Clerk of the Crown, whose duty

it was, in cases of this description, to select the names, was summoned to the palace, and had an interview

with James in the presence of the Chancellor.392 Sir Samuel seems to have done his best. For, among the

fortyeight persons whom he nominated, were said to be several servants of the King, and several Roman

Catholics.393 But as the counsel for the Bishops had a right to strike off twelve, these persons were removed.

The crown lawyers also struck off twelve. The list was thus reduced to twentyfour. The first twelve who

On the twentyninth of June, Westminster Hall, Old and New Palace Yard, and all the neighbouring streets to

a great distance were thronged with people. Such an auditory had never before and has never since been

assembled in the Court of King's Bench. Thirty five temporal peers of the realm were counted in the

All the four judges of the Court were on the bench. Wright, who presided, had been raised to his high place

over the heads of many abler and more learned men solely on account of his unscrupulous servility. Allybone

was a Papist, and owed his situation to that dispensing power, the legality of which was now in question.

Holloway had hitherto been a serviceable tool of the government. Even Powell, whose character for honesty

stood high, had borne a part in some proceedings which it is impossible to defend. He had, in the great case

of Sir Edward Hales, with some hesitation, it is true, and after some delay, concurred with the majority of the

bench, and had thus brought on his character a stain which his honourable conduct on this day completely

The counsel were by no means fairly matched. The government had required from its law officers services so

odious and disgraceful that all the ablest jurists and advocates of the Tory party had, one after another,

refused to comply, and had been dismissed from their employments. Sir Thomas Powis, the Attorney

General, was scarcely of the third rank in his profession. Sir William Williams, the Solicitor General, had

quick parts and dauntless courage: but he wanted discretion; he loved wrangling; he had no command over

his temper; and he was hated and despised by all political parties. The most conspicuous assistants of the

Attorney and Solicitor were Serjeant Trinder, a Roman Catholic, and Sir Bartholomew Shower, Recorder of

London, who had some legal learning, but whose fulsome apologies and endless repetitions were the jest of

Westminster Hall. The government had wished to secure the services of Maynard: but he had plainly declared

On the other side were arrayed almost all the eminent forensic talents of the age. Sawyer and Finch, who, at

the time of the accession of James, had been Attorney and Solicitor General, and who, during the persecution

of the Whigs in the late reign, had served the crown with but too much vehemence and success, were of

counsel for the defendants. With them were joined two persons who, since age had diminished the activity of

Maynard, were reputed the two best lawyers that could be found in the Inns of Court: Pemberton, who had, in

the time of Charles the Second, been Chief justice of the King's Bench, who had been removed from his high

place on account of his humanity and moderation, and who had resumed his practice at the bar; and

Pollexfen, who had long been at the head of the Western circuit, and who, though he had incurred much

unpopularity by holding briefs for the crown at the Bloody Assizes, and particularly by appearing against

Alice Lisle, was known to be at heart a Whig, if not a republican. Sir Creswell Levinz was also there, a man

of great knowledge and experience, but of singularly timid nature. He had been removed from the bench

some years before, because he was afraid to serve the purposes of the government. He was now afraid to

appear as the advocate of the Bishops, and had at first refused to receive their retainer: but it had been

intimated to him by the whole body of attorneys who employed him that, if he declined this brief, he should

Sir George Treby, an able and zealous Whig, who had been Recorder of London under the old charter, was

on the same side. Sir John Holt, a still more eminent Whig lawyer, was not retained for the defence, in

consequence, it should seem, of some prejudice conceived against him by Sancroft, but was privately

consulted on the case by the Bishop of London.397 The junior counsel for the Bishops was a young barrister

named John Somers. He had no advantages of birth or fortune; nor had he yet had any opportunity of

distinguishing himself before the eyes of the public: but his genius, his industry, his great and various

accomplishments, were well known to a small circle of friends; and, in spite of his Whig opinions, his

pertinent and lucid mode of arguing and the constant propriety of his demeanour had already secured to him

the ear of the Court of King's Bench. The importance of obtaining his services had been strongly represented

to the Bishops by Johnstone; and Pollexfen, it is said, had declared that no man in Westminster Hall was so

The jury was sworn; it consisted of persons of highly respectable station. The foreman was Sir Roger

Langley, a baronet of old and honourable family. With him were joined a knight and ten esquires, several of

whom are known to have been men of large possessions. There were some Nonconformists in the number;

for the Bishops had wisely resolved not to show any distrust of the Protestant Dissenters. One name excited

considerable alarm, that of Michael Arnold. He was brewer to the palace; and it was apprehended that the

government counted on his voice. The story goes that he complained bitterly of the position in which he

found himself. "Whatever I do," he said, "I am sure to be half ruined. If I say Not Guilty, I shall brew no

more for the King; and if I say Guilty, I shall brew no more for anybody else."398

The trial then commenced, a trial which, even when coolly perused after the lapse of more than a century and

a half, has all the interest of a drama. The advocates contended on both sides with far more than professional

keenness and vehemence: the audience listened with as much anxiety as if the fate of every one of them was

to be decided by the verdict; and the turns of fortune were so sudden and amazing that the multitude

repeatedly passed in a single minute from anxiety to exultation and back again from exultation to still deeper

The information charged the Bishops with having written or published, in the county of Middlesex, a false,

malicious, and seditious libel. The Attorney and Solicitor first tried to prove the writing. For this purpose

several persons were called to speak to the hands of the Bishops. But the witnesses were so unwilling that

hardly a single plain answer could be extracted from any of them. Pemberton, Pollexfen, and Levinz

contended that there was no evidence to go to the jury. Two of the judges, Holloway and Powell, declared

themselves of the same opinion; and the hopes of the spectators rose high. All at once the crown lawyers

announced their intention to take another line. Powis, with shame and reluctance which he could not

dissemble, put into the witness box Blathwayt, a Clerk of the Privy Council, who had been present when the

King interrogated the Bishops. Blathwayt swore that he had heard them own their signatures. His testimony

was decisive. "Why," said judge Holloway to the Attorney, "when you had such evidence, did you not

produce it at first, without all this waste of time?" It soon appeared why the counsel for the crown had been

unwilling, without absolute necessity, to resort to this mode of proof. Pemberton stopped Blathwayt,

subjected him to a searching cross examination, and insisted upon having all that had passed between the

King and the defendants fully related. "That is a pretty thing indeed," cried Williams. "Do you think," said

Powis, "that you are at liberty to ask our witnesses any impertinent question that comes into your heads?" The

advocates of the Bishops were not men to be so put down. "He is sworn," said Pollexfen, "to tell the truth and

the whole truth: and an answer we must and will have." The witness shuffled, equivocated, pretended to

misunderstand the questions, implored the protection of the Court. But he was in hands from which it was not

easy to escape. At length the Attorney again interposed. "If," he said, "you persist in asking such a question,

tell us, at least, what use you mean to make of it." Pemberton, who, through the whole trial, did his duty

manfully and ably, replied without hesitation; "My Lords, I will answer Mr. Attorney. I will deal plainly with

the Court. If the Bishops owned this paper under a promise from His Majesty that their confession should not

be used against them, I hope that no unfair advantage will be taken of them." "You put on His Majesty what I

dare hardly name," said Williams: "since you will be so pressing, I demand, for the King, that the question

may be recorded." "What do you mean, Mr. Solicitor?" said Sawyer, interposing. "I know what I mean," said

the apostate: "I desire that the question may be recorded in Court." "Record what you will, I am not afraid of

you, Mr. Solicitor," said Pemberton. Then came a loud and fierce altercation, which the Chief Justice could

with difficulty quiet. In other circumstances, he would probably have ordered the question to be recorded and

Pemberton to be committed. But on this great day he was overawed. He often cast a side glance towards the

thick rows of Earls and Barons by whom he was watched, and who in the next Parliament might be his

judges. He looked, a bystander said, as if all the peers present had halters in their pockets.399 At length

Blathwayt was forced to give a full account of what had passed. It appeared that the King had entered into no

express covenant with the Bishops. But it appeared also that the Bishops might not unreasonably think that

there was an implied engagement. Indeed, from the unwillingness of the crown lawyers to put the Clerk of

the Council into the witness box, and from the vehemence with which they objected to Pemberton's cross

However, the handwriting was now proved. But a new and serious objection was raised. It was not sufficient

to prove that the Bishops had written the alleged libel. It was necessary to prove also that they had written it

in the county of Middlesex. And not only was it out of the power of the Attorney and Solicitor to prove this;

but it was in the power of the defendants to prove the contrary. For it so happened that Sancroft had never

once left the palace, at Lambeth from the time when the Order in Council appeared till after the petition was

in the King's hands. The whole case for the prosecution had therefore completely broken down; and the

The crown lawyers then changed their ground again, abandoned altogether the charge of writing a libel, and

undertook to prove that the Bishops had published a libel in the county of Middlesex. The difficulties were

great. The delivery of the petition to the King was undoubtedly, in the eye of the law, a publication. But how

was this delivery to be proved? No person had been present at the audience in the royal closet, except the

King and the defendants. The King could not well be sworn. It was therefore only by the admissions of the

defendants that the fact of publication could be established. Blathwayt was again examined, but in vain. He

well remembered, he said, that the Bishops owned their hands; but he did not remember that they owned the

paper which lay on the table of the Privy Council to be the same paper which they had delivered to the King,

or that they were even interrogated on that point. Several other official men who had been in attendance on

the Council were called, and among them Samuel Pepys, Secretary of the Admiralty; but none of them could

remember that anything was said about the delivery. It was to no purpose that Williams put leading questions

till the counsel on the other side declared that such twisting, such wiredrawing, was never seen in a court of

justice, and till Wright himself was forced to admit that the Solicitor's mode of examination was contrary to

all rule. As witness after witness answered in the negative, roars of laughter and shouts of triumph, which the

It seemed that at length this hard fight had been won. The case for the crown was closed. Had the counsel for

the Bishops remained silent, an acquittal was certain; for nothing which the most corrupt and shameless judge

could venture to call legal evidence of publication had been given. The Chief justice was beginning to charge

the jury, and would undoubtedly have directed them to acquit the defendants; but Finch, too anxious to be

perfectly discreet, interfered, and begged to be heard. "If you will be heard," said Wright, "you shall be heard;

but you do not understand your own interests." The other counsel for the defence made Finch sit down, and

begged the Chief justice to proceed. He was about to do so when a messenger came to the Solicitor General

with news that Lord Sunderland could prove the publication, and would come down to the court immediately.

Wright maliciously told the counsel for the defence that they had only themselves to thank for the turn which

things had taken. The countenances of the great multitude fell. Finch was, during some hours, the most

unpopular man in the country. Why could he not sit still as his betters, Sawyer, Pemberton, and Pollexfen had

done? His love of meddling, his ambition to make a fine speech, had ruined everything.

Meanwhile the Lord President was brought in a sedan chair through the hall. Not a hat moved as he passed;

and many voices cried out "Popish dog." He came into Court pale and trembling, with eyes fixed on the

ground, and gave his evidence in a faltering voice. He swore that the Bishops had informed him of their

intention to present a petition to the King, and that they had been admitted into the royal closet for that

purpose. This circumstance, coupled with the circumstance that, after they left the closet, there was in the

King's hands a petition signed by them, was such proof as might reasonably satisfy a jury of the fact of the

Publication in Middlesex was then proved. But was the paper thus published a false, malicious, and seditious

libel? Hitherto the matter in dispute had been whether a fact which everybody well knew to be true could be

proved according to technical rules of evidence; but now the contest became one of deeper interest. It was

necessary to inquire into the limits of prerogative and liberty, into the right of the King to dispense with

statutes, into the right of the subject to petition for the redress of grievances. During three hours the counsel

for the petitioners argued with great force in defence of the fundamental principles of the constitution, and

proved from the journals of the House of Commons that the Bishops had affirmed no more than the truth

when they represented to the King that the dispensing power which he claimed had been repeatedly declared

illegal by Parliament. Somers rose last. He spoke little more than five minutes; but every word was full of

weighty matter; and when he sate down his reputation as an orator and a constitutional lawyer was

established. He went through the expressions which were used in the information to describe the offence

imputed to the Bishops, and showed that every word, whether adjective or substantive, was altogether

inappropriate. The offence imputed was a false, a malicious, a seditious libel. False the paper was not; for

every fact which it set forth had been proved from the journals of Parliament to be true. Malicious the paper

was not; for the defendants had not sought an occasion of strife, but had been placed by the government in

such a situation that they must either oppose themselves to the royal will, or violate the most sacred

obligations of conscience and honour. Seditious the paper was not; for it had not been scattered by the writers

among the rabble, but delivered privately into the hands of the King alone: and a libel it was not, but a decent

petition such as, by the laws of England, nay, by the laws of imperial Rome, by the laws of all civilised states,

a subject who thinks himself aggrieved may with propriety present to the sovereign.

The Attorney replied shortly and feebly. The Solicitor spoke at great length and with great acrimony, and was

often interrupted by the clamours and hisses of the audience. He went so far as to lay it down that no subject

or body of subjects, except the Houses of Parliament, had a right to petition the King. The galleries were

furious; and the Chief justice himself stood aghast at the effrontery of this venal turncoat.

At length Wright proceeded to sum up the evidence. His language showed that the awe in which he stood of

the government was tempered by the awe with which the audience, so numerous, so splendid, and so strongly

excited, had impressed him. He said that he would give no opinion on the question of the dispensing power,

that it was not necessary for him to do so, that he could not agree with much of the Solicitor's speech, that it

was the right of the subject to petition, but that the particular petition before the Court was improperly

worded, and was, in the contemplation of law, a libel. Allybone was of the same mind, but, in giving his

opinion, showed such gross ignorance of law and history as brought on him the contempt of all who heard

him. Holloway evaded the question of the dispensing power, but said that the petition seemed to him to be

such as subjects who think themselves aggrieved are entitled to present, and therefore no libel. Powell took a

bolder course. He avowed that, in his judgment, the Declaration of Indulgence was a nullity, and that the

dispensing power, as lately exercised, was utterly inconsistent with all law. If these encroachments of

prerogative were allowed, there was an end of Parliaments. The whole legislative authority would be in the

King. "That issue, gentlemen," he said, "I leave to God and to your consciences."400

It was dark before the jury retired to consider of their verdict. The night was a night of intense anxiety. Some

letters are extant which were despatched during that period of suspense, and which have therefore an interest

of a peculiar kind. "It is very late," wrote the Papal Nuncio; "and the decision is not yet known. The judges

and the culprits have gone to their own homes. The jury remain together. Tomorrow we shall learn the event

The solicitor for the Bishops sate up all night with a body of servants on the stairs leading to the room where

the jury was, consulting. It was absolutely necessary to watch the officers who watched the doors; for those

officers were supposed to be in the interest of the crown, and might, if not carefully observed, have furnished

a courtly juryman with food, which would have enabled him to starve out the other eleven. Strict guard was

therefore kept. Not even a candle to light a pipe was permitted to enter. Some basins of water for washing

were suffered to pass at about four in the morning. The jurymen, raging with thirst, soon lapped up the whole.

Great numbers of people walked the neighbouring streets till dawn. Every hour a messenger came from

Whitehall to know what was passing. Voices, high in altercation, were repeatedly heard within the room: but

At first nine were for acquitting and three for convicting. Two of the minority soon gave way; but Arnold was

obstinate. Thomas Austin, a country gentleman of great estate, who had paid close attention to the evidence

and speeches, and had taken full notes, wished to argue the question. Arnold declined. He was not used, he

doggedly said, to reasoning and debating. His conscience was not satisfied; and he should not acquit the

Bishops. "If you come to that," said Austin, "look at me. I am the largest and strongest of the twelve; and

before I find such a petition as this a libel, here I will stay till I am no bigger than a tobacco pipe." It was six

in the morning before Arnold yielded. It was soon known that the jury were agreed: but what the verdict

At ten the Court again met. The crowd was greater than ever. The jury appeared in their box; and there was a

Sir Samuel Astry spoke. "Do you find the defendants, or any of them, guilty of the misdemeanour whereof

they are impeached, or not guilty?" Sir Roger Langley answered, "Not guilty." As the words passed his lips,

Halifax sprang up and waved his hat. At that signal, benches and galleries raised a shout. In a moment ten

thousand persons, who crowded the great hall, replied with a still louder shout, which made the old oaken

roof crack; and in another moment the innumerable throng without set up a third huzza, which was heard at

Temple Bar. The boats which covered the Thames, gave an answering cheer. A peal of gunpowder was heard

on the water, and another, and another; and so, in a few moments, the glad tidings went flying past the Savoy

and the Friars to London Bridge, and to the forest of masts below. As the news spread, streets and squares,

market places and coffeehouses, broke forth into acclamations. Yet were the acclamations less strange than

the weeping. For the feelings of men had been wound up to such a point that at length the stern English

nature, so little used to outward signs of emotion, gave way, and thousands sobbed aloud for very joy.

Meanwhile, from the outskirts of the multitude, horsemen were spurring off to bear along all the great roads

intelligence of the victory of our Church and nation. Yet not even that astounding explosion could awe the

bitter and intrepid spirit of the Solicitor. Striving to make himself heard above the din, he called on the judges

to commit those who had violated, by clamour, the dignity of a court of justice. One of the rejoicing populace

was seized. But the tribunal felt that it would be absurd to punish a single individual for an offence common

It was vain to think of passing at that moment to any other business. Indeed the roar of the multitude was

such that, for half an hour, scarcely a word could be heard in court. Williams got to his coach amidst a

tempest of hisses and curses. Cartwright, whose curiosity was ungovernable, had been guilty of the folly and

indecency of coming to Westminster in order to hear the decision. He was recognised by his sacerdotal garb

and by his corpulent figure, and was hooted through the hall. "Take care," said one, "of the wolf in sheep's

clothing." "Make room," cried another, "for the man with the Pope in his belly."404

The acquitted prelates took refuge from the crowd which implored their blessing in the nearest chapel where

divine service was performing. Many churches were open on that morning throughout the capital; and many

pious persons repaired thither. The bells of all the parishes of the City and liberties were ringing. The jury

meanwhile could scarcely make their way out of the hall. They were forced to shake hands with hundreds.

"God bless you," cried the people; "God prosper your families; you have done like honest goodnatured

gentlemen; you have saved us all today." As the noblemen who had appeared to support the good cause drove

off, they flung from their carriage windows handfuls of money, and bade the crowd drink to the health of the

The Attorney went with the tidings to Sunderland, who happened to be conversing with the Nuncio. "Never,"

said Powis, "within man's memory, have there been such shouts and such tears of joy as today."406 The King

had that morning visited the camp on Hounslow Heath. Sunderland instantly sent a courier thither with the

news. James was in Lord Feversham's tent when the express arrived. He was greatly disturbed, and exclaimed

in French, "So much the worse for them." He soon set out for London. While he was present, respect

prevented the soldiers from giving a loose to their feelings; but he had scarcely quitted the camp when he

heard a great shouting behind him. He was surprised, and asked what that uproar meant. "Nothing," was the

answer: "the soldiers are glad that the Bishops are acquitted." "Do you call that nothing? "said James. And

He might well be out of temper. His defeat had been complete and most humiliating. Had the prelates

escaped on account of some technical defect in the case for the crown, had they escaped because they had not

written the petition in Middlesex, or because it was impossible to prove, according to the strict rules of law,

that they had delivered to the King the paper for which they were called in question, the prerogative would

have suffered no shock. Happily for the country, the fact of publication had been fully established. The

counsel for the defence had therefore been forced to attack the dispensing power. They had attacked it with

great learning, eloquence, and boldness. The advocates of the government had been by universal

acknowledgment overmatched in the contest. Not a single judge had ventured to declare that the Declaration

of Indulgence was legal. One Judge had in the strongest terms pronounced it illegal. The language of the

whole town was that the dispensing power had received a fatal blow. Finch, who had the day before been

universally reviled, was now universally applauded. He had been unwilling, it was said, to let the case be

decided in a way which would have left the great constitutional question still doubtful. He had felt that a

verdict which should acquit his clients, without condemning the Declaration of Indulgence, would be but half

a victory. It is certain that Finch deserved neither the reproaches which had been cast on him while the event

was doubtful, nor the praises which he received when it had proved happy. It was absurd to blame him

because, during the short delay which he occasioned, the crown lawyers unexpectedly discovered new

evidence. It was equally absurd to suppose that he deliberately exposed his clients to risk, in order to establish

a general principle: and still more absurd was it to praise him for what would have been a gross violation of

That joyful day was followed by a not less joyful night. The Bishops, and some of their most respectable

friends, in vain exerted themselves to prevent tumultuous demonstrations of joy. Never within the memory of

the oldest, not even on that evening on which it was known through London that the army of Scotland had

declared for a free Parliament, had the streets been in such a glare with bonfires. Round every bonfire crowds

were drinking good health to the Bishops and confusion to the Papists. The windows were lighted with rows

of candles. Each row consisted of seven; and the taper in the centre, which was taller than the rest,

represented the Primate. The noise of rockets, squibs, and firearms, was incessant. One huge pile of faggots

blazed right in front of the great gate of Whitehall. Others were lighted before the doors of Roman Catholic

Peers. Lord Arundell of Wardour wisely quieted the mob with a little money: but at Salisbury House in the

Strand an attempt at resistance was made. Lord Salisbury's servants sallied out and fired: but they killed only

the unfortunate beadle of the parish, who had come thither to put out the fire; and they were soon routed and

driven back into the house. None of the spectacles of that night interested the common people so much as one

with which they had, a few years before, been familiar, and which they now, after a long interval, enjoyed

once more, the burning of the Pope. This once familiar pageant is known to our generation only by

descriptions and engravings. A figure, by no means resembling those rude representations of Guy Faux which

are still paraded on the fifth of November, but made of wax with some skill, and adorned at no small expense

with robes and a tiara, was mounted on a chair resembling that in which the Bishops of Rome are still, on

some great festivals, borne through Saint Peter's Church to the high altar. His Holiness was generally

accompanied by a train of Cardinals and Jesuits. At his ear stood a buffoon disguised as a devil with horns

and tail. No rich and zealous Protestant grudged his guinea on such an occasion, and, if rumour could be

trusted, the cost of the procession was sometimes not less than a thousand pounds. After the Pope had been

borne some time in state over the heads of the multitude, he was committed to the flames with loud

acclamations. In the time of the popularity of Oates and Shaftesbury this show was exhibited annually in

Fleet Street before the windows of the Whig Club on the anniversary of the birth of Queen Elizabeth. Such

was the celebrity of these grotesque rites, that Barillon once risked his life in order to peep at them from a

hiding place.408 But, from the day when the Rye House Plot was discovered, till the day of the acquittal of

the Bishops, the ceremony had been disused. Now, however, several Popes made their appearance in different

parts of London. The Nuncio was much shocked; and the King was more hurt by this insult to his Church

than by all the other affronts which he had received. The magistrates, however, could do nothing. The Sunday

had dawned, and the bells of the parish churches were ringing for early prayers, before the fires began to

languish and the crowds to disperse. A proclamation was speedily put forth against the rioters. Many of them,

mostly young apprentices, were apprehended; but the bills were thrown out at the Middlesex sessions. The

magistrates, many of whom were Roman Catholics, expostulated with the grand jury and sent them three or

Meanwhile the glad tidings were flying to every part of the kingdom, and were everywhere received with

rapture. Gloucester, Bedford, and Lichfield, were among the places which were distinguished by peculiar

zeal: but Bristol and Norwich, which stood nearest to London in population and wealth, approached nearest

The prosecution of the Bishops is an event which stands by itself in our history. It was the first and the last

occasion on which two feelings of tremendous potency, two feelings which have generally been opposed to

each other, and either of which, when strongly excited, has sufficed to convulse the state, were united in

perfect harmony. Those feelings were love of the Church and love of freedom. During many generations

every violent outbreak of High Church feeling, with one exception, has been unfavourable to civil liberty;

every violent outbreak of zeal for liberty, with one exception, has been unfavourable to the authority and

influence of the prelacy and the priesthood. In 1688 the cause of the hierarchy was for a moment that of the

popular party. More than nine thousand clergymen, with the Primate and his most respectable suffragans at

their head, offered themselves to endure bonds and the spoiling of their goods for the great fundamental

principle of our free constitution. The effect was a coalition which included the most zealous Cavaliers, the

most zealous Republicans, and all the intermediate sections of the community. The spirit which had

supported Hampden in the preceding generation, the spirit which, in the succeeding generation, supported

Sacheverell, combined to support the Archbishop who was Hampden and Sacheverell in one. Those classes

of society which are most deeply interested in the preservation of order, which in troubled times are generally

most ready to strengthen the hands of government, and which have a natural antipathy to agitators, followed,

without scruple, the guidance of a venerable man, the first peer of the realm, the first minister of the Church,

a Tory in politics, a saint in manners, whom tyranny had in his own despite turned into a demagogue. Those,

on the other hand, who had always abhorred episcopacy, as a relic of Popery, and as an instrument of

arbitrary power, now asked on bended knees the blessing of a prelate who was ready to wear fetters and to lay

his aged limbs on bare stones rather than betray the interests of the Protestant religion and set the prerogative

above the laws. With love of the Church and with love of freedom was mingled, at this great crisis, a third

feeling which is among the most honourable peculiarities of our national character. An individual oppressed

by power, even when destitute of all claim to public respect and gratitude, generally finds strong sympathy

among us. Thus, in the time of our grandfathers, society was thrown into confusion by the persecution of

Wilkes. We have ourselves seen the nation roused almost to madness by the wrongs of Queen Caroline. It is

probable, therefore, that, even if no great political and religious interests had been staked on the event of the

proceeding against the Bishops, England would not have seen, without strong emotions of pity and anger, old

men of stainless virtue pursued by the vengeance of a harsh and inexorable prince who owed to their fidelity

Actuated by these sentiments our ancestors arrayed themselves against the government in one huge and

compact mass. All ranks, all parties, all Protestant sects, made up that vast phalanx. In the van were the Lords

Spiritual and Temporal. Then came the landed gentry and the clergy, both the Universities, all the Inns of

Court, merchants, shopkeepers, farmers, the porters who plied in the streets of the great towns, the peasants

who ploughed the fields. The league against the King included the very foremast men who manned his ships,

the very sentinels who guarded his palace. The names of Whig and Tory were for a moment forgotten. The

old Exclusionist took the old Abhorrer by the hand. Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists,

forgot their long feuds, and remembered only their common Protestantism and their common danger. Divines

bred in the school of Laud talked loudly, not only of toleration, but of comprehension. The Archbishop soon

after his acquittal put forth a pastoral letter which is one of the most remarkable compositions of that age. He

had, from his youth up, been at war with the Nonconformists, and had repeatedly assailed them with unjust

and unchristian asperity. His principal work was a hideous caricature of the Calvinistic theology.410 He had

drawn up for the thirtieth of January and for the twentyninth of May forms of prayer which reflected on the

Puritans in language so strong that the government had thought fit to soften it down. But now his heart was

melted and opened. He solemnly enjoined the Bishops and clergy to have a very tender regard to their

brethren the Protestant Dissenters, to visit them often, to entertain them hospitably, to discourse with them

civilly, to persuade them, if it might be, to conform to the Church, but, if that were found impossible, to join

them heartily and affectionately in exertions for the blessed cause of the Reformation.411

Many pious persons in subsequent years remembered that time with bitter regret. They described it as a short

glimpse of a golden age between two iron ages. Such lamentation, though natural, was not reasonable. The

coalition of 1688 was produced, and could be produced, only by tyranny which approached to insanity, and

by danger which threatened at once all the great institutions of the country. If there has never since been

similar union, the reason is that there has never since been similar misgovernment. It must be remembered

that, though concord is in itself better than discord, discord may indicate a better state of things than is

indicated by concord. Calamity and peril often force men to combine. Prosperity and security often encourage

Change in the Opinion of the Tories concerning the Lawfulness of ResistanceRussell proposes to the

Prince of Orange a Descent on EnglandHenry SidneyDevonshire; Shrewsbury; HalifaxDanby

MaryDifficulties of William's EnterpriseConduct of James after the Trial of the Bishops Dismissions

and PromotionsProceedings of the High Commission; Sprat resigns his SeatDiscontent of the Clergy;

Transactions at OxfordDiscontent of the GentryDiscontent of the ArmyIrish Troops brought over;

Public IndignationLillibulleroPolitics of the United Provinces; Errors of the French KingHis Quarrel

with the Pope concerning FranchisesThe Archbishopric of CologneSkilful Management of

WilliamHis Military and Naval PreparationsHe receives numerous Assurances of Support from

EnglandSunderlandAnxiety of WilliamWarnings conveyed to JamesExertions of Lewis to save

JamesJames frustrates them The French Armies invade GermanyWilliam obtains the Sanction of the

States General to his ExpeditionSchombergBritish Adventurers at the HagueWilliam's

DeclarationJames roused to a Sense of his Danger; his Naval MeansHis Military MeansHe attempts

to conciliate his SubjectsHe gives Audience to the BishopsHis Concessions ill receivedProofs of the

Birth of the Prince of Wales submitted to thePrivy CouncilDisgrace of SunderlandWilliam takes

leave of the States of HollandHe embarks and sails; he is driven back by a StormHis Declaration arrives

in England; James questions the LordsWilliam sets sail the second TimeHe passes the StraitsHe

lands at TorbayHe enters ExeterConversation of the King with the Bishops Disturbances in

LondonMen of Rank begin to repair to the Prince LovelaceColchester; AbingdonDesertion of

CornburyPetition of the Lords for a ParliamentThe King goes to Salisbury Seymour; Court of

William at ExeterNorthern Insurrection Skirmish at WincantonDesertion of Churchill and Grafton

Retreat of the Royal Army from SalisburyDesertion of Prince George and OrmondFlight of the Princess

AnneCouncil of Lords held by JamesHe appoints Commissioners to treat with William The

Negotiation a FeintDartmouth refuses to send the Prince of Wales into FranceAgitation of

LondonForged Proclamation Risings in various Parts of the CountryClarendon joins the Prince at

Salisbury; Dissension in the Prince's CampThe Prince reaches Hungerford; Skirmish at Reading; the

King's Commissioners arrive at HungerfordNegotiationThe Queen and the Prince of Wales sent to

THE acquittal of the Bishops was not the only event which makes the thirtieth of June 1688 a great epoch in

history. On that day, while the bells of a hundred churches were ringing, while multitudes were busied, from

Hyde Park to Mile End, in piling faggots and dressing Popes for the rejoicings of the night, was despatched

from London to the Hague an instrument scarcely less important to the liberties of England than the Great

The prosecution of the Bishops, and the birth of the Prince of Wales, had produced a great revolution in the

feelings of many Tories. At the very moment at which their Church was suffering the last excess of injury

and insult, they were compelled to renounce the hope of peaceful deliverance. Hitherto they had flattered

themselves that the trial to which their loyalty was subjected would, though severe, be temporary, and that

their wrongs would shortly be redressed without any violation of the ordinary rule of succession. A very

different prospect was now before them. As far as they could look forward they saw only misgovernment,

such as that of the last three years, extending through ages. The cradle of the heir apparent of the crown was

surrounded by Jesuits. Deadly hatred of that Church of which he would one day be the head would be

studiously instilled into his infant mind, would be the guiding principle of his life, and would be bequeathed

by him to his posterity. This vista of calamities had no end. It stretched beyond the life of the youngest man

living, beyond the eighteenth century. None could say how many generations of Protestant Englishmen might

hive to bear oppression, such as, even when it had been believed to be short, had been found almost

insupportable. Was there then no remedy? One remedy there was, quick, sharp, and decisive, a remedy which

the Whigs had been but too ready to employ, but which had always been regarded by the Tories as, in all

The greatest Anglican doctors of that age had maintained that no breach of law or contract, no excess of

cruelty, rapacity, or licentiousness, on the part of a rightful King, could justify his people in withstanding him

by force. Some of them had delighted to exhibit the doctrine of nonresistance in a form so exaggerated as to

shock common sense and humanity. They frequently and emphatically remarked that Nero was at the head of

the Roman government when Saint Paul inculcated the duty of obeying magistrates. The inference which

they drew was that, if an English King should, without any law but his own pleasure, persecute his subjects

for not worshipping idols, should fling them to the lions in the Tower, should wrap them up in pitched cloth

and set them on fire to light up Saint James's Park, and should go on with these massacres till whole towns

and shires were left without one inhabitant, the survivors would still be bound meekly to submit, and to be

torn in pieces or roasted alive without a struggle. The arguments in favour of this proposition were futile

indeed: but the place of sound argument was amply supplied by the omnipotent sophistry of interest and of

passion. Many writers have expressed wonder that the high spirited Cavaliers of England should have been

zealous for the most slavish theory that has ever been known among men. The truth is that this theory at first

presented itself to the Cavalier as the very opposite of slavish. Its tendency was to make him not a slave but a

freeman and a master. It exalted him by exalting one whom he regarded as his protector, as his friend, as the

head of his beloved party and of his more beloved Church. When Republicans were dominant the Royalist

had endured wrongs and insults which the restoration of the legitimate government had enabled him to

retaliate. Rebellion was therefore associated in his imagination with subjection and degradation, and

monarchical authority with liberty and ascendency. It had never crossed his imagination that a time might

come when a King, a Stuart, would persecute the most loyal of the clergy and gentry with more than the

animosity of the Rump or the Protector. That time had however arrived. It was now to be seen how the

patience which Churchmen professed to have learned from the writings of Paul would stand the test of a

persecution by no means so severe as that of Nero. The event was such as everybody who knew anything of

human nature would have predicted. Oppression speedily did what philosophy and eloquence would have

failed to do. The system of Filmer might have survived the attacks of Locke: but it never recovered from the

death blow given by James. That logic, which, while it was used to prove that Presbyterians and Independents

ought to bear imprisonment and confiscation with meekness, had been pronounced unanswerable, seemed to

be of very little force when the question was whether Anglican Bishops should be imprisoned, and the

revenues of Anglican colleges confiscated. It has been often repeated, from the pulpits of all the Cathedrals in

the land, that the apostolical injunction to obey the civil magistrate was absolute and universal, and that it was

impious presumption in man to limit a precept which had been promulgated without any limitation in the

word of God. Now, however, divines, whose sagacity had been sharpened by the imminent danger in which

they stood of being turned out of their livings and prebends to make room for Papists, discovered flaws in the

reasoning which had formerly seemed so convincing. The ethical parts of Scripture were not to be construed

like Acts of Parliament, or like the casuistical treatises of the schoolmen. What Christian really turned the left

cheek to the ruffian who had smitten the right? What Christian really gave his cloak to the thieves who had

taken his coat away? Both in the Old and in the New Testament general rules were perpetually laid down

unaccompanied by the exceptions. Thus there was a general command not to kill, unaccompanied by any

reservation in favour of the warrior who kills in defence of his king and country. There was a general

command not to swear, unaccompanied by any reservation in favour of the witness who swears to speak the

truth before a judge. Yet the lawfulness of defensive war, and of judicial oaths, was disputed only by a few

obscure sectaries, and was positively affirmed in the articles of the Church of England. All the arguments,

which showed that the Quaker, who refused to bear arms, or to kiss the Gospels, was unreasonable and

perverse, might be turned against those who denied to subjects the right of resisting extreme tyranny by force.

If it was contended that the texts which prohibited homicide, and the texts which prohibited swearing, though

generally expressed, must be construed in subordination to the great commandment by which every man is

enjoined to promote the welfare of his neighbours, and would, when so construed, be found not to apply to

cases in which homicide or swearing might be absolutely necessary to protect the dearest interests of society,

it was not easy to deny that the texts which prohibited resistance ought to be construed in the same manner. If

the ancient people of God had been directed sometimes to destroy human life, and sometimes to bind

themselves by oaths, they had also been directed sometimes to resist wicked princes. If early fathers of the

Church had occasionally used language which seemed to imply that they disapproved of all resistance, they

had also occasionally used language which seemed to imply that they disapproved of all war and of all oaths.

In truth the doctrine of passive obedience, as taught at Oxford in the reign of Charles the Second, can be

deduced from the Bible only by a mode of interpretation which would irresistibly lead us to the conclusions

It was not merely by arguments drawn from the letter of Scripture that the Anglican theologians had, during

the years which immediately followed the Restoration, laboured to prove their favourite tenet. They had

attempted to show that, even if revelation had been silent, reason would have taught wise men the folly and

wickedness of all resistance to established government. It was universally admitted that such resistance was,

except in extreme cases, unjustifiable. And who would undertake to draw the line between extreme cases and

ordinary cases? Was there any government in the world under which there were not to be found some

discontented and factious men who would say, and perhaps think, that their grievances constituted an extreme

case? If, indeed, it were possible to lay down a clear and accurate rule which might forbid men to rebel

against Trajan, and yet leave them at liberty to rebel against Caligula, such a rule might be highly beneficial.

But no such rule had even been, or ever would be, framed. To say that rebellion was lawful under some

circumstances, without accurately defining those circumstances, was to say that every man might rebel

whenever he thought fit; and a society in which every man rebelled whenever he thought fit would be more

miserable than a society governed by the most cruel and licentious despot. It was therefore necessary to

maintain the great principle of nonresistance in all its integrity. Particular cases might doubtless be put in

which resistance would benefit a community: but it was, on the whole, better that the people should patiently

endure a bad government than that they should relieve themselves by violating a law on which the security of

Such reasoning easily convinced a dominant and prosperous party, but could ill bear the scrutiny of minds

strongly excited by royal injustice and ingratitude. It is true that to trace the exact boundary between rightful

and wrongful resistance is impossible: but this impossibility arises from the nature of right and wrong, and is

found in almost every part of ethical science. A good action is not distinguished from a bad action by marks

so plain as those which distinguish a hexagon from a square. There is a frontier where virtue and vice fade

into each other. Who has ever been able to define the exact boundary between courage and rashness, between

prudence and cowardice, between frugality and avarice, between liberality and prodigality? Who has ever

been able to say how far mercy to offenders ought to be carried, and where it ceases to deserve the name of

mercy and becomes a pernicious weakness? What casuist, what lawyer, has ever been able nicely to mark the

limits of the right of selfdefence? All our jurists bold that a certain quantity of risk to life or limb justifies a

man in shooting or stabbing an assailant: but they have long given up in despair the attempt to describe, in

precise words, that quantity of risk. They only say that it must be, not a slight risk, but a risk such as would

cause serious apprehension to a man of firm mind; and who will undertake to say what is the precise amount

of apprehension which deserves to be called serious, or what is the precise texture of mind which deserves to

be called firm. It is doubtless to be regretted that the nature of words and the nature of things do not admit of

more accurate legislation: nor can it be denied that wrong will often be done when men are judges in their

own cause, and proceed instantly to execute their own judgment. Yet who would, on that account, interdict all

selfdefence? The right which a people has to resist a bad government bears a close analogy to the right which

an individual, in the absence of legal protection, has to slay an assailant. In both cases the evil must be grave.

In both cases all regular and peaceable modes of defence must be exhausted before the aggrieved party

resorts to extremities. In both cases an awful responsibility is incurred. In both cases the burden of the proof

lies on him who has ventured on so desperate an expedient; and, if he fails to vindicate himself, he is justly

liable to the severest penalties. But in neither case can we absolutely deny the existence of the right. A man

beset by assassins is not bound to let himself be tortured and butchered without using his weapons, because

nobody has ever been able precisely to define the amount of danger which justifies homicide. Nor is a society

bound to endure passively all that tyranny can inflict, because nobody has ever been able precisely to define

But could the resistance of Englishmen to such a prince as James be properly called rebellion? The

thoroughpaced disciples of Filmer, indeed, maintained that there was no difference whatever between the

polity of our country and that of Turkey, and that, if the King did not confiscate the contents of all the tills in

Lombard Street, and send mutes with bowstrings to Sancroft and Halifax, this was only because His Majesty

was too gracious to use the whole power which he derived from heaven. But the great body of Tories, though,

in the heat of conflict, they might occasionally use language which seemed to indicate that they approved of

these extravagant doctrines, heartily abhorred despotism. The English government was, in their view, a

limited monarchy. Yet how can a monarchy be said to be limited if force is never to be employed, even in the

last resort, for the purpose of maintaining the limitations? In Muscovy, where the sovereign was, by the

constitution of the state, absolute, it might perhaps be, with some colour of truth, contended that, whatever

excesses he might commit, he was still entitled to demand, on Christian principles, the obedience of his

subjects. But here prince and people were alike bound by the laws. It was therefore James who incurred the

woe denounced against those who insult the powers that be. It was James who was resisting the ordinance of

God, who was mutinying against that legitimate authority to which he ought to have been subject, not only

for wrath, but also for conscience sake, and who was, in the true sense of the words of Jesus, withholding

Moved by such considerations as these, the ablest and most enlightened Tories began to admit that they had

overstrained the doctrine of passive obedience. The difference between these men and the Whigs as to the

reciprocal obligations of Kings and subjects was now no longer a difference of principle. There still

remained, it is true, many historical controversies between the party which had always maintained the

lawfulness of resistance and the new converts. The memory of the blessed Martyr was still as much revered

as ever by those old Cavaliers who were ready to take arms against his degenerate son. They still spoke with

abhorrence of the Long Parliament, of the Rye House Plot, and of the Western insurrection. But, whatever

they might think about the past, the view which they took of the present was altogether Whiggish: for they

now held that extreme oppression might justify resistance, and they held that the oppression which the nation

It must not, however, be supposed that all the Tories renounced, even at that conjuncture, a tenet which they

had from childhood been taught to regard as an essential part of Christianity, which they had professed during

many years with ostentatious vehemence, and which they had attempted to propagate by persecution. Many

were kept steady to their old creed by conscience, and many by shame. But the greater part, even of those

who still continued to pronounce all resistance to the sovereign unlawful, were disposed, in the event of a

civil conflict, to remain neutral. No provocation should drive them to rebel: but, if rebellion broke forth, it did

not appear that they were bound to fight for James the Second as they would have fought for Charles the

First. The Christians of Rome had been forbidden by Saint Paul to resist the government of Nero: but there

was no reason to believe that the Apostle, if he had been alive when the Legions and the Senate rose up

against that wicked Emperor, would have commanded the brethren to fly to arms in support of tyranny. The

duty of the persecuted Church was clear: she must suffer patiently, and commit her cause to God. But, if God,

whose providence perpetually educes good out of evil, should be pleased, as oftentimes He bad been pleased,

to redress her wrongs by the instrumentality of men whose angry passions her lessons had not been able to

tame, she might gratefully accept from Him a deliverance which her principles did not permit her to achieve

for herself. Most of those Tories, therefore, who still sincerely disclaimed all thought of attacking the

government, were yet by no means inclined to defend it, and perhaps, while glorying in their own scruples,

The Whigs saw that their time was come. Whether they should draw the sword against the government had,

during six or seven years, been, in their view, merely a question of prudence; and prudence itself now urged

In May, before the birth of the Prince of Wales, and while it was still uncertain whether the Declaration

would or would not be read in the churches, Edward Russell had repaired to the Hague. He had strongly

represented to the Prince of Orange the state of the public mind, and had advised his Highness to appear in

William had seen, at a glance, the whole importance of the crisis. "Now or never," he exclaimed in Latin to

Dykvelt.413 To Russell he held more guarded language, admitted that the distempers of the state were such

as required an extraordinary remedy, but spoke with earnestness of the chance of failure, and of the calamities

which failure might bring on Britain and on Europe. He knew well that many who talked in high language

about sacrificing their lives and fortunes for their country would hesitate when the prospect of another

Bloody Circuit was brought close to them. He wanted therefore to have, not vague professions of good will,

but distinct invitations and promises of support subscribed by powerful and eminent men. Russell remarked

that it would be dangerous to entrust the design to a great number of persons. William assented, and said that

a few signatures would be sufficient, if they were the signatures of statesmen who represented great

With this answer Russell returned to London, where he found the excitement greatly increased and daily

increasing. The imprisonment of the Bishops and the delivery of the Queen made his task easier than he could

have anticipated. He lost no time in collecting the voices of the chiefs of the opposition. His principal

coadjutor in this work was Henry Sidney, brother of Algernon. It is remarkable that both Edward Russell and

Henry Sidney had been in the household of James, that both had, partly on public and partly on private

grounds, become his enemies, and that both had to avenge the blood of near kinsmen who had, in the same

year, fallen victims to his implacable severity. Here the resemblance ends. Russell, with considerable

abilities, was proud, acrimonious, restless, and violent. Sidney, with a sweet temper and winning manners,

seemed to be deficient in capacity and knowledge, and to be sunk in voluptuousness and indolence. His face

and form were eminently handsome. In his youth he had been the terror of husbands; and even now, at near

fifty, he was the favourite of women and the envy of younger men. He had formerly resided at the Hague in a

public character, and had then succeeded in obtaining a large share of William's confidence. Many wondered

at this: for it seemed that between the most austere of statesmen and the most dissolute of idlers there could

be nothing in common. Swift, many years later, could not be convinced that one whom he had known only as

an illiterate and frivolous old rake could really have played a great part in a great revolution. Yet a less acute

observer than Swift might have been aware that there is a certain tact, resembling an instinct, which is often

wanting to great orators and philosophers, and which is often found in persons who, if judged by their

conversation or by their writings, would be pronounced simpletons. Indeed, when a man possesses this tact, it

is in some sense an advantage to him that he is destitute of those more showy talents which would make him

an object of admiration, of envy, and of fear. Sidney was a remarkable instance of this truth. Incapable,

ignorant, and dissipated as he seemed to be, he understood, or rather felt, with whom it was necessary to be

reserved, and with whom he might safely venture to be communicative. The consequence was that he did

what Mordaunt, with all his vivacity and invention, or Burnet, with all his multifarious knowledge and fluent

With the old Whigs there could be no difficulty. In their opinion there had been scarcely a moment, during

many years, at which the public wrongs would not have justified resistance. Devonshire, who might be

regarded as their chief, had private as well as public wrongs to revenge. He went into the scheme with his

Russell opened the design to Shrewsbury. Sidney sounded Halifax. Shrewsbury took his part with a courage

and decision which, at a later period, seemed to be wanting to his character. He at once agreed to set his

estate, his honours, and his life, on the stake. But Halifax received the first hint of the project in a way which

showed that it would be useless, and perhaps hazardous, to be explicit. He was indeed not the man for such an

enterprise. His intellect was inexhaustibly fertile of distinctions and objections; his temper calm and

unadventurous. He was ready to oppose the court to the utmost in the House of Lords and by means of

anonymous writings: but he was little disposed to exchange his lordly repose for the insecure and agitated life

of a conspirator, to be in the power of accomplices, to live in constant dread of warrants and King's

messengers, nay, perhaps, to end his days on a scaffold, or to live on alms in some back street of the Hague.

He therefore let fall some words which plainly indicated that he did not wish to be privy to the intentions of

his more daring and impetuous friends. Sidney understood him and said no more.417

The next application was made to Danby, and had far better success. Indeed, for his bold and active spirit the

danger and the excitement, which were insupportable to the more delicately organized mind of Halifax, had a

strong fascination. The different characters of the two statesmen were legible in their faces. The brow, the

eye, and the mouth of Halifax indicated a powerful intellect and an exquisite sense of the ludicrous; but the

expression was that of a sceptic, of a voluptuary, of a man not likely to venture his all on a single hazard, or

to be a martyr in any cause. To those who are acquainted with his countenance it will not seem wonderful that

the writer in whom he most delighted was Montaigne.418 Danby was a skeleton; and his meagre and

wrinkled, though handsome and noble, face strongly expressed both the keenness of his parts and the

restlessness of his ambition. Already he had once risen from obscurity to the height of power. He had then

fallen headlong from his elevation. His life had been in danger. He had passed years in a prison. He was now

free: but this did not content him: he wished to be again great. Attached as he was to the Anglican Church,

hostile as he was to the French ascendency, he could not hope to be great in a court swarming with Jesuits

and obsequious to the House of Bourbon. But, if be bore a chief part in a revolution which should confound

all the schemes of the Papists, which should put an end to the long vassalage of England, and which should

transfer the regal power to an illustrious pair whom he had united, he might emerge from his eclipse with new

splendour. The Whigs, whose animosity had nine years before driven him from office, would, on his

auspicious reappearance, join their acclamations to the acclamations of his old friends the Cavaliers. Already

there had been a complete reconciliation between him and one of the most distinguished of those who had

formerly been managers of his impeachment, the Earl of Devonshire. The two noblemen had met at a village

in the Peak, and had exchanged assurances of good will. Devonshire had frankly owned that the Whigs had

been guilty of a great injustice, and had declared that they were now convinced of their error. Danby, on his

side, had also recantations to make. He had once held, or pretended to hold, the doctrine of passive obedience

in the largest sense. Under his administration and with his sanction, a law had been proposed which, if it had

been passed, would have excluded from Parliament and office all who refused to declare on oath that they

thought resistance in every case unlawful. But his vigorous understanding, now thoroughly awakened by

anxiety for the public interests and for his own, was no longer to be duped, if indeed it ever had been duped,

by such childish fallacies. He at once gave in his own adhesion to the conspiracy. He then exerted himself to

obtain the concurrence of Compton, the suspended Bishop of London, and succeeded without difficulty. No

prelate had been so insolently and unjustly treated by the government as Compton; nor had any prelate so

much to expect from a revolution: for he had directed the education of the Princess of Orange, and was

supposed to possess a large share of her confidence. He had, like his brethren, strongly maintained, as long as

he was not oppressed, that it was a crime to resist oppression; but, since he had stood before the High

Both Danby and Compton were desirous to secure the assistance of Nottingham. The whole plan was opened

to him; and he approved of it. But in a few days he began to be unquiet. His mind was not sufficiently

powerful to emancipate itself from the prejudices of education. He went about from divine to divine

proposing in general terms hypothetical cases of tyranny, and inquiring whether in such cases resistance

would be lawful. The answers which he obtained increased his distress. He at length told his accomplices that

he could go no further with them. If they thought him capable of betraying them, they might stab him; and he

should hardly blame them; for, by drawing back after going so far, he had given them a kind of right over his

life. They had, however, he assured them, nothing to fear from him: he would keep their secret; he could not

help wishing them success; but his conscience would not suffer him to take an active part in a rebellion. They

heard his confession with suspicion and disdain. Sidney, whose notions of a conscientious scruple were

extremely vague, informed the Prince that Nottingham had taken fright. It is due to Nottingham, however, to

say that the general tenor of his life justifies us in believing his conduct on this occasion to have been

The agents of the Prince had more complete success with Lord Lumley, who knew himself to be, in spite of

the eminent service which he had performed at the time of the Western insurrection, abhorred at Whitehall,

not only as a heretic but as a renegade, and who was therefore more eager than most of those who had been

During June the meetings of those who were in the secret were frequent. At length, on the last day of the

month, the day on which the Bishops were pronounced not guilty, the decisive step was taken. A formal

invitation, transcribed by Sidney but drawn up by some person more skilled than Sidney, in the art of

composition, was despatched to the Hague. In this paper William was assured that nineteen twentieths of the

English people were desirous of a change, and would willingly join to effect it, if only they could obtain the

help of such a force from abroad as might secure those who should rise in arms from the danger of being

dispersed and slaughtered before they could form themselves into anything like military order. If his

Highness would appear in the island at the head of some troops, tens of thousands would hasten to his

standard. He would soon find himself at the head of a force greatly superior to the whole regular army of

England. Nor could that army be implicitly depended on by the government. The officers were discontented;

and the common soldiers shared that aversion to Popery which was general in the class from which they were

taken. In the navy Protestant feeling was still stronger. It was important to take some decisive step while

things were in this state. The enterprise would be far more arduous if it were deferred till the King, by

remodelling boroughs and regiments, had procured a Parliament and an army on which he could rely. The

conspirators, therefore, implored the Prince to come among them with as little delay as possible. They

pledged their honour that they would join him; and they undertook to secure the cooperation of as large a

number of persons as could safely be trusted with so momentous and perilous a secret. On one point they

thought it their duty to remonstrate with his Highness. He had not taken advantage of the opinion which the

great body of the English people had formed respecting the late birth. He had, on the contrary, sent

congratulations to Whitehall, and had thus seemed to acknowledge that the child who was called Prince of

Wales was rightful heir of the throne. This was a grave error, and had damped the zeal of many. Not one

person in a thousand doubted that the boy was supposititious; and the Prince would be wanting to his own

interests if the suspicious circumstances which had attended the Queen's confinement were not put

This paper was signed in cipher by the seven chiefs of the conspiracy, Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby,

Lumley, Compton, Russell and Sidney. Herbert undertook to be their messenger. His errand was one of no

ordinary peril. He assumed the garb of a common sailor, and in this disguise reached the Dutch coast in

safety, on the Friday after the trial of the Bishops. He instantly hastened to the Prince. Bentinck and Dykvelt

were summoned, and several days were passed in deliberation. The first result of this deliberation was that

the prayer for the Prince of Wales ceased to be read in the Princess's chapel.423

From his wife William had no opposition to apprehend. Her understanding had been completely subjugated

by his; and, what is more extraordinary, he had won her entire affection. He was to her in the place of the

parents whom she had lost by death and by estrangement, of the children who had been denied to her prayers,

and of the country from which she was banished. His empire over her heart was divided only with her God.

To her father she had probably never been attached: she had quitted him young: many years had elapsed since

she had seen him; and no part of his conduct to her, since her marriage, had indicated tenderness on his part,

or had been calculated to call forth tenderness on hers. He had done all in his power to disturb her domestic

happiness, and had established a system of spying, eavesdropping, and talebearing under her roof. He had a

far greater revenue than any of his predecessors had ever possessed, and regularly allowed to her younger

sister forty thousand pounds a year424: but the heiress presumptive of his throne had never received from

him the smallest pecuniary assistance, and was scarcely able to make that appearance which became her high

rank among European princesses. She had ventured to intercede with him on behalf of her old friend and

preceptor Compton, who, for refusing to commit an act of flagitious injustice, had been suspended from his

episcopal functions; but she had been ungraciously repulsed.425 From the day on which it had become clear

that she and her husband were determined not to be parties to the subversion of the English constitution, one

chief object of the politics of James had been to injure them both. He had recalled the British regiments from

Holland. He had conspired with Tyrconnel and with France against Mary's rights, and had made

arrangements for depriving her of one at least of the three crowns to which, at his death, she would have been

entitled. It was now believed by the great body of his people, and by many persons high in rank and

distinguished by abilities, that he had introduced a supposititious Prince of Wales into the royal family, in

order to deprive her of a magnificent inheritance; and there is no reason to doubt that she partook of the

prevailing suspicion. That she should love such a father was impossible. Her religious principles, indeed,

were so strict that she would probably have tried to perform what she considered as her duty, even to a father

whom she did not love. On the present occasion, however, she judged that the claim of James to her

obedience ought to yield to a claim more sacred. And indeed all divines and publicists agree in this, that,

when the daughter of a prince of one country is married to a prince of another country, she is bound to forget

her own people and her father's house, and, in the event of a rupture between her husband and her parents, to

side with her husband. This is the undoubted rule even when the husband is in the wrong; and to Mary the

But, though she carefully abstained from doing or saying anything that could add to his difficulties, those

difficulties were serious indeed. They were in truth but imperfectly understood even by some of those who

invited him over, and have been but imperfectly described by some of those who have written the history of

The obstacles which he might expect to encounter on English ground, though the least formidable of the

obstacles which stood in the way of his design, were yet serious. He felt that it would be madness in him to

imitate the example of Monmouth, to cross the sea with a few British adventurers, and to trust to a general

rising of the population. It was necessary, and it was pronounced necessary by all those who invited him over,

that he should carry an army with him. Yet who could answer for the effect which the appearance of such an

army might produce? The government was indeed justly odious. But would the English people, altogether

unaccustomed to the interference of continental powers in English disputes, be inclined to look with favour

on a deliverer who was surrounded by foreign soldiers? If any part of the royal forces resolutely withstood

the invaders, would not that part soon have on its side the patriotic sympathy of millions? A defeat would be

fatal to the whole undertaking. A bloody victory gained in the heart of the island by the mercenaries of the

States General over the Coldstream Guards and the Buffs would be almost as great a calamity as a defeat.

Such a victory would be the most cruel wound ever inflicted on the national pride of one of the proudest of

nations. The crown so won would never be worn in peace or security: The hatred with which the High

Commission and the Jesuits were regarded would give place to the more intense hatred which would be

inspired by the alien conquerors; and many, who had hitherto contemplated the power of France with dread

and loathing, would say that, if a foreign yoke must be borne, there was less ignominy in submitting to

These considerations might well have made William uneasy; even if all the military means of the United

Provinces had been at his absolute disposal. But in truth it seemed very doubtful whether he would be able to

obtain the assistance of a single battalion. Of all the difficulties with which he had to struggle, the greatest,

though little noticed by English historians, arose from the constitution of the Batavian republic. No great

society has ever existed during a long course of years under a polity so inconvenient. The States General

could not make war or peace, could not conclude any alliance or levy any tax, without the consent of the

States of every province. The States of a province could not give such consent without the consent of every

municipality which had a share in the representation. Every municipality was, in some sense, a sovereign

state, and, as such, claimed the right of communicating directly with foreign ambassadors, and of concerting

with them the means of defeating schemes on which other municipalities were intent. In some town councils

the party which had, during several generations, regarded the influence of the Stadtholders with jealousy had

great power. At the head of this party were the magistrates of the noble city of Amsterdam, which was then at

the height of prosperity. They had, ever since the peace of Nimeguen, kept up a friendly correspondence with

Lewis through the instrumentality of his able and active envoy the Count of Avaux. Propositions brought

forward by the Stadtholder as indispensable to the security of the commonwealth, sanctioned by all the

provinces except Holland, and sanctioned by seventeen of the eighteen town councils of Holland, had

repeatedly been negatived by the single voice of Amsterdam. The only constitutional remedy in such cases

was that deputies from the cities which were agreed should pay a visit to the city which dissented, for the

purpose of expostulation. The number of deputies was unlimited: they might continue to expostulate as long

as they thought fit; and meanwhile all their expenses were defrayed by the obstinate community which

refused to yield to their arguments. This absurd mode of coercion had once been tried with success on the

little town of Gorkum, but was not likely to produce much effect on the mighty and opulent Amsterdam,

renowned throughout the world for its haven bristling with innumerable masts, its canals bordered by stately

mansions, its gorgeous hall of state, walled, roofed, and floored with polished marble, its warehouses filled

with the most costly productions of Ceylon and Surinam, and its Exchange resounding with the endless

The disputes between the majority which supported the Stadtholder and the minority headed by the

magistrates of Amsterdam had repeatedly run so high that bloodshed had seemed to be inevitable. On one

occasion the Prince had attempted to bring the refractory deputies to punishment as traitors. On another

occasion the gates of Amsterdam had been barred against him, and troops had been raised to defend the

privileges of the municipal council. That the rulers of this great city would ever consent to an expedition

offensive in the highest degree to Lewis whom they courted, and likely to aggrandise the House of Orange

which they abhorred, was not likely. Yet, without their consent, such an expedition could not legally be

undertaken. To quell their opposition by main force was a course from which, in different circumstances, the

resolute and daring Stadtholder would not have shrunk. But at that moment it was most important that he

should carefully avoid every act which could be represented as tyrannical. He could not venture to violate the

fundamental laws of Holland at the very moment at which he was drawing the sword against his father in law

for violating the fundamental laws of England. The violent subversion of one free constitution would have

There was yet another difficulty which has been too little noticed by English writers, but which was never for

a moment absent from William's mind. In the expedition which he meditated he could succeed only by

appealing to the Protestant feeling of England, and by stimulating that feeling till it became, for a time, the

dominant and almost the exclusive sentiment of the nation. This would indeed have been a very simple

course, had the end of all his politics been to effect a revolution in our island and to reign there. But he had in

view an ulterior end which could be attained only by the help of princes sincerely attached to the Church of

Rome. He was desirous to unite the Empire, the Catholic King, and the Holy See, with England and Holland,

in a league against the French ascendency. It was therefore necessary that, while striking the greatest blow

ever struck in defence of Protestantism, he should yet contrive not to lose the goodwill of governments which

Such were the complicated difficulties of this great undertaking. Continental statesmen saw a part of those

difficulties; British statesmen another part. One capacious and powerful mind alone took them all in at one

view, and determined to surmount them all. It was no easy thing to subvert the English government by means

of a foreign army without galling the national pride of Englishmen. It was no easy thing to obtain from that

Batavian faction which regarded France with partiality, and the House of Orange with aversion, a decision in

favour of an expedition which would confound all the schemes of France, and raise the House of Orange to

the height of greatness. It was no easy thing to lead enthusiastic Protestants on a crusade against Popery with

the good wishes of almost all Popish governments and of the Pope himself. Yet all these things William

effected. All his objects, even those which appeared most incompatible with each other, he attained

completely and at once. The whole history of ancient and of modern times records no other such triumph of

The task would indeed have been too arduous even for such a statesman as the Prince of Orange, had not his

chief adversaries been at this time smitten with an infatuation such as by many men not prone to superstition

was ascribed to the special judgment of God. Not only was the King of England, as he had ever been, stupid

and perverse: but even the counsel of the politic King of France was turned into foolishness. Whatever

wisdom and energy could do William did. Those obstacles which no wisdom or energy could have overcome

On the great day on which the Bishops were acquitted, and on which the invitation was despatched to the

Hague, James returned from Hounslow to Westminster in a gloomy and agitated mood. He made an effort

that afternoon to appear cheerful:428 but the bonfires, the rockets, and above all the waxen Popes who were

blazing in every quarter of London, were not likely to soothe him. Those who saw him on the morrow could

easily read in his face and demeanour the violent emotions which agitated his mind.429 During some days he

appeared so unwilling to talk about the trial that even Barillon could not venture to introduce the subject.430

Soon it began to be clear that defeat and mortification had only hardened the King's heart. The first words

which he uttered when he learned that the objects of his revenge had escaped him were, "So much the worse

for them." In a few days these words, which he, according to his fashion, repeated many times, were fully

explained. He blamed himself; not for having prosecuted the Bishops, but for having prosecuted them before

a tribunal where questions of fact were decided by juries, and where established principles of law could not

be utterly disregarded even by the most servile Judges. This error he determined to repair. Not only the seven

prelates who had signed the petition, but the whole Anglican clergy, should have reason to curse the day on

which they had triumphed over their Sovereign. Within a fortnight after the trial an order was made,

enjoining all Chancellors of dioceses and all Archdeacons to make a strict inquisition throughout their

respective jurisdictions, and to report to the High Commission, within five weeks, the names of all such

rectors, vicars, and curates as had omitted to read the Declaration.431 The King anticipated with delight the

terror with which the offenders would learn that they were to be cited before a court which would give them

no quarter.432 The number of culprits was little, if at all, short of ten thousand: and, after what had passed at

Magdalene College, every one of them might reasonably expect to be interdicted from all his spiritual

functions, ejected from his benefice, declared incapable of holding any other preferment, and charged with

Such was the persecution with which James, smarting from his great defeat in Westminster Hall, resolved to

harass the clergy. Meanwhile he tried to show the lawyers, by a prompt and large distribution of rewards and

punishments, that strenuous and unblushing servility, even when least successful, was a sure title to his

favour, and that whoever, after years of obsequiousness, ventured to deviate but for one moment into courage

and honesty was guilty of an unpardonable offence. The violence and audacity which the apostate Williams

had exhibited throughout the trial of the Bishops had made him hateful to the whole nation.433 He was

recompensed with a baronetcy. Holloway and Powell had raised their character by declaring that, in their

judgment, the petition was no libel. They were dismissed from their situations.434 The fate of Wright seems

to have been, during some time, in suspense. He had indeed summed up against the Bishops: but he had

suffered their counsel to question the dispensing power. He had pronounced the petition a libel: but he had

carefully abstained from pronouncing the Declaration legal; and, through the whole proceeding, his tone had

been that of a man who remembered that a day of reckoning might come. He had indeed strong claims to

indulgence: for it was hardly to be expected that any human impudence would hold out without flagging

through such a task in the presence of such a bar and of such an auditory. The members of the Jesuitical

cabal, however, blamed his want of spirit; the Chancellor pronounced him a beast; and it was generally

believed that a new Chief Justice would be appointed.435 But no change was made. It would indeed have

been no easy matter to supply Wright's place. The many lawyers who were far superior to him in parts and

learning were, with scarcely an exception, hostile to the designs of the government; and the very few lawyers

who surpassed him in turpitude and effrontery were, with scarcely an exception, to be found only in the

lowest ranks of the profession, and would have been incompetent to conduct the ordinary business of the

Court of King's Bench. Williams, it is true, united all the qualities which James required in a magistrate. But

the services of Williams were needed at the bar; and, had he been moved thence, the crown would have been

Nothing had amazed or mortified the King more than the enthusiasm which the Dissenters had shown in the

cause of the Bishops. Penn, who, though he had himself sacrificed wealth and honours to his conscientious

scruples, seems to have imagined that nobody but himself had a conscience, imputed the discontent of the

Puritans to envy and dissatisfied ambition. They had not had their share of the benefits promised by the

Declaration of Indulgence: none of them had been admitted to any high and honourable post; and therefore it

was not strange that they were jealous of the Roman Catholics. Accordingly, within a week after the great

verdict had been pronounced in Westminster Hall, Silas Titus, a noted Presbyterian, a vehement Exclusionist,

and a manager of Stafford's impeachment, was invited to occupy a seat in the Privy Council. He was one of

the persons on whom the opposition had most confidently reckoned. But the honour now offered to him, and

the hope of obtaining a large sum due to him from the crown, overcame his virtue, and, to the great disgust of

The vindictive designs of the King against the Church were not accomplished. Almost all the Archdeacons

and diocesan Chancellors refused to furnish the information which was required. The day on which it had

been intended that the whole body of the priesthood should he summoned to answer for the crime of

disobedience arrived. The High Commission met. It appeared that scarcely one ecclesiastical officer had sent

up a return. At the same time a paper of grave import was delivered to the board. It came from Sprat, Bishop

of Rochester. During two years, supported by the hope of an Archbishopric, he had been content to bear the

reproach of persecuting that Church which he was bound by every obligation of conscience and honour to

defend. But his hope had been disappointed. He saw that, unless he abjured his religion, he had no chance of

sitting on the metropolitan throne of York. He was too goodnatured to find any pleasure in tyranny, and too

discerning not to see the signs of the coming retribution. He therefore determined to resign his odious

functions; and he communicated his determination to his colleagues in a letter written, like all his prose

compositions, with great propriety and dignity of style. It was impossible, he said, that he could longer

continue to be a member of the Commission. He had himself, in obedience to the royal command, read the

Declaration: but he could not presume to condemn thousands of pious and loyal divines who had taken a

different view of their duty; and, since it was resolved to punish them for acting according to their

conscience, he must declare that he would rather suffer with them than be accessary to their sufferings.

The Commissioners read and stood aghast. The very faults of their colleague, the known laxity of his

principles, the known meanness of his spirit, made his defection peculiarly alarming. A government must be

indeed in danger when men like Sprat address it in the language of Hampden. The tribunal, lately so insolent,

became on a sudden strangely tame. The ecclesiastical functionaries who had defied its authority were not

even reprimanded. It was not thought safe to hint any suspicion that their disobedience had been intentional.

They were merely enjoined to have their reports ready in four months. The Commission then broke up in

While the High Commission shrank from a conflict with the Church, the Church, conscious of its strength,

and animated by a new enthusiasm, invited, by a series of defiances, the attack of the High Commission.

Soon after the acquittal of the Bishops, the venerable Ormond, the most illustrious of the Cavaliers of the

great civil war, sank under his infirmities. The intelligence of his death was conveyed with speed to Oxford.

Instantly the University, of which he had long been Chancellor, met to name a successor. One party was for

the eloquent and accomplished Halifax, another for the grave and orthodox Nottingham. Some mentioned the

Earl of Abingdon, who resided near them, and had recently been turned out of the lieutenancy of the county

for refusing to join with the King against the established religion. But the majority, consisting of a hundred

and eighty graduates, voted for the young Duke of Ormond, grandson of their late head, and son of the gallant

Ossory. The speed with which they came to this resolution was caused by their apprehension that, if there

were a delay even of a day, the King would attempt to force on them some chief who would betray their

rights. The apprehension was reasonable: for, only two hours after they had separated, came a mandate from

Whitehall requiring them to choose Jeffreys. Happily the election of young Ormond was already complete

and irrevocable.438 A few weeks later the infamous Timothy Hall, who had distinguished himself among the

clergy of London by reading the Declaration, was rewarded with the Bishopric of Oxford, which had been

vacant since the death of the not less infamous Parker. Hall came down to his see: but the Canons of his

Cathedral refused to attend his installation: the University refused to create him a Doctor: not a single one of

the academic youth applied to him for holy orders: no cap was touched to him and, in his palace, he found

Soon afterwards a living which was in the gift of Magdalene College, Oxford, became vacant. Hough and his

ejected brethren assembled and presented a clerk; and the Bishop of Gloucester, in whose diocese the living

The gentry were not less refractory than the clergy. The assizes of that summer wore all over the country an

aspect never before known. The Judges, before they set out on their circuits, had been summoned into the

King's presence, and had been directed by him to impress on the grand jurors and magistrates, throughout the

kingdom, the duty of electing such members of Parliament as would support his policy. They obeyed his

commands, harangued vehemently against the clergy, reviled the seven Bishops, called the memorable

petition a factious libel, criticized with great asperity Sancroft's style, which was indeed open to criticism,

and pronounced that his Grace ought to be whipped by Doctor Busby for writing bad English. But the only

effect of these indecent declamations was to increase the public discontent. All the marks of public respect

which had usually been shown to the judicial office and to the royal commission were withdrawn. The old

custom was that men of good birth and estate should ride in the train of the Sheriff when he escorted the

Judges to the county town: but such a procession could now with difficulty be formed in any part of the

kingdom. The successors of Powell and Holloway, in particular, were treated with marked indignity. The

Oxford circuit had been allotted to them; and they had expected to be greeted in every shire by a cavalcade of

the loyal gentry. But as they approached Wallingford, where they were to open their commission for

Berkshire, the Sheriff alone came forth to meet them. As they approached Oxford, the eminently loyal capital

of an eminently loyal province, they were again welcomed by the Sheriff alone.441

The army was scarcely less disaffected than the clergy or the gentry. The garrison of the Tower had drunk the

health of the imprisoned Bishops. The footguards stationed at Lambeth had, with every mark of reverence,

welcomed the Primate back to his palace. Nowhere had the news of the acquittal been received with more

clamorous delight than at Hounslow Heath. In truth, the great force which the King had assembled for the

purpose of overawing his mutinous capital had become more mutinous than the capital itself; and was more

dreaded by the court than by the citizens. Early in August, therefore, the camp was broken up, and the troops

James flattered himself that it would he easier to deal with separate battalions than with many thousands of

men collected in one mass. The first experiment was tried on Lord Lichfield's regiment of infantry, now

called the Twelfth of the Line. That regiment was probably selected because it had been raised, at the time of

the Western insurrection, in Staffordshire, a province where the Roman Catholics were more numerous and

powerful than in almost any other part of England. The men were drawn up in the King s presence. Their

major informed them that His Majesty wished them to subscribe an engagement, binding them to assist in

carrying into effect his intentions concerning the test, and that all who did not choose to comply must quit the

service on the spot. To the King's great astonishment, whole ranks instantly laid down their pikes and

muskets. Only two officers and a few privates, all Roman Catholics, obeyed his command. He remained

silent for a short time. Then he bade the men take up their arms. "Another time," he said, with a gloomy look,

It was plain that, if he determined to persist in his designs, he must remodel his army. Yet materials for that

purpose he could not find in our island. The members of his Church, even in the districts where they were

most numerous, were a small minority of the people. Hatred of Popery had spread through all classes of his

Protestant subjects, and had become the ruling passion even of ploughmen and artisans. But there was

another part of his dominions where a very different spirit animated the great body of the population. There

was no limit to the number of Roman Catholic soldiers whom the good pay and quarters of England would

attract across St. George's Channel. Tyrconnel had been, during some time, employed in forming out of the

peasantry of his country a military force on which his master might depend. Already Papists, of Celtic blood

and speech, composed almost the whole army of Ireland. Barillon earnestly and repeatedly advised James to

James wavered. He wished to be surrounded by troops on whom he could rely: but he dreaded the explosion

of national feeling which the appearance of a great Irish force on English ground must produce. At last, as

usually happens when a weak man tries to avoid opposite inconveniences, he took a course which united

them all. He brought over Irishmen, not indeed enough to hold down the single city of London, or the single

county of York, but more than enough to excite the alarm and rage of the whole kingdom, from

Northumberland to Cornwall. Battalion after battalion, raised and trained by Tyrconnel, landed on the

western coast and moved towards the capital; and Irish recruits were imported in considerable numbers, to fill

Of the many errors which James committed, none was more fatal than this. Already he had alienated the

hearts of his people by violating their laws, confiscating their estates, and persecuting their religion. Of those

who had once been most zealous for monarchy, he had already made many rebels in heart. Yet he might still,

with some chance of success, have appealed to the patriotic spirit of his subjects against an invader. For they

were a race insular in temper as well as in geographical position. Their national antipathies were, indeed, in

that age, unreasonably and unamiably strong. Never had the English been accustomed to the control of

interference of any stranger. The appearance of a foreign army on their soil might impel them to rally even

round a King whom they had no reason to love. William might perhaps have been unable to overcome this

difficulty; but James removed it. Not even the arrival of a brigade of Lewis's musketeers would have excited

such resentment and shame as our ancestors felt when they saw armed columns of Papists, just arrived from

Dublin, moving in military pomp along the high roads. No man of English blood then regarded the aboriginal

Irish as his countrymen. They did not belong to our branch of the great human family. They were

distinguished from us by more than one moral and intellectual peculiarity, which the difference of situation

and of education, great as that difference was, did not seem altogether to explain. They had an aspect of their

own, a mother tongue of their own. When they talked English their pronunciation was ludicrous; their

phraseology was grotesque, as is always the phraseology of those who think in one language and express

their thoughts in another. They were therefore foreigners; and of all foreigners they were the most hated and

despised: the most hated, for they had, during five centuries, always been our enemies; the most despised, for

they were our vanquished, enslaved, and despoiled enemies. The Englishman compared with pride his own

fields with the desolate bogs whence the Rapparees issued forth to rob and murder, and his own dwelling

with the hovels where the peasants and the hogs of the Shannon wallowed in filth together. He was a member

of a society far inferior, indeed, in wealth and civilisation, to the society in which we live, but still one of the

wealthiest and most highly civilised societies that the world had then seen: the Irish were almost as rude as

the savages of Labrador. He was a freeman: the Irish were the hereditary serfs of his race. He worshipped

God after a pure and rational fashion: the Irish were sunk in idolatry and superstition. He knew that great

numbers of Irish had repeatedly fled before a small English force, and that the whole Irish population had

been held down by a small English colony; and he very complacently inferred that he was naturally a being of

a higher order than the Irishman: for it is thus that a dominant race always explains its ascendency and

excuses its tyranny. That in vivacity, humour, and eloquence, the Irish stand high among the nations of the

world is now universally acknowledged. That, when well disciplined, they are excellent soldiers has been

proved on a hundred fields of battle. Yet it is certain that, a century and a half ago, they were generally

despised in our island as both a stupid and a cowardly people. And these were the men who were to hold

England down by main force while her civil and ecclesiastical constitution was destroyed. The blood of the

whole nation boiled at the thought. To be conquered by Frenchmen or by Spaniards would have seemed

comparatively a tolerable fate. With Frenchmen and Spaniards we had been accustomed to treat on equal

terms. We had sometimes envied their prosperity, sometimes dreaded their power, sometimes congratulated

ourselves on their friendship. In spite of our unsocial pride, we admitted that they were great nations, and that

they could boast of men eminent in the arts of war and peace. But to be subjugated by an inferior caste was a

degradation beyond all other degradation. The English felt as the white inhabitants of Charleston and New

Orleans would feel if those towns were occupied by negro garrisons. The real facts would have been

sufficient to excite uneasiness and indignation: but the real facts were lost amidst a crowd of wild rumours

which flew without ceasing from coffeehouse to coffeehouse and from alebench to alebench, and became

more wonderful and terrible at every stage of the progress. The number of the Irish troops who had landed on

our shores might justly excite serious apprehensions as to the King's ulterior designs; but it was magnified

tenfold by the public apprehensions. It may well be supposed that the rude kerne of Connaught, placed, with

arms in his hands, among a foreign people whom he hated, and by whom he was hated in turn, was guilty of

some excesses. These excesses were exaggerated by report; and, in addition to the outrages which the

stranger had really committed, all the offences of his English comrades were set down to his account. From

every corner of the kingdom a cry arose against the foreign barbarians who forced themselves into private

houses, seized horses and waggons, extorted money and insulted women. These men, it was said, were the

sons of those who, fortyseven years before, had massacred Protestants by tens of thousands. The history of

the rebellion of 1641, a history which, even when soberly related, might well move pity and horror, and

which had been frightfully distorted by national and religious antipathies, was now the favourite topic of

conversation. Hideous stories of houses burned with all the inmates, of women and young children butchered,

of near relations compelled by torture to be the murderers of each other, of corpses outraged and mutilated,

were told and heard with full belief and intense interest. Then it was added that the dastardly savages who

had by surprise committed all these cruelties on an unsuspecting and defenceless colony had, as soon as

Oliver came among them on his great mission of vengeance, flung down their arms in panic terror, and had

sunk, without trying the chances of a single pitched field, into that slavery which was their fit portion. Many

signs indicated that another great spoliation and slaughter of the Saxon settlers was meditated by the Lord

Lieutenant. Already thousands of Protestant colonists, flying from the injustice and insolence of Tyrconnel,

had raised the indignation of the mother country by describing all that they had suffered, and all that they had,

with too much reason, feared. How much the public mind had been excited by the complaints of these

fugitives had recently been shown in a manner not to be mistaken. Tyrconnel had transmitted for the royal

approbation the heads of a bill repealing the law by which half the soil of Ireland was held, and he had sent to

Westminster, as his agents, two of his Roman Catholic countrymen who had lately been raised to high

judicial office; Nugent, Chief Justice of the Irish Court of King's Bench, a personification of all the vices and

weaknesses which the English then imagined to be characteristic of the Popish Celt, and Rice, a Baron of the

Irish Exchequer, who, in abilities and attainments, was perhaps the foremost man of his race and religion. The

object of the mission was well known; and the two Judges could not venture to show themselves in the

streets. If ever they were recognised, the rabble shouted, "Room for the Irish Ambassadors;" and their coach

was escorted with mock solemnity by a train of ushers and harbingers bearing sticks with potatoes stuck on

So strong and general, indeed, was at that time the aversion of the English to the Irish that the most

distinguished Roman Catholics partook of it. Powis and Bellasyse expressed, in coarse and acrimonious

language, even at the Council board, their antipathy to the aliens.447 Among English Protestants that

antipathy was still stronger and perhaps it was strongest in the army. Neither officers nor soldiers were

disposed to bear patiently the preference shown by their master to a foreign and a subject race. The Duke of

Berwick, who was Colonel of the Eighth Regiment of the Line, then quartered at Portsmouth, gave orders

that thirty men just arrived from Ireland should be enlisted. The English soldiers declared that they would not

serve with these intruders. John Beaumont, the Lieutenant Colonel, in his own name and in the name of five

of the Captains, protested to the Duke's face against this insult to the English army and nation. "We raised the

regiment," he said, "at our own charges to defend His Majesty's crown in a time of danger. We had then no

difficulty in procuring hundreds of English recruits. We can easily keep every company up to its full

complement without admitting Irishmen. We therefore do not think it consistent with our honour to have

these strangers forced on us; and we beg that we may either be permitted to command men of our own nation

or to lay down our commissions." Berwick sent to Windsor for directions. The King, greatly exasperated,

instantly despatched a troop of horse to Portsmouth with orders to bring the six refractory officers before him.

A council of war sate on them. They refused to make any submission; and they were sentenced to be

cashiered, the highest punishment which a court martial was then competent to inflict. The whole nation

applauded the disgraced officers; and the prevailing sentiment was stimulated by an unfounded rumour that,

Public feeling did not then manifest itself by those signs with which we are familiar, by large meetings, and

by vehement harangues. Nevertheless it found a vent. Thomas Wharton, who, in the last Parliament, had

represented Buckinghamshire, and who was already conspicuous both as a libertine and as a Whig, had

written a satirical ballad on the administration of Tyrconnel. In this little poem an Irishman congratulates a

brother Irishman, in a barbarous jargon, on the approaching triumph of Popery and of the Milesian race. The

Protestant heir will be excluded. The Protestant officers will be broken. The Great Charter and the praters

who appeal to it will be hanged in one rope. The good Talbot will shower commissions on his countrymen,

and will cut the throats of the English. These verses, which were in no respect above the ordinary standard of

street poetry, had for burden some gibberish which was said to have been used as a watchword by the

insurgents of Ulster in 1641. The verses and the tune caught the fancy of the nation. From one end of England

to the other all classes were constantly singing this idle rhyme. It was especially the delight of the English

army. More than seventy years after the Revolution, a great writer delineated, with exquisite skill, a veteran

who had fought at the Boyne and at Namur. One of the characteristics of the good old soldier is his trick of

Wharton afterwards boasted that he had sung a King out of three kingdoms. But in truth the success of

Lillibullero was the effect, and not the cause, of that excited state of public feeling which produced the

While James was thus raising against himself all those national feelings which, but for his own folly, might

have saved his throne, Lewis was in another way exerting himself not less effectually to facilitate the

The party in Holland which was favourable to France was a minority, but a minority strong enough,

according to the constitution of the Batavian federation, to prevent the Stadtholder from striking any great

blow. To keep that minority steady was an object to which, if the Court of Versailles had been wise, every

other object would at that conjuncture have been postponed. Lewis however had, during some time, laboured,

as if of set purpose, to estrange his Dutch friends; and he at length, though not without difficulty, succeeded

in forcing them to become his enemies at the precise moment at which their help would have been invaluable

There were two subjects on which the people of the United Provinces were peculiarly sensitive, religion and

trade; and both their religion and their trade the French King assailed. The persecution of the Huguenots, and

the revocation of the edict of Nantes, had everywhere moved the grief and indignation of Protestants. But in

Holland these feelings were stronger than in any other country; for many persons of Dutch birth, confiding in

the repeated and solemn declarations of Lewis that the toleration granted by his grandfather should be

maintained, had, for commercial purposes, settled in France, and a large proportion of the settlers had been

naturalised there. Every post now brought to Holland the tidings that these persons were treated with extreme

rigour on account of their religion. Dragoons, it was reported, were quartered on one. Another had been held

naked before a fire till he was half roasted. All were forbidden, under the severest penalties, to celebrate the

rites of their religion, or to quit the country into which they had, under false pretences, been decoyed. The

partisans of the House of Orange exclaimed against the cruelty and perfidy of the tyrant. The opposition was

abashed and dispirited. Even the town council of Amsterdam, though strongly attached to the French interest

and to the Arminian theology, and though little inclined to find fault with Lewis or to sympathize with the

Calvinists whom he persecuted, could not venture to oppose itself to the general sentiment; for in that great

city there was scarcely one wealthy merchant who had not some kinsman or friend among the sufferers.

Petitions numerously and respectably signed were presented to the Burgomasters, imploring them to make

strong representations to Avaux. There were even suppliants who made their way into the Stadthouse, flung

themselves on their knees, described with tears and sobs the lamentable condition of those whom they most

loved, and besought the intercession of the magistrates. The pulpits resounded with invectives and

lamentations. The press poured forth heartrending narratives and stirring exhortations. Avaux saw the whole

danger. He reported to his court that even the well intentionedfor so he always called the enemies of the

House of Orangeeither partook of the public feeling or were overawed by it; and he suggested the policy of

making some concession to their wishes. The answers which he received from Versailles were cold and

acrimonious. Some Dutch families, indeed, which had not been naturalised in France, were permitted to

return to their country. But to those natives of Holland who had obtained letters of naturalisation Lewis

refused all indulgence. No power on earth, he said, should interfere between him and his subjects. These

people had chosen to become his subjects; and how he treated them was a matter with which no neighbouring

state had anything to do. The magistrates of Amsterdam naturally resented the scornful ingratitude of the

potentate whom they had strenuously and unscrupulously served against the general sense of their own

countrymen. Soon followed another provocation which they felt even more keenly. Lewis began to make war

on their trade. He first put forth an edict prohibiting the importation of herrings into his dominions, Avaux

hastened to inform his court that this step had excited great alarm and indignation, that sixty thousand persons

in the United Provinces subsisted by the herring fishery, and that some strong measure of retaliation would

probably be adopted by the States. The answer which he received was that the King was determined, not only

to persist, but also to increase the duties on many of those articles in which Holland carried on a lucrative

trade with France. The consequence of these errors, errors committed in defiance of repeated warnings, and,

as it should seem, in the mere wantonness of selfwill, was that now, when the voice of a single powerful

member of the Batavian federation might have averted an event fatal to all the politics of Lewis, no such

voice was raised. The Envoy, with all his skill, vainly endeavoured to rally the party by the help of which he

had, during several years, held the Stadtholder in check. The arrogance and obstinacy of the master

counteracted all the efforts of the servant. At length Avaux was compelled to send to Versailles the alarming

tidings that no reliance could be placed on Amsterdam, so long devoted to the French cause, that some of the

well intentioned were alarmed for their religion, and that the few whose inclinations were unchanged could

not venture to utter what they thought. The fervid eloquence of preachers who declaimed against the horrors

of the French persecution, and the lamentations of bankrupts who ascribed their ruin to the French decrees,

had wrought up the people to such a temper, that no citizen could declare himself favourable to France

without imminent risk of being flung into the nearest canal. Men remembered that, only fifteen years before,

the most illustrious chief of the party adverse to the House of Orange had been torn to pieces by an infuriated

mob in the very precinct of the palace of the States General. A similar fate might not improbably befall those

who should, at this crisis, be accused of serving the purposes of France against their native land, and against

While Lewis was thus forcing his friends in Holland to become, or to pretend to become, his enemies, he was

labouring with not less success to remove all the scruples which might have prevented the Roman Catholic

princes of the Continent from countenancing William's designs. A new quarrel had arisen between the Court

of Versailles and the Vatican, a quarrel in which the injustice and insolence of the French King were perhaps

It had long been the rule at Rome that no officer of justice or finance could enter the dwelling inhabited by

the minister who represented a Catholic state. In process of time not only the dwelling, but a large precinct

round it, was held inviolable. It was a point of honour with every Ambassador to extend as widely as possible

the limits of the region which was under his protection. At length half the city consisted of privileged

districts, within which the Papal government had no more power than within the Louvre or the Escurial.

Every asylum was thronged with contraband traders, fraudulent bankrupts, thieves and assassins. In every

asylum were collected magazines of stolen or smuggled goods. From every asylum ruffians sallied forth

nightly to plunder and stab. In no town of Christendom, consequently, was law so impotent and wickedness

so audacious as in the ancient capital of religion and civilisation. On this subject Innocent felt as became a

priest and a prince. He declared that he would receive no Ambassador who insisted on a right so destructive

of order and morality. There was at first much murmuring; but his resolution was so evidently just that all

governments but one speedily acquiesced. The Emperor, highest in rank among Christian monarchs, the

Spanish court, distinguished among all courts by sensitiveness and pertinacity on points of etiquette,

renounced the odious privilege. Lewis alone was impracticable. What other sovereigns might choose to do,

he said, was nothing to him. He therefore sent a mission to Rome, escorted by a great force of cavalry and

infantry. The Ambassador marched to his palace as a general marches in triumph through a conquered town.

The house was strongly guarded. Round the limits of the protected district sentinels paced the rounds day and

night, as on the walls of a fortress. The Pope was unmoved. "They trust," he cried, "in chariots and in horses;

but we will remember the name of the Lord our God." He betook him vigorously to his spiritual weapons,

This dispute was at the height when another dispute arose, in which the Germanic body was as deeply

Cologne and the surrounding district were governed by an Archbishop, who was an Elector of the Empire.

The right of choosing this great prelate belonged, under certain limitations, to the Chapter of the Cathedral.

The Archbishop was also Bishop of Liege, of Munster, and of Hildesheim. His dominions were extensive,

and included several strong fortresses, which in the event of a campaign on the Rhine would be of the highest

importance. In time of war he could bring twenty thousand men into the field. Lewis had spared no effort to

gain so valuable an ally, and had succeeded so well that Cologne had been almost separated from Germany,

and had become an outwork of France. Many ecclesiastics devoted to the court of Versailles had been

brought into the Chapter; and Cardinal Furstemburg, a mere creature of that court, had been appointed

In the summer of the year 1688 the archbishopric became vacant. Furstemburg was the candidate of the

House of Bourbon. The enemies of that house proposed the young Prince Clement of Bavaria. Furstemburg

was already a Bishop, and therefore could not be moved to another diocese except by a special dispensation

from the Pope, or by a postulation, in which it was necessary that two thirds of the Chapter of Cologne should

join. The Pope would grant no dispensation to a creature of France. The Emperor induced more than a third

part of the Chapter to vote for the Bavarian prince. Meanwhile, in the Chapters of Liege, Munster, and

Hildesheim, the majority was adverse to France. Lewis saw, with indignation and alarm, that an extensive

province which he had begun to regard as a fief of his crown was about to become, not merely independent of

him, but hostile to him. In a paper written with great acrimony he complained of the injustice with which

France was on all occasions treated by that See which ought to extend a parental protection to every part of

Christendom. Many signs indicated his fixed resolution to support the pretensions of his candidate by arms

Thus Lewis, by two opposite errors, raised against himself at once the resentment of both the religious parties

between which Western Europe was divided. Having alienated one great section of Christendom by

persecuting the Huguenots, he alienated another by insulting the Holy See. These faults he committed at a

conjuncture at which no fault could be committed with impunity, and under the eye of an opponent second in

vigilance, sagacity, and energy, to no statesman whose memory history has preserved. William saw with stern

delight his adversaries toiling to clear away obstacle after obstacle from his path. While they raised against

themselves the enmity of all sects, he laboured to conciliate all. The great design which he meditated, he with

exquisite skill presented to different governments in different lights; and it must be added that, though those

lights were different, none of them was false. He called on the princes of Northern Germany to rally round

him in defence of the common cause of all reformed Churches. He set before the two heads of the House of

Austria the danger with which they were threatened by French ambition, and the necessity of rescuing

England from vassalage and of uniting her to the European confederacy.453 He disclaimed, and with truth,

all bigotry. The real enemy, he said, of the British Roman Catholics was that shortsighted and headstrong

monarch who, when he might easily have obtained for them a legal toleration, had trampled on law, liberty,

property, in order to raise them to an odious and precarious ascendency. If the misgovernment of James were

suffered to continue, it must produce, at no remote time, a popular outbreak, which might be followed by a

barbarous persecution of the Papists. The Prince declared that to avert the horrors of such a persecution was

one of his chief objects. If he succeeded in his design, he would use the power which he must then possess, as

head of the Protestant interest, to protect the members of the Church of Rome. Perhaps the passions excited

by the tyranny of James might make it impossible to efface the penal laws from the statute book but those

laws should be mitigated by a lenient administration. No class would really gain more by the proposed

expedition than those peaceable and unambitious Roman Catholics who merely wished to follow their

callings and to worship their Maker without molestation. The only losers would be the Tyrconnels, the

Dovers, the Albevilles, and the other political adventurers who, in return for flattery and evil counsel, had

While William exerted himself to enlist on his side the sympathies both of Protestants and of Roman

Catholics, he exerted himself with not less vigour and prudence to provide the military means which his

undertaking required. He could not make a descent on England without the sanction of the United Provinces.

If he asked for that sanction before his design was ripe for execution, his intentions might possibly be

thwarted by the faction hostile to his house, and would certainly be divulged to the whole world. He therefore

determined to make his preparations with all speed, and, when they were complete, to seize some favourable

moment for requesting the consent of the federation. It was observed by the agents of France that he was

more busy than they had ever known him. Not a day passed on which he was not seen spurring from his villa

to the Hague. He was perpetually closeted with his most distinguished adherents. Twentyfour ships of war

were fitted out for sea in addition to the ordinary force which the commonwealth maintained. There was, as it

chanced, an excellent pretence for making this addition to the marine: for some Algerine corsairs had recently

dared to show themselves in the German Ocean. A camp was formed near Nimeguen. Many thousands of

troops were assembled there. In order to strengthen this army the garrisons were withdrawn from the

strongholds in Dutch Brabant. Even the renowned fortress of Bergopzoom was left almost defenceless. Field

pieces, bombs, and tumbrels from all the magazines of the United Provinces were collected at the head

quarters. All the bakers of Rotterdam toiled day and night to make biscuit. All the gunmakers of Utrecht were

found too few to execute the orders for pistols and muskets. All the saddlers of Amsterdam were hard at work

on harness and bolsters. Six thousand sailors were added to the naval establishment. Seven thousand new

soldiers were raised. They could not, indeed, be formally enlisted without the sanction of the federation: but

they were well drilled, and kept in such a state of discipline that they might without difficulty be distributed

into regiments within twentyfour hours after that sanction should be obtained. These preparations required

ready money: but William had, by strict economy, laid up against a great emergency a treasure amounting to

about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling. What more was wanting was supplied by the zeal of

his partisans. Great quantities of gold, not less, it was said, than a hundred thousand guineas, came to him

from England. The Huguenots, who had carried with them into exile large quantities of the precious metals,

were eager to lend him all that they possessed; for they fondly hoped that, if he succeeded, they should be

restored to the country of their birth; and they feared that, if he failed, they should scarcely be safe even in the

Through the latter part of July and the whole of August the preparations went on rapidly, yet too slowly for

the vehement spirit of William. Meanwhile the intercourse between England and Holland was active. The

ordinary modes of conveying intelligence and passengers were no longer thought safe. A light bark of

marvellous speed constantly ran backward and forward between Schevening and the eastern coast of our

island.455 By this vessel William received a succession of letters from persons of high note in the Church,

the state, and the army. Two of the seven prelates who had signed the memorable petition, Lloyd, Bishop of

St. Asaph, and Trelawney, Bishop of Bristol, had, during their residence in the tower, reconsidered the

doctrine of nonresistance, and were ready to welcome an armed deliverer. A brother of the Bishop of Bristol,

Colonel Charles Trelawney, who commanded one of the Tangier regiments, now known as the Fourth of the

Line, signified his readiness to draw his sword for the Protestant religion. Similar assurances arrived from the

savage Kirke. Churchill, in a letter written with a certain elevation of language, which was the sure mark that

he was going to commit a baseness, declared that he was determined to perform his duty to heaven and to his

country, and that he put his honour absolutely into the hands of the Prince of Orange. William doubtless read

these words with one of those bitter and cynical smiles which gave his face its least pleasing expression. It

was not his business to take care of the honour of other men; nor had the most rigid casuists pronounced it

unlawful in a general to invite, to use, and to reward the services of deserters whom he could not but

Churchill's letter was brought by Sidney, whose situation in England had become hazardous, and who, having

taken many precautions to hide his track, had passed over to Holland about the middle of August.457 About

the same time Shrewsbury and Edward Russell crossed the German Ocean in a boat which they had hired

with great secrecy, and appeared at the Hague. Shrewsbury brought with him twelve thousand pounds, which

he had raised by a mortgage on his estates, and which he lodged in the bank of Amsterdam.458 Devonshire,

Danby, and Lumley remained in England, where they undertook to rise in arms as soon as the Prince should

There is reason to believe that, at this conjuncture, William first received assurances of support from a very

different quarter. The history of Sunderland's intrigues is covered with an obscurity which it is not probable

that any inquirer will ever succeed in penetrating: but, though it is impossible to discover the whole truth, it is

easy to detect some palpable fictions. The Jacobites, for obvious reasons, affirmed that the revolution of 1688

was the result of a plot concerted long before. Sunderland they represented as the chief conspirator. He had,

they averred, in pursuance of his great design, incited his too confiding master to dispense with statutes, to

create an illegal tribunal, to confiscate freehold property, and to send the fathers of the Established Church to

a prison. This romance rests on no evidence, and, though it has been repeated down to our own time, seems

hardly to deserve confutation. No fact is more certain than that Sunderland opposed some of the most

imprudent steps which James took, and in particular the prosecution of the Bishops, which really brought on

the decisive crisis. But, even if this fact were not established, there would still remain one argument sufficient

to decide the controversy. What conceivable motive had Sunderland to wish for a revolution? Under the

existing system he was at the height of dignity and prosperity. As President of the Council he took

precedence of the whole temporal peerage. As Principal Secretary of State he was the most active and

powerful member of the cabinet. He might look forward to a dukedom. He had obtained the garter lately

worn by the brilliant and versatile Buckingham, who, having squandered away a princely fortune and a

vigorous intellect, had sunk into the grave deserted, contemned, and brokenhearted.459 Money, which

Sunderland valued more than honours, poured in upon him in such abundance that, with ordinary

management, he might hope to become, in a few years, one of the wealthiest subjects in Europe. The direct

emolument of his posts, though considerable, was a very small part of what he received. From France alone

he drew a regular stipend of near six thousand pounds a year, besides large occasional gratuities. He had

bargained with Tyrconnel for five thousand a year, or fifty thousand pounds down, from Ireland. What sums

he made by selling places, titles, and pardons, can only be conjectured, but must have been enormous. James

seemed to take a pleasure in loading with wealth one whom he regarded as his own convert. All fines, all

forfeitures went to Sunderland. On every grant toll was paid to him. If any suitor ventured to ask any favour

directly from the King, the answer was, "Have you spoken to my Lord President?" One bold man ventured to

say that the Lord President got all the money of the court. "Well," replied His Majesty "he deserves it all."460

We shall scarcely overrate the amount of the minister's gains, if we put them at thirty thousand pounds a year:

and it must be remembered that fortunes of thirty thousand pounds a year were in his time rarer than fortunes

of a hundred thousand pounds a year now are. It is probable that there was then not one peer of the realm

What chance was there that, in a new order of things, a man so deeply implicated in illegal and unpopular

acts, a member of the High Commission, a renegade whom the multitude, in places of general resort, pursued

with the cry of Popish dog, would be greater and richer? What chance that he would even be able to escape

He had undoubtedly been long in the habit of looking forward to the time when William and Mary might be,

in the ordinary course of nature and law, at the head of the English government, and had probably attempted

to make for himself an interest in their favour, by promises and services which, if discovered, would not have

raised his credit at Whitehall. But it may with confidence be affirmed that he had no wish to see them raised

to power by a revolution, and that he did not at all foresee such a revolution when, towards the close of June

Scarcely however had he, by that inexpiable crime, made himself an object of hatred and contempt to the

whole nation, when he learned that the civil and ecclesiastical polity of England would shortly be vindicated

by foreign and domestic arms. From that moment all his plans seem to have undergone a change. Fear bowed

down his whole soul, and was so written in his face that all who saw him could read.461 It could hardly be

doubted that, if there were a revolution, the evil counsellors who surrounded the throne would be called to a

strict account: and among those counsellors he stood in the foremost rank. The loss of his places, his salaries,

his pensions, was the least that he had to dread. His patrimonial mansion amid woods at Althorpe might be

confiscated. He might lie many years in a prison. He might end his days in a foreign land a pensioner on the

bounty of France. Even this was not the worst. Visions of an innumerable crowd covering Tower Hill and

shouting with savage joy at the sight of the apostate, of a scaffold hung with black, of Burnet reading the

prayer for the departing, and of Ketch leaning on the axe with which Russell and Monmouth had been

mangled in so butcherly a fashion, began to haunt the unhappy statesman. There was yet one way in which he

might escape, a way more terrible to a noble spirit than a prison or a scaffold. He might still, by a well timed

and useful treason, earn his pardon from the foes of the government. It was in his power to render to them at

this conjuncture services beyond all price: for he had the royal ear; he had great influence over the Jesuitical

cabal; and he was blindly trusted by the French Ambassador. A channel of communication was not wanting, a

channel worthy of the purpose which it was to serve. The Countess of Sunderland was an artful woman, who,

under a show of devotion which imposed on some grave men, carried on, with great activity, both amorous

and political intrigues.462 The handsome and dissolute Henry Sidney had long been her favourite lover. Her

husband was well pleased to see her thus connected with the court of the Hague. Whenever he wished to

transmit a secret message to Holland, he spoke to his wife: she wrote to Sidney; and Sidney communicated

her letter to William. One of her communications was intercepted and carried to James. She vehemently

protested that it was a forgery. Her husband, with characteristic ingenuity, defended himself by representing

that it was quite impossible for any man to be so base as to do what he was in the habit of doing. "Even if this

is Lady Sunderland's hand," he said, "that is no affair of mine. Your Majesty knows my domestic

misfortunes. The footing on which my wife and Mr. Sidney are is but too public. Who can believe that I

would make a confidant of the man who has injured my honour in the tenderest point, of the man whom, of

all others, I ought most to hate?"463 This defence was thought satisfactory; and secret intelligence was still

transmitted from the wittol to the adulteress, from the adulteress to the gallant, and from the gallant to the

It is highly probable that the first decisive assurances of Sunderland's support were conveyed orally by

Sidney to William about the middle of August. It is certain that, from that time till the expedition was ready

to sail, a most significant correspondence was kept up between the Countess and her lover. A few of her

letters, partly written in cipher, are still extant. They contain professions of good will and promises of service

mingled with earnest intreaties for protection. The writer intimates that her husband will do all that his friends

at the Hague can wish: she supposes that it will be necessary for him to go into temporary exile: but she

hopes that his banishment will not be perpetual, and that his patrimonial estate will be spared; and she

earnestly begs to be informed in what place it will be best for him to take refuge till the first fury of the storm

The help of Sunderland was most welcome. For, as the time of striking the great blow drew near, the anxiety

of William became intense. From common eyes his feelings were concealed by the icy tranquillity of his

demeanour: but his whole heart was open to Bentinck. The preparations were not quite complete. The design

was already suspected, and could not be long concealed. The King of France or the city of Amsterdam might

still frustrate the whole plan. If Lewis were to send a great force into Brabant, if the faction which hated the

Stadtholder were to raise its head, all was over. "My sufferings, my disquiet," the Prince wrote, "are dreadful.

I hardly see my way. Never in my life did I so much feel the need of God's guidance."465 Bentinck's wife

was at this time dangerously ill; and both the friends were painfully anxious about her. "God support you,"

William wrote, "and enable you to bear your part in a work on which, as far as human beings can see, the

It was indeed impossible that a design so vast as that which had been formed against the King of England

should remain during many weeks a secret. No art could prevent intelligent men from perceiving that William

was making great military and naval preparations, and from suspecting the object with which those

preparations were made. Early in August hints that some great event was approaching were whispered up and

down London. The weak and corrupt Albeville was then on a visit to England, and was, or affected to be,

certain that the Dutch government entertained no design unfriendly to James. But, during the absence of

Albeville from his post, Avaux performed, with eminent skill, the duties both of French and English

Ambassador to the States, and supplied Barillon as well as Lewis with ample intelligence. Avaux was

satisfied that a descent on England was in contemplation, and succeeded in convincing his master of the truth.

Every courier who arrived at Westminster, either from the Hague or from Versailles, brought earnest

warnings.467 But James was under a delusion which appears to have been artfully encouraged by

Sunderland. The Prince of Orange, said the cunning minister, would never dare to engage in an expedition

beyond sea, leaving Holland defenceless. The States, remembering what they had suffered and what they had

been in danger of suffering during the great agony of 1672, would never incur the risk of again seeing an

invading army encamped on the plain between Utrecht and Amsterdam. There was doubtless much discontent

in England: but the interval was immense between discontent and rebellion. Men of rank and fortune were

not disposed lightly to hazard their honours, their estates, and their lives. How many eminent Whigs had held

high language when Monmouth was in the Netherlands! And yet, when he set up his standard, what eminent

Whig had joined it? It was easy to understand why Lewis affected to give credit to these idle rumours. He

doubtless hoped to frighten the King of England into taking the French side in the dispute about Cologne. By

such reasoning James was easily lulled into stupid security.468 The alarm and indignation of Lewis increased

daily. The style of his letters became sharp and vehement.469 He could not understand, he wrote, this

lethargy on the eve of a terrible crisis. Was the King bewitched? Were his ministers blind? Was it possible

that nobody at Whitehall was aware of what was passing in England and on the Continent? Such foolhardy

security could scarcely be the effect of mere improvidence. There must be foul play. James was evidently in

bad hands. Barillon was earnestly cautioned not to repose implicit confidence in the English ministers: but he

was cautioned in vain. On him, as on James, Sunderland had cast a spell which no exhortation could break.

Lewis bestirred himself vigorously. Bonrepaux, who was far superior to Barillon in shrewdness, and who had

always disliked and distrusted Sunderland, was despatched to London with an offer of naval assistance.

Avaux was at the same time ordered to declare to the States General that France had taken James under her

protection. A large body of troops was held in readiness to march towards the Dutch frontier. This bold

attempt to save the infatuated tyrant in his own despite was made with the full concurrence of Skelton, who

Avaux, in conformity with his instructions, demanded an audience of the States. It was readily granted. The

assembly was unusually large. The general belief was that some overture respecting commerce was about to

be made; and the President brought a written answer framed on that supposition. As soon as Avaux began to

disclose his errand, signs of uneasiness were discernible. Those who were believed to enjoy the confidence of

the Prince of Orange cast down their eyes. The agitation became great when the Envoy announced that his

master was strictly bound by the ties of friendship and alliance to His Britannic Majesty, and that any attack

on England would be considered as a declaration of war against France. The President, completely taken by

surprise, stammered out a few evasive phrases; and the conference terminated. It was at the same time

notified to the States that Lewis had taken under his protection Cardinal Furstemburg and the Chapter of

The Deputies were in great agitation. Some recommended caution and delay. Others breathed nothing but

war. Fagel spoke vehemently of the French insolence, and implored his brethren not to be daunted by threats.

The proper answer to such a communication, he said, was to levy more soldiers, and to equip more ships. A

courier was instantly despatched to recall William from Minden, where he was holding a consultation of high

But there was no cause for alarm. James was bent on ruining himself; and every attempt to stop him only

made him rush more eagerly to his doom. When his throne was secure, when his people were submissive,

when the most obsequious of Parliaments was eager to anticipate all his reasonable wishes, when foreign

kingdoms and commonwealths paid emulous court to him, when it depended only on himself whether he

would be the arbiter of Christendom, he had stooped to be the slave and the hireling of France. And now

when, by a series of crimes and follies, he had succeeded in alienating his neighbours, his subjects, his

soldiers, his sailors, his children, and had left himself no refuge but the protection of France, he was taken

with a fit of pride, and determined to assert his independence. That help which, when he did not want it, he

had accepted with ignominious tears, he now, when it was indispensable to him, threw contemptuously away.

Having been abject when he might, with propriety, have been punctilious in maintaining his dignity, he

became ungratefully haughty at a moment when haughtiness must bring on him at once derision and ruin. He

resented the friendly intervention which might have saved him. Was ever King so used? Was he a child, or an

idiot, that others must think for him? Was he a petty prince, a Cardinal Furstemburg, who must fall if not

upheld by a powerful patron? Was he to be degraded in the estimation of all Europe, by an ostentatious

patronage which he had never asked? Skelton was recalled to answer for his conduct, and, as soon as he

arrived, was committed prisoner to the Tower. Citters was well received at Whitehall, and had a long

audience. He could, with more truth than diplomatists on such occasions think at all necessary, disclaim, on

the part of the States General, any hostile project. For the States General had, as yet, no official knowledge of

the design of William; nor was it by any means impossible that they might, even now, refuse to sanction that

design. James declared that he gave not the least credit to the rumours of a Dutch invasion, and that the

conduct of the French government had surprised and annoyed him. Middleton was directed to assure all the

foreign ministers that there existed no such alliance between France and England as the Court of Versailles

had, for its own ends, pretended. To the Nuncio the King said that the designs of Lewis were palpable and

should be frustrated. This officious protection was at once an insult and a snare. "My good brother," said

James, "has excellent qualities; but flattery and vanity have turned his head."471 Adda, who was much more

anxious about Cologne than about England, encouraged this strange delusion. Albeville, who had now

returned to his post, was commanded to give friendly assurances to the States General, and to add some high

language, which might have been becoming in the mouth of Elizabeth or Oliver. "My master," he said, "is

raised, alike by his power and by his spirit, above the position which France affects to assign to him. There is

some difference between a King of England and an Archbishop of Cologne." The reception of Bonrepaux at

Whitehall was cold. The naval succours which he offered were not absolutely declined; but he was forced to

return without having settled anything; and the Envoys, both of the United Provinces and of the House of

Austria, were informed that his mission had been disagreeable to the King and had produced no result. After

the Revolution Sunderland boasted, and probably with truth, that he had induced his master to reject the

The perverse folly of James naturally excited the indignation of his powerful neighbour. Lewis complained

that, in return for the greatest service which he could render to the English government, that government had

given him the lie in the face of all Christendom. He justly remarked that what Avaux had said, touching the

alliance between France and Great Britain, was true according to the spirit, though perhaps not according to

the letter. There was not indeed a treaty digested into articles, signed, sealed, and ratified: but assurances

equivalent in the estimation of honourable men to such a treaty had, during some years, been constantly

exchanged between the two Courts. Lewis added that, high as was his own place in Europe, he should never

be so absurdly jealous of his dignity as to see an insult in any act prompted by friendship. But James was in a

very different situation, and would soon learn the value of that aid which he had so ungraciously rejected.473

Yet, notwithstanding the stupidity and ingratitude of James, it would have been wise in Lewis to persist in the

resolution which had been notified to the States General. Avaux, whose sagacity and judgment made him an

antagonist worthy of William, was decidedly of this opinion. The first object of the French governmentso

the skilful Envoy reasonedought to be to prevent the intended descent on England. The way to prevent that

descent was to invade the Spanish Netherlands, and to menace the Batavian frontier. The Prince of Orange,

indeed, was so bent on his darling enterprise that he would persist, even if the white flag were flying on the

walls of Brussels. He had actually said that, if the Spaniards could only manage to keep Ostend, Mons, and

Namur till the next spring, he would then return from England with a force which would soon recover all that

had been lost. But, though such was the Prince's opinion, it was not the opinion of the States. They would not

readily consent to send their Captain General and the flower of their army across the German Ocean, while a

Lewis admitted the force of these reasonings: but he had already resolved on a different line of action.

Perhaps he had been provoked by the discourtesy and wrongheadedness of the English government, and

indulged his temper at the expense of his interest. Perhaps he was misled by the counsels of his minister of

war, Louvois, whose influence was great, and who regarded Avaux with no friendly feeling. It was

determined to strike in a quarter remote from Holland a great and unexpected blow. Lewis suddenly withdrew

his troops from Flanders, and poured them into Germany. One army, placed under the nominal command of

the Dauphin, but really directed by the Duke of Duras and by Vauban, the father of the science of

fortification, invested Philipsburg. Another, led by the Marquess of Boufflers, seized Worms, Mentz, and

Treves. A third, commanded by the Marquess of Humieres, entered Bonn. All down the Rhine, from

Carlsruhe to Cologne, the French arms were victorious. The news of the fall of Philipsburg reached Versailles

on All Saints day, while the Court was listening to a sermon in the chapel. The King made a sign to the

preacher to stop, announced the good news to the congregation, and, kneeling down, returned thanks to God

for this great success. The audience wept for joy.475 The tidings were eagerly welcomed by the sanguine and

susceptible people of France. Poets celebrated the triumphs of their magnificent patron. Orators extolled from

the pulpit the wisdom and magnanimity of the eldest son of the Church. The Te Deum was sung with

unwonted pomp; and the solemn notes of the organ were mingled with the clash of the cymbal and the blast

of the trumpet. But there was little cause for rejoicing. The great statesman who was at the head of the

European coalition smiled inwardly at the misdirected energy of his foe. Lewis had indeed, by his

promptitude, gained some advantages on the side of Germany: but those advantages would avail little if

England, inactive and inglorious under four successive Kings, should suddenly resume her old rank in

Europe. A few weeks would suffice for the enterprise on which the fate of the world depended; and for a few

William now urged on his preparations with indefatigable activity and with less secrecy than he had hitherto

thought necessary. Assurances of support came pouring in daily from foreign courts. Opposition had become

extinct at the Hague. It was in vain that Avaux, even at this last moment, exerted all his skill to reanimate the

faction which had contended against three generations of the House of Orange. The chiefs of that faction,

indeed, still regarded the Stadtholder with no friendly feeling. They had reason to fear that, if he prospered in

England, he would become absolute master of Holland. Nevertheless the errors of the court of Versailles, and

the dexterity with which he had availed himself of those errors, made it impossible to continue the struggle

against him. He saw that the time had come for demanding the sanction of the States. Amsterdam was the

head quarters of the party hostile to his line, his office, and his person; and even from Amsterdam he had at

this moment nothing to apprehend. Some of the chief functionaries of that city had been repeatedly closeted

with him, with Dykvelt, and with Bentinck, and had been induced to promise that they would promote, or at

least that they would not oppose, the great design: some were exasperated by the commercial edicts of Lewis:

some were in deep distress for kinsmen and friends who were harassed by the French dragoons: some shrank

from the responsibility of causing a schism which might be fatal to the Batavian federation; and some were

afraid of the common people, who, stimulated by the exhortations of zealous preachers, were ready to execute

summary justice on any traitor to the Protestant cause. The majority, therefore, of that town council which

had long been devoted to France pronounced in favour of William's undertaking. Thenceforth all fear of

opposition in any part of the United Provinces was at an end; and the full sanction of the federation to his

The Prince had already fixed upon a general well qualified to be second in command. This was indeed no

light matter. A random shot or the dagger of an assassin might in a moment leave the expedition without a

head. It was necessary that a successor should be ready to fill the vacant place. Yet it was impossible to make

choice of any Englishman without giving offence either to the Whigs or to the Tories; nor had any

Englishman then living shown that he possessed the military skill necessary for the conduct of a campaign.

On the other band it was not easy to assign preeminence to a foreigner without wounding the national

sensibility of the haughty islanders. One man there was, and only one in Europe, to whom no objection could

be found, Frederic, Count of Schomberg, a German, sprung from a noble house of the Palatinate. He was

generally esteemed the greatest living master of the art of war. His rectitude and piety, tried by strong

temptations and never found wanting, commanded general respect and confidence. Though a Protestant, he

had been, during many years, in the service of Lewis, and had, in spite of the ill offices of the Jesuits,

extorted from his employer, by a series of great actions, the staff of a Marshal of France. When persecution

began to rage, the brave veteran steadfastly refused to purchase the royal favour by apostasy, resigned,

without one murmur, all his honours and commands, quitted his adopted country for ever, and took refuge at

the court of Berlin. He had passed his seventieth year; but both his mind and his body were still in full vigour.

He had been in England, and was much loved and honoured there. He had indeed a recommendation of which

very few foreigners could then boast; for he spoke our language, not only intelligibly, but with grace and

purity. He was, with the consent of the Elector of Brandenburg, and with the warm approbation of the chiefs

And now the Hague was crowded with British adventurers of all the various parties which the tyranny of

James had united in a strange coalition, old royalists who had shed their blood for the throne, old agitators of

the army of the Parliament, Tories who had been persecuted in the days of the Exclusion Bill, Whigs who had

Conspicuous in this great assemblage were Charles Gerard, Earl of Macclesfield, an ancient Cavalier who

had fought for Charles the First and had shared the exile of Charles the Second; Archibald Campbell, who

was the eldest son of the unfortunate Argyle, but had inherited nothing except an illustrious name and the

inalienable affection of a numerous clan; Charles Paulet, Earl of Wiltshire, heir apparent of the Marquisate of

Winchester; and Peregrine Osborne, Lord Dumblame, heir apparent of the Earldom of Danby. Mordaunt,

exulting in the prospect of adventures irresistibly attractive to his fiery nature, was among the foremost

volunteers. Fletcher of Saltoun had learned, while guarding the frontier of Christendom against the infidels,

that there was once more a hope of deliverance for his country, and had hastened to offer the help of his

sword. Sir Patrick Hume, who had, since his flight from Scotland, lived humbly at Utrecht, now emerged

from his obscurity: but, fortunately, his eloquence could, on this occasion, do little mischief; for the Prince of

Orange was by no means disposed to be the lieutenant of a debating society such as that which had ruined the

enterprise of Argyle. The subtle and restless Wildman, who had some time before found England an unsafe

residence, and had retired to Germany, now repaired from Germany to the Prince's court. There too was

Carstairs, a presbyterian minister from Scotland, who in craft and courage had no superior among the

politicians of his age. He had been entrusted some years before by Fagel with important secrets, and had

resolutely kept them in spite of the most horrible torments which could be inflicted by boot and thumbscrew.

His rare fortitude had earned for him as large a share of the Prince's confidence and esteem as was granted to

any man except Bentinck.478 Ferguson could not remain quiet when a revolution was preparing. He secured

for himself a passage in the fleet, and made himself busy among his fellow emigrants: but he found himself

generally distrusted and despised. He had been a great man in the knot of ignorant and hotheaded outlaws

who had urged the feeble Monmouth to destruction: but there was no place for a lowminded agitator, half

maniac and half knave, among the grave statesmen and generals who partook the cares of the resolute and

The difference between the expedition of 1685 and the expedition of 1688 was sufficiently marked by the

difference between the manifestoes which the leaders of those expeditions published. For Monmouth

Ferguson had scribbled an absurd and brutal libel about the burning of London, the strangling of Godfrey, the

butchering of Essex, and the poisoning of Charles. The Declaration of William was drawn up by the Grand

Pensionary Fagel, who was highly renowned as a publicist. Though weighty and learned, it was, in its

original form, much too prolix: but it was abridged and translated into English by Burnet, who well

understood the art of popular composition. It began by a solemn preamble, setting forth that, in every

community, the strict observance of law was necessary alike to the happiness of nations and to the security of

governments. The Prince of Orange had therefore seen with deep concern that the fundamental laws of a

kingdom, with which he was by blood and by marriage closely connected, had, by the advice of evil

counsellors, been grossly and systematically violated. The power of dispensing with Acts of Parliament had

been strained to such a point that the whole legislative authority had been transferred to the crown. Decisions

at variance with the spirit of the constitution had been obtained from the tribunals by turning out Judge after

Judge, till the bench had been filled with men ready to obey implicitly the directions of the government.

Notwithstanding the King's repeated assurances that he would maintain the established religion, persons

notoriously hostile to that religion had been promoted, not only to civil offices, but also to ecclesiastical

benefices. The government of the Church had, in defiance of express statutes, been entrusted to a new court

of High Commission; and in that court one avowed Papist had a seat. Good subjects, for refusing to violate

their duty and their oaths, had been ejected from their property, in contempt of the Great Charter of the

liberties of England. Meanwhile persons who could not legally set foot on the island had been placed at the

head of seminaries for the corruption of youth. Lieutenants, Deputy Lieutenants, Justices of the Peace, had

been dismissed in multitudes for refusing to support a pernicious and unconstitutional policy. The franchises

of almost every borough in the realm bad been invaded. The courts of justice were in such a state that their

decisions, even in civil matters, had ceased to inspire confidence, and that their servility in criminal cases had

brought on the kingdom the stain of innocent blood. All these abuses, loathed by the English nation, were to

be defended, it seemed, by an army of Irish Papists. Nor was this all. The most arbitrary princes had never

accounted it an offence in a subject modestly and peaceably to represent his grievances and to ask for relief.

But supplication was now treated as a high misdemeanour in England. For no crime but that of offering to the

Sovereign a petition drawn up in the most respectful terms, the fathers of the Church had been imprisoned

and prosecuted; and every Judge who gave his voice in their favour had instantly been turned out. The calling

of a free and lawful Parliament might indeed be an effectual remedy for all these evils: but such a Parliament,

unless the whole spirit of the administration were changed, the nation could not hope to see. It was evidently

the intention of the court to bring together, by means of regulated corporations and of Popish returning

officers, a body which would be a House of Commons in name alone. Lastly, there were circumstances which

raised a grave suspicion that the child who was called Prince of Wales was not really born of the Queen. For

these reasons the Prince, mindful of his near relation to the royal house, and grateful for the affection which

the English people had ever shown to his beloved wife and to himself, had resolved, in compliance with the

request of many Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and of many other persons of all ranks, to go over at the head

of a force sufficient to repel violence. He abjured all thought of conquest. He protested that, while his troops

remained in the island, they should be kept under the strictest restraints of discipline, and that, as soon as the

nation had been delivered from tyranny, they should be sent back. His single object was to have a free and

legal Parliament assembled: and to the decision of such a Parliament he solemnly pledged himself to leave all

As soon as copies of this Declaration were banded about the Hague, signs of dissension began to appear

among the English. Wildman, indefatigable in mischief, prevailed on some of his countrymen, and, among

others, on the headstrong and volatile Mordaunt, to declare that they would not take up arms on such grounds.

The paper had been drawn up merely to please the Cavaliers and the parsons. The injuries of the Church and

the trial of the Bishops had been put too prominently forward; and nothing had been said of the tyrannical

manner in which the Tories, before their rupture with the court, had treated the Whigs. Wildman then brought

forward a counterproject, prepared by himself, which, if it had been adopted, would have disgusted all the

Anglican clergy and four fifths of the landed aristocracy. The leading Whigs strongly opposed him: Russell in

particular declared that, if such an insane course were taken, there would be an end of the coalition from

which alone the nation could expect deliverance. The dispute was at length settled by the authority of

William, who, with his usual good sense, determined that the manifesto should stand nearly as Fagel and

While these things were passing in Holland, James had at length become sensible of his danger. Intelligence

which could not be disregarded came pouring in from various quarters. At length a despatch from Albeville

removed all doubts. It is said that, when the King had read it, the blood left his cheeks, and he remained some

time speechless.480 He might, indeed, well be appalled. The first easterly wind would bring a hostile

armament to the shores of his realm. All Europe, one single power alone excepted, was impatiently waiting

for the news of his downfall. The help of that single power he had madly rejected. Nay, he had requited with

insult the friendly intervention which might have saved him. The French armies which, but for his own folly,

might have been employed in overawing the States General, were besieging Philipsburg or garrisoning

Mentz. In a few days he might have to fight, on English ground, for his crown and for the birthright of his

infant son. His means were indeed in appearance great. The navy was in a much more efficient state than at

the time of his accession: and the improvement is partly to be attributed to his own exertions. He had

appointed no Lord High Admiral or Board of Admiralty, but had kept the chief direction of maritime affairs

in his own hands, and had been strenuously assisted by Pepys. It is a proverb that the eye of a master is more

to be trusted than that of a deputy: and, in an age of corruption and peculation, a department on which a

sovereign, even of very slender capacity, bestows close personal attention is likely to be comparatively free

from abuses. It would have been easy to find an abler minister of marine than James; but it would not have

been easy to find, among the public men of that age, any minister of marine, except James, who would not

have embezzled stores, taken bribes from contractors, and charged the crown with the cost of repairs which

had never been made. The King was, in truth, almost the only person who could be trusted not to rob the

King. There had therefore been, during the last three years, much less waste and pilfering in the dockyards

than formerly. Ships had been built which were fit to go to sea. An excellent order had been issued increasing

the allowances of Captains, and at the same time strictly forbidding them to carry merchandise from port to

port without the royal permission. The effect of these reforms was already perceptible; and James found no

difficulty in fitting out, at short notice, a considerable fleet. Thirty ships of the line, all third rates and fourth

rates, were collected in the Thames, under the command of Lord Dartmouth. The loyalty of Dartmouth was

above suspicion; and he was thought to have as much professional skill and knowledge as any of the patrician

sailors who, in that age, rose to the highest naval commands without a regular naval training, and who were at

The regular army was the largest that any King of England had ever commanded, and was rapidly augmented.

New companies were incorporated with the existing regiments. Commissions for the raising of fresh

regiments were issued. Four thousand men were added to the English establishment. Three thousand were

sent for with all speed from Ireland. As many more were ordered to march southward from Scotland. James

estimated the force with which he should be able to meet the invaders at near forty thousand troops, exclusive

The navy and army were therefore far more than sufficient to repel a Dutch invasion. But could the navy,

could the army, be trusted? Would not the trainbands flock by thousands to the standard of the deliverer? The

party which had, a few years before, drawn the sword for Monmouth would undoubtedly be eager to

welcome the Prince of Orange. And what had become of the party which had, during seven and forty years,

been the bulwark of monarchy? Where were now those gallant gentlemen who had ever been ready to shed

their blood for the crown? Outraged and insulted, driven from the bench of justice and deprived of all military

command, they saw the peril of their ungrateful Sovereign with undisguised delight. Where were those priests

and prelates who had, from ten thousand pulpits, proclaimed the duty of obeying the anointed delegate of

God? Some of them had been imprisoned: some had been plundered: all had been placed under the iron rule

of the High Commission, and had been in hourly fear lest some new freak of tyranny should deprive them of

their freeholds and leave them without a morsel of bread. That Churchmen would even now so completely

forget the doctrine which had been their peculiar boast as to join in active resistance seemed incredible. But

could their oppressor expect to find among them the spirit which in the preceding generation had triumphed

over the armies of Essex and Waller, and had yielded only after a desperate struggle to the genius and vigour

of Cromwell? The tyrant was overcome by fear. He ceased to repeat that concession had always ruined

princes, and sullenly owned that he must stoop to court the Tories once more.483 There is reason to believe

that Halifax was, at this time, invited to return to office, and that he was not unwilling to do so. The part of

mediator between the throne and the nation was, of all parts, that for which he was best qualified, and of

which he was most ambitious. How the negotiation with him was broken off is not known: but it is not

improbable that the question of the dispensing power was the insurmountable difficulty. His hostility to that

power had caused his disgrace three years before; and nothing that had since happened had been of a nature

to change his views. James, on the other hand, was fully determined to make no concession on that point.484

As to other matters he was less pertinacious. He put forth a proclamation in which he solemnly promised to

protect the Church of England and to maintain the Act of Uniformity. He declared himself willing to make

great sacrifices for the sake of concord. He would no longer insist that Roman Catholics should be admitted

into the House of Commons; and he trusted that his people would justly appreciate such a proof of his

disposition to meet their wishes. Three days later he notified his intention to replace all the magistrates and

Deputy Lieutenants who had been dismissed for refusing to support his policy. On the day after the

At the same time the King gave an audience to all the Bishops who were then in London. They had requested

admittance to his presence for the purpose of tendering their counsel in this emergency. The Primate was

spokesman. He respectfully asked that the administration might be put into the hands of persons duly

qualified, that all acts done under pretence of the dispensing power might be revoked, that the Ecclesiastical

Commission might be annulled, that the wrongs of Magdalene College might be redressed, and that the old

franchises of the municipal corporations might be restored. He hinted very intelligibly that there was one

most desirable event which would completely secure the throne and quiet the distracted realm. If His Majesty

would reconsider the points in dispute between the Churches of Rome and England, perhaps, by the divine

blessing on the arguments which the Bishops wished to lay before him, he might be convinced that it was his

duty to return to the religion of his father and of his grandfather. Thus far, Sancroft said, he had spoken the

sense of his brethren. There remained a subject on which he had not taken counsel with them, but to which he

thought it his duty to advert. He was indeed the only man of his profession who could advert to that subject

without being suspected of an interested motive. The metropolitan see of York had been three years vacant.

The Archbishop implored the King to fill it speedily with a pious and learned divine, and added that such a

divine might without difficulty be found among those who then stood in the royal presence. The King

commanded himself sufficiently to return thanks for this unpalatable counsel, and promised to consider what

bad been said.486 Of the dispensing power he would not yield one tittle. No unqualified person was removed

from any civil or military office. But some of Sancroft's suggestions were adopted. Within fortyeight hours

the Court of High Commission was abolished.487 It was determined that the charter of the City of London,

which had been forfeited six years before, should be restored; and the Chancellor was sent in state to carry

back the venerable parchment to Guildhall.488 A week later the public was informed that the Bishop of

Winchester, who was by virtue of his office Visitor of Magdalene College, had it in charge from the King to

correct whatever was amiss in that society. It was not without a long struggle and a bitter pang that James

stooped to this last humiliation. Indeed he did not yield till the Vicar Apostolic Leyburn, who seems to have

behaved on all occasions like a wise and honest man, declared that in his judgment the ejected President and

Fellows had been wronged, and that, on religious as well as on political grounds, restitution ought to be made

to them.489 In a few days appeared a proclamation restoring the forfeited franchises of all the municipal

James flattered himself that concessions so great made in the short space of a month would bring back to him

the hearts of his people. Nor can it be doubted that such concessions, made before there was reason to expect

an invasion from Holland, would have done much to conciliate the Tories. But gratitude is not to be expected

by rulers who give to fear what they have refused to justice. During three years the King had been proof to all

argument and to all entreaty. Every minister who had dared to raise his voice in favour of the civil and

ecclesiastical constitution of the realm had been disgraced. A Parliament eminently loyal had ventured to

protest gently and respectfully against a violation of the fundamental laws of England, and had been sternly

reprimanded, prorogued, and dissolved. Judge after Judge had been stripped of the ermine for declining to

give decisions opposed to the whole common and statute law. The most respectable Cavaliers had been

excluded from all share in the government of their counties for refusing to betray the public liberties. Scores

of clergymen had been deprived of their livelihood for observing their oaths. Prelates, to whose steadfast

fidelity the King owed the crown which he wore, had on their knees besought him not to command them to

violate the laws of God and of the land. Their modest petition had been treated as a seditious libel. They had

been browbeaten, threatened, imprisoned, prosecuted, and had narrowly escaped utter ruin. Then at length the

nation, finding that right was borne down by might, and that even supplication was regarded as a crime,

began to think of trying the chances of war. The oppressor learned that an armed deliverer was at hand and

would be eagerly welcomed by Whigs and Tories, Dissenters and Churchmen. All was immediately changed.

That government which had requited constant and zealous service with spoliation and persecution, that

government which to weighty reasons and pathetic intreaties had replied only by injuries, and insults, became

in a moment strangely gracious. Every Gazette now announced the removal of some grievance. It was then

evident that on the equity, the humanity, the plighted word of the King, no reliance could be placed, and that

he would govern well only so long as he was under the strong dread of resistance. His subjects were therefore

by no means disposed to restore to him a confidence which he had justly forfeited, or to relax the pressure

which had wrung from him the only good acts of his whole reign. The general impatience for the arrival of

the Dutch became every day stronger. The gales which at this time blew obstinately from the west, and which

at once prevented the Prince's armament from sailing and brought fresh Irish regiments from Dublin to

Chester, were bitterly cursed and reviled by the common people. The weather, it was said, was Popish.

Crowds stood in Cheapside gazing intently at the weathercock on the graceful steeple of Bow Church, and

The general feeling was strengthened by an event which, though merely accidental, was not unnaturally

ascribed to the perfidy of the King. The Bishop of Winchester announced that, in obedience to the royal

commands, he designed to restore the ejected members of Magdalene College. He fixed the twentyfirst of

October for this ceremony, and on the twentieth went down to Oxford. The whole University was in

expectation. The expelled Fellows had arrived from all parts of the kingdom, eager to take possession of their

beloved home. Three hundred gentlemen on horseback escorted the Visitor to his lodgings. As he passed, the

bells rang, and the High Street was crowded with shouting spectators. He retired to rest. The next morning a

joyous crowd assembled at the gates of Magdalene: but the Bishop did not make his appearance; and soon it

was known that be had been roused from his bed by a royal messenger, and had been directed to repair

immediately to Whitehall. This strange disappointment caused much wonder and anxiety: but in a few hours

came news which, to minds disposed, not without reason, to think the worst, seemed completely to explain

the King's change of purpose. The Dutch armament had put out to sea, and had been driven back by a storm.

The disaster was exaggerated by rumour. Many ships, it was said, had been lost. Thousands of horses had

perished. All thought of a design on England must be relinquished, at least for the present year. Here was a

lesson for the nation. While James expected immediate invasion and rebellion, he had given orders that

reparation should be made to those whom he had unlawfully despoiled. As soon as he found himself safe,

those orders had been revoked. This imputation, though at that time generally believed, and though, since that

time, repeated by writers who ought to have been well informed, was without foundation. It is certain that the

mishap of the Dutch fleet could not, by any mode of communication, have been known at Westminster till

some hours after the Bishop of Winchester had received the summons which called him away from Oxford.

The King, however, had little right to complain of the suspicions of his people. If they sometimes, without

severely examining evidence, ascribed to his dishonest policy what was really the effect of accident or

inadvertence, the fault was his own. That men who are in the habit of breaking faith should be distrusted

It is remarkable that James, on this occasion, incurred one unmerited imputation solely in consequence of his

eagerness to clear himself from another imputation equally unmerited. The Bishop of Winchester had been

hastily summoned from Oxford to attend an extraordinary meeting of the Privy Council, or rather an

assembly of Notables, which had been convoked at Whitehall. With the Privy Councillors were joined, in this

solemn sitting, all the Peers Spiritual and Temporal who chanced to be in or near the capital, the Judges, the

crown lawyers, the Lord Mayor and the Aldermen of the City of London. A hint had been given to Petre that

he would do well to absent himself. In truth few of the Peers would have chosen to sit with him. Near the

head of the board a chair of state was placed for the Queen Dowager. The Princess Anne had been requested

James informed this great assembly that he thought it necessary to produce proofs of the birth of his son. The

arts of bad men had poisoned the public mind to such an extent that very many believed the Prince of Wales

to be a supposititious child. But Providence had graciously ordered things so that scarcely any prince had

ever come into the world in the presence of so many witnesses. Those witnesses then appeared and gave their

evidence. After all the depositions had been taken, James with great solemnity declared that the imputation

thrown on him was utterly false, and that he would rather die a thousand deaths than wrong any of his

All who were present appeared to be satisfied. The evidence was instantly published, and was allowed by

judicious and impartial persons to be decisive.493 But the judicious are always a minority; and scarcely

anybody was then impartial. The whole nation was convinced that all sincere Papists thought it a duty to

perjure themselves whenever they could, by perjury, serve the interests of their Church. Men who, having

been bred Protestants, had for the sake of lucre pretended to be converted to Popery, were, if possible, less

trustworthy than sincere Papists. The depositions of all who belonged to these two classes were therefore

regarded as mere nullities. Thus the weight of the testimony on which James had relied was greatly reduced.

What remained was malignantly scrutinised. To every one of the few Protestant witnesses who had said

anything material some exception was taken. One was notoriously a greedy sycophant. Another had not

indeed yet apostatized, but was nearly related to an apostate. The people asked, as they had asked from the

first, why, if all was right, the King, knowing, as he knew, that many doubted the reality of his wife's

pregnancy, had not taken care that the birth should be more satisfactorily proved. Was there nothing

suspicious in the false reckoning, in the sudden change of abode, in the absence of the Princess Anne and of

the Archbishop of Canterbury? Why was no prelate of the Established Church in attendance? Why was not

the Dutch Ambassador summoned? Why, above all, were not the Hydes, loyal servants of the crown, faithful

sons of the Church, and natural guardians of the interest of their nieces, suffered to mingle with the crowd of

Papists which was assembled in and near the royal bedchamber? Why, in short, was there, in the long list of

assistants, not a single name which commanded public confidence and respect? The true answer to these

questions was that the King's understanding was weak, that his temper was despotic, and that he had willingly

seized an opportunity of manifesting his contempt for the opinion of his subjects. But the multitude, not

contented with this explanation, attributed to deep laid villany what was really the effect of folly and

perverseness. Nor was this opinion confined to the multitude. The Lady Anne, at her toilette, on the morning

after the Council, spoke of the investigation with such scorn as emboldened the very tirewomen who were

dressing her to put in their jests. Some of the Lords who had heard the examination, and had appeared to be

satisfied, were really unconvinced. Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph, whose piety and learning commanded general

respect, continued to the end of his life to believe that a fraud had been practised.

The depositions taken before the Council had not been many hours in the hands of the public when it was

noised abroad that Sunderland had been dismissed from all his places. The news of his disgrace seems to

have taken the politicians of the coffeehouses by surprise, but did not astonish those who had observed what

was passing in the palace. Treason had not been brought home to him by legal, or even by tangible, evidence

but there was a strong suspicion among those who watched him closely that, through some channel or other,

he was in communication with the enemies of that government in which he occupied so high a place. He,

with unabashed forehead, imprecated on his own head all evil here and hereafter if he was guilty. His only

fault, he protested, was that he had served the crown too well. Had he not given hostages to the royal cause?

Had he not broken down every bridge by which he could, in case of a disaster, effect his retreat? Had he not

gone all lengths in favour of the dispensing power, sate in the High Commission, signed the warrant for the

commitment of the Bishops, appeared as a witness against them, at the hazard of his life, amidst the hisses

and curses of the thousands who filled Westminster Hall? Had he not given the last proof of fidelity by

renouncing his religion, and publicly joining a Church which the nation detested? What had he to hope from a

change? What had he not to dread? These arguments, though plausible, and though set off by the most

insinuating address, could not remove the impression which whispers and reports arriving at once from a

hundred different quarters had produced. The King became daily colder and colder. Sunderland attempted to

support himself by the Queen's help, obtained an audience of Her Majesty, and was actually in her apartment

when Middleton entered, and, by the King's orders, demanded the seals. That evening the fallen minister was

for the last time closeted with the Prince whom he had flattered and betrayed. The interview was a strange

one. Sunderland acted calumniated virtue to perfection. He regretted not, he said, the Secretaryship of State

or the Presidency of the Council, if only he retained his sovereign's esteem. "Do not, sir, do not make me the

most unhappy gentleman in your dominions, by refusing to declare that you acquit me of disloyalty." The

King hardly knew what to believe. There was no positive proof of guilt; and the energy and pathos with

which Sunderland lied might have imposed on a keener understanding than that with which he had to deal. At

the French embassy his professions still found credit. There he declared that he should remain a few days in

London, and show himself at court. He would then retire to his country seat at Althorpe, and try to repair his

dilapidated fortunes by economy. If a revolution should take place he must fly to France. His ill requited

The seals which had been taken from Sunderland were delivered to Preston. The same Gazette which

announced this change contained the official intelligence of the disaster which had befallen the Dutch

fleet.495 That disaster was serious, though far less serious than the King and his few adherents, misled by

On the sixteenth of October, according to the English reckoning, was held a solemn sitting of the States of

Holland. The Prince came to bid them farewell. He thanked them for the kindness with which they had

watched over him when he was left an orphan child, for the confidence which they had reposed in him during

his administration, and for the assistance which they had granted to him at this momentous crisis. He

entreated them to believe that he had always meant and endeavoured to promote the interest of his country.

He was now quitting them, perhaps never to return. If he should fall in defence of the reformed religion and

of the independence of Europe, he commended his beloved wife to their care. The Grand Pensionary

answered in a faltering voice; and in all that grave senate there was none who could refrain from shedding

tears. But the iron stoicism of William never gave way; and he stood among his weeping friends calm and

austere as if he had been about to leave them only for a short visit to his hunting grounds at Loo.496

The deputies of the principal towns accompanied him to his yacht. Even the representatives of Amsterdam, so

long the chief seat of opposition to his administration, joined in paying him this compliment. Public prayers

In the evening he arrived at Helvoetsluys and went on board of a frigate called the Brill. His flag was

immediately hoisted. It displayed the arms of Nassau quartered with those of England. The motto,

embroidered in letters three feet long, was happily chosen. The House of Orange had long used the elliptical

device, "I will maintain." The ellipsis was now filled up with words of high import, "The liberties of England

The Prince had not been many hours on board when the wind became fair. On the nineteenth the armament

put to sea, and traversed, before a strong breeze, about half the distance between the Dutch and English

coasts. Then the wind changed, blew hard from the west, and swelled into a violent tempest. The ships,

scattered and in great distress, regained the shore of Holland as they best might. The Brill reached

Helvoetsluys on the twentyfirst. The Prince's fellow passengers had observed with admiration that neither

peril nor mortification had for one moment disturbed his composure. He now, though suffering from sea

sickness, refused to go on shore: for he conceived that, by remaining on board, he should in the most

effectual manner notify to Europe that the late misfortune had only delayed for a very short time the

execution of his purpose. In two or three days the fleet reassembled. One vessel only had been cast away. Not

a single soldier or sailor was missing. Some horses had perished: but this loss the Prince with great

expedition repaired; and, before the London Gazette had spread the news of his mishap, he was again ready

His Declaration preceded him only by a few hours. On the first of November it began to be mentioned in

mysterious whispers by the politicians of London, was passed secretly from man to man, and was slipped into

the boxes of the post office. One of the agents was arrested, and the packets of which he was in charge were

carried to Whitehall. The King read, and was greatly troubled. His first impulse was to bide the paper from all

human eyes. He threw into the fire every copy which had been brought to him, except one; and that one he

The paragraph in the manifesto which disturbed him most was that in which it was said that some of the

Peers, Spiritual and Temporal, had invited the Prince of Orange to invade England. Halifax, Clarendon, and

Nottingham were then in London. They were immediately summoned to the palace and interrogated. Halifax,

though conscious of innocence, refused at first to make any answer. "Your Majesty asks me," said he,

"whether I have committed high treason. If I am suspected, let me be brought before my peers. And how can

your Majesty place any dependence on the answer of a culprit whose life is at stake? Even if I had invited His

Highness over, I should without scruple plead Not Guilty." The King declared that he did not at all consider

Halifax as a culprit, and that he had asked the question as one gentleman asks another who has been

calumniated whether there be the least foundation for the calumny. "In that case," said Halifax, "I have no

objection to aver, as a gentleman speaking to a gentleman, on my honour, which is as sacred as my oath, that

I have not invited the Prince of Orange over."499 Clarendon and Nottingham said the same. The King was

still more anxious to ascertain the temper of the Prelates. If they were hostile to him, his throne was indeed in

danger. But it could not be. There was something monstrous in the supposition that any Bishop of the Church

of England could rebel against his Sovereign. Compton was called into the royal closet, and was asked

whether he believed that there was the slightest ground for the Prince's assertion. The Bishop was in a strait;

for he was himself one of the seven who had signed the invitation; and his conscience, not a very enlightened

conscience, would not suffer him, it seems, to utter a direct falsehood. "Sir," he said, "I am quite confident

that there is not one of my brethren who is not as guiltless as myself in this matter." The equivocation was

ingenious: but whether the difference between the sin of such an equivocation and the sin of a lie be worth

any expense of ingenuity may perhaps be doubted. The King was satisfied. "I fully acquit you all," he said.

"But I think it necessary that you should publicly contradict the slanderous charge brought against you in the

Prince's declaration." The Bishop very naturally begged that he might be allowed to read the paper which he

On the following day appeared a proclamation threatening with the severest punishment all who should

circulate, or who should even dare to read, William's manifesto.500 The Primate and the few Spiritual Peers

who happened to be then in London had orders to wait upon the King. Preston was in attendance with the

Prince's Declaration in his hand. "My Lords," said James, "listen to this passage. It concerns you." Preston

then read the sentence in which the Spiritual Peers were mentioned. The King proceeded: "I do not believe

one word of this: I am satisfied of your innocence; but I think it fit to let you know of what you are accused."

The Primate, with many dutiful expressions, protested that the King did him no more than justice. "I was born

in your Majesty's allegiance. I have repeatedly confirmed that allegiance by my oath. I can have but one King

at one time. I have not invited the Prince over; and I do not believe that a single one of my brethren has done

so." "I am sure I have not," said Crewe of Durham. "Nor I," said Cartwright of Chester. Crewe and

Cartwright might well be believed; for both had sate in the Ecclesiastical Commission. When Compton's turn

came, he parried the question with an adroitness which a Jesuit might have envied. "I gave your Majesty my

James repeated again and again that he fully acquitted them all. Nevertheless it would, in his judgment, be for

his service and for their own honour that they should publicly vindicate themselves. He therefore required

them to draw up a paper setting forth their abhorrence of the Prince's design. They remained silent: their

Meanwhile the fleet of William was on the German Ocean. It was on the evening of Thursday the first of

November that he put to sea the second time. The wind blew fresh from the east. The armament, during

twelve hours, held a course towards the north west. The light vessels sent out by the English Admiral for the

purpose of obtaining intelligence brought back news which confirmed the prevailing opinion that the enemy

would try to land in Yorkshire. All at once, on a signal from the Prince's ship, the whole fleet tacked, and

made sail for the British Channel. The same breeze which favoured the voyage of the invaders prevented

Dartmouth from coming out of the Thames. His ships were forced to strike yards and topmasts; and two of

his frigates, which had gained the open sea, were shattered by the violence of the weather and driven back

The Dutch fleet ran fast before the gale, and reached the Straits at about ten in the morning of Saturday the

third of November. William himself, in the Brill, led the way. More than six hundred vessels, with canvass

spread to a favourable wind, followed in his train. The transports were in the centre. The men of war, more

than fifty in number, formed an outer rampart. Herbert, with the title of Lieutenant Admiral General,

commanded the whole fleet. His post was in the rear, and many English sailors, inflamed against Popery, and

attracted by high pay, served under him. It was not without great difficulty that the Prince had prevailed on

some Dutch officers of high reputation to submit to the authority of a stranger. But the arrangement was

eminently judicious. There was, in the King's fleet, much discontent and an ardent zeal for the Protestant

faith. But within the memory of old mariners the Dutch and English navies had thrice, with heroic spirit and

various fortune, contended for the empire of the sea. Our sailors had not forgotten the broom with which

Tromp had threatened to sweep the Channel, or the fire which De Ruyter had lighted in the dockyards of the

Medway. Had the rival nations been once more brought face to face on the element of which both claimed the

sovereignty, all other thoughts might have given place to mutual animosity. A bloody and obstinate battle

might have been fought. Defeat would have been fatal to William's enterprise. Even victory would have

deranged all his deeply meditated schemes of policy. He therefore wisely determined that the pursuers, if they

overtook him, should be hailed in their own mother tongue, and adjured, by an admiral under whom they had

served, and whom they esteemed, not to fight against old mess mates for Popish tyranny. Such an appeal

might possibly avert a conflict. If a conflict took place, one English commander would be opposed to another;

nor would the pride of the islanders be wounded by learning that Dartmouth had been compelled to strike to

Happily William's precautions were not necessary. Soon after midday he passed the Straits. His fleet spread

to within a league of Dover on the north and of Calais on the south. The men of war on the extreme right and

left saluted both fortresses at once. The troops appeared under arms on the decks. The flourish of trumpets,

the clash of cymbals, and the rolling of drums were distinctly heard at once on the English and French shores.

An innumerable company of gazers blackened the white beach of Kent. Another mighty multitude covered

the coast of Picardy. Rapin de Thoyras, who, driven by persecution from his country, had taken service in the

Dutch army and accompanied the Prince to England, described the spectacle, many years later, as the most

magnificent and affecting that was ever seen by human eyes. At sunset the armament was off Beachy Head.

Then the lights were kindled. The sea was in a blaze for many miles. But the eyes of all the steersmen were

fixed throughout the night on three huge lanterns which flamed on the stern of the Brill.504

Meanwhile a courier bad been riding post from Dover Castle to Whitehall with news that the Dutch had

passed the Straits and were steering westward. It was necessary to make an immediate change in all the

military arrangements. Messengers were despatched in every direction. Officers were roused from their beds

at dead of night. At three on the Sunday morning there was a great muster by torchlight in Hyde Park. The

King had sent several regiments northward in the expectation that William would land in Yorkshire.

Expresses were despatched to recall them. All the forces except those which were necessary to keep the peace

of the capital were ordered to move to the west. Salisbury was appointed as the place of rendezvous: but, as it

was thought possible that Portsmouth might be the first point of attack, three battalions of guards and a strong

body of cavalry set out for that fortress. In a few hours it was known that Portsmouth was safe; and these

When Sunday the fourth of November dawned, the cliffs of the Isle of Wight were full in view of the Dutch

armament. That day was the anniversary both of William's birth and of his marriage. Sail was slackened

during part of the morning; and divine service was performed on board of the ships. In the afternoon and

through the night the fleet held on its course. Torbay was the place where the Prince intended to land. But the

morning of Monday the fifth of November was hazy. The pilot of the Brill could not discern the sea marks,

and carried the fleet too far to the west. The danger was great. To return in the face of the wind was

impossible. Plymouth was the next port. But at Plymouth a garrison had been posted under the command of

Lord Bath. The landing might be opposed; and a check might produce serious consequences. There could be

little doubt, moreover, that by this time the royal fleet had got out of the Thames and was hastening full sail

down the Channel. Russell saw the whole extent of the peril, and exclaimed to Burnet, "You may go to

prayers, Doctor. All is over." At that moment the wind changed: a soft breeze sprang up from the south: the

mist dispersed; the sun shone forth and, under the mild light of an autumnal noon, the fleet turned back,

passed round the lofty cape of Berry Head, and rode safe in the harbour of Torbay.506

Since William looked on that harbour its aspect has greatly changed. The amphitheatre which surrounds the

spacious basin now exhibits everywhere the signs of prosperity and civilisation. At the northeastern extremity

has sprung up a great watering place, to which strangers are attracted from the most remote parts of our island

by the Italian softness of the air; for in that climate the myrtle flourishes unsheltered; and even the winter is

milder than the Northumbrian April. The inhabitants are about ten thousand in number. The newly built

churches and chapels, the baths and libraries, the hotels and public gardens, the infirmary and the museum,

the white streets, rising terrace above terrace, the gay villas peeping from the midst of shrubberies and flower

beds, present a spectacle widely different from any that in the seventeenth century England could show. At

the opposite end of the bay lies, sheltered by Berry head, the stirring market town of Brixham, the wealthiest

seat of our fishing trade. A pier and a haven were formed there at the beginning of the present century, but

have been found insufficient for the increasing traffic. The population is about six thousand souls. The

shipping amounts to more than two hundred sail. The tonnage exceeds many times the tonnage of the port of

Liverpool under the Kings of the House of Stuart. But Torbay, when the Dutch fleet cast anchor there, was

known only as a haven where ships sometimes took refuge from the tempests of the Atlantic. Its quiet shores

were undisturbed by the bustle either of commerce or of pleasure and the huts of ploughmen and fishermen

were thinly scattered over what is now the site of crowded marts and of luxurious pavilions.

The peasantry of the coast of Devonshire remembered the name of Monmouth with affection, and held

Popery in detestation. They therefore crowded down to the seaside with provisions and offers of service. The

disembarkation instantly commenced. Sixty boats conveyed the troops to the coast. Mackay was sent on

shore first with the British regiments. The Prince soon followed. He landed where the quay of Brixham now

stands. The whole aspect of the place has been altered. Where we now see a port crowded with shipping, and

a market place swarming with buyers and sellers, the waves then broke on a desolate beach: but a fragment of

the rock on which the deliverer stepped from his boat has been carefully preserved, and is set up as an object

As soon as the Prince had planted his foot on dry ground he called for horses. Two beasts, such as the small

yeomen of that time were in the habit of riding, were procured from the neighbouring village. William and

As soon as Burnet was on shore he hastened to the Prince. An amusing dialogue took place between them.

Burnet poured forth his congratulations with genuine delight, and then eagerly asked what were His

Highness's plans. Military men are seldom disposed to take counsel with gownsmen on military matters; and

William regarded the interference of unprofessional advisers, in questions relating to war, with even more

than the disgust ordinarily felt by soldiers on such occasions. But he was at that moment in an excellent

humour, and, instead of signifying his displeasure by a short and cutting reprimand, graciously extended his

hand, and answered his chaplain's question by another question: "Well, Doctor, what do you think of

predestination now?" The reproof was so delicate that Burnet, whose perceptions were not very fine, did not

perceive it. He answered with great fervour that he should never forget the signal manner in which

During the first day the troops who had gone on shore had many discomforts to endure. The earth was soaked

with rain. The baggage was still on board of the ships. Officers of high rank were compelled to sleep in wet

clothes on the wet ground: the Prince himself had no better quarters than a hut afforded. His banner was

displayed on the thatched roof; and some bedding brought from his ship was spread for him on the floor.508

There was some difficulty about landing the horses; and it seemed probable that this operation would occupy

several days. But on the following morning the prospect cleared. The wind was gentle. The water in the bay

was as even as glass. Some fishermen pointed out a place where the ships could be brought within sixty feet

of the beach. This was done; and in three hours many hundreds of horses swam safely to shore.

The disembarkation had hardly been effected when the wind rose again, and swelled into a fierce gale from

the west. The enemy coming in pursuit down the Channel had been stopped by the same change of weather

which enabled William to land. During two days the King's fleet lay on an unruffled sea in sight of Beachy

Head. At length Dartmouth was able to proceed. He passed the Isle of Wight, and one of his ships came in

sight of the Dutch topmasts in Torbay. Just at this moment he was encountered by the tempest, and compelled

to take shelter in the harbour of Portsmouth.509 At that time James, who was not incompetent to form a

judgment on a question of seamanship, declared himself perfectly satisfied that his Admiral had done all that

man could do, and had yielded only to the irresistible hostility of the winds and waves. At a later period the

unfortunate prince began, with little reason, to suspect Dartmouth of treachery, or at least of slackness.510

The weather had indeed served the Protestant cause so well that some men of more piety than judgment fully

believed the ordinary laws of nature to have been suspended for the preservation of the liberty and religion of

England. Exactly a hundred years before, they said, the Armada, invincible by man, had been scattered by the

wrath of God. Civil freedom and divine truth were again in jeopardy; and again the obedient elements had

fought for the good cause. The wind had blown strong from the east while the Prince wished to sail down the

Channel, had turned to the south when he wished to enter Torbay, had sunk to a calm during the

disembarkation, and, as soon as the disembarkation was completed, had risen to a storm, and had met the

pursuers in the face. Nor did men omit to remark that, by an extraordinary coincidence, the Prince had

reached our shores on a day on which the Church of England commemorated, by prayer and thanksgiving, the

wonderful escape of the royal House and of the three Estates from the blackest plot ever devised by Papists.

Carstairs, whose suggestions were sure to meet with attention from the Prince, recommended that, as soon as

the landing had been effected, public thanks should be offered to God for the protection so conspicuously

accorded to the great enterprise. This advice was taken, and with excellent effect. The troops, taught to regard

themselves as favourites of heaven, were inspired with new courage; and the English people formed the most

favourable opinion of a general and an army so attentive to the duties of religion.

On Tuesday, the sixth of November, William's army began to march up the country. Some regiments

advanced as far as Newton Abbot. A stone, set up in the midst of that little town, still marks the spot where

the Prince's Declaration was solemnly read to the people. The movements of the troops were slow: for the

rain fell in torrents; and the roads of England were then in a state which seemed frightful to persons

accustomed to the excellent communications of Holland. William took up his quarters, during two days, at

Ford, a seat of the ancient and illustrious family of Courtenay, in the neighbourhood of Newton Abbot. He

was magnificently lodged and feasted there; but it is remarkable that the owner of the house, though a strong

Whig, did not choose to be the first to put life and fortune in peril, and cautiously abstained from doing

Exeter, in the meantime, was greatly agitated. Lamplugh, the bishop, as soon as he heard that the Dutch were

at Torbay, set off in terror for London. The Dean fled from the deanery. The magistrates were for the King,

the body of the inhabitants for the Prince. Every thing was in confusion when, on the morning of Thursday,

the eighth of November, a body of troops, under the command of Mordaunt, appeared before the city. With

Mordaunt came Burnet, to whom William had entrusted the duty of protecting the clergy of the Cathedral

from injury and insult.511 The Mayor and Aldermen had ordered the gates to be closed, but yielded on the

first summons. The deanery was prepared for the reception of the Prince. On the following day, Friday the

ninth, he arrived. The magistrates had been pressed to receive him in state at the entrance of the city, but had

steadfastly refused. The pomp of that day, however, could well spare them. Such a sight had never been seen

in Devonshire. Many went forth half a day's journey to meet the champion of their religion. All the

neighbouring villages poured forth their inhabitants. A great crowd, consisting chiefly of young peasants,

brandishing their cudgels, had assembled on the top of Haldon Hill, whence the army, marching from

Chudleigh, first descried the rich valley of the Exe, and the two massive towers rising from the cloud of

smoke which overhung the capital of the West. The road, all down the long descent, and through the plain to

the banks of the river, was lined, mile after mile, with spectators. From the West Gate to the Cathedral Close,

the pressing and shouting on each side was such as reminded Londoners of the crowds on the Lord Mayor's

day. The houses were gaily decorated. Doors, windows, balconies, and roofs were thronged with gazers. An

eye accustomed to the pomp of war would have found much to criticize in the spectacle. For several toilsome

marches in the rain, through roads where one who travelled on foot sank at every step up to the ancles in clay,

had not improved the appearance either of the men or of their accoutrements. But the people of Devonshire,

altogether unused to the splendour of well ordered camps, were overwhelmed with delight and awe.

Descriptions of the martial pageant were circulated all over the kingdom. They contained much that was well

fitted to gratify the vulgar appetite for the marvellous. For the Dutch army, composed of men who had been

born in various climates, and had served under various standards, presented an aspect at once grotesque,

gorgeous, and terrible to islanders who had, in general, a very indistinct notion of foreign countries. First rode

Macclesfield at the head of two hundred gentlemen, mostly of English blood, glittering in helmets and

cuirasses, and mounted on Flemish war horses. Each was attended by a negro, brought from the sugar

plantations on the coast of Guiana. The citizens of Exeter, who had never seen so many specimens of the

African race, gazed with wonder on those black faces set off by embroidered turbans and white feathers.

Then with drawn broad swords came a squadron of Swedish horsemen in black armour and fur cloaks. They

were regarded with a strange interest; for it was rumoured that they were natives of a land where the ocean

was frozen and where the night lasted through half the year, and that they had themselves slain the huge bears

whose skins they wore. Next, surrounded by a goodly company of gentlemen and pages, was borne aloft the

Prince's banner. On its broad folds the crowd which covered the roofs and filled the windows read with

delight that memorable inscription, "The Protestant religion and the liberties of England." But the

acclamations redoubled when, attended by forty running footmen, the Prince himself appeared, armed on

back and breast, wearing a white plume and mounted on a white charger. With how martial an air he curbed

his horse, how thoughtful and commanding was the expression of his ample forehead and falcon eye, may

still be seen on the canvass of Kneller. Once those grave features relaxed into a smile. It was when an ancient

woman, perhaps one of the zealous Puritans who through twentyeight years of persecution had waited with

firm faith for the consolation of Israel, perhaps the mother of some rebel who had perished in the carnage of

Sedgemoor, or in the more fearful carnage of the Bloody Circuit, broke from the crowd, rushed through the

drawn swords and curvetting horses, touched the hand of the deliverer, and cried out that now she was happy.

Near to the Prince was one who divided with him the gaze of the multitude. That, men said, was the great

Count Schomberg, the first soldier in Europe, since Turenne and Conde were gone, the man whose genius

and valour had saved the Portuguese monarchy on the field of Montes Claros, the man who had earned a still

higher glory by resigning the truncheon of a Marshal of France for the sake of the true religion. It was not

forgotten that the two heroes who, indissolubly united by their common Protestantism, were entering Exeter

together, had twelve years before been opposed to each other under the walls of Maestricht, and that the

energy of the young Prince had not then been found a match for the cool science of the veteran who now rode

in friendship by his side. Then came a long column of the whiskered infantry of Switzerland, distinguished in

all the continental wars of two centuries by preeminent valour and discipline, but never till that week seen on

English ground. And then marched a succession of bands designated, as was the fashion of that age, after

their leaders, Bentinck, Solmes and Ginkell, Talmash and Mackay. With peculiar pleasure Englishmen might

look on one gallant regiment which still bore the name of the honoured and lamented Ossory. The effect of

the spectacle was heightened by the recollection of the renowned events in which many of the warriors now

pouring through the West Gate had borne a share. For they had seen service very different from that of the

Devonshire militia or of the camp at Hounslow. Some of them had repelled the fiery onset of the French on

the field of Seneff; and others had crossed swords with the infidels in the cause of Christendom on that great

day when the siege of Vienna was raised. The very senses of the multitude were fooled by imagination.

Newsletters conveyed to every part of the kingdom fabulous accounts of the size and strength of the invaders.

It was affirmed that they were, with scarcely an exception, above six feet high, and that they wielded such

huge pikes, swords, and muskets, as had never before been seen in England. Nor did the wonder of the

population diminish when the artillery arrived, twentyone huge pieces of brass cannon, which were with

difficulty tugged along by sixteen cart horses to each. Much curiosity was excited by a strange structure

mounted on wheels. It proved to be a moveable smithy, furnished with all tools and materials necessary for

repairing arms and carriages. But nothing raised so much admiration as the bridge of boats, which was laid

with great speed on the Exe for the conveyance of waggons, and afterwards as speedily taken to pieces and

carried away. It was made, if report said true, after a pattern contrived by the Christians who were warring

against the Great Turk on the Danube. The foreigners inspired as much good will as admiration. Their politic

leader took care to distribute the quarters in such a manner as to cause the smallest possible inconvenience to

the inhabitants of Exeter and of the neighbouring villages. The most rigid discipline was maintained. Not

only were pillage and outrage effectually prevented, but the troops were required to demean themselves with

civility towards all classes. Those who had formed their notions of an army from the conduct of Kirke and his

Lambs were amazed to see soldiers who never swore at a landlady or took an egg without paying for it. In

return for this moderation the people furnished the troops with provisions in great abundance and at

Much depended on the course which, at this great crisis, the clergy of the Church of England might take; and

the members of the Chapter of Exeter were the first who were called upon to declare their sentiments. Burnet

informed the Canons, now left without a head by the flight of the Dean, that they could not be permitted to

use the prayer for the Prince of Wales, and that a solemn service must be performed in honour of the safe

arrival of the Prince. The Canons did not choose to appear in their stalls; but some of the choristers and

prebendaries attended. William repaired in military state to the Cathedral. As he passed under the gorgeous

screen, that renowned organ, scarcely surpassed by any of those which are the boast of his native Holland,

gave out a peal of triumph. He mounted the Bishop's seat, a stately throne rich with the carving of the

fifteenth century. Burnet stood below; and a crowd of warriors and nobles appeared on the right hand and on

the left. The singers, robed in white, sang the Te Deum. When the chaunt was over, Burnet read the Prince's

Declaration: but as soon as the first words were uttered, prebendaries and singers crowded in all haste out of

the choir. At the close Burnet cried in a loud voice, "God save the Prince of Orange!" and many fervent

On Sunday, the eleventh of November, Burnet preached before the Prince in the Cathedral, and dilated on the

signal mercy vouchsafed by God to the English Church and nation. At the same time a singular event

happened in a humbler place of worship. Ferguson resolved to preach at the Presbyterian meeting house. The

minister and elders would not consent but the turbulent and halfwitted knave, fancying that the times of

Fleetwood and Harrison were come again, forced the door, went through the congregation sword in hand,

mounted the pulpit, and there poured forth a fiery invective against the King. The time for such follies had

While these things were passing in Devonshire the ferment was great in London. The Prince's Declaration, in

spite of all precautions, was now in every man's hands. On the sixth of November James, still uncertain on

what part of the coast the invaders had landed, summoned the Primate and three other Bishops, Compton of

London, White of Peterborough, and Sprat of Rochester, to a conference in the closet. The King listened

graciously while the prelates made warm professions of loyalty, and assured them that he did not suspect

them. "But where," said he, "is the paper that you were to bring me?" "Sir," answered Sancroft, "we have

brought no paper. We are not solicitous to clear our fame to the world. It is no new thing to us to be reviled

and falsely accused. Our consciences acquit us: your Majesty acquits us: and we are satisfied." "Yes," said

the King; "but a declaration from you is necessary to my service." He then produced a copy of the Prince's

manifesto. "See," he said, "how you are mentioned here." "Sir," answered one of the Bishops, "not one person

in five hundred believes this manifesto to be genuine." "No!" cried the King fiercely; "then those five

hundred would bring the Prince of Orange to cut my throat." "God forbid," exclaimed the prelates in concert.

But the King's understanding, never very clear, was now quite bewildered. One of his peculiarities was that,

whenever his opinion was not adopted, he fancied that his veracity was questioned. "This paper not genuine!"

he exclaimed, turning over the leaves with his hands. "Am I not worthy to be believed? Is my word not to be

taken?" "At all events, sir," said one of the Bishops, "this is not an ecclesiastical matter. It lies within the

sphere of the civil power. God has entrusted your Majesty with the sword: and it is not for us to invade your

functions." Then the Archbishop, with that gentle and temperate malice which inflicts the deepest wounds,

declared that he must be excused from setting his hand to any political document. "I and my brethren, sir," he

said, "have already smarted severely for meddling with affairs of state; and we shall be very cautious how we

do so again. We once subscribed a petition of the most harmless kind: we presented it in the most respectful

manner; and we found that we had committed a high offence. We were saved from ruin only by the merciful

protection of God. And, sir, the ground then taken by your Majesty's Attorney and Solicitor was that, out of

Parliament, we were private men, and that it was criminal presumption in private men to meddle with

politics. They attacked us so fiercely that for my part I gave myself over for lost." "I thank you for that, my

Lord of Canterbury," said the King; "I should have hoped that you would not have thought yourself lost by

falling into my hands." Such a speech might have become the mouth of a merciful sovereign, but it came with

a bad grace from a prince who had burned a woman alive for harbouring one of his flying enemies, from a

prince round whose knees his own nephew had clung in vain agonies of supplication. The Archbishop was

not to be so silenced. He resumed his story, and recounted the insults which the creatures of the court had

offered to the Church of England, among which some ridicule thrown on his own style occupied a

conspicuous place. The King had nothing to say but that there was no use in repeating old grievances, and

that he had hoped that these things had been quite forgotten. He, who never forgot the smallest injury that he

had suffered, could not understand how others should remember for a few weeks the most deadly injuries that

At length the conversation came back to the point from which it had wandered. The King insisted on having

from the Bishops a paper declaring their abhorrence of the Prince's enterprise. They, with many professions

of the most submissive loyalty, pertinaciously refused. The Prince, they said, asserted that he had been

invited by temporal as well as by spiritual peers. The imputation was common. Why should not the purgation

be common also? "I see how it is," said the King. "Some of the temporal peers have been with you, and have

persuaded you to cross me in this matter." The Bishops solemnly averred that it was not so. But it would, they

said, seem strange that, on a question involving grave political and military considerations, the temporal peers

should be entirely passed over, and the prelates alone should be required to take a prominent part. "But this,"

said James, "is my method. I am your King. It is for me to judge what is best. I will go my own way; and I

call on you to assist me." The Bishops assured him that they would assist him in their proper department, as

Christian ministers with their prayers, and as peers of the realm with their advice in his Parliament. James,

who wanted neither the prayers of heretics nor the advice of Parliaments, was bitterly disappointed. After a

long altercation, "I have done," he said, "I will urge you no further. Since you will not help me, I must trust to

The Bishops had hardly left the royal presence, when a courier arrived with the news that on the preceding

day the Prince of Orange had landed in Devonshire. During the following week London was violently

agitated. On Sunday, the eleventh of November, a rumour was circulated that knives, gridirons, and caldrons,

intended for the torturing of heretics, were concealed in the monastery which had been established under the

King's protection at Clerkenwell. Great multitudes assembled round the building, and were about to demolish

it, when a military force arrived. The crowd was dispersed, and several of the rioters were slain. An inquest

sate on the bodies, and came to a decision which strongly indicated the temper of the public mind. The jury

found that certain loyal and well disposed persons, who had gone to put down the meetings of traitors and

public enemies at a mass house, had been wilfully murdered by the soldiers; and this strange verdict was

signed by all the jurors. The ecclesiastics at Clerkenwell, naturally alarmed by these symptoms of popular

feeling, were desirous to place their property in safety. They succeeded in removing most of their furniture

before any report of their intentions got abroad. But at length the suspicions of the rabble were excited. The

two last carts were stopped in Holborn, and all that they contained was publicly burned in the middle of the

street. So great was the alarm among the Catholics that all their places of worship were closed, except those

On the whole, however, things as yet looked not unfavourably for James. The invaders had been more than a

week on English ground. Yet no man of note had joined them. No rebellion had broken out in the north or the

east. No servant of the crown appeared to have betrayed his trust. The royal army was assembling fast at

Salisbury, and, though inferior in discipline to that of William, was superior in numbers.

The Prince was undoubtedly surprised and mortified by the slackness of those who had invited him to

England. By the common people of Devonshire, indeed, he had been received with every sign of good will:

but no nobleman, no gentleman of high consideration, had yet repaired to his quarters. The explanation of this

singular fact is probably to be found in the circumstance that he had landed in a part of the island where he

had not been expected. His friends in the north had made their arrangements for a rising, on the supposition

that he would be among them with an army. His friends in the west had made no arrangements at all, and

were naturally disconcerted at finding themselves suddenly called upon to take the lead in a movement so

important and perilous. They had also fresh in their recollection, and indeed full in their sight, the disastrous

consequences of rebellion, gibbets, heads, mangled quarters, families still in deep mourning for brave

sufferers who had loved their country well but not wisely. After a warning so terrible and so recent, some

hesitation was natural. It was equally natural, however, that William, who, trusting to promises from

England, had put to hazard, not only his own fame and fortunes, but also the prosperity and independence of

his native land, should feel deeply mortified. He was, indeed, so indignant, that he talked of falling back to

Torbay, reembarking his troops, returning to Holland, and leaving those who had betrayed him to the fate

which they deserved. At length, on Monday, the twelfth of November, a gentleman named Burrington, who

resided in the neighbourhood of Crediton, joined the Prince's standard, and his example was followed by

Men of higher consequence had already set out from different parts of the country for Exeter. The first of

these was John Lord Lovelace, distinguished by his taste, by his magnificence, and by the audacious and

intemperate vehemence of his Whiggism. He had been five or six times arrested for political offences. The

last crime laid to his charge was, that he had contemptuously denied the validity of a warrant, signed by a

Roman Catholic Justice of the Peace. He had been brought before the Privy Council and strictly examined,

but to little purpose. He resolutely refused to criminate himself; and the evidence against him was

insufficient. He was dismissed; but, before he retired, James exclaimed in great heat, "My Lord, this is not the

first trick that you have played me." "Sir," answered Lovelace, with undaunted spirit, "I never played any

trick to your Majesty, or to any other person. Whoever has accused me to your Majesty of playing tricks is a

liar." Lovelace had subsequently been admitted into the confidence of those who planned the Revolution.517

His mansion, built by his ancestors out of the spoils of Spanish galleons from the Indies, rose on the ruins of

a house of Our Lady in that beautiful valley through which the Thames, not yet defiled by the precincts of a

great capital, nor rising and falling with the flow and ebb of the sea, rolls under woods of beech round the

gentle hills of Berkshire. Beneath the stately saloon, adorned by Italian pencils, was a subterraneous vault, in

which the bones of ancient monks had sometimes been found. In this dark chamber some zealous and daring

opponents of the government had held many midnight conferences during that anxious time when England

was impatiently expecting the Protestant wind.518 The season for action had now arrived. Lovelace, with

seventy followers, well armed and mounted, quitted his dwelling, and directed his course westward. He

reached Gloucestershire without difficulty. But Beaufort, who governed that county, was exerting all his great

authority and influence in support of the crown. The militia had been called out. A strong party had been

posted at Cirencester. When Lovelace arrived there he was informed that he could not be suffered to pass. It

was necessary for him either to relinquish his undertaking or to fight his way through. He resolved to force a

passage; and his friends and tenants stood gallantly by him. A sharp conflict took place. The militia lost an

officer and six or seven men; but at length the followers of Lovelace were overpowered: he was made a

Others were more fortunate. On the day on which the skirmish took place at Cirencester, Richard Savage,

Lord Colchester, son and heir of the Earl Rivers, and father, by a lawless amour, of that unhappy poet whose

misdeeds and misfortunes form one of the darkest portions of literary history, came with between sixty and

seventy horse to Exeter. With him arrived the bold and turbulent Thomas Wharton. A few hours later came

Edward Russell, son of the Earl of Bedford, and brother of the virtuous nobleman whose blood had been shed

on the scaffold. Another arrival still more important was speedily announced. Colchester, Wharton, and

Russell belonged to that party which had been constantly opposed to the court. James Bertie, Earl of

Abingdon, had, on the contrary, been regarded as a supporter of arbitrary government. He had been true to

James in the days of the Exclusion Bill. He had, as Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, acted with vigour and

severity against the adherents of Monmouth, and had lighted bonfires to celebrate the defeat of Argyle. But

dread of Popery had driven him into opposition and rebellion. He was the first peer of the realm who made

But the King had less to fear from those who openly arrayed themselves against his authority, than from the

dark conspiracy which had spread its ramifications through his army and his family. Of that conspiracy

Churchill, unrivalled in sagacity and address, endowed by nature with a certain cool intrepidity which never

failed him either in fighting or lying, high in military rank, and high in the favour of the Princess Anne, must

be regarded as the soul. It was not yet time for him to strike the decisive blow. But even thus early he

inflicted, by the instrumentality of a subordinate agent, a wound, serious if not deadly, on the royal cause.

Edward, Viscount Cornbury, eldest son of the Earl of Clarendon, was a young man of slender abilities, loose

principles, and violent temper. He had been early taught to consider his relationship to the Princess Anne as

the groundwork of his fortunes, and had been exhorted to pay her assiduous court. It had never occurred to

his father that the hereditary loyalty of the Hydes could run any risk of contamination in the household of the

King's favourite daughter: but in that household the Churchills held absolute sway; and Cornbury became

their tool. He commanded one of the regiments of dragoons which had been sent westward. Such dispositions

had been made that, on the fourteenth of November, he was, during a few hours, the senior officer at

Salisbury, and all the troops assembled there were subject to his authority. It seems extraordinary that, at such

a crisis, the army on which every thing depended should have been left, even for a moment, under the

command of a young Colonel who had neither abilities nor experience. There can be little doubt that so

strange an arrangement was the result of deep design, and as little doubt to what head and to what heart the

Suddenly three of the regiments of cavalry which had assembled at Salisbury were ordered to march

westward. Cornbury put himself at their head, and conducted them first to Blandford and thence to

Dorchester. From Dorchester, after a halt of an hour or two, they set out for Axminster. Some of the officers

began to be uneasy, and demanded an explanation of these strange movements. Cornbury replied that he had

instructions to make a night attack on some troops which the Prince of Orange had posted at Honiton. But

suspicion was awake. Searching questions were put, and were evasively answered. At last Cornbury was

pressed to produce his orders. He perceived, not only that it would be impossible for him to carry over all the

three regiments, as he had hoped, but that he was himself in a situation of considerable peril. He accordingly

stole away with a few followers to the Dutch quarters. Most of his troops returned to Salisbury but some who

had been detached from the main body, and who had no suspicion of the designs of their commander,

proceeded to Honiton. There they found themselves in the midst of a large force which was fully prepared to

receive them. Resistance was impossible. Their leader pressed them to take service under William. A gratuity

The news of these events reached London on the fifteenth. James had been on the morning of that day in high

good humour. Bishop Lamplugh had just presented himself at court on his arrival from Exeter, and had been

most graciously received. "My Lord," said the King, "you are a genuine old Cavalier." The archbishopric of

York, which had now been vacant more than two years and a half, was immediately bestowed on Lamplugh

as the reward of loyalty. That afternoon, just as the King was sitting down to dinner, arrived an express with

the tidings of Cornbury's defection. James turned away from his untasted meal, swallowed a crust of bread

and a glass of wine, and retired to his closet. He afterwards learned that, as he was rising from table, several

of the Lords in whom he reposed the greatest confidence were shaking hands and congratulating each other in

the adjoining gallery. When the news was carried to the Queen's apartments she and her ladies broke out into

The blow was indeed a heavy one. It was true that the direct loss to the crown and the direct gain to the

invaders hardly amounted to two hundred men and as many horses. But where could the King henceforth

expect to find those sentiments in which consists the strength of states and of armies? Cornbury was the heir

of a house conspicuous for its attachment to monarchy. His father Clarendon, his uncle Rochester, were men

whose loyalty was supposed to be proof to all temptation. What must be the strength of that feeling against

which the most deeply rooted hereditary prejudices were of no avail, of that feeling which could reconcile a

young officer of high birth to desertion, aggravated by breach of trust and by gross falsehood? That Cornbury

was not a man of brilliant parts or enterprising temper made the event more alarming. It was impossible to

doubt that he had in some quarter a powerful and artful prompter. Who that prompter was soon became

evident. In the meantime no man in the royal camp could feel assured that he was not surrounded by traitors.

Political rank, military rank, the honour of a nobleman, the honour of a soldier, the strongest professions, the

purest Cavalier blood, could no longer afford security. Every man might reasonably doubt whether every

order which he received from his superior was not meant to serve the purposes of the enemy. That prompt

obedience without which an army is merely a rabble was necessarily at an end. What discipline could there be

among soldiers who had just been saved from a snare by refusing to follow their commanding officer on a

Cornbury was soon kept in countenance by a crowd of deserters superior to him in rank and capacity: but

during a few days he stood alone in his shame, and was bitterly reviled by many who afterwards imitated his

example and envied his dishonourable precedence. Among these was his own father. The first outbreak of

Clarendon's rage and sorrow was highly pathetic. "Oh God!" he ejaculated, "that a son of mine should be a

rebel!" A fortnight later he made up his mind to be a rebel himself. Yet it would be unjust to pronounce him a

mere hypocrite. In revolutions men live fast: the experience of years is crowded into hours: old habits of

thought and action are violently broken; novelties, which at first sight inspire dread and disgust, become in a

few days familiar, endurable, attractive. Many men of far purer virtue and higher spirit than Clarendon were

prepared, before that memorable year ended, to do what they would have pronounced wicked and infamous

The unhappy father composed himself as well as he could, and sent to ask a private audience of the King. It

was granted. James said, with more than his usual graciousness, that he from his heart pitied Cornbury's

relations, and should not hold them at all accountable for the crime of their unworthy kinsman. Clarendon

went home, scarcely daring to look his friends in the face. Soon, however, he learned with surprise that the

act, which had, as he at first thought, for ever dishonoured his family, was applauded by some persons of high

station. His niece, the Princess of Denmark, asked him why he shut himself up. He answered that he had been

overwhelmed with confusion by his son's villany. Anne seemed not at all to understand this feeling. "People,"

she said, "are very uneasy about Popery. I believe that many of the army will do the same."523

And now the King, greatly disturbed, called together the principal officers who were still in London.

Churchill, who was about this time promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General, made his appearance with

that bland serenity which neither peril nor infamy could ever disturb. The meeting was attended by Henry

Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, whose audacity and activity made him conspicuous among the natural children of

Charles the Second. Grafton was colonel of the first regiment of Foot Guards. He seems to have been at this

time completely under Churchill's influence, and was prepared to desert the royal standard as soon as the

favourable moment should arrive. Two other traitors were in the circle, Kirke and Trelawney, who

commanded those two fierce and lawless bands then known as the Tangier regiments. Both of them had, like

the other Protestant officers of the army, long seen with extreme displeasure the partiality which the King had

shown to members of his own Church; and Trelawney remembered with bitter resentment the persecution of

his brother the Bishop of Bristol. James addressed the assembly in terms worthy of a better man and of a

better cause. It might be, he said, that some of the officers had conscientious scruples about fighting for him.

If so he was willing to receive back their commissions. But he adjured them as gentlemen and soldiers not to

imitate the shameful example of Cornbury. All seemed moved; and none more than Churchill. He was the

first to vow with well feigned enthusiasm that he would shed the last drop of his blood in the service of his

gracious master: Grafton was loud and forward in similar protestations; and the example was followed by

Deceived by these professions, the King prepared to set out for Salisbury. Before his departure he was

informed that a considerable number of peers, temporal and spiritual, desired to be admitted to an audience.

They came, with Sancroft at their head, to present a petition, praying that a free and legal Parliament might be

The history of this petition is curious. The thought seems to have occurred at once to two great chiefs of

parties who had long been rivals and enemies, Rochester and Halifax. They both, independently of one

another, consulted the Bishops. The Bishops warmly approved of the suggestion. It was then proposed that a

general meeting of peers should be called to deliberate on the form of an address to the King. It was term

time; and in term time men of rank and fashion then lounged every day in Westminster Hall as they now

lounge in the clubs of Pall Mall and Saint James's Street. Nothing could be easier than for the Lords who

assembled there to step aside into some adjoining room and to hold a consultation. But unexpected

difficulties arose. Halifax became first cold and then adverse. It was his nature to discover objections to

everything; and on this occasion his sagacity was quickened by rivalry. The scheme, which he had approved

while he regarded it as his own, began to displease him as soon as he found that it was also the scheme of

Rochester, by whom he had been long thwarted and at length supplanted, and whom he disliked as much as it

was in his easy nature to dislike anybody. Nottingham was at that time much under the influence of Halifax.

They both declared that they would not join in the address if Rochester signed it. Clarendon expostulated in

vain. "I mean no disrespect," said Halifax, "to my Lord Rochester: but he has been a member of the

Ecclesiastical Commission: the proceedings of that court must soon be the subject of a very serious inquiry;

and it is not fit that one who has sate there should take any part in our petition." Nottingham, with strong

expressions of personal esteem for Rochester, avowed the same opinion. The authority of the two dissentient

Lords prevented several other noblemen from subscribing the address but the Hydes and the Bishops

persisted. Nineteen signatures were procured; and the petitioners waited in a body on the King.525

He received their address ungraciously. He assured them, indeed, that he passionately desired the meeting of

a free Parliament; and he promised them, on the faith of a King, that he would call one as soon as the Prince

of Orange should have left the island. "But how," said he, "can a Parliament be free when an enemy is in the

kingdom, and can return near a hundred votes?" To the prelates he spoke with peculiar acrimony. "I could

not," he said, "prevail on you the other day to declare against this invasion: but you are ready enough to

declare against me. Then you would not meddle with politics. You have no scruple about meddling now. You

have excited this rebellious temper among your flocks, and now you foment it. You would be better

employed in teaching them how to obey than in teaching me how to govern." He was much incensed against

his nephew Grafton, whose signature stood next to that of Sancroft, and said to the young man, with great

asperity, "You know nothing about religion; you care nothing about it; and yet, forsooth, you must pretend to

have a conscience." "It is true, sir," answered Grafton, with impudent frankness, "that I have very little

Bitter as was the King's language to the petitioners, it was far less bitter that that which he held after they had

withdrawn. He had done, he said, far too much already in the hope of satisfying an undutiful and ungrateful

people. He had always hated the thought of concession: but he had suffered himself to be talked over; and

now he, like his father before him, had found that concession only made subjects more encroaching. He

would yield nothing more, not an atom, and, after his fashion, he vehemently repeated many times, "Not an

atom." Not only would he make no overtures to the invaders, but he would receive none. If the Dutch sent

flags of truce, the first messenger should be dismissed without an answer; the second should be hanged.527

In such a mood James set out for Salisbury. His last act before his departure was to appoint a Council of five

Lords to represent him in London during his absence. Of the five, two were Papists, and by law incapable of

office. Joined with them was Jeffreys, a Protestant indeed, but more detested by the nation than any Papist.

To the other two members of this board, Preston and Godolphin, no serious objection could be made. On the

day on which the King left London the Prince of Wales was sent to Portsmouth. That fortress was strongly

garrisoned, and was under the government of Berwick. The fleet commanded by Dartmouth lay close at hand:

and it was supposed that, if things went ill, the royal infant would, without difficulty, be conveyed from

On the nineteenth James reached Salisbury, and took up his quarters in the episcopal palace. Evil news was

now fast pouring in upon him from all sides. The western counties had at length risen. As soon as the news of

Cornbury's desertion was known, many wealthy landowners took heart and hastened to Exeter. Among them

was Sir William Portman of Bryanstone, one of the greatest men in Dorsetshire, and Sir Francis Warre of

Hestercombe, whose interest was great in Somersetshire.529 But the most important of the new comets was

Seymour, who had recently inherited a baronetcy which added little to his dignity, and who, in birth, in

political influence, and in parliamentary abilities, was beyond comparison the foremost among the Tory

gentlemen of England. At his first audience he is said to have exhibited his characteristic pride in a way

which surprised and amused the Prince. "I think, Sir Edward," said William, meaning to be very civil, "that

you are of the family of the Duke of Somerset." "Pardon me, sir," said Sir Edward, who never forgot that he

was the head of the elder branch of the Seymours, "the Duke of Somerset is of my family."530

The quarters of William now began to present the appearance of a court. More than sixty men of rank and

fortune were lodged at Exeter; and the daily display of rich liveries, and of coaches drawn by six horses, in

the Cathedral Close, gave to that quiet precinct something of the splendour and gaiety of Whitehall. The

common people were eager to take arms; and it would have been easy to form many battalions of infantry.

But Schomberg, who thought little of soldiers fresh from the plough, maintained that, if the expedition could

not succeed without such help, it would not succeed at all: and William, who had as much professional

feeling as Schomberg, concurred in this opinion. Commissions therefore for raising new regiments were very

It was now thought desirable that the Prince should give a public reception to the whole body of noblemen

and gentlemen who had assembled at Exeter. He addressed them in a short but dignified and well considered

speech. He was not, he said, acquainted with the faces of all whom he saw. But he had a list of their names,

and knew how high they stood in the estimation of their country. He gently chid their tardiness, but expressed

a confident hope that it was not yet too late to save the kingdom. "Therefore," he said, "gentlemen, friends,

and fellow Protestants, we bid you and all your followers most heartily welcome to our court and camp."531

Seymour, a keen politician, long accustomed to the tactics of faction, saw in a moment that the party which

had begun to rally round the Prince stood in need of organization. It was as yet, he said, a mere rope of sand:

no common object had been publicly and formally avowed: nobody was pledged to anything. As soon as the

assembly at the Deanery broke up, he sent for Burnet, and suggested that an association should be formed,

and that all the English adherents of the Prince should put their hands to an instrument binding them to be

true to their leader and to each other. Burnet carried the suggestion to the Prince and to Shrewsbury, by both

of whom it was approved. A meeting was held in the Cathedral. A short paper drawn up by Burnet was

produced, approved, and eagerly signed. The subscribers engaged to pursue in concert the objects set forth in

the Prince's declaration; to stand by him and by each other; to take signal vengeance on all who should make

any attempt on his person; and, even if such an attempt should unhappily succeed, to persist in their

undertaking till the liberties and the religion of the nation should be effectually secured.532

About the same time a messenger arrived at Exeter from the Earl of Bath, who commanded at Plymouth.

Bath declared that he placed himself, his troops, and the fortress which he governed at the Prince's disposal.

While the West was thus rising to confront the King, the North was all in a flame behind him. On the

sixteenth Delamere took arms in Cheshire. He convoked his tenants, called upon them to stand by him,

promised that, if they fell in the cause, their leases should be renewed to their children, and exhorted every

one who had a good horse either to take the field or to provide a substitute.534 He appeared at Manchester

with fifty men armed and mounted, and his force had trebled before he reached Boaden Downs.

The neighbouring counties were violently agitated. It had been arranged that Danby should seize York, and

that Devonshire should appear at Nottingham. At Nottingham no resistance was anticipated. But at York

there was a small garrison under the command of Sir John Reresby. Danby acted with rare dexterity. A

meeting of the gentry and freeholders of Yorkshire had been summoned for the twentysecond of November

to address the King on the state of affairs. All the Deputy Lieutenants of the three Ridings, several noblemen,

and a multitude of opulent esquires and substantial yeomen had been attracted to the provincial capital. Four

troops of militia had been drawn out under arms to preserve the public peace. The Common Hall was

crowded with freeholders, and the discussion had begun, when a cry was suddenly raised that the Papists

were up, and were slaying the Protestants. The Papists of York were much more likely to be employed in

seeking for hiding places than in attacking enemies who outnumbered them in the proportion of a hundred to

one. But at that time no story of Popish atrocity could be so wild and marvellous as not to find ready belief.

The meeting separated in dismay. The whole city was in confusion. At this moment Danby at the head of

about a hundred horsemen rode up to the militia, and raised the cry "No Popery! A free Parliament! The

Protestant religion!" The militia echoed the shout. The garrison was instantly surprised and disarmed. The

governor was placed under arrest. The gates were closed. Sentinels were posted everywhere. The populace

was suffered to pull down a Roman Catholic chapel; but no other harm appears to have been done. On the

following morning the Guildhall was crowded with the first gentlemen of the shire, and with the principal

magistrates of the city. The Lord Mayor was placed in the chair. Danby proposed a Declaration setting forth

the reasons which had induced the friends of the constitution and of the Protestant religion to rise in arms.

This Declaration was eagerly adopted, and received in a few hours the signatures of six peers, of five

Devonshire meantime, at the head of a great body of friends and dependents, quitted the palace which he was

rearing at Chatsworth, and appeared in arms at Derby. There he formally delivered to the municipal

authorities a paper setting forth the reasons which had moved him to this enterprise. He then proceeded to

Nottingham, which soon became the head quarters of the Northern insurrection. Here a proclamation was put

forth couched in bold and severe terms. The name of rebellion, it was said, was a bugbear which could

frighten no reasonable man. Was it rebellion to defend those laws and that religion which every King of

England bound himself by oath to maintain? How that oath had lately been observed was a question on

which, it was to be hoped, a free Parliament would soon pronounce. In the meantime, the insurgents declared

that they held it to be not rebellion, but legitimate self defence, to resist a tyrant who knew no law but his

own will. The Northern rising became every day more formidable. Four powerful and wealthy Earls,

Manchester, Stamford, Rutland, and Chesterfield, repaired to Nottingham, and were joined there by Lord

All this time the hostile armies in the south were approaching each other. The Prince of Orange, when he

learned that the King had arrived at Salisbury, thought it time to leave Exeter. He placed that city and the

surrounding country under the government of Sir Edward Seymour, and set out on Wednesday the

twentyfirst of November, escorted by many of the most considerable gentlemen of the western counties, for

The King was eager to fight; and it was obviously his interest to do so. Every hour took away something from

his own strength, and added something to the strength of his enemies. It was most important, too, that his

troops should be blooded. A great battle, however it might terminate, could not but injure the Prince's

popularity. All this William perfectly understood, and determined to avoid an action as long as possible. It is

said that, when Schomberg was told that the enemy were advancing and were determined to fight, he

answered, with the composure of a tactician confident in his skill, "That will be just as we may choose." It

was, however, impossible to prevent all skirmishing between the advanced guards of the armies. William was

desirous that in such skirmishing nothing might happen which could wound the pride or rouse the vindictive

feelings of the nation which he meant to deliver. He therefore, with admirable prudence, placed his British

regiments in the situations where there was most risk of collision. The outposts of the royal army were Irish.

The consequence was that, in the little combats of this short campaign, the invaders had on their side the

The first of these encounters took place at Wincanton. Mackay's regiment, composed of British soldiers, lay

near a body of the King's Irish troops, commanded by their countryman, the gallant Sarsfield. Mackay sent

out a small party under a lieutenant named Campbell, to procure horses for the baggage. Campbell found

what he wanted at Wincanton, and was just leaving that town on his return, when a strong detachment of

Sarsfield's troops approached. The Irish were four to one: but Campbell resolved to fight it out to the last.

With a handful of resolute men he took his stand in the road. The rest of his soldiers lined the hedges which

overhung the highway on the right and on the left. The enemy came up. "Stand," cried Campbell: "for whom

are you?" "I am for King James," answered the leader of the other party. "And I for the Prince of Orange,"

cried Campbell. "We will prince you," answered the Irishman with a curse. "Fire!" exclaimed Campbell; and

a sharp fire was instantly poured in from both the hedges. The King's troops received three well aimed

volleys before they could make any return. At length they succeeded in carrying one of the hedges; and

would have overpowered the little band which was opposed to them, had not the country people, who

mortally hated the Irish, given a false alarm that more of the Prince's troops were coming up. Sarsfield

recalled his men and fell back; and Campbell proceeded on his march unmolested with the baggage horses.

This affair, creditable undoubtedly to the valour and discipline of the Prince's army was magnified by report

into a victory won against great odds by British Protestants over Popish barbarians who had been brought

A few hours after this skirmish an event took place which put an end to all risk of a more serious struggle

between the armies. Churchill and some of his principal accomplices were assembled at Salisbury. Two of

the conspirators, Kirke and Trelawney, had proceeded to Warminster, where their regiments were posted. All

Churchill advised the King to visit Warminster, and to inspect the troops stationed there. James assented; and

his coach was at the door of the episcopal palace when his nose began to bleed violently. He was forced to

postpone his expedition and to put himself under medical treatment. Three days elapsed before the

hemorrhage was entirely subdued; and during those three days alarming rumours reached his ears.

It was impossible that a conspiracy so widely spread as that of which Churchill was the head could be kept

altogether secret. There was no evidence which could be laid before a jury or a court martial: but strange

whispers wandered about the camp. Feversham, who held the chief command, reported that there was a bad

spirit in the army. It was hinted to the King that some who were near his person were not his friends, and that

it would be a wise precaution to send Churchill and Grafton under a guard to Portsmouth. James rejected this

counsel. A propensity to suspicion was not among his vices. Indeed the confidence which he reposed in

professions of fidelity and attachment was such as might rather have been expected from a goodhearted and

inexperienced stripling than from a politician who was far advanced in life, who had seen much of the world,

who had suffered much from villanous arts, and whose own character was by no means a favourable

specimen of human nature. It would be difficult to mention any other man who, having himself so little

scruple about breaking faith, was so slow to believe that his neighbours could break faith with him.

Nevertheless the reports which he had received of the state of his army disturbed him greatly. He was now no

longer impatient for a battle. He even began to think of retreating. On the evening of Saturday, the

twentyfourth of November, he called a council of war. The meeting was attended by those officers against

whom he had been most earnestly cautioned. Feversham expressed an opinion that it was desirable to fall

back. Churchill argued on the other side. The consultation lasted till midnight. At length the King declared

that he had decided for a retreat. Churchill saw or imagined that he was distrusted, and, though gifted with a

rare self command, could not conceal his uneasiness. Before the day broke he fled to the Prince's quarters,

Churchill left behind him a letter of explanation. It was written with that decorum which he never failed to

preserve in the midst of guilt and dishonour. He acknowledged that he owed everything to the royal favour.

Interest, he said, and gratitude impelled him in the same direction. Under no other government could he hope

to be so great and prosperous as he had been: but all such considerations must yield to a paramount duty. He

was a Protestant; and he could not conscientiously draw his sword against the Protestant cause. As to the rest

he would ever be ready to hazard life and fortune in defence of the sacred person and of the lawful rights of

Next morning all was confusion in the royal camp. The King's friends were in dismay. His enemies could not

conceal their exultation. The consternation of James was increased by news which arrived on the same day

from Warminster. Kirke, who commanded at that post, had refused to obey orders which he had received

from Salisbury. There could no longer be any doubt that he too was in league with the Prince of Orange. It

was rumoured that he had actually gone over with all his troops to the enemy: and the rumour, though false,

was, during some hours, fully believed.540 A new light flashed on the mind of the unhappy King. He thought

that he understood why he had been pressed, a few days before, to visit Warminster. There he would have

found himself helpless, at the mercy of the conspirators, and in the vicinity of the hostile outposts. Those who

might have attempted to defend him would have been easily overpowered. He would have been carried a

prisoner to the head quarters of the invading army. Perhaps some still blacker treason might have been

committed; for men who have once engaged in a wicked and perilous enterprise are no longer their own

masters, and are often impelled, by a fatality which is part of their just punishment, to crimes such as they

would at first have shuddered to contemplate. Surely it was not without the special intervention of some

guardian Saint that a King devoted to the Catholic Church had, at the very moment when he was blindly

hastening to captivity, perhaps to death, been suddenly arrested by what he had then thought a disastrous

All these things confirmed James in the resolution which he had taken on the preceding evening. Orders were

given for an immediate retreat. Salisbury was in an uproar. The camp broke up with the confusion of a flight.

No man knew whom to trust or whom to obey. The material strength of the army was little diminished: but its

moral strength had been destroyed. Many whom shame would have restrained from leading the way to the

Prince's quarters were eager to imitate an example which they never would have set; and many, who would

have stood by their King while he appeared to be resolutely advancing against the invaders, felt no inclination

James went that day as far as Andover. He was attended by his son in law Prince George, and by the Duke of

Ormond. Both were among the conspirators, and would probably have accompanied Churchill, had he not, in

consequence of what had passed at the council of war, thought it expedient to take his departure suddenly.

The impenetrable stupidity of Prince George served his turn on this occasion better than cunning would have

done. It was his habit, when any news was told him, to exclaim in French, "possible?" "Is it possible?" This

catchword was now of great use to him. "Est ilpossible?" he cried, when he had been made to understand

that Churchill and Grafton were missing. And when the ill tidings came from Warminster, he again

Prince George and Ormond were invited to sup with the King at Andover. The meal must have been a sad

one. The King was overwhelmed by his misfortunes. His son in law was the dullest of companions. "I have

tried Prince George sober," said Charles the Second; "and I have tried him drunk; and, drunk or sober, there

is nothing in him."542 Ormond, who was through life taciturn and bashful, was not likely to be in high spirits

at such a moment. At length the repast terminated. The King retired to rest. Horses were in waiting for the

Prince and Ormond, who, as soon as they left the table, mounted and rode off. They were accompanied by the

Earl of Drumlanrig, eldest son of the Duke of Queensberry. The defection of this young nobleman was no

insignificant event. For Queensberry was the head of the Protestant Episcopalians of Scotland, a class

compared with whom the bitterest English Tories might be called Whiggish; and Drumlanrig himself was

Lieutenant Colonel of Dundee's regiment, a band more detested by the Whigs than even Kirke's lambs. This

fresh calamity was announced to the King on the following morning. He was less disturbed by the news than

might have been expected. The shock which he had undergone twentyfour hours before had prepared him

for almost any disaster; and it was impossible to be seriously angry with Prince George, who was hardly an

accountable being, for having yielded to the arts of such a tempter as Churchill. "What!" said James, "is

Estilpossible gone too? After all, a good trooper would have been a greater loss."543 In truth the King's

whole anger seems, at this time, to have been concentrated, and not without cause, on one object. He set off

for London, breathing vengeance against Churchill, and learned, on arriving, a new crime of the arch

Anne, who had no will but that of the Churchills, had been induced by them to notify under her own hand to

William, a week before, her approbation of his enterprise. She assured him that she was entirely in the hands

of her friends, and that she would remain in the palace, or take refuge in the City, as they might

determine.544 On Sunday the twentyfifth of November, she, and those who thought for her, were under the

necessity of coming to a sudden resolution. That afternoon a courier from Salisbury brought tidings that

Churchill had disappeared, that he had been accompanied by Grafton, that Kirke had proved false, and that

the royal forces were in full retreat. There was, as usually happened when great news, good or bad, arrived in

town, an immense crowd that evening in the galleries of Whitehall. Curiosity and anxiety sate on every face.

The Queen broke forth into natural expressions of indignation against the chief traitor, and did not altogether

spare his too partial mistress. The sentinels were doubled round that part of the palace which Anne occupied.

The Princess was in dismay. In a few hours her father would be at Westminster. It was not likely that he

would treat her personally with severity; but that he would permit her any longer to enjoy the society of her

friend was not to be hoped. It could hardly be doubted that Sarah would be placed under arrest and would be

subjected to a strict examination by shrewd and rigorous inquisitors. Her papers would be seized. Perhaps

evidence affecting her life might be discovered. If so the worst might well be dreaded. The vengeance of the

implacable King knew no distinction of sex. For offences much smaller than those which might probably be

brought home to Lady Churchill he had sent women to the scaffold and the stake. Strong affection braced the

feeble mind of the Princess. There was no tie which she would not break, no risk which she would not run,

for the object of her idolatrous affection. "I will jump out of the window," she cried, "rather than be found

here by my father." The favourite undertook to manage an escape. She communicated in all haste with some

of the chiefs of the conspiracy. In a few hours every thing was arranged. That evening Anne retired to her

chamber as usual. At dead of night she rose, and, accompanied by her friend Sarah and two other female

attendants, stole down the back stairs in a dressing gown and slippers. The fugitives gained the open street

unchallenged. A hackney coach was in waiting for them there. Two men guarded the humble vehicle. One of

them was Compton, Bishop of London, the Princess's old tutor: the other was the magnificent and

accomplished Dorset, whom the extremity of the public danger had roused from his luxurious repose. The

coach drove instantly to Aldersgate Street, where the town residence of the Bishops of London then stood,

within the shadow of their Cathedral. There the Princess passed the night. On the following morning she set

out for Epping Forest. In that wild tract Dorset possessed a venerable mansion, which has long since been

destroyed. In his hospitable dwelling, the favourite resort, during, many years, of wits and poets, the fugitives

made a short stay. They could not safely attempt to reach William's quarters; for the road thither lay through a

country occupied by the royal forces. It was therefore determined that Anne should take refuge with the

northern insurgents. Compton wholly laid aside, for the time, his sacerdotal character. Danger and conflict

had rekindled in him all the military ardour which he had felt twentyeight years before, when he rode in the

Life Guards. He preceded the Princess's carriage in a buff coat and jackboots, with a sword at his side and

pistols in his holsters. Long before she reached Nottingham, she was surrounded by a body guard of

gentlemen who volunteered to escort her. They invited the Bishop to act as their colonel; and he consented

with an alacrity which gave great scandal to rigid Churchmen, and did not much raise his character even in

When, on the morning of the twentysixth, Anne's apartment was found empty, the consternation was great

in Whitehall. While the Ladies of her Bedchamber ran up and down the courts of the palace, screaming and

wringing their hands, while Lord Craven, who commanded the Foot Guards, was questioning the sentinels in

the gallery, while the Chancellor was sealing up the papers of the Churchills, the Princess's nurse broke into

the royal apartments crying out that the dear lady had been murdered by the Papists. The news flew to

Westminster Hall. There the story was that Her Highness had been hurried away by force to a place of

confinement. When it could no longer be denied that her flight had been voluntary, numerous fictions were

invented to account for it. She had been grossly insulted; she had been threatened; nay, though she was in that

situation in which woman is entitled to peculiar tenderness, she had been beaten by her cruel stepmother. The

populace, which years of misrule had made suspicious and irritable, was so much excited by these calumnies

that the Queen was scarcely safe. Many Roman Catholics, and some Protestant Tories whose loyalty was

proof to all trials, repaired to the palace that they might be in readiness to defend her in the event of an

outbreak. In the midst of this distress and tenor arrived the news of Prince George's flight. The courier who

brought these evil tidings was fast followed by the King himself. The evening was closing in when James

arrived, and was informed that his daughter had disappeared. After all that he had suffered, this affliction

forced a cry of misery from his lips. "God help me," he said; "my own children have forsaken me."546

That evening he sate in Council with his principal ministers, till a late hour. It was determined that he should

summon all the Lords Spiritual and Temporal who were then in London to attend him on the following day,

and that he should solemnly ask their advice. Accordingly, on the afternoon of Tuesday the twenty seventh,

the Lords met in the dining room of the palace. The assembly consisted of nine prelates and between thirty

and forty secular nobles, all Protestants. The two Secretaries of State, Middleton and Preston, though not

peers of England, were in attendance. The King himself presided. The traces of severe bodily and mental

suffering were discernible in his countenance and deportment. He opened the proceedings by referring to the

petition which had been put into his hands just before he set out for Salisbury. The prayer of that petition was

that he would convoke a free Parliament. Situated as he then was, he had not, he said, thought it right to

comply. But, during his absence from London, great changes had taken place. He had also observed that his

people everywhere seemed anxious that the Houses should meet. He had therefore commanded the

For a time there was silence. Then Oxford, whose pedigree, unrivalled in antiquity and splendour, gave him a

kind of primacy in the meeting, said that in his opinion those Lords who had signed the petition to which His

These words called up Rochester. He defended the petition, and declared that he still saw no hope for the

throne or the country but in a Parliament. He would not, he said, venture to affirm that, in so disastrous an

extremity, even that remedy would be efficacious: but he had no other remedy to propose. He added that it

might be advisable to open a negotiation with the Prince of Orange. Jeffreys and Godolphin followed; and

Then Clarendon rose, and, to the astonishment of all who remembered his loud professions of loyalty, and the

agony of shame and sorrow into which he had been thrown, only a few days before, by the news of his son's

defection, broke forth into a vehement invective against tyranny and Popery. "Even now," he said, "His

Majesty is raising in London a regiment into which no Protestant is admitted." "That is not true," cried James,

in great agitation, from the head of the board. Clarendon persisted, and left this offensive topic only to pass to

a topic still more offensive. He accused the unfortunate King of pusillanimity. Why retreat from Salisbury?

Why not try the event of a battle? Could people be blamed for submitting to the invader when they saw their

sovereign run away at the head of his army? James felt these insults keenly, and remembered them long.

Indeed even Whigs thought the language of Clarendon indecent and ungenerous. Halifax spoke in a very

different tone. During several years of peril he had defended with admirable ability the civil and ecclesiastical

constitution of his country against the prerogative. But his serene intellect, singularly unsusceptible of

enthusiasm, and singularly averse to extremes, began to lean towards the cause of royalty at the very moment

at which those noisy Royalists who had lately execrated the Trimmers as little bettor than rebels were

everywhere rising in rebellion. It was his ambition to be, at this conjuncture, the peacemaker between the

throne and the nation. His talents and character fitted him for that office; and, if he failed, the failure is to be

ascribed to causes against which no human skill could contend, and chiefly to the folly, faithlessness, and

Halifax now gave utterance to much unpalatable truth, but with a delicacy which brought on him the reproach

of flattery from spirits too abject to understand that what would justly be called flattery when offered to the

powerful is a debt of humanity to the fallen. With many expressions of sympathy and deference, he declared

it to be his opinion that the King must make up his mind to great sacrifices. It was not enough to convoke a

Parliament or to open a negotiation with the Prince of Orange. Some at least of the grievances of which the

nation complained should be instantly redressed without waiting till redress was demanded by the Houses or

by the captain of the hostile army. Nottingham, in language equally respectful, declared that he agreed with

Halifax. The chief concessions which these Lords pressed the King to make were three. He ought, they said,

forthwith to dismiss all Roman Catholics from office, to separate himself wholly from France, and to grant an

unlimited amnesty to those who were in arms against him. The last of these propositions, it should seem,

admitted of no dispute. For, though some of those who were banded together against the King had acted

towards him in a manner which might not unreasonably excite his bitter resentment, it was more likely that

he would soon be at their mercy than that they would ever be at his. It would have been childish to open a

negotiation with William, and yet to denounce vengeance against men whom William could not without

infamy abandon. But the clouded understanding and implacable temper of James held out long against the

arguments of those who laboured to convince him that it would be wise to pardon offences which he could

not punish. "I cannot do it," he exclaimed. "I must make examples, Churchill above all; Churchill whom I

raised so high. He and he alone has done all this. He has corrupted my army. He has corrupted my child. He

would have put me into the hands of the Prince of Orange, but for God's special providence. My Lords, you

are strangely anxious for the safety of traitors. None of you troubles himself about my safety." In answer to

this burst of impotent anger, those who had recommended the amnesty represented with profound respect, but

with firmness, that a prince attacked by powerful enemies can be safe only by conquering or by conciliating.

"If your Majesty, after all that has happened, has still any hope of safety in arms, we have done: but if not,

you can be safe only by regaining the affections of your people." After long and animated debate the King

broke up the meeting. "My Lords," he said, "you have used great freedom: but I do not take it ill of you. I

have made up my mind on one point. I shall call a Parliament. The other suggestions which have been offered

are of grave importance; and you will not be surprised that I take a night to reflect on them before I

At first James seemed disposed to make excellent use of the time which he had taken for consideration. The

Chancellor was directed to issue writs convoking a Parliament for the thirteenth of January. Halifax was sent

for to the closet, had a long audience, and spoke with much more freedom than he had thought it decorous to

use in the presence of a large assembly. He was informed that he had been appointed a Commissioner to treat

with the Prince of Orange. With him were joined Nottingham and Godolphin. The King declared that he was

prepared to make great sacrifices for the sake of peace. Halifax answered that great sacrifices would

doubtless be required. "Your Majesty," he said, "must not expect that those who have the power in their

hands will consent to any terms which would leave the laws at the mercy of the prerogative." With this

distinct explanation of his views, he accepted the Commission which the King wished him to undertake.548

The concessions which a few hours before had been so obstinately refused were now made in the most liberal

manner. A proclamation was put forth by which the King not only granted a free pardon to all who were in

rebellion against him, but declared them eligible to be members of the approaching Parliament. It was not

even required as a condition of eligibility that they should lay down their arms. The same Gazette which

announced that the Houses were about to meet contained a notification that Sir Edward Hales, who, as a

Papist, as a renegade, as the foremost champion of the dispensing power, and as the harsh gaoler of the

Bishops, was one of the most unpopular men in the realm, had ceased to be Lieutenant of the Tower, and had

been succeeded by his late prisoner, Bevil Skelton, who, though he held no high place in the esteem of his

But these concessions were meant only to blind the Lords and the nation to the King's real designs. He had

secretly determined that, even in this extremity, he would yield nothing. On the very day on which he issued

the proclamation of amnesty, he fully explained his intentions to Barillon. "This negotiation," said James, "is

a mere feint. I must send commissioners to my nephew, that I may gain time to ship off my wife and the

Prince of Wales. You know the temper of my troops. None but the Irish will stand by me; and the Irish are

not in sufficient force to resist the enemy. A Parliament would impose on me conditions which I could not

endure. I should be forced to undo all that I have done for the Catholics, and to break with the King of

France. As soon, therefore, as the Queen and my child are safe, I will leave England, and tale refuge in

Already James had made preparations for carrying this scheme into effect. Dover had been sent to

Portsmouth with instructions to take charge of the Prince of Wales; and Dartmouth, who commanded the fleet

there, had been ordered to obey Dover's directions in all things concerning the royal infant, and to have a

yacht manned by trusty sailors in readiness to sail for France at a moment's notice.551 The King now sent

positive orders that the child should instantly be conveyed to the nearest continental port.552 Next to the

Prince of Wales the chief object of anxiety was the Great Seal. To that symbol of kingly authority our jurists

have always ascribed a peculiar and almost mysterious importance. It is held that, if the Keeper of the Seal

should affix it, without taking the royal pleasure, to a patent of peerage or to a pardon, though he may be

guilty of a high offence, the instrument cannot be questioned by any court of law, and can be annulled only

by an Act of Parliament. James seems to have been afraid that his enemies might get this organ of his will

into their hands, and might thus give a legal validity to acts which might affect him injuriously. Nor will his

apprehensions be thought unreasonable when it is remembered that, exactly a hundred years later, the Great

Seal of a King was used, with the assent of Lords and Commons, and with the approbation of many great

statesmen and lawyers, for the purpose of transferring his prerogatives to his son. Lest the talisman which

possessed such formidable powers should be abused, James determined that it should be kept within a few

yards of his own closet. Jeffreys was therefore ordered to quit the costly mansion which he had lately built in

The King had made all his preparations for flight, when an unexpected impediment compelled him to

postpone the execution of his design. His agents at Portsmouth began to entertain scruples. Even Dover,

though a member of the Jesuitical cabal, showed signs of hesitation. Dartmouth was still less disposed to

comply with the royal wishes. He had hitherto been faithful to the throne, and had done all that he could do,

with a disaffected fleet, and in the face of an adverse wind, to prevent the Dutch from landing in England: but

he was a zealous member of the Established Church; and was by no means friendly to the policy of that

government which he thought himself bound in duty and honour to defend. The mutinous tamper of the

officers and men under his command had caused him much anxiety; and he had been greatly relieved by the

news that a free Parliament had been convoked, and that Commissioners had been named to treat with the

Prince of Orange. The joy was clamorous throughout the fleet. An address, warmly thanking the King for

these gracious concessions to public feeling, was drawn up on board of the flag ship. The Admiral signed

first. Thirtyeight Captains wrote their names under his. This paper on its way to Whitehall crossed the

messenger who brought to Portsmouth the order that the Prince of Wales should instantly be conveyed to

France. Dartmouth learned, with bitter grief and resentment, that the free Parliament, the general amnesty, the

negotiation, were all parts of a great fraud on the nation, and that in this fraud he was expected to be an

accomplice. In a pathetic and manly letter he declared that he had already carried his obedience to the farthest

point to which a Protestant and an Englishman could go. To put the heir apparent of the British crown into

the hands of Lewis would be nothing less than treason against the monarchy. The nation, already too much

alienated from the Sovereign, would be roused to madness. The Prince of Wales would either not return at all,

or would return attended by a French army. If His Royal Highness remained in the island, the worst that

could be apprehended was that he would be brought up a member of the national Church; and that he might

be so brought up ought to be the prayer of every loyal subject. Dartmouth concluded by declaring that he

would risk his life in defence of the throne, but that he would be no party to the transporting of the Prince into

This letter deranged all the projects of James. He learned too that he could not on this occasion expect from

his Admiral even passive obedience. For Dartmouth had gone so far as to station several sloops at the mouth

of the harbour of Portsmouth with orders to suffer no vessel to pass out unexamined. A change of plan was

necessary. The child must be brought back to London, and sent thence to France. An interval of some days

must elapse before this could be done. During that interval the public mind must be amused by the hope of a

Parliament and the semblance of a negotiation. Writs were sent out for the elections. Trumpeters went

backward and forward between the capital and the Dutch headquarters. At length passes for the king's

They left the capital in a state of fearful distraction. The passions which, during three troubled years, had

been gradually gathering force, now, emancipated from the restraint of fear, and stimulated by victory and

sympathy, showed themselves without disguise, even in the precincts of the royal dwelling. The grand jury of

Middlesex found a bill against the Earl of Salisbury for turning Papist.555 The Lord Mayor ordered the

houses of the Roman Catholics of the City to be searched for arms. The mob broke into the house of one

respectable merchant who held the unpopular faith, in order to ascertain whether he had not run a mine from

his cellars under the neighbouring parish church, for the purpose of blowing up parson and congregation.556

The hawkers bawled about the streets a hue and cry after Father Petre, who had withdrawn himself, and not

before it was time, from his apartments in the palace.557 Wharton's celebrated song, with many additional

verses, was chaunted more loudly than ever in all the streets of the capital. The very sentinels who guarded

The secret presses of London worked without ceasing. Many papers daily came into circulation by means

which the magistracy could not discover, or would not check. One of these has been preserved from oblivion

by the skilful audacity with which it was written, and by the immense effect which it produced. It purported

to be a supplemental declaration under the hand and seal of the Prince of Orange: but it was written in a style

very different from that of his genuine manifesto. Vengeance alien from the usages of Christian and civilised

nations was denounced against all Papists who should dare to espouse the royal cause. They should be

treated, not as soldiers or gentlemen, but as freebooters. The ferocity and licentiousness of the invading army,

which had hitherto been restrained with a strong hand, should be let loose on them. Good Protestants, and

especially those who inhabited the capital, were adjured, as they valued all that was dear to them, and

commanded, on peril of the Prince's highest displeasure, to seize, disarm, and imprison their Roman Catholic

neighbours. This document, it is said, was found by a Whig bookseller one morning under his shop door. He

made haste to print it. Many copies were dispersed by the post, and passed rapidly from hand to hand.

Discerning men had no difficulty in pronouncing it a forgery devised by some unquiet and unprincipled

adventurer, such as, in troubled times, are always busy in the foulest and darkest offices of faction. But the

multitude was completely duped. Indeed to such a height had national and religious feeling been excited

against the Irish Papists that most of those who believed the spurious proclamation to be genuine were

inclined to applaud it as a seasonable exhibition of vigour. When it was known that no such document had

really proceeded from William, men asked anxiously what impostor had so daringly and so successfully

personated his Highness. Some suspected Ferguson, others Johnson. At length, after the lapse of

twentyseven years, Hugh Speke avowed the forgery, and demanded from the House of Brunswick a reward

for so eminent a service rendered to the Protestant religion. He asserted, in the tone of a man who conceives

himself to have done something eminently virtuous and honourable, that, when the Dutch invasion had

thrown Whitehall into consternation, he had offered his services to the court, had pretended to be estranged

from the Whigs, and had promised to act as a spy upon them; that he had thus obtained admittance to the

royal closet, had vowed fidelity, had been promised large pecuniary rewards, and had procured blank passes

which enabled him to travel backwards and forwards across the hostile lines. All these things he protested

that he had done solely in order that he might, unsuspected, aim a deadly blow at the government, and

produce a violent outbreak of popular feeling against the Roman Catholics. The forged proclamation he

claimed as one of his contrivances: but whether his claim were well founded may be doubted. He delayed to

make it so long that we may reasonably suspect him of having waited for the death of those who could

While these things happened in London, every post from every part of the country brought tidings of some

new insurrection. Lumley had seized Newcastle. The inhabitants had welcomed him with transport. The

statue of the King, which stood on a lofty pedestal of marble, had been pulled down and hurled into the Tyne.

The third of December was long remembered at Hull as the town taking day. That place had a garrison

commanded by Lord Langdale, a Roman Catholic. The Protestant officers concerted with the magistracy a

plan of revolt: Langdale and his adherents were arrested; and soldiers and citizens united in declaring for the

The Pastern Counties were up. The Duke of Norfolk, attended by three hundred gentlemen armed and

mounted, appeared in the stately marketplace of Norwich. The Mayor and Aldermen met him there, and

engaged to stand by him against Popery and arbitrary power.560 Lord Herbert of Cherbury and Sir Edward

Harley took up arms in Worcestershire.561 Bristol, the second city of the realm, opened its gates to

Shrewsbury. Trelawney, the Bishop, who had entirely unlearned in the Tower the doctrine of nonresistance,

was the first to welcome the Prince's troops. Such was the temper of the inhabitants that it was thought

unnecessary to leave any garrison among them.562 The people of Gloucester rose and delivered Lovelace

from confinement. An irregular army soon gathered round him. Some of his horsemen had only halters for

bridles. Many of his infantry had only clubs for weapons. But this force, such as it was, marched unopposed

through counties once devoted to the House of Stuart, and at length entered Oxford in triumph. The

magistrates came in state to welcome the insurgents. The University itself, exasperated by recent injuries, was

little disposed to pass censures on rebellion. Already some of the Heads of Houses had despatched one of

their number to assure the Prince of Orange that they were cordially with him, and that they would gladly

coin their plate for his service. The Whig chief, therefore, rode through the capital of Toryism amidst general

acclamation. Before him the drums beat Lillibullero. Behind him came a long stream of horse and foot. The

whole High Street was gay with orange ribands. For already the orange riband had the double signification

which, after the lapse of one hundred and sixty years, it still retains. Already it was the emblem to the

Protestant Englishman of civil and religious freedom, to the Roman Catholic Celt of subjugation and

While foes were thus rising up all round the King, friends were fast shrinking from his side. The idea of

resistance had become familiar to every mind. Many who had been struck with horror when they heard of the

first defections now blamed themselves for having been so slow to discern the signs of the times. There was

no longer any difficulty or danger in repairing to William. The King, in calling on the nation to elect

representatives, had, by implication, authorised all men to repair to the places where they had votes or

interest; and many of those places were already occupied by invaders or insurgents. Clarendon eagerly caught

at this opportunity of deserting the falling cause. He knew that his speech in the Council of Peers had given

deadly offence: and he was mortified by finding that he was not to be one of the royal Commissioners. He

had estates in Wiltshire. He determined that his son, the son of whom he had lately spoken with grief and

horror, should be a candidate for that county; and, under pretence of looking after the election, he set out for

the West. He was speedily followed by the Earl of Oxford, and by others who had hitherto disclaimed all

By this time the invaders, steadily though slowly advancing, were within seventy miles of London. Though

midwinter was approaching, the weather was fine; the way was pleasant; and the turf of Salisbury Plain

seemed luxuriously smooth to men who had been toiling through the miry ruts of the Devonshire and

Somersetshire highways. The route of the army lay close by Stonehenge; and regiment after regiment halted

to examine that mysterious ruin, celebrated all over the Continent as the greatest wonder of our island.

William entered Salisbury with the same military pomp which he had displayed at Exeter, and was lodged

His train was now swelled by the Earls of Clarendon and Oxford, and by other men of high rank, who had,

till within a few days, been considered as jealous Royalists. Van Citters also made his appearance at the

Dutch head quarters. He had been during some weeks almost a prisoner in his house, near Whitehall, under

the constant observation of relays of spies. Yet, in spite of those spies, or perhaps by their help, he had

succeeded in obtaining full and accurate intelligence of all that passed in the palace; and now, full fraught

wrath valuable information about men and things, he came to assist the deliberations of William.566

Thus far the Prince's enterprise had prospered beyond the anticipations of the most sanguine. And now,

according to the general law which governs human affairs, prosperity began to produce disunion. The

Englishmen assembled at Salisbury were divided into two parties. One party consisted of Whigs who had

always regarded the doctrines of passive obedience and of indefeasible hereditary right as slavish

superstitions. Many of them had passed years in exile. All had been long shut out from participation to the

favours of the crown. They now exulted in the near prospect of greatness and of vengeance. Burning with

resentment, flushed with victory and hope, they would hear of no compromise. Nothing less than the

deposition of their enemy would content them: nor can it be disputed that herein they were perfectly

consistent. They had exerted themselves, nine years earlier, to exclude him from the throne, because they

thought it likely that he would be a bad King. It could therefore scarcely be expected that they would

willingly leave him on the throne, now that he had turned out a far worse King than any reasonable man

On the other hand, not a few of William's followers were zealous Tories, who had, till very recently, held the

doctrine of nonresistance in the most absolute form, but whose faith in that doctrine had, for a moment, given

way to the strong passions excited by the ingratitude of the King and by the peril of the Church. No situation

could be more painful or perplexing than that of the old Cavalier who found himself in arms against the

throne. The scruples which had not prevented him from repairing to the Dutch camp began to torment him

cruelly as soon as he was there. His mind misgave him that he had committed a crime. At all events he had

exposed himself to reproach, by acting in diametrical opposition to the professions of his whole life. He felt

insurmountable disgust for his new allies. They were people whom, ever since he could remember, he had

been reviling and persecuting, Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, old soldiers of Cromwell, brisk boys

of Shaftesbury, accomplices in the Rye House Plot, captains of the Western Insurrection. He naturally wished

to find out some salvo which might sooth his conscience, which might vindicate his consistency, and which

might put a distinction between him and the crew of schismatical rebels whom he had always despised and

abhorred, but with whom he was now in danger of being confounded. He therefore disclaimed with

vehemence all thought of taking the crown from that anointed head which the ordinance of heaven and the

fundamental laws of the realm had made sacred. His dearest wish was to see a reconciliation effected on

terms which would not lower the royal dignity. He was no traitor. He was not, in truth, resisting the kingly

authority. He was in arms only because he was convinced that the best service which could be rendered to the

throne was to rescue His Majesty, by a little gentle coercion, from the hands of wicked counsellors.

The evils which the mutual animosity of these factions tended to produce were, to a great extent, averted by

the ascendency and by the wisdom of the Prince. Surrounded by eager disputants, officious advisers, abject

flatterers, vigilant spies, malicious talebearers, he remained serene and inscrutable. He preserved silence

while silence was possible. When he was forced to speak, the earnest and peremptory tone in which he

uttered his well weighed opinions soon silenced everybody else. Whatever some of his too zealous adherents

might say, he uttered not a word indicating any design on the English crown. He was doubtless well aware

that between him and that crown were still interposed obstacles which no prudence might be able to

surmount, and which a single false step would make insurmountable. His only chance of obtaining the

splendid prize was not to seize it rudely, but to wait till, without any appearance of exertion or stratagem on

his part, his secret wish should be accomplished by the force of circumstances, by the blunders of his

opponents, and by the free choice of the Estates of the Realm. Those who ventured to interrogate him learned

nothing, and yet could not accuse him of shuffling. He quietly referred them to his Declaration, and assured

them that his views had undergone no change since that instrument had been drawn up. So skilfully did he

manage his followers that their discord seems rather to have strengthened than to have weakened his hands

but it broke forth with violence when his control was withdrawn, interrupted the harmony of convivial

meetings, and did not respect even the sanctity of the house of God. Clarendon, who tried to hide from others

and from himself, by an ostentatious display of loyal sentiments, the plain fact that he was a rebel, was

shocked to hear some of his new associates laughing over their wine at the royal amnesty which had just been

graciously offered to them. They wanted no pardon, they said. They would make the King ask pardon before

they had done with him. Still more alarming and disgusting to every good Tory was an incident which

happened at Salisbury Cathedral. As soon as the officiating minister began to read the collect for the King,

Barnet, among whose many good qualities selfcommand and a fine sense of the becoming cannot be

reckoned, rose from his knees, sate down in his stall, and uttered some contemptuous noises which disturbed

In a short time the factions which divided the Prince's camp had an opportunity of measuring their strength.

The royal Commissioners were on their way to him. Several days had elapsed since they had been appointed;

and it was thought strange that, in a case of such urgency, there should be such delay. But in truth neither

James nor William was desirous that negotiations should speedily commence; for James wished only to gain

time sufficient for sending his wife and son into prance; and the position of William became every day more

commanding. At length the Prince caused it to be notified to the Commissioners that he would meet them at

Hungerford. He probably selected this place because, lying at an equal distance from Salisbury and from

Oxford, it was well situated for a rendezvous of his most important adherents. At Salisbury were those

noblemen and gentlemen who had accompanied him from Holland or had joined him in the West; and at

Late on Thursday, the sixth of December, he reached Hungerford. The little town was soon crowded with

men of rank and note who came thither from opposite quarters. The Prince was escorted by a strong body of

troops. The northern Lords brought with them hundreds of irregular cavalry, whose accoutrements and

horsemanship moved the mirth of men accustomed to the splendid aspect and exact movements of regular

While the Prince lay at Hungerford a sharp encounter took place between two hundred and fifty of his troops

and six hundred Irish, who were posted at Reading. The superior discipline of the invaders was signally

proved on this occasion. Though greatly outnumbered, they, at one onset, drove the King's forces in

confusion through the streets of the town into the market place. There the Irish attempted to rally; but, being

vigorously attacked in front and fired upon at the same time by the inhabitants from the windows of the

neighbouring houses, they soon lost hart, and fled with the loss of them colours and of fifty men. Of the

conquerors only five fell. The satisfaction which this news gave to the Lords and gentlemen who had joined

William was unmixed. There was nothing in what had happened to gall their national feelings. The Dutch had

not beaten the English, but had assisted an English town to free itself from the insupportable dominion of the

On the morning of Saturday, the eighth of December, the King's Commissioners reached Hungerford. The

Prince's body guard was drawn up to receive them with military respect. Bentinck welcomed them, and

proposed to conduct them immediately to his master. They expressed a hope that the Prince would favour

them with a private audience; but they were informed that he had resolved to hear them and answer them in

public. They were ushered into his bedchamber, where they found him surrounded by a crowd of noblemen

and gentlemen. Halifax, whose rank, age, and abilities entitled him to precedence, was spokesman. The

proposition which the Commissioners had been instructed to make was that the points in dispute should be

referred to the Parliament, for which the writs were already sealing, and that in the mean time the Prince's

army would not come within thirty or forty miles of London. Halifax, having explained that this was the basis

on which he and his colleagues were prepared to treat, put into William's hands a letter from the King, and

retired. William opened the letter and seemed unusually moved. It was the first letter which he had received

from his father in law since they had become avowed enemies. Once they had been on good terms and had

written to each other familiarly; nor had they, even when they had begun to regard each other with suspicion

and aversion, banished from their correspondence those forms of kindness which persons nearly related by

blood and marriage commonly use. The letter which the Commissioners had brought was drawn up by a

secretary in diplomatic form and in the French language. "I have had many letters from the King," said

William, "but they were all in English, and in his own hand." He spoke with a sensibility which he was little

in the habit of displaying. Perhaps he thought at that moment how much reproach his enterprise, just,

beneficent, and necessary as it was, must bring on him and on the wife who was devoted to him. Perhaps he

repined at the hard fate which had placed him in such a situation that he could fulfil his public duties only by

breaking through domestic ties, and envied the happier condition of those who are not responsible for the

welfare of nations and Churches. But such thoughts, if they rose in his mind, were firmly suppressed. He

requested the Lords and gentlemen whom he had convoked on this occasion to consult together, unrestrained

by his presence, as to the answer which ought to be returned. To himself, however, he reserved the power of

deciding in the last resort, after hearing their opinion. He then left them, and retired to Littlecote Hall, a

manor house situated about two miles off, and renowned down to our own times, not more on account of its

venerable architecture and furniture than an account of a horrible and mysterious crime which was

Before he left Hungerford, he was told that Halifax had expressed a great desire to see Burnet. In this desire

there was nothing strange; for Halifax and Burnet had long been on terms of friendship. No two men, indeed,

could resemble each other less. Burnet was utterly destitute of delicacy and tact. Halifax's taste was

fastidious, and his sense of the ludicrous morbidly quick. Burnet viewed every act and every character

through a medium distorted and coloured by party spirit. The tendency of Halifax's mind was always to see

the faults of his allies more strongly than the faults of his opponents. Burnet was, with all his infirmities, and

through all the vicissitudes of a life passed in circumstances not very favourable to piety, a sincerely pious

man. The sceptical and sarcastic Halifax lay under the imputation of infidelity. Halifax therefore often

incurred Burnet's indignant censure; and Burnet was often the butt of Halifax's keen and polished pleasantry.

Yet they were drawn to each other by a mutual attraction, liked each other's conversation, appreciated each

other's abilities, interchanged opinions freely, and interchanged also good offices in perilous times. It was

not, however, merely from personal regard that Halifax now wished to see his old acquaintance. The

Commissioners must have been anxious to know what was the Prince's real aim. He had refused to see them

in private; and little could be learned from what he might say in a formal and public interview. Almost all

those who were admitted to his confidence were men taciturn and impenetrable as himself. Burnet was the

only exception. He was notoriously garrulous and indiscreet. Yet circumstances had made it necessary to trust

him; and he would doubtless, under the dexterous management of Halifax, have poured out secrets as fast as

words. William knew this well, and, when he was informed that Halifax was asking for the Doctor, could not

refrain from exclaiming, "If they get together there will be fine tattling." Burnet was forbidden to see the

Commissioners in private; but he was assured in very courteous terms that his fidelity was regarded by the

Prince as above all suspicion; and, that there might be no ground for complaint, the prohibition was made

That afternoon the noblemen and gentlemen whose advice William had asked met in the great room of the

principal inn at Hungerford. Oxford was placed in the chair; and the King's overtures were taken into

consideration. It soon appeared that the assembly was divided into two parties, a party anxious to come to

terms with the King, and a party bent on his destruction. The latter party had the numerical superiority: but it

was observed that Shrewsbury, who of all the English nobles was supposed to enjoy the largest share of

William's confidence, though a Whig, sided on this occasion with the Tories. After much altercation the

question was put. The majority was for rejecting the proposition which the royal Commissioners had been

instructed to make. The resolution of the assembly was reported to the Prince at Littlecote. On no occasion

during the whole course of his eventful life did he show more prudence and selfcommand. He could not wish

the negotiation to succeed. But he was far too wise a man not to know that, if unreasonable demands made by

him should cause it to fail, public feeling would no longer be on his side. He therefore overruled the opinion

of his too eager followers, and declared his determination to treat on the basis proposed by the King. Many of

the Lords and gentlemen assembled at Hungerford remonstrated: a whole day was spent in bickering: but

William's purpose was immovable. He declared himself willing to refer all the questions in dispute to the

Parliament which had just been summoned, and not to advance within forty miles of London. On his side he

made some demands which even those who were least disposed to commend him allowed to be moderate. He

insisted that the existing statutes should be obeyed till they should be altered by competent authority, and that

all persons who held offices without a legal qualification should be forthwith dismissed. The deliberations of

the Parliament, he justly conceived, could not be free if it was to sit surrounded by Irish regiments while he

and his army lay at a distance of several marches. He therefore thought it reasonable that, since his troops

were not to advance within forty miles of London on the west, the King's troops should fall back as far to the

east. There would thus be, round the spot where the Houses were to meet, a wide circle of neutral ground.

Within that circle, indeed, there were two fastnesses of great importance to the people of the capital, the

Tower, which commanded their dwellings, and Tilbury Fort, which commanded their maritime trade. It was

impossible to leave these places ungarrisoned. William therefore proposed that they should be temporarily

entrusted to the care of the City of London. It might possibly be convenient that, when the Parliament

assembled, the King should repair to Westminster with a body guard. The Prince announced that, in that case,

he should claim the right of repairing thither also with an equal number of soldiers. It seemed to him just that,

while military operations were suspended, both the armies should be considered as alike engaged in the

service of the English nation, and should be alike maintained out of the English revenue. Lastly, he required

some guarantee that the King would not take advantage of the armistice for the purpose of introducing a

French force into England. The point where there was most danger was Portsmouth. The Prince did not

however insist that this important fortress should be delivered up to him, but proposed that it should, during

the truce, be under the government of an officer in whom both himself and James could confide.

The propositions of William were framed with a punctilious fairness, such as might have been expected

rather from a disinterested umpire pronouncing an award than from a victorious prince dictating to a helpless

enemy. No fault could be found with them by the partisans of the King. But among the Whigs there was

much murmuring. They wanted no reconciliation with their old master. They thought themselves absolved

from all allegiance to him. They were not disposed to recognise the authority of a Parliament convoked by his

writ. They were averse to an armistice; and they could not conceive why, if there was to be an armistice, it

should be an armistice on equal terms. By all the laws of war the stronger party had a right to take advantage

of his strength; and what was there in the character of James to justify any extraordinary indulgence? Those

who reasoned thus little knew from how elevated a point of view, and with how discerning an eye, the leader

whom they censured contemplated the whole situation of England and Europe. They were eager to ruin

James, and would therefore either have refused to treat with him on any conditions, or have imposed on him

conditions insupportably hard. To the success of William's vast and profound scheme of policy it was

necessary that James should ruin himself by rejecting conditions ostentatiously liberal. The event proved the

wisdom of the course which the majority of the Englishmen at Hungerford were inclined to condemn.

On Sunday, the ninth of December, the Prince's demands were put in writing, and delivered to Halifax. The

Commissioners dined at Littlecote. A splendid assemblage had been invited to meat them. The old hall, hung

with coats of mail which had seen the wars of the Roses, and with portraits of gallants who had adorned the

court of Philip and Nary, was now crowded with Peers and Generals. In such a throng a short question and

answer might be exchanged without attracting notice. Halifax seized this opportunity, the first which had

presented itself, of extracting all that Burnet knew or thought. "What is it that you want?" said the dexterous

diplomatist; "do you wish to get the King into your power?" " Not at all," said Burnet; "we would not do the

least harm to his person." "And if he were to go away?" said Halifax. "There is nothing," said Burnet, "so

much to be wished." There can be no doubt that Burnet expressed the general sentiment of the Whigs in the

Prince's camp. They were all desirous that James should fly from the country: but only a few of the wisest

among them understood how important it was that his flight should be ascribed by the nation to his own folly

and perverseness, and not to harsh usage and well grounded apprehension. It seems probable that, even in the

extremity to which he was now reduced, all his enemies united would have been unable to effect his complete

overthrow had he not been his own worst enemy: but, while his Commissioners were labouring to save him,

His plans were at length ripe for execution. The pretended negotiation had answered its purpose. On the same

day on which the three Lords reached Hungerford the Prince of Wales arrived at Westminster. It had been

intended that he should come over London Bridge; and some Irish troops were sent to Southwark to meet

him. But they were received by a great multitude with such hooting and execration that they thought it

advisable to retire with all speed. The poor child crossed the Thames at Kingston, and was brought into

To send him and the Queen out of the country without delay was now the first object of James. But who

could be trusted to manage the escape? Dartmouth was the most loyal of Protestant Tories; and Dartmouth

had refused. Dover was a creature of the Jesuits; and even Dover had hesitated. It was not very easy to find,

an Englishman of rank and honour who would undertake to place the heir apparent of the English crown in

the hands of the King of France. In these circumstances, James bethought him of a French nobleman who

then resided in London, Antonine, Count of Lauzun. Of this man it has been said that his life was stranger

than the dreams of other people. At an early age he had been the intimate associate of Lewis, and had been

encouraged to expect the highest employments under the French crown. Then his fortunes had undergone an

eclipse. Lewis had driven from him the friend of his youth with bitter reproaches, and had, it was said,

scarcely refrained from adding blows. The fallen favourite had been sent prisoner to a fortress: but he had

emerged from his confinement, had again enjoyed the smiles of his master, and had gained the heart of one of

the greatest ladies in Europe, Anna Maria, daughter of Gaston, Duke of Orleans, granddaughter of King

Henry the Fourth, and heiress of the immense domains of the house of Montpensier. The lovers were bent on

marriage. The royal consent was obtained. During a few hours Lauzun was regarded by the court as an

adopted member of the house of Bourbon. The portion which the princess brought with her might well have

been an object of competition to sovereigns; three great dukedoms, an independent principality with its own

mint and with its own tribunals, and an income greatly exceeding the whole revenue of the kingdom of

Scotland. But this splendid prospect had been overcast. The match had been broken off. The aspiring suitor

had been, during many years, shut up in an Alpine castle. At length Lewis relented. Lauzun was forbidden to

appear in the royal presence, but was allowed to enjoy liberty at a distance from the court. He visited

England, and was well received at the palace of James and in the fashionable circles of London; for in that

age the gentlemen of France were regarded throughout Europe as models of grace; and many Chevaliers and

Viscounts, who had never been admitted to the interior circle at Versailles, found themselves objects of

general curiosity and admiration at Whitehall. Lauzun was in every respect the man for the present

emergency. He had courage and a sense of honour, had been accustomed to eccentric adventures, and, with

the keen observation and ironical pleasantry of a finished man of the world, had a strong propensity to knight

errantry. All his national feelings and all his personal interests impelled him to undertake the adventure from

which the most devoted subjects of the English crown seemed to shrink. As the guardian, at a perilous crisis,

of the Queen of Great Britain and of the Prince of Wales, he might return with honour to his native land; he

might once more be admitted to see Lewis dress and dine, and might, after so many vicissitudes,

recommence, in the decline of life, the strangely fascinating chase of royal favour.

Animated by such feelings, Lauzun eagerly accepted the high trust which was offered to him. The

arrangements for the flight were promptly made: a vessel was ordered to be in readiness at Gravesend: but to

reach Gravesend was not easy. The City was in a state of extreme agitation. The slightest cause sufficed to

bring a crowd together. No foreigner could appear in the streets without risk of being stopped, questioned,

and carried before a magistrate as a Jesuit in disguise. It was, therefore, necessary to take the road on the

south of the Thames. No precaution which could quiet suspicion was omitted. The King and Queen retired to

rest as usual. When the palace had been some time profoundly quiet, James rose and called a servant who was

in attendance. "You will find," said the King, "a man at the door of the antechamber; bring him hither." The

servant obeyed, and Lauzun was ushered into the royal bedchamber. "I confide to you," said James, "my

Queen and my son; everything must be risked to carry them into France." Lauzun, with a truly chivalrous

spirit, returned thanks for the dangerous honour which had been conferred on him, and begged permission to

avail himself of the assistance of his friend Saint Victor, a gentleman of Provence, whose courage and faith

had been often tried. The services of so valuable an assistant were readily accepted. Lauzun gave his hand to

Mary; Saint Victor wrapped up in his warm cloak the ill fated heir of so many Kings. The party stole down

the back stairs, and embarked in an open skiff. It was a miserable voyage. The night was bleak: the rain fell:

the wind roared: the waves were rough: at length the boat reached Lambeth; and the fugitives landed near an

inn, where a coach and horses were in waiting. Some time elapsed before the horses could be harnessed.

Mary, afraid that her face might be known, would not enter the house. She remained with her child, cowering

for shelter from the storm under the tower of Lambeth Church, and distracted by terror whenever the ostler

approached her with his lantern. Two of her women attended her, one who gave suck to the Prince, and one

whose office was to rock his cradle; but they could be of little use to their mistress; for both were foreigners

who could hardly speak the English language, and who shuddered at the rigour of the English climate. The

only consolatory circumstance was that the little boy was well, and uttered not a single cry. At length the

coach was ready. Saint Victor followed it on horseback. The fugitives reached Gravesend safely, and

embarked in the yacht which waited for them. They found there Lord Powis and his wife. Three Irish officers

were also on board. These men had been sent thither in order that they might assist Lauzun in any desperate

emergency; for it was thought not impossible that the captain of the ship might prove false; and it was fully

determined that, on the first suspicion of treachery, he should be stabbed to the heart. There was, however, no

necessity for violence. The yacht proceeded down the river with a fair wind; and Saint Victor, having seen

On the morning of Monday the tenth of December, the King learned that his wife and son had begun their

voyage with a fair prospect of reaching their destination. About the same time a courier arrived at the palace

with despatches from Hungerford. Had James been a little more discerning, or a little less obstinate, those

despatches would have induced him to reconsider all his plans. The Commissioners wrote hopefully. The

conditions proposed by the conqueror were strangely liberal. The King himself could not refrain from

exclaiming that they were more favourable than he could have expected. He might indeed not unreasonably

suspect that they had been framed with no friendly design: but this mattered nothing; for, whether they were

offered in the hope that, by closing with them, he would lay the ground for a happy reconciliation, or, as is

more likely, in the hope that, by rejecting them, he would exhibit himself to the whole nation as utterly

unreasonable and incorrigible, his course was equally clear. In either case his policy was to accept them

But it soon appeared that William had perfectly understood the character with which he had to deal, and, in

offering those terms which the Whigs at Hungerford had censured as too indulgent, had risked nothing. The

solemn farce by which the public had been amused since the retreat of the royal army from Salisbury was

prolonged during a few hours. All the Lords who were still in the capital were invited to the palace that they

might be informed of the progress of the negotiation which had been opened by their advice. Another

meeting of Peers was appointed for the following day. The Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs of London were also

summoned to attend the King. He exhorted them to perform their duties vigorously, and owned that he had

thought it expedient to send his wife and child out of the country, but assured them that he would himself

remain at his post. While he uttered this unkingly and unmanly falsehood, his fixed purpose was to depart

before daybreak. Already he had entrusted his most valuable moveables to the care of several foreign

Ambassadors. His most important papers had been deposited with the Tuscan minister. But before the flight

there was still something to be done. The tyrant pleased himself with the thought that he might avenge

himself on a people who had been impatient of his despotism by inflicting on them at parting all the evils of

anarchy. He ordered the Great Seal and the writs for the new Parliament to be brought to his apartment. The

writs which could be found he threw into the fire. Those which had been already sent out he annulled by an

instrument drawn up in legal form. To Feversham he wrote a letter which could be understood only as a

command to disband the army. Still, however, the King concealed his intention of absconding even from his

chief ministers. Just before he retired he directed Jeffreys to be in the closet early on the morrow; and, while

stepping into bed, whispered to Mulgrave that the news from Hungerford was highly satisfactory. Everybody

withdrew except the Duke of Northumberland. This young man, a natural son of Charles the Second by the

Duchess of Cleveland, commanded a troop of Life Guards, and was a Lord of the Bedchamber. It seems to

have been then the custom of the court that, in the Queen's absence, a Lord of the Bedchamber should sleep

on a pallet in the King's room; and it was Northumberland's turn to perform this duty.

At three in the morning of Tuesday the eleventh of December, James rose, took the Great Seal in his hand,

laid his commands on Northumberland not to open the door of the bedchamber till the usual hour, and

disappeared through a secret passage; the same passage probably through which Huddleston had been

brought to the bedside of the late king. Sir Edward Hales was in attendance with a hackney coach. James was

conveyed to Millbank, where he crossed the Thames in a small wherry. As he passed Lambeth he flung the

Great Seal into the midst of the stream, where, after many months, it was accidentally caught by a fishing net

At Vauxhall he landed. A carriage and horses had been stationed there for him; and he immediately took the

road towards Sheerness, where a boy belonging to the Custom House had been ordered to await his

The Flight of James known; great AgitationThe Lords meet at GuildhallRiots in LondonThe Spanish

Ambassador's House sackedArrest of JeffreysThe Irish NightThe King detained near

SheernessThe Lords order him to be set at Liberty William's EmbarrassmentArrest of

FevershamArrival of James in LondonConsultation at WindsorThe Dutch Troops occupy

WhitehallMessage from the Prince delivered to JamesJames sets out for Rochester; Arrival of William

at Saint James'sHe is advised to assume the Crown by Right of Conquest He calls together the Lords

and the Members of the Parliaments of Charles II.Flight of James from RochesterDebates and

Resolutions of the LordsDebates and Resolutions of the Commoners summoned by the

PrinceConvention called; Exertions of the Prince to restore OrderHis tolerant PolicySatisfaction of

Roman Catholic Powers; State of Feeling in FranceReception of the Queen of England in FranceArrival

of James at Saint GermainsState of Feeling in the United ProvincesElection of Members to serve in the

ConventionAffairs of ScotlandState of Parties in England Sherlock's PlanSancroft's

PlanDanby's PlanThe Whig Plan Meeting of the Convention; leading Members of the House of

CommonsChoice of a SpeakerDebate on the State of the Nation Resolution declaring the Throne

vacantIt is sent up to the Lords; Debate in the Lords on the Plan of RegencySchism between the Whigs

and the Followers of DanbyMeeting at the Earl of Devonshire'sDebate in the Lords on the Question

whether the Throne was vacantMajority for the Negative; Agitation in LondonLetter of James to the

ConventionDebates; Negotiations; Letter of the Princess of Orange to DanbyThe Princess Anne

acquiesces in the Whig PlanWilliam explains his viewsThe Conference between the housesThe

Lords yieldNew Laws proposed for the Security of LibertyDisputes and CompromiseThe Declaration

of RightArrival of MaryTender and Acceptance of the CrownWilliam and Mary proclaimed; peculiar

NORTHUMBERLAND strictly obeyed the injunction which had been laid on him, and did not open the door

of the royal apartment till it was broad day. The antechamber was filled with courtiers who came to make

their morning bow and with Lords who had been summoned to Council. The news of James's flight passed in

an instant from the galleries to the streets; and the whole capital was in commotion.

It was a terrible moment. The King was gone. The Prince had not arrived. No Regency had been appointed.

The Great Seal, essential to the administration of ordinary justice, had disappeared. It was soon known that

Feversham had, on the receipt of the royal order, instantly disbanded his forces. What respect for law or

property was likely to be found among soldiers, armed and congregated, emancipated from the restraints of

discipline, and destitute of the necessaries of life? On the other hand, the populace of London had, during

some weeks, shown a strong disposition to turbulence and rapine. The urgency of the crisis united for a short

time all who had any interest in the peace of society. Rochester had till that day adhered firmly to the royal

cause. He now saw that there was only one way of averting general confusion. "Call your troop of Guards

together," he said to Northumberland, "and declare for the Prince of Orange." The advice was promptly

followed. The principal officers of the army who were then in London held a meeting at Whitehall, and

resolved that they would submit to William's authority, and would, till his pleasure should be known, keep

their men together and assist the civil power to preserve order.575 The Peers repaired to Guildhall, and were

received there with all honour by the magistracy of the city. In strictness of law they were no better entitled

than any other set of persons to assume the executive administration. But it was necessary to the public safety

that there should be a provisional government; and the eyes of men naturally turned to the hereditary

magnates of the realm. The extremity of the danger drew Sancroft forth from his palace. He took the chair;

and, under his presidency, the new Archbishop of York, five Bishops, and twentytwo temporal Lords,

By this instrument they declared that they were firmly attached to the religion and constitution of their

country, and that they had cherished the hope of seeing grievances redressed and tranquillity restored by the

Parliament which the King had lately summoned, but that this hope had been extinguished by his flight. They

had therefore determined to join with the Prince of Orange, in order that the freedom of the nation might be

vindicated, that the rights of the Church might be secured, that a just liberty of conscience might be given to

Dissenters, and that the Protestant interest throughout the world might be strengthened. Till His Highness

should arrive, they were prepared to take on themselves the responsibility of giving such directions as might

be necessary for the preservation of order. A deputation was instantly sent to lay this Declaration before the

The Lords then proceeded to deliberate on the course which it was necessary to take for the prevention of

tumult. They sent for the two Secretaries of State. Middleton refused to submit to what he regarded as an

usurped authority: but Preston, astounded by his master's flight, and not knowing what to expect, or whither

to turn, obeyed the summons. A message was sent to Skelton, who was Lieutenant of the Tower, requesting

his attendance at Guildhall. He came, and was told that his services were no longer wanted, and that he must

instantly deliver up his keys. He was succeeded by Lord Lucas. At the same time the Peers ordered a letter to

be written to Dartmouth, enjoining him to refrain from all hostile operations against the Dutch fleet, and to

The part taken in these proceedings by Sancroft, and by some other persons who had, up to that day, been

strictly faithful to the principle of passive obedience, deserves especial notice. To usurp the command of the

military and naval forces of the state, to remove the officers whom the King had set over his castles and his

ships, and to prohibit his Admiral from giving battle to his enemies, was surely nothing less than rebellion.

Yet several honest and able Tories of the school of Filmer persuaded themselves that they could do all these

things without incurring the guilt of resisting their Sovereign. The distinction which they took was, at least,

ingenious. Government, they said, is the ordinance of God. Hereditary monarchical government is eminently

the ordinance of God. While the King commands what is lawful we must obey him actively. When he

commands what is unlawful we must obey him passively. In no extremity are we justified in withstanding

him by force. But, if he chooses to resign his office, his rights over us are at an end. While he governs us,

though he may govern us ill, we are bound to submit: but, if he refuses to govern us at all, we are not bound

to remain for ever without a government. Anarchy is not the ordinance of God; nor will he impute it to us as a

sin that, when a prince, whom, in spite of extreme provocations, we have never ceased to honour and obey,

has departed we know not whither, leaving no vicegerent, we take the only course which can prevent the

entire dissolution of society. Had our Sovereign remained among us, we were ready, little as he deserved our

love, to die at his feet. Had he, when he quitted us, appointed a regency to govern us with vicarious authority

during his absence, to that regency alone should we have looked for direction. But he has disappeared, having

made no provision for the preservation of order or the administration of justice. With him, and with his Great

Seal, has vanished the whole machinery by which a murderer can be punished, by which the right to an estate

can be decided, by which the effects of a bankrupt can be distributed. His last act has been to free thousands

of armed men from the restraints of military discipline, and to place them in such a situation that they must

plunder or starve. Yet a few hours, and every man's hand will be against his neighbour. Life, property, female

honour, will be at the mercy of every lawless spirit. We are at this moment actually in that state of nature

about which theorists have written so much; and in that state we have been placed, not by our fault, but by the

voluntary defection of him who ought to have been our protector. His defection may be justly called

voluntary: for neither his life nor his liberty was in danger. His enemies had just consented to treat with him

on a basis proposed by himself, and had offered immediately to suspend all hostile operations, on conditions

which he could not deny to be liberal. In such circumstances it is that he has abandoned his trust. We retract

nothing. We are in nothing inconsistent. We still assert our old doctrines without qualification. We still hold

that it is in all cases sinful to resist the magistrate: but we say that there is no longer any magistrate to resist.

He who was the magistrate, after long abusing his powers, has at last abdicated them. The abuse did not give

us a right to depose him: but the abdication gives us a right to consider how we may best supply his place.

It was on these grounds that the Prince's party was now swollen by many adherents who had previously stood

aloof from it. Never, within the memory of man, had there been so near an approach to entire concord among

all intelligent Englishmen as at this conjuncture: and never had concord been more needed. Legitimate

authority there was none. All those evil passions which it is the office of government to restrain, and which

the best governments restrain but imperfectly, were on a sudden emancipated from control; avarice,

licentiousness, revenge, the hatred of sect to sect, the hatred of nation to nation. On such occasions it will

ever be found that the human vermin which, neglected by ministers of state and ministers of religion,

barbarous in the midst of civilisation, heathen in the midst of Christianity, burrows among all physical and all

moral pollution, in the cellars and garrets of great cities, will at once rise into a terrible importance. So it was

now in London. When the night, the longest night, as it chanced, of the year, approached, forth came from

every den of vice, from the bear garden at Hockley, and from the labyrinth of tippling houses and brothels in

the Friars, thousands of housebreakers and highwaymen, cutpurses and ringdroppers. With these were

mingled thousands of idle apprentices, who wished merely for the excitement of a riot. Even men of

peaceable and honest habits were impelled by religious animosity to join the lawless part of the population.

For the cry of No Popery, a cry which has more than once endangered the existence of London, was the

signal for outrage and rapine. First the rabble fell on the Roman Catholic places of worship. The buildings

were demolished. Benches, pulpits, confessionals, breviaries were heaped up and set on fire. A great

mountain of books and furniture blazed on the site of the convent at Clerkenwell. Another pile was kindled

before the ruins of the Franciscan house in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The chapel in Lime Street, the chapel in

Bucklersbury, were pulled down. The pictures, images and crucifixes were carried along the streets in

triumph, amidst lighted tapers torn from the altars. The procession bristled thick with swords and staves, and

on the point of every sword and of every staff was an orange. The King's printing house, whence had issued,

during the preceding three years, innumerable tracts in defence of Papal supremacy, image worship, and

monastic vows, was, to use a coarse metaphor which then, for the first time, came into use, completely

gutted. The vast stock of paper, much of which was still unpolluted by types, furnished an immense bonfire.

From monasteries, temples, and public offices, the fury of the multitude turned to private dwellings. Several

houses were pillaged and destroyed: but the smallness of the booty disappointed the plunderers; and soon a

rumour was spread that the most valuable effects of the Papists had been placed under the care of the foreign

Ambassadors. To the savage and ignorant populace the law of nations and the risk of bringing on their

country the just vengeance of all Europe were as nothing. The houses of the Ambassadors were besieged. A

great crowd assembled before Barillon's door in St. James's Square. He, however, fared better than might

have been expected. For, though the government which he represented was held in abhorrence, his liberal

housekeeping and exact payments had made him personally popular. Moreover he had taken the precaution

of asking for a guard of soldiers; and, as several men of rank, who hued near him, had done the same, a

considerable force was collected in the Square. The rioters, therefore, when they were assured that no arms or

priests were concealed under his roof, left him unmolested. The Venetian Envoy was protected by a

detachment of troops: but the mansions occupied by the ministers of the Elector Palatine and of the Grand

Duke of Tuscany were destroyed. One precious box the Tuscan minister was able to save from the marauders.

It contained nine volumes of memoirs, written in the hand of James himself. These volumes reached France

in safety, and, after the lapse of more than a century, perished there in the havoc of a revolution far more

terrible than that from which they had escaped. But some fragments still remain, and, though grievously

mutilated, and imbedded in great masses of childish fiction, well deserve to be attentively studied.

The rich plate of the Chapel Royal had been deposited at Wild House, near Lincoln's Inn Fields, the residence

of the Spanish ambassador Ronquillo. Ronquillo, conscious that he and his court had not deserved ill of the

English nation, had thought it unnecessary to ask for soldiers: but the mob was not in a mood to make nice

distinctions. The name of Spain had long been associated in the public mind with the Inquisition and the

Armada, with the cruelties of Mary and the plots against Elizabeth. Ronquillo had also made himself many

enemies among the common people by availing himself of his privilege to avoid the necessity of paying his

debts. His house was therefore sacked without mercy; and a noble library, which he had collected, perished in

the flames. His only comfort was that the host in his chapel was rescued from the same fate.578

The morning of the twelfth of December rose on a ghastly sight. The capital in many places presented the

aspect of a city taken by storm. The Lords met at Whitehall, and exerted themselves to restore tranquillity.

The trainbands were ordered under arms. A body of cavalry was kept in readiness to disperse tumultuous

assemblages. Such atonement as was at that moment possible was made for the gross insults which had been

offered to foreign governments. A reward was promised for the discovery of the property taken from Wild

House; and Ronquillo, who had not a bed or an ounce of plate left, was splendidly lodged in the deserted

palace of the Kings of England. A sumptuous table was kept for him; and the yeomen of the guard were

ordered to wait in his antechamber with the same observance which they were in the habit of paying to the

Sovereign. These marks of respect soothed even the punctilious pride of the Spanish court, and averted all

In spite, however, of the well meant efforts of the provisional government, the agitation grew hourly more

formidable. It was heightened by an event which, even at this distance of time, can hardly be related without

a feeling of vindictive pleasure. A scrivener who lived at Wapping, and whose trade was to furnish the

seafaring men there with money at high interest, had some time before lent a sum on bottomry. The debtor

applied to equity for relief against his own bond; and the case came before Jeffreys. The counsel for the

borrower, having little else to say, said that the lender was a Trimmer. The Chancellor instantly fired. "A

Trimmer! where is he? Let me see him. I have heard of that kind of monster. What is it made like?" The

unfortunate creditor was forced to stand forth. The Chancellor glared fiercely on him, stormed at him, and

sent him away half dead with fright. "While I live," the poor man said, as he tottered out of the court, "I shall

never forget that terrible countenance." And now the day of retribution had arrived. The Trimmer was

walking through Wapping, when he saw a well known face looking out of the window of an alehouse. He

could not be deceived. The eyebrows, indeed, had been shaved away. The dress was that of a common sailor

from Newcastle, and was black with coal dust: but there was no mistaking the savage eye and mouth of

Jeffreys. The alarm was given. In a moment the house was surrounded by hundreds of people shaking

bludgeons and bellowing curses. The fugitive's life was saved by a company of the trainbands; and he was

carried before the Lord Mayor. The Mayor was a simple man who had passed his whole life in obscurity, and

was bewildered by finding himself an important actor in a mighty revolution. The events of the last

twentyfour hours, and the perilous state of the city which was under his charge, had disordered his mind and

his body. When the great man, at whose frown, a few days before, the whole kingdom had trembled, was,

dragged into the justice room begrimed with ashes, half dead with fright, and followed by a raging multitude,

the agitation of the unfortunate Mayor rose to the height. He fell into fits, and was carried to his bed, whence

he never rose. Meanwhile the throng without was constantly becoming more numerous and more savage.

Jeffreys begged to be sent to prison. An order to that effect was procured from the Lords who were sitting at

Whitehall; and he was conveyed in a carriage to the Tower. Two regiments of militia were drawn out to

escort him, and found the duty a difficult one. It was repeatedly necessary for them to form, as if for the

purpose of repelling a charge of cavalry, and to present a forest of pikes to the mob. The thousands who were

disappointed of their revenge pursued the coach, with howls of rage, to the gate of the Tower, brandishing

cudgels, and holding up halters full in the prisoner's view. The wretched man meantime was in convulsions of

terror. He wrung his hands; he looked wildly out, sometimes at one window, sometimes at the other, and was

heard even above the tumult, crying "Keep them off, gentlemen! For God's sake keep them off!" At length,

having suffered far more than the bitterness of death, he was safely lodged in the fortress where some of his

most illustrious victims had passed their last days, and where his own life was destined to close in

All this time an active search was making after Roman Catholic priests. Many were arrested. Two Bishops,

Ellis and Leyburn, were sent to Newgate. The Nuncio, who had little reason to expect that either his spiritual

or his political character would be respected by the multitude, made his escape disguised as a lacquey in the

Another day of agitation and terror closed, and was followed by a night the strangest and most terrible that

England had ever seen. Early in the evening an attack was made by the rabble on a stately house which had

been built a few months before for Lord Powis, which in the reign of George the Second was the residence of

the Duke of Newcastle, and which is still conspicuous at the northwestern angle of Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Some troops were sent thither: the mob was dispersed, tranquillity seemed to be restored, and the citizens

were retiring quietly to their beds. Just at this time arose a whisper which swelled fast into a fearful clamour,

passed in an hour from Piccadilly to Whitechapel, and spread into every street and alley of the capital. It was'

said that the Irish whom Feversham had let loose were marching on London and massacring every man,

woman, and child on the road. At one in the morning the drums of the militia beat to arms. Everywhere

terrified women were weeping and wringing their hands, while their fathers and husbands were equipping

themselves for fight. Before two the capital wore a face of stern preparedness which might well have daunted

a real enemy, if such an enemy had been approaching. Candles were blazing at all the windows. The public

places were as bright as at noonday. All the great avenues were barricaded. More than twenty thousand pikes

and muskets lined the streets. The late daybreak of the winter solstice found the whole City still in arms.

During many years the Londoners retained a vivid recollection of what they called the Irish Night. When it

was known that there had been no cause of alarm, attempts were made to discover the origin of the rumour

which had produced so much agitation. It appeared that some persons who had the look and dress of clowns

just arrived from the country had first spread the report in the suburbs a little before midnight: but whence

these men came, and by whom they were employed, remained a mystery. And soon news arrived from many

quarters which bewildered the public mind still more. The panic had not been confined to London. The cry

that disbanded Irish soldiers were coming to murder the Protestants had, with malignant ingenuity, been

raised at once in many places widely distant from each other. Great numbers of letters, skilfully framed for

the purpose of frightening ignorant people, had been sent by stage coaches, by waggons, and by the post, to

various parts of England. All these letters came to hand almost at the same time. In a hundred towns at once

the populace was possessed with the belief that armed barbarians were at hand, bent on perpetrating crimes as

foul as those which had disgraced the rebellion of Ulster. No Protestant would find mercy. Children would be

compelled by torture to murder their parents. Babes would be stuck on pikes, or flung into the blazing ruins

of what had lately been happy dwellings. Great multitudes assembled with weapons: the people in some

places began to pull down bridges, and to throw up barricades: but soon the excitement went down. In many

districts those who had been so foully imposed upon learned with delight, alloyed by shame, that there was

not a single Popish soldier within a week's march. There were places, indeed, where some straggling bands of

Irish made their appearance and demanded food: but it can scarcely be imputed to them as a crime that they

did not choose to die of hunger; and there is no evidence that they committed any wanton outrage. In truth

they were much less numerous than was commonly supposed; and their spirit was cowed by finding

themselves left on a sudden without leaders or provisions, in the midst of a mighty population which felt

towards them as men feel towards a drove of wolves. Of all the subjects of James none had more reason to

execrate him than these unfortunate members of his church and defenders of his throne.582

It is honourable to the English character that, notwithstanding the aversion with which the Roman Catholic

religion and the Irish race were then regarded, notwithstanding the anarchy which was the effect of the flight

of James, notwithstanding the artful machinations which were employed to scare the multitude into cruelty,

no atrocious crime was perpetrated at this conjuncture. Much property, indeed, was destroyed and carried

away. The houses of many Roman Catholic gentlemen were attacked. Parks were ravaged. Deer were slain

and stolen. Some venerable specimens of the domestic architecture of the middle ages bear to this day the

marks of popular violence. The roads were in many places made impassable by a selfappointed police, which

stopped every traveller till he proved that he was not a Papist. The Thames was infested by a set of pirates

who, under pretence of searching for arms or delinquents, rummaged every boat that passed. Obnoxious

persons were insulted and hustled. Many persons who were not obnoxious were glad to ransom their persons

and effects by bestowing some guineas on the zealous Protestants who had, without any legal authority,

assumed the office of inquisitors. But in all this confusion, which lasted several days and extended over many

counties, not a single Roman Catholic lost his life. The mob showed no inclination to blood, except in the

case of Jeffreys; and the hatred which that bad man inspired had more affinity with humanity than with

Many years later Hugh Speke affirmed that the Irish Night was his work, that he had prompted the rustics

who raised London, and that he was the author of the letters which had spread dismay through the country.

His assertion is not intrinsically improbable: but it rests on no evidence except his own word. He was a man

quite capable of committing such a villany, and quite capable also of falsely boasting that he had committed

At London William was impatiently expected: for it was not doubted that his vigour and ability would

speedily restore order and security. There was however some delay for which the Prince cannot justly be

blamed. His original intention had been to proceed from Hungerford to Oxford, where he was assured of an

honourable and affectionate reception: but the arrival of the deputation from Guildhall induced him to change

his intention and to hasten directly towards the capital. On the way he learned that Feversham, in pursuance

of the King's orders, had dismissed the royal army, and that thousands of soldiers, freed from restraint and

destitute of necessaries, were scattered over the counties through which the road to London lay. It was

therefore impossible for William to proceed slenderly attended without great danger, not only to his own

person, about which he was not much in the habit of being solicitous, but also to the great interests which

were under his care. It was necessary that he should regulate his own movements by the movements of his

troops; and troops could then move but slowly over the highways of England in midwinter. He was, on this

occasion, a little moved from his ordinary composure. "I am not to be thus dealt with," he exclaimed with

bitterness; "and that my Lord Feversham shall find." Prompt and judicious measures were taken to remedy

the evils which James had caused. Churchill and Grafton were entrusted with the task of reassembling the

dispersed army and bringing it into order. The English soldiers were invited to resume their military

character. The Irish were commanded to deliver up their arms on pain of being treated as banditti, but were

assured that, if they would submit quietly, they should be supplied with necessaries.585

The Prince's orders were carried into effect with scarcely any opposition, except from the Irish soldiers who

had been in garrison at Tilbury. One of these men snapped a pistol at Grafton. It missed fire, and the assassin

was instantly shot dead by an Englishman. About two hundred of the unfortunate strangers made a gallant

attempt to return to their own country. They seized a richly laden East Indiaman which had just arrived in the

Thames, and tried to procure pilots by force at Gravesend. No pilot, however was to be found; and they were

under the necessity of trusting to their own skill in navigation. They soon ran their ship aground, and, after

William had now been five weeks on English ground; and during the whole of that time his good fortune had

been uninterrupted. His own prudence and firmness had been conspicuously displayed, and yet had done less

for him than the folly and pusillanimity of others. And now, at the moment when it seemed that his plans

were about to be crowned with entire success, they were disconcerted by one of those strange incidents which

On the morning of the thirteenth of December the people of London, not yet fully recovered from the

agitation of the Irish Night, were surprised by a rumour that the King had been detained, and was still in the

island. The report gathered strength during the day, and was fully confirmed before the evening.

James had travelled with relays of coach horses along the southern shore of the Thames, and on the morning

of the twelfth had reached Emley Ferry near the island of Sheppey. There lay the hoy in which he was to sail.

He went on board: but the wind blew fresh; and the master would not venture to put to sea without more

ballast. A tide was thus lost. Midnight was approaching before the vessel began to float. By that time the

news that the King had disappeared, that the country was without a government, and that London was in

confusion, had travelled fast down the Thames, and wherever it spread had produced outrage and misrule.

The rude fishermen of the Kentish coast eyed the hoy with suspicion and with cupidity. It was whispered that

some persons in the garb of gentlemen had gone on board of her in great haste. Perhaps they were Jesuits:

perhaps they were rich. Fifty or sixty boatmen, animated at once by hatred of Popery and by love of plunder,

boarded the hoy just as she was about to make sail. The passengers were told that they must go on shore and

be examined by a magistrate. The King's appearance excited suspicion. "It is Father Petre," cried one ruffian;

"I know him by his lean jaws." "Search the hatchet faced old Jesuit," became the general cry. He was rudely

pulled and pushed about. His money and watch were taken from him. He had about him his coronation ring,

and some other trinkets of great value: but these escaped the search of the robbers, who indeed were so

At length the prisoners were put on shore and carried to an inn. A crowd had assembled there to see them;

and James, though disguised by a wig of different shape and colour from that which he usually wore, was at

once recognised. For a moment the rabble seemed to be overawed: but the exhortations of their chiefs revived

their courage; and the sight of Hales, whom they well knew and bitterly hated, inflamed their fury. His park

was in the neighbourhood; and at that very moment a band of rioters was employed in pillaging his house and

shooting his deer. The multitude assured the King that they would not hurt him: but they refused to let him

depart. It chanced that the Earl of Winchelsea, a Protestant, but a zealous royalist, head of the Finch family,

and a near kinsman of Nottingham, was then at Canterbury. As soon as he learned what had happened he

hastened to the coast, accompanied by some Kentish gentlemen. By their intervention the King was removed

to a more convenient lodging: but he was still a prisoner. The mob kept constant watch round the house to

which he had been carried; and some of the ringleaders lay at the door of his bedroom. His demeanour

meantime was that of a man, all the nerves of whose mind had been broken by the load of misfortunes.

Sometimes he spoke so haughtily that the rustics who had charge of him were provoked into making insolent

replies. Then he betook himself to supplication. "Let me go," he cried; "get me a boat. The Prince of Orange

is hunting for my life. If you do not let me fly now, it will be too late. My blood will be on your heads. He

that is not with me is against me." On this last text he preached a sermon half an hour long. He harangued on

a strange variety of subjects, on the disobedience of the fellows of Magdalene College, on the miracles

wrought by Saint Winifred's well, on the disloyalty of the black coats, and on the virtues of a piece of the true

cross which he had unfortunately lost. "What have I done?" he demanded of the Kentish squires who attended

him. "Tell me the truth. What error have I committed?" Those to whom he put these questions were too

humane to return the answer which must have risen to their lips, and listened to his wild talk in pitying

When the news that he had been stopped, insulted, roughly handled, and plundered, and that he was still a

prisoner in the hands of rude churls, reached the capital, many passions were roused. Rigid Churchmen, who

had, a few hours before, begun to think that they were freed from their allegiance to him, now felt misgivings.

He had not quitted his kingdom. He had not consummated his abdication. If he should resume his regal

office, could they, on their principles, refuse to pay him obedience? Enlightened statesmen foresaw with

concern that all the disputes which his flight had for a moment set at rest would be revived and exasperated

by his return. Some of the common people, though still smarting from recent wrongs, were touched with

compassion for a great prince outraged by ruffians, and were willing to entertain a hope, more honourable to

their good nature than to their discernment, that he might even now repent of the errors which had brought on

From the moment when it was known that the King was still in England, Sancroft, who had hitherto acted as

chief of the provisional government, absented himself from the sittings of the Peers. Halifax, who had just

returned from the Dutch head quarters, was placed in the chair. His sentiments had undergone a great change

in a few hours. Both public and private feelings now impelled him to join the Whigs. Those who candidly

examine the evidence which has come down to us will be of opinion that he accepted the office of royal

Commissioner in the sincere hope of effecting an accommodation between the King and the Prince on fair

terms. The negotiation had commenced prosperously: the Prince had offered terms which the King could not

but acknowledge to be fair: the eloquent and ingenious Trimmer might flatter himself that he should be able

to mediate between infuriated factions, to dictate a compromise between extreme opinions, to secure the

liberties and religion of his country, without exposing her to the risks inseparable from a change of dynasty

and a disputed succession. While he was pleasing himself with thoughts so agreeable to his temper, he

learned that he had been deceived, and had been used as an instrument for deceiving the nation. His mission

to Hungerford had been a fool's errand. The King had never meant to abide by the terms which he had

instructed his Commissioners to propose. He had charged them to declare that he was willing to submit all

the questions in dispute to the Parliament which he had summoned; and, while they were delivering his

message, he had burned the writs, made away with the seal, let loose the army, suspended the administration

of justice, dissolved the government, and fled from the capital. Halifax saw that an amicable arrangement was

no longer possible. He also felt, it may be suspected, the vexation natural to a man widely renowned for

wisdom, who finds that he has been duped by an understanding immeasurably inferior to his own, and the

vexation natural to a great master of ridicule, who finds himself placed in a ridiculous situation. His judgment

and his resentment alike induced him to relinquish the schemes of reconciliation on which he had hitherto

been intent, and to place himself at the head of those who were bent on raising William to the throne.588

A journal of what passed in the Council of Lords while Halifax presided is still extant in his own

handwriting.589 No precaution, which seemed necessary for the prevention of outrage and robbery, was

omitted. The Peers took on themselves the responsibility of giving orders that, if the rabble rose again, the

soldiers should fire with bullets. Jeffreys was brought to Whitehall and interrogated as to what had become of

the Great Seal and the writs. At his own earnest request he was remanded to the Tower, as the only place

where his life could be safe; and he retired thanking and blessing those who had given him the protection of a

prison. A Whig nobleman moved that Oates should be set at liberty: but this motion was overruled.590

The business of the day was nearly over, and Halifax was about to rise, when he was informed that a

messenger from Sheerness was in attendance. No occurrence could be more perplexing or annoying. To do

anything, to do nothing, was to incur a grave responsibility. Halifax, wishing probably to obtain time for

communication with the Prince, would have adjourned the meeting; but Mulgrave begged the Lords to keep

their seats, and introduced the messenger. The man told his story with many tears, and produced a letter

written in the King's hand, and addressed to no particular person, but imploring the aid of all good

Such an appeal it was hardly possible to disregard. The Lords ordered Feversham to hasten with a troop of

the Life Guards to the place where the King was detained, and to set his Majesty at liberty.

Already Middleton and a few other adherents of the royal cause had set out to assist and comfort their

unhappy master. They found him strictly confined, and were not suffered to enter his presence till they had

delivered up their swords. The concourse of people about him was by this time immense. Some Whig

gentlemen of the neighbourhood had brought a large body of militia to guard him. They had imagined most

erroneously that by detaining him they were ingratiating themselves with his enemies, and were greatly

disturbed when they learned that the treatment which the King had undergone was disapproved by the

Provisional Government in London, and that a body of cavalry was on the road to release him. Feversham

soon arrived. He had left his troop at Sittingbourne; but there was no occasion to use force. The King was

suffered to depart without opposition, and was removed by his friends to Rochester, where he took some rest,

which he greatly needed. He was in a pitiable state. Not only was his understanding, which had never been

very clear, altogether bewildered: but the personal courage which, when a young man, he had shown in

several battles, both by sea and by land, had forsaken him. The rough corporal usage which he had now, for

the first time, undergone, seems to have discomposed him more than any other event of his chequered life.

The desertion of his army, of his favourites, of his family, affected him less than the indignities which he

suffered when his hoy was boarded. The remembrance of those indignities continued long to rankle in his

heart, and on one occasion showed itself in a way which moved all Europe to contemptuous mirth. In the

fourth year of his exile he attempted to lure back his subjects by offering them an amnesty. The amnesty was

accompanied by a long list of exceptions; and in this list the poor fishermen who had searched his pockets

rudely appeared side by side with Churchill and Danby. From this circumstance we may judge how keenly he

Yet, had he possessed an ordinary measure of good sense, he would have seen that those who had detained

him had unintentionally done him a great service. The events which had taken place during his absence from

his capital ought to have convinced him that, if he had succeeded in escaping, he never would have returned.

In his own despite he had been saved from ruin. He had another chance, a last chance. Great as his offences

had been, to dethrone him, while he remained in his kingdom and offered to assent to such conditions as a

During a short time he seemed disposed to remain. He sent Feversham from Rochester with a letter to

William. The substance of the letter was that His Majesty was on his way back to Whitehall, that he wished

to have a personal conference with the Prince, and that Saint James's Palace should be fitted up for his

William was now at Windsor. He had learned with deep mortification the events which had taken place on

the coast of Kent. Just before the news arrived, those who approached him observed that his spirits were

unusually high. He had, indeed, reason to rejoice. A vacant throne was before him. All parties, it seemed,

would, with one voice, invite him to mount it. On a sudden his prospects were overcast. The abdication, it

appeared, had not been completed. A large proportion of his own followers would have scruples about

deposing a King who remained among them, who invited them to represent their grievances in a

parliamentary way, and who promised full redress. It was necessary that the Prince should examine his new

position, and determine on a new line of action. No course was open to him which was altogether free from

objections, no course which would place him in a situation so advantageous as that which he had occupied a

few hours before. Yet something might be done. The King's first attempt to escape had failed. What was now

most to be desired was that he should make a second attempt with better success. He must be at once

frightened and enticed. The liberality with which he had been treated in the negotiation at Hungerford, and

which he had requited by a breach of faith, would now be out of season. No terms of accommodation must be

proposed to him. If he should propose terms he must be coldly answered. No violence must be used towards

him, or even threatened. Yet it might not be impossible, without either using or threatening violence, to make

so weak a man uneasy about his personal safety. He would soon be eager to fly. All facilities for flight must

then be placed within his reach; and care must be taken that he should not again be stopped by any officious

Such was William's plan: and the ability and determination with which he carried it into effect present a

strange contrast to the folly and cowardice with which he had to deal. He soon had an excellent opportunity

of commencing his system of intimidation. Feversham arrived at Windsor with James's letter. The messenger

had not been very judiciously selected. It was he who had disbanded the royal army. To him primarily were

to be imputed the confusion and terror of the Irish Night. His conduct was loudly blamed by the public.

William had been provoked into muttering a few words of menace: and a few words of menace from

William's lips generally meant something. Feversham was asked for his safe conduct. He had none. By

coming without one into the midst of a hostile camp, he had, according to the laws of war, made himself

liable to be treated with the utmost severity. William refused to see him, and ordered him to be put under

arrest.594 Zulestein was instantly despatched to inform James that the Prince declined the proposed

But it was too late. James was already in London. He had hesitated about the journey, and had, at one time,

determined to make another attempt to reach the Continent. But at length he yielded to the urgency of friends

who were wiser than himself, and set out for Whitehall. He arrived there on the afternoon of Sunday, the

sixteenth of December. He had been apprehensive that the common people, who, during his absence, had

given so many proofs of their aversion to Popery, would offer him some affront. But the very violence of the

recent outbreak had produced a remission. The storm had spent itself. Good humour and pity had succeeded

to fury. In no quarter was any disposition shown to insult the King. Some cheers were raised as his coach

passed through the City. The bells of some churches were rung; and a few bonfires were lighted in honour of

his return.595 His feeble mind, which had just before been sunk in despondency, was extravagantly elated by

these unexpected signs of popular goodwill and compassion. He entered his dwelling in high spirits. It

speedily resumed its old aspect. Roman Catholic priests, who had, during the preceding week, been glad to

hide themselves from the rage of the multitude in vaults and cocklofts, now came forth from their lurking

places, and demanded possession of their old apartments in the palace. Grace was said at the royal table by a

Jesuit. The Irish brogue, then the most hateful of all sounds to English ears, was heard everywhere in the

courts and galleries. The King himself had resumed all his old haughtiness. He held a Council, his last

Council, and, even in that extremity, summoned to the board persons not legally qualified to sit there. He

expressed high displeasure at the conduct of those Lords who, during his absence, had dared to take the

administration on themselves. It was their duty, he conceived, to let society be dissolved, to let the houses of

Ambassadors be pulled down, to let London be set on fire, rather than assume the functions which he had

thought fit to abandon. Among those whom he thus censured were some nobles and prelates who, in spite of

all his errors, had been constantly true to him, and who, even after this provocation, never could be induced

by hope or fear to transfer their allegiance from him to any other sovereign.596

But his courage was soon cast down. Scarcely had he entered his palace when Zulestein was announced.

William's cold and stern message was delivered. The King still pressed for a personal conference with his

nephew. "I would not have left Rochester," he said, "if I had known that he wished me not to do so: but, since

I am here, I hope that he will come to Saint James's." "I must plainly tell your Majesty," said Zulestein, "that

His Highness will not come to London while there are any troops here which are not under his orders." The

King, confounded by this answer, remained silent. Zulestein retired; and soon a gentleman entered the

bedchamber with the news that Feversham had been put under arrest.597 James was greatly disturbed. Yet

the recollection of the applause with which he had been greeted still buoyed up his spirits. A wild hope rose

in his mind. He fancied that London, so long the stronghold of Protestantism and Whiggism, was ready to

take arms in his defence. He sent to ask the Common Council whether, if he took up his residence in the City,

they would engage to defend him against the Prince. But the Common Council had not forgotten the seizure

of the charter and the judicial murder of Cornish, and refused to give the pledge which was demanded. Then

the King's heart again sank within him. Where, he asked, was he to look for protection? He might as well

have Dutch troops about him as his own Life Guards. As to the citizens, he now understood what their huzzas

and bonfires were worth. Nothing remained but flight: and yet, he said, he knew that there was nothing which

While be was in this state of trepidation, his fate was the subject of a grave deliberation at Windsor. The court

of William was now crowded to overflowing with eminent men of all parties. Most of the chiefs of the

Northern insurrection had joined him. Several of the Lords, who had, during the anarchy of the preceding

week, taken upon themselves to act as a provisional government, had, as soon as the King returned, quitted

London for the Dutch head quarters. One of these was Halifax. William had welcomed him with great

satisfaction, but had not been able to suppress a sarcastic smile at seeing the ingenious and accomplished

politician, who had aspired to be the umpire in that great contention, forced to abandon the middle course and

to take a side. Among those who, at this conjuncture, repaired to Windsor were some men who had purchased

the favour of James by ignominious services, and who were now impatient to atone, by betraying their

master, for the crime of having betrayed their country. Such a man was Titus, who had sate at the Council

board in defiance of law, and who had laboured to unite the Puritans with the Jesuits in a league against the

constitution. Such a man was Williams, who had been converted by interest from a demagogue into a

champion of prerogative, and who was now ready for a second apostasy. These men the Prince, with just

contempt, suffered to wait at the door of his apartment in vain expectation of an audience.599

On Monday, the seventeenth of December, all the Peers who were at Windsor were summoned to a solemn

consultation at the Castle. The subject proposed for deliberation was what should be done with the King.

William did not think it advisable to be present during the discussion. He retired; and Halifax was called to

the chair. On one point the Lords were agreed. The King could not be suffered to remain where be was. That

one prince should fortify himself in Whitehall and the other in Saint James's, that there should be two hostile

garrisons within an area of a hundred acres, was universally felt to be inexpedient. Such an arrangement

could scarcely fail to produce suspicions, insults, and bickerings which might end in blood. The assembled

Lords, therefore, thought it advisable that James should be sent out of London. Ham, which had been built

and decorated by Lauderdale, on the banks of the Thames, out of the plunder of Scotland and the bribes of

France, and which was regarded as the most luxurious of villas, was proposed as a convenient retreat. When

the Lords had come to this conclusion, they requested the Prince to join them. Their opinion was then

communicated to him, by Halifax. William listened and approved. A short message to the King was drawn

up. "Whom," said William, "shall we send with it?" "Ought it not," said Halifax, "to be conveyed by one of

your Highness's officers?" "Nay, my Lord," answered the Prince; "by your favour, it is sent by the advice of

your Lordships, and some of you ought to carry it." Then, without pausing to give time for remonstrance, he

The resolution of the Lords appeared to be unanimous. But there were in the assembly those who by no

means approved of the decision in which they affected to concur, and who wished to see the King treated

with a severity which they did not venture openly to recommend. It is a remarkable fact that the chief of this

party was a peer who had been a vehement Tory, and who afterwards died a Nonjuror, Clarendon. The

rapidity, with which, at this crisis, he went backward and forward from extreme to extreme, might seem

incredible to people living in quiet times, but will not surprise those who have had an opportunity of

watching the course of revolutions. He knew that the asperity, with which he had, in the royal presence,

censured the whole system of government, had given mortal offence to his old master. On the other hand he

might, as the uncle of the Princesses, hope to be great and rich in the new world which was about to

commence. The English colony in Ireland regarded him as a friend and patron; and he felt that on the

confidence and attachment of that great interest much of his importance depended. To such considerations as

these the principles, which he had, during his whole life, ostentatiously professed, now gave way. He repaired

to the Prince's closet, and represented the danger of leaving the King at liberty. The Protestants of Ireland

were in extreme peril. There was only one way to secure their estates and their lives; and that was to keep His

Majesty close prisoner. It might not be prudent to shut him up in an English castle. But he might be sent

across the sea and confined in the fortress of Breda till the affairs of the British Islands were settled. If the

Prince were in possession of such a hostage, Tyrconnel would probably lay down the sword of state; and the

English ascendency would be restored to Ireland without a blow. If, on the other hand, James should escape

to France and make his appearance at Dublin, accompanied by a foreign army, the consequences must be

disastrous. William owned that there was great weight in these reasons, but it could not be. He knew his

wife's temper; and he knew that she never would consent to such a step. Indeed it would not be for his own

honour to treat his vanquished kinsman so ungraciously. Nor was it quite clear that generosity might not be

the best policy. Who could say what effect such severity as Clarendon recommended might produce on the

public mind of England? Was it impossible that the loyal enthusiasm, which the King's misconduct had

extinguished, might revive as soon as it was known that he was within the walls of a foreign fortress? On

these grounds William determined not to subject his father in law to personal restraint; and there can be little

James, while his fate was under discussion, remained at Whitehall, fascinated, as it seemed, by the greatness

and nearness of the danger, and unequal to the exertion of either struggling or flying. In the evening news

came that the Dutch had occupied Chelsea and Kensington. The King, however, prepared to go to rest as

usual. The Coldstream Guards were on duty at the palace. They were commanded by William Earl of Craven,

an aged man who, more than fifty years before, had been distinguished in war and love, who had led the

forlorn hope at Creutznach with such courage that he had been patted on the shoulder by the great Gustavus,

and who was believed to have won from a thousand rivals the heart of the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia.

It was past ten o'clock when he was informed that three battalions of the Prince's foot, mingled with some

troops of horse, were pouring down the long avenue of St. James's Park, with matches lighted, and in full

readiness for action. Count Solmes, who commanded the foreigners, said that his orders were to take military

possession of the posts round Whitehall, and exhorted Craven to retire peaceably. Craven swore that he

would rather be cut in pieces: but, when the King, who was undressing himself, learned what was passing, he

forbade the stout old soldier to attempt a resistance which must have been ineffectual. By eleven the

Coldstream Guards had withdrawn; and Dutch sentinels were pacing the rounds on every side of the palace.

Some of the King's attendants asked whether he would venture to lie down surrounded by enemies. He

answered that they could hardly use him worse than his own subjects had done, and, with the apathy of a man

Scarcely was the palace again quiet when it was again roused. A little after midnight the three Lords arrived

from Windsor. Middleton was called up to receive them. They informed him that they were charged with an

errand which did not admit of delay. The King was awakened from his first slumber; and they were ushered

into his bedchamber. They delivered into his hand the letter with which they had been entrusted, and

informed him that the Prince would be at Westminster in a few hours, and that His Majesty would do well to

set out for Ham before ten in the morning. James made some difficulties. He did not like Ham. It was a

pleasant place in the summer, but cold and comfortless at Christmas, and was moreover unfurnished. Halifax

answered that furniture should be instantly sent in. The three messengers retired, but were speedily followed

by Middleton, who told them that the King would greatly prefer Rochester to Ham. They answered that they

had not authority to accede to His Majesty's wish, but that they would instantly send off an express to the

Prince, who was to lodge that night at Sion House. A courier started immediately, and returned before

That consent, indeed, was most gladly given: for there could be no doubt that Rochester had been named

because it afforded facilities for flight; and that James might fly was the first wish of his nephew.604

On the morning of the eighteenth of December, a rainy and stormy morning, the royal barge was early at

Whitehall stairs; and round it were eight or ten boats filled with Dutch soldiers. Several noblemen and

gentlemen attended the King to the waterside. It is said, and may well be believed, that many tears were shed.

For even the most zealous friend of liberty could scarcely have seen, unmoved, the sad and ignominious close

of a dynasty which might have been so great. Shrewsbury did all in his power to soothe the fallen Sovereign.

Even the bitter and vehement Delamere was softened. But it was observed that Halifax, who was generally

distinguished by his tenderness to the vanquished, was, on this occasion, less compassionate than his two

colleagues. The mock embassy to Hungerford was doubtless still rankling in his mind.605

While the King's barge was slowly working its way on rough billows down the river, brigade after brigade of

the Prince's troops came pouring into London from the west. It had been wisely determined that the duty of

the capital should be chiefly done by the British soldiers in the service of the States General. The three

English regiments were quartered in and round the Tower, the three Scotch regiments in Southwark.606

In defiance of the weather a great multitude assembled between Albemarle House and Saint James's Palace to

greet the Prince. Every hat, every cane, was adorned with an orange riband. The bells were ringing all over

London. Candles for an illumination were disposed in the windows. Faggots for bonfires were heaped up in

the streets. William, however, who had no taste for crowds and shouting, took the road through the Park.

Before nightfall he arrived at Saint James's in a light carriage, accompanied by Schomberg. In a short time all

the rooms and staircases in the palace were thronged by those who came to pay their court. Such was the

press, that men of the highest rank were unable to elbow their way into the presence chamber.607 While

Westminster was in this state of excitement, the Common Council was preparing at Guildhall an address of

thanks and congratulation. The Lord Major was unable to preside. He had never held up his head since the

Chancellor had been dragged into the justice room in the garb of a collier. But the Aldermen and the other

officers of the corporation were in their places. On the following day the magistrates of the City went in state

to pay their duty to their deliverer. Their gratitude was eloquently expressed by their Recorder, Sir George

Treby. Some princes of the House of Nassau, he said, had been the chief officers of a great republic. Others

had worn the imperial crown. But the peculiar title of that illustrious line to the public veneration was this,

that God had set it apart and consecrated it to the high office of defending truth and freedom against tyrants

from generation to generation. On the same day all the prelates who were in town, Sancroft excepted, waited

on the Prince in a body. Then came the clergy of London, the foremost men of their profession in knowledge,

eloquence, and influence, with their bishop at their head. With them were mingled some eminent dissenting

ministers, whom Compton, much to his honour, treated with marked courtesy. A few months earlier, or a few

months later, such courtesy would have been considered by many Churchmen as treason to the Church. Even

then it was but too plain to a discerning eye that the armistice to which the Protestant sects had been forced

would not long outlast the danger from which it had sprung. About a hundred Nonconformist divines,

resident in the capital, presented a separate address. They were introduced by Devonshire, and were received

with every mark of respect and kindness. The lawyers paid their homage, headed by Maynard, who, at ninety

years of age, was as alert and clearheaded as when he stood up in Westminster Hall to accuse Strafford. "Mr.

Serjeant," said the Prince, "you must have survived all the lawyers of your standing." "Yes, sir," said the old

But, though the addresses were numerous and full of eulogy, though the acclamations were loud, though the

illuminations were splendid, though Saint James's Palace was too small for the crowd of courtiers, though the

theatres were every night, from the pit to the ceiling, one blaze of orange ribands, William felt that the

difficulties of his enterprise were but beginning. He had pulled a government down. The far harder task of

reconstruction was now to be performed. From the moment of his landing till he reached London he had

exercised the authority which, by the laws of war, acknowledged throughout the civilised world, belongs to

the commander of an army in the field. It was now necessary that he should exchange the character of a

general for that of a magistrate; and this was no easy task. A single false step might be fatal; and it was

impossible to take any step without offending prejudices and rousing angry passions.

Some of the Prince's advisers pressed him to assume the crown at once as his own by right of conquest, and

then, as King, to send out, under his Great Seal, writs calling a Parliament. This course was strongly

recommended by some eminent lawyers. It was, they said, the shortest way to what could otherwise be

attained only through innumerable difficulties and disputes. It was in strict conformity with the auspicious

precedent set after the battle of Bosworth by Henry the Seventh. It would also quiet the scruples which many

respectable people felt as to the lawfulness of transferring allegiance from one ruler to another. Neither the

law of England nor the Church of England recognised any right in subjects to depose a sovereign. But no

jurist, no divine, had ever denied that a nation, overcome in war, might, without sin, submit to the decision of

the God of battles. Thus, after the Chaldean conquest, the most pious and patriotic Jews did not think that

they violated their duty to their native King by serving with loyalty the new master whom Providence had set

over them. The three confessors, who had been marvellously preserved in the furnace, held high office in the

province of Babylon. Daniel was minister successively of the Assyrian who subjugated Judah, and of the

Persian who subjugated Assyria. Nay, Jesus himself, who was, according to the flesh, a prince of the house of

David, had, by commanding his countrymen to pay tribute to Caesar, pronounced that foreign conquest

annuls hereditary right and is a legitimate title to dominion. It was therefore probable that great numbers of

Tories, though they could not, with a clear conscience, choose a King for themselves, would accept, without

On the other side, however, there were reasons which greatly preponderated. The Prince could not claim the

crown as won by his sword without a gross violation of faith. In his Declaration he had protested that he had

no design of conquering England; that those who imputed to him such a design foully calumniated, not only

himself, but the patriotic noblemen and gentlemen who had invited him over; that the force which he brought

with him was evidently inadequate to an enterprise so arduous; and that it was his full resolution to refer all

the public grievances, and all his own pretensions, to a free Parliament. For no earthly object could it be right

or wise that he should forfeit his word so solemnly pledged in the face of all Europe. Nor was it certain that,

by calling himself a conqueror, he would have removed the scruples which made rigid Churchmen unwilling

to acknowledge him as King. For, call himself what he might, all the world knew that he was not really a

conqueror. It was notoriously a mere fiction to say that this great kingdom, with a mighty fleet on the sea,

with a regular army of forty thousand men, and with a militia of a hundred and thirty thousand men, had

been, without one siege or battle, reduced to the state of a province by fifteen thousand invaders. Such a

fiction was not likely to quiet consciences really sensitive, but it could scarcely fail to gall the national pride,

already sore and irritable. The English soldiers were in a temper which required the most delicate

management. They were conscious that, in the late campaign, their part had not been brilliant. Captains and

privates were alike impatient to prove that they had not given way before an inferior force from want of

courage. Some Dutch officers had been indiscreet enough to boast, at a tavern over their wine, that they had

driven the King's army before them. This insult had raised among the English troops a ferment which, but for

the Prince's prompt interference, would probably have ended in a terrible slaughter.610 What, in such

circumstances, was likely to be the effect of a proclamation announcing that the commander of the foreigners

It was also to be remembered that, by putting forth such a proclamation, the Prince would at once abrogate all

the rights of which he had declared himself the champion. For the authority of a foreign conqueror is not

circumscribed by the customs and statutes of the conquered nation, but is, by its own nature, despotic. Either,

therefore, it was not competent to William to declare himself King, or it was competent to him to declare the

Great Charter and the Petition of Right nullifies, to abolish trial by jury, and to raise taxes without the consent

of Parliament. He might, indeed, reestablish the ancient constitution of the realm. But, if he did so, he did so

in the exercise of an arbitrary discretion. English liberty would thenceforth be held by a base tenure. It would

be, not, as heretofore, an immemorial inheritance, but a recent gift which the generous master who had

William therefore righteously and prudently determined to observe the promises contained in his Declaration,

and to leave to the legislature the office of settling the government. So carefully did he avoid whatever looked

like usurpation that he would not, without some semblance of parliamentary authority, take upon himself

even to convoke the Estates of the Realm, or to direct the executive administration during the elections.

Authority strictly parliamentary there was none in the state: but it was possible to bring together, in a few

hours, an assembly which would be regarded by the nation with a large portion of the respect due to a

Parliament. One Chamber might be formed of the numerous Lords Spiritual and Temporal who were then in

London, and another of old members of the House of Commons and of the magistrates of the City. The

scheme was ingenious, and was promptly executed. The Peers were summoned to St. James's on the

twentyfirst of December. About seventy attended. The Prince requested them to consider the state of the

country, and to lay before him the result of their deliberations. Shortly after appeared a notice inviting all

gentlemen who had sate in the House of Commons during the reign of Charles the Second to attend His

Highness on the morning of the twentysixth. The Aldermen of London were also summoned; and the

It has often been asked, in a reproachful tone, why the invitation was not extended to the members of the

Parliament which had been dissolved in the preceding year. The answer is obvious. One of the chief

grievances of which the nation complained was the manner in which that Parliament had been elected. The

majority of the burgesses had been returned by constituent bodies remodelled in a manner which was

generally regarded as illegal, and which the Prince had, in his Declaration, condemned. James himself had,

just before his downfall, consented to restore the old municipal franchises. It would surely have been the

height of inconsistency in William, after taking up arms for the purpose of vindicating the invaded charters of

corporations, to recognise persons chosen in defiance of those charters as the legitimate representatives of the

On Saturday the twentysecond the Lords met in their own house. That day was employed in settling the

order of proceeding. A clerk was appointed: and, as no confidence could be placed in any of the twelve

judges, some serjeants and barristers of great note were requested to attend, for the purpose of giving advice

on legal points. It was resolved that on the Monday the state of the kingdom should be taken into

The interval between the sitting of Saturday and the sitting of Monday was anxious and eventful. A strong

party among the Peers still cherished the hope that the constitution and religion of England might be secured

without the deposition of the King. This party resolved to move a solemn address to him, imploring him to

consent to such terms as might remove the discontents and apprehensions which his past conduct had excited.

Sancroft, who, since the return of James from Kent to Whitehall, had taken no part in public affairs,

determined to come forth from his retreat on this occasion, and to put himself at the head of the Royalists.

Several messengers were sent to Rochester with letters for the King. He was assured that his interests would

be strenuously defended, if only he could, at this last moment, make up his mind to renounce designs

abhorred by his people. Some respectable Roman Catholics followed him, in order to implore him, for the

The advice was good; but James was in no condition to take it. His understanding had always been dull and

feeble; and, such as it was, womanish tremors and childish fancies now disabled him from using it. He was

aware that his flight was the thing which his adherents most dreaded and which his enemies most desired.

Even if there had been serious personal risk in remaining, the occasion was one on which he ought to have

thought it infamous to flinch: for the question was whether he and his posterity should reign on an ancestral

throne or should be vagabonds and beggars. But in his mind all other feelings had given place to a craven fear

for his life. To the earnest entreaties and unanswerable arguments of the agents whom his friends had sent to

Rochester, he had only one answer. His head was in danger. In vain he was assured that there was no ground

for such an apprehension, that common sense, if not principle, would restrain the Prince of Orange from

incurring the guilt and shame of regicide and parricide, and that many, who never would consent to depose

their Sovereign while he remained on English ground, would think themselves absolved from their allegiance

by his desertion. Fright overpowered every other feeling. James determined to depart; and it was easy for him

to do so. He was negligently guarded: all persons were suffered to repair to him: vessels ready to put to sea

lay at no great distance; and their boats might come close to the garden of the house in which he was lodged.

Had he been wise, the pains which his keepers took to facilitate his escape would have sufficed to convince

him that he ought to stay where he was. In truth the snare was so ostentatiously exhibited that it could impose

The arrangements were expeditiously made. On the evening of Saturday the twentysecond the King assured

some of the gentlemen, who had been sent to him from London with intelligence and advice, that he would

see them again in the morning. He went to bed, rose at dead of night, and, attended by Berwick, stole out at a

back door, and went through the garden to the shore of the Medway. A small skiff was in waiting. Soon after

the dawn of Sunday the fugitives were on board of a smack which was running down the Thames.614

That afternoon the tidings of the flight reached London. The King's adherents were confounded. The Whigs

could not conceal their joy. The good news encouraged the Prince to take a bold and important step. He was

informed that communications were passing between the French embassy and the party hostile to him. It was

well known that at that embassy all the arts of corruption were well understood; and there could be little

doubt that, at such a conjuncture, neither intrigues nor pistoles would be spared. Barillon was most desirous

to remain a few days longer in London, and for that end omitted no art which could conciliate the victorious

party. In the streets he quieted the populace, who looked angrily at his coach, by throwing money among

them. At his table he publicly drank the health of the Prince of Orange. But William was not to be so cajoled.

He had not, indeed, taken on himself to exercise regal authority: but he was a general and, as such, he was not

bound to tolerate, within the territory of which he had taken military occupation, the presence of one whom

be regarded as a spy. Before that day closed Barillon was informed that he must leave England within

twentyfour hours. He begged hard for a short delay: but minutes were precious; the order was repeated in

more peremptory terms; and he unwillingly set off for Dover. That no mark of contempt and defiance might

be omitted, he was escorted to the coast by one of his Protestant countrymen whom persecution had driven

into exile. So bitter was the resentment excited by the French ambition and arrogance that even those

Englishmen who were not generally disposed to take a favourable view of William's conduct loudly

applauded him for retorting with so much spirit the insolence with which Lewis had, during many years,

On Monday the Lords met again. Halifax was chosen to preside. The Primate was absent, the Royalists sad

and gloomy, the Whigs eager and in high spirits. It was known that James had left a letter behind him. Some

of his friends moved that it might be produced, in the faint hope that it might contain propositions which

might furnish a basis for a happy settlement. On this motion the previous question was put and carried.

Godolphin, who was known not to be unfriendly to his old master, uttered a few words which were decisive.

"I have seen the paper," he said; "and I grieve to say that there is nothing in it which will give your Lordships

any satisfaction." In truth it contained no expression of regret for pass errors; it held out no hope that those

errors would for the future be avoided; and it threw the blame of all that had happened on the malice of

William and on the blindness of a nation deluded by the specious names of religion and property. None

ventured to propose that a negotiation should be opened with a prince whom the most rigid discipline of

adversity seemed only to have made more obstinate in wrong. Something was said about inquiring into the

birth of the Prince of Wales: but the Whig peers treated the suggestion with disdain. "I did not expect, my

Lords," exclaimed Philip Lord Wharton, an old Roundhead, who had commanded a regiment against Charles

the First at Edgehill, "I did not expect to hear anybody at this time of day mention the child who was called

Prince of Wales; and I hope that we have now heard the last of him." After long discussion it was resolved

that two addresses should be presented to William. One address requested him to take on himself

provisionally the administration of the government; the other recommended that he should, by circular letters

subscribed with his own hand, invite all the constituent bodies of the kingdom to send up representatives to

Westminster. At the same time the Peers took upon themselves to issue an order banishing all Papists, except

The Lords presented their addresses to the Prince on the following day, without waiting for the issue of the

deliberations of the commoners whom he had called together. It seems, indeed, that the hereditary nobles

were disposed at this moment to be punctilious in asserting their dignity, and were unwilling to recognise a

coordinate authority in an assembly unknown to the law. They conceived that they were a real House of

Lords. The other Chamber they despised as only a mock House of Commons. William, however, wisely

excused himself from coming to any decision till he had ascertained the sense of the gentlemen who had

formerly been honoured with the confidence of the counties and towns of England.617

The commoners who had been summoned met in Saint Stephen's Chapel, and formed a numerous assembly.

They placed in the chair Henry Powle, who had represented Cirencester in several Parliaments, and had been

Addresses were proposed and adopted similar to those which the Lords had already presented. No difference

of opinion appeared on any serious question; and some feeble attempts which were made to raise a debate on

points of form were put down by the general contempt. Sir Robert Sawyer declared that he could not

conceive how it was possible for the Prince to administer the government without some distinguishing title,

such as Regent or Protector. Old Maynard, who, as a lawyer, had no equal, and who was also a politician

versed in the tactics of revolutions, was at no pains to conceal his disdain for so puerile an objection, taken at

a moment when union and promptitude were of the highest importance. "We shall sit here very long," he said,

"if we sit till Sir Robert can conceive how such a thing is possible;" and the assembly thought the answer as

The resolutions of the meeting were communicated to the Prince. He forthwith announced his determination

to comply with the joint request of the two Chambers which he had called together, to issue letters

summoning a Convention of the Estates of the Realm, and, till the Convention should meet, to take on

He had undertaken no light task. The whole machine of government was disordered. The Justices of the

Peace had abandoned their functions. The officers of the revenue had ceased to collect the taxes. The army

which Feversham had disbanded was still in confusion, and ready to break out into mutiny. The fleet was in a

scarcely less alarming state. Large arrears of pay were due to the civil and military servants of the crown; and

only forty thousand pounds remained in the Exchequer. The Prince addressed himself with vigour to the work

of restoring order. He published a proclamation by which all magistrates were continued in office, and

another containing orders for the collection of the revenue.620 The new modelling of the army went rapidly

on. Many of the noblemen and gentlemen whom James had removed from the command of the English

regiments were reappointed. A way was found of employing the thousands of Irish soldiers whom James had

brought into England. They could not safely be suffered to remain in a country where they were objects of

religious and national animosity. They could not safely be sent home to reinforce the army of Tryconnel. It

was therefore determined that they should be sent to the Continent, where they might, under the banners of

the House of Austria, render indirect but effectual service to the cause of the English constitution and of the

Protestant religion. Dartmouth was removed from his command; and the navy was conciliated by assurances

that every sailor should speedily receive his due. The City of London undertook to extricate the Prince from

his financial difficulties. The Common Council, by an unanimous vote, engaged to find him two hundred

thousand pounds. It was thought a great proof, both of the wealth and of the public spirit of the merchants of

the capital, that, in forty eight hours, the whole sum was raised on no security but the Prince's word. A few

weeks before, James had been unable to procure a much smaller sum, though he had offered to pay higher

In a very few days the confusion which the invasion, the insurrection, the flight of James, and the suspension

of all regular government had produced was at an end, and the kingdom wore again its accustomed aspect.

There was a general sense of security. Even the classes which were most obnoxious to public hatred, and

which had most reason to apprehend a persecution, were protected by the politic clemency of the conqueror.

Persons deeply implicated in the illegal transactions of the late reign not only walked the streets in safety, but

offered themselves as candidates for seats in the Convention. Mulgrave was received not ungraciously at St.

James's. Feversham was released from arrest, and was permitted to resume the only office for which he was

qualified, that of keeping the bank at the Queen Dowager's basset table. But no body of men had so much

reason to feel grateful to William as the Roman Catholics. It would not have been safe to rescind formally the

severe resolutions which the Peers had passed against the professors of a religion generally abhorred by the

nation: but, by the prudence and humanity of the Prince, those resolutions were practically annulled. On his

line of march from Torbay to London, he had given orders that no outrage should be committed on the

persons or dwellings of Papists. He now renewed those orders, and directed Burnet to see that they were

strictly obeyed. A better choice could not have been made; for Burnet was a man of such generosity and good

nature, that his heart always warmed towards the unhappy; and at the same time his known hatred of Popery

was a sufficient guarantee to the most zealous Protestants that the interests of their religion would be safe in

his hands. He listened kindly to the complaints of the Roman Catholics, procured passports for those who

wished to go beyond sea, and went himself to Newgate to visit the prelates who were imprisoned there. He

ordered them to be removed to a more commodious apartment and supplied with every indulgence. He

solemnly assured them that not a hair of their heads should be touched, and that, as soon as the Prince could

venture to act as he wished, they should be set at liberty. The Spanish minister reported to his government,

and, through his government, to the Pope, that no Catholic need feel any scruple of conscience on account of

the late revolution in England, that for the danger to which the members of the true Church were exposed

James alone was responsible, and that William alone had saved them from a sanguinary persecution.622

There was, therefore, little alloy to the satisfaction with which the princes of the House of Austria and the

Sovereign Pontiff learned that the long vassalage of England was at an end. When it was known at Madrid

that William was in the full career of success, a single voice in the Spanish Council of State faintly expressed

regret that an event which, in a political point of view, was most auspicious, should be prejudicial to the

interests of the true Church.623 But the tolerant policy of the Prince soon quieted all scruples, and his

elevation was seen with scarcely less satisfaction by the bigoted Grandees of Castile than by the English

With very different feelings had the news of this great revolution been received in France. The politics of a

long, eventful, and glorious reign had been confounded in a day. England was again the England of Elizabeth

and of Cromwell; and all the relations of all the states of Christendom were completely changed by the

sudden introduction of this new power into the system. The Parisians could talk of nothing but what was

passing in London. National and religious feeling impelled them to take the part of James. They knew

nothing of the English constitution. They abominated the English Church. Our revolution appeared to them,

not as the triumph of public liberty over despotism, but as a frightful domestic tragedy in which a venerable

and pious Servius was hurled from his throne by a Tarquin, and crushed under the chariot wheels of a Tullia.

They cried shame on the traitorous captains, execrated the unnatural daughters, and regarded William with a

mortal loathing, tempered, however, by the respect which valour, capacity, and success seldom fail to

inspire.624 The Queen, exposed to the night wind and rain, with the infant heir of three crowns clasped to her

breast, the King stopped, robbed, and outraged by ruffians, were objects of pity and of romantic interest to all

France. But Lewis saw with peculiar emotion the calamities of the House of Stuart. All the selfish and all the

generous parts of his nature were moved alike. After many years of prosperity he had at length met with a

great check. He had reckoned on the support or neutrality of England. He had now nothing to expect from her

but energetic and pertinacious hostility. A few weeks earlier he might not unreasonably have hoped to

subjugate Flanders and to give law to Germany. At present he might think himself fortunate if he should be

able to defend his own frontiers against a confederacy such as Europe had not seen during many ages. From

this position, so new, so embarrassing, so alarming, nothing but a counterrevolution or a civil war in the

British Islands could extricate him. He was therefore impelled by ambition and by fear to espouse the cause

of the fallen dynasty. And it is but just to say that motives nobler than ambition or fear had a large share in

determining his course. His heart was naturally compassionate; and this was an occasion which could not fail

to call forth all his compassion. His situation had prevented his good feelings from fully developing

themselves. Sympathy is rarely strong where there is a great inequality of condition; and he was raised so

high above the mass of his fellow creatures that their distresses excited in him only a languid pity, such as

that with which we regard the sufferings of the inferior animals, of a famished redbreast or of an overdriven

posthorse. The devastation of the Palatinate and the persecution of the Huguenots had therefore given him no

uneasiness which pride and bigotry could not effectually soothe. But all the tenderness of which he was

capable was called forth by the misery of a great King who had a few weeks ago been served on the knee by

Lords, and who was now a destitute exile. With that tenderness was mingled, in the soul of Lewis, a not

ignoble vanity. He would exhibit to the world a pattern of munificence and courtesy. He would show

mankind what ought to be the bearing of a perfect gentleman in the highest station and on the greatest

occasion; and, in truth, his conduct was marked by a chivalrous generosity and urbanity, such as had not

embellished the annals of Europe since the Black Prince had stood behind the chair of King John at the

As soon as the news that the Queen of England was on the French coast had been brought to Versailles, a

palace was prepared for her reception. Carriages and troops of guards were despatched to await her orders,

workmen were employed to mend the Calais road that her journey might be easy. Lauzun was not only

assured that his past offences were forgiven for her sake, but was honoured with a friendly letter in the

handwriting of Lewis. Mary was on the road towards the French court when news came that her husband had,

after a rough voyage, landed safe at the little village of Ambleteuse. Persons of high rank were instantly

despatched from Versailles to greet and escort him. Meanwhile Lewis, attended by his family and his

nobility, went forth in state to receive the exiled Queen. Before his gorgeous coach went the Swiss

halberdiers. On each side of it and behind it rode the body guards with cymbals clashing and trumpets

pealing. After the King, in a hundred carriages each drawn by six horses, came the most splendid aristocracy

of Europe, all feathers, ribands, jewels, and embroidery. Before the procession had gone far it was announced

that Mary was approaching. Lewis alighted and advanced on foot to meet her. She broke forth into passionate

expressions of gratitude. "Madam," said her host, "it is but a melancholy service that I am rendering you to

day. I hope that I may be able hereafter to render you services greater and more pleasing." He embraced the

little Prince of Wales, and made the Queen seat herself in the royal state coach on the right hand. The

At Saint Germains, on the verge of a forest swarming with beasts of chase, and on the brow of a hill which

looks down on the windings of the Seine, Francis the First had built a castle, and Henry the Fourth had

constructed a noble terrace. Of the residences of the French kings none stood in a more salubrious air or

commanded a fairer prospect. The huge size and venerable age of the trees, the beauty of the gardens, the

abundance of the springs, were widely famed. Lewis the Fourteenth had been born there, had, when a young

man, held his court there, had added several stately pavilions to the mansion of Francis, and had completed

the terrace of Henry. Soon, however, the magnificent King conceived an inexplicable disgust for his

birthplace. He quitted Saint Germains for Versailles, and expended sums almost fabulous in the vain attempt

to create a paradise on a spot singularly sterile and unwholesome, all sand or mud, without wood, without

water, and without game. Saint Germains had now been selected to be the abode of the royal family of

England. Sumptuous furniture had been hastily sent in. The nursery of the Prince of Wales had been carefully

furnished with everything that an infant could require. One of the attendants presented to the Queen the key

of a superb casket which stood in her apartment. She opened the casket, and found in it six thousand pistoles.

On the following day James arrived at Saint Germains. Lewis was already there to welcome him. The

unfortunate exile bowed so low that it seemed as if he was about to embrace the knees of his protector. Lewis

raised him, and embraced him with brotherly tenderness. The two Kings then entered the Queen's room.

"Here is a gentleman," said Lewis to Mary, "whom you will be glad to see." Then, after entreating his guests

to visit him next day at Versailles, and to let him have the pleasure of showing them his buildings, pictures,

In a few hours the royal pair were informed that, as long as they would do the King of France the favour to

accept of his hospitality, fortyfive thousand pounds sterling a year would be paid them from his treasury.

The liberality of Lewis, however, was much less rare and admirable than the exquisite delicacy with which he

laboured to soothe the feelings of his guests and to lighten the almost intolerable weight of the obligations

which he laid upon them. He who had hitherto, on all questions of precedence, been sensitive, litigious,

insolent, who had been more than once ready to plunge Europe into war rather than concede the most

frivolous point of etiquette, was now punctilious indeed, but punctilious for his unfortunate friends against

himself. He gave orders that Mary should receive all the marks of respect that had ever been paid to his own

deceased wife. A question was raised whether the Princes of the House of Bourbon were entitled to be

indulged with chairs in the presence of the Queen. Such trifles were serious matters at the old court of France.

There were precedents on both sides: but Lewis decided the point against his own blood. Some ladies of

illustrious rank omitted the ceremony of kissing the hem of Mary's robe. Lewis remarked the omission, and

noticed it in such a voice and with such a look that the whole peerage was ever after ready to kiss her shoe.

When Esther, just written by Racine, was acted at Saint Cyr, Mary had the seat of honour. James was at her

right hand. Lewis modestly placed himself on the left. Nay, he was well pleased that, in his own palace, an

outcast living on his bounty should assume the title of King of France, should, as King of France, quarter the

lilies with the English lions, and should, as King of France, dress in violet on days of court mourning.

The demeanour of the French nobility on public occasions was absolutely regulated by their sovereign: but it

was beyond even his power to prevent them from thinking freely, and from expressing what they thought, in

private circles, with the keen and delicate wit characteristic of their nation and of their order. Their opinion of

Mary was favourable. They found her person agreeable and her deportment dignified. They respected her

courage and her maternal affection; and they pitied her ill fortune. But James they regarded with extreme

contempt. They were disgusted by his insensibility, by the cool way in which he talked to every body of his

ruin, and by the childish pleasure which he took in the pomp and luxury of Versailles. This strange apathy

they attributed, not to philosophy or religion, but to stupidity and meanness of spirit, and remarked that

nobody who had had the honour to hear His Britannic Majesty tell his own story could wonder that he was at

In the United Provinces the excitement produced by the tidings from England was even greater than in

France. This was the moment at which the Batavian federation reached the highest point of power and glory.

From the day on which the expedition sailed, the anxiety of the whole Dutch nation had been intense. Never

had there been such crowds in the churches. Never had the enthusiasm of the preachers been so ardent. The

inhabitants of the Hague could not be restrained from insulting Albeville. His house was so closely beset by

the populace, day and night, that scarcely any person ventured to visit him; and he was afraid that his chapel

would be burned to the ground.626 As mail after mail arrived with news of the Prince's progress, the spirits

of his countrymen rose higher and higher; and when at length it was known that he had, on the invitation of

the Lords and of an assembly of eminent commoners, taken on himself the executive administration, a

general cry of pride and joy rose from all the Dutch factions. An extraordinary mission was, with great speed,

despatched to congratulate him. Dykvelt, whose adroitness and intimate knowledge of English politics made

his assistance, at such a conjuncture, peculiarly valuable, was one of the Ambassadors; and with him was

joined Nicholas Witsen, a Burgomaster of Amsterdam, who seems to have been selected for the purpose of

proving to all Europe that the long feud between the House of Orange and the chief city of Holland was at an

end. On the eighth of January Dykvelt and Witsen made their appearance at Westminster. William talked to

them with a frankness and an effusion of heart which seldom appeared in his conversations with Englishmen.

His first words were, "Well, and what do our friends at home say now?" In truth, the only applause by which

his stoical nature seems to have been strongly moved was the applause of his dear native country. Of his

immense popularity in England he spoke with cold disdain, and predicted, too truly, the reaction which

followed. "Here," said he, "the cry is all Hosannah today, and will, perhaps, be Crucify him tomorrow."627

On the following day the first members of the Convention were chosen. The City of London led the way, and

elected, without any contest, four great merchants who were zealous Whigs. The King and his adherents had

hoped that many returning officers would treat the Prince's letter as a nullity; but the hope was disappointed.

The elections went on rapidly and smoothly. There were scarcely any contests. For the nation had, during

more than a year, been kept in constant expectation of a Parliament. Writs, indeed, had been twice issued, and

twice recalled. Some constituent bodies had, under those writs, actually proceeded to the choice of

representatives. There was scarcely a county in which the gentry and yeomanry had not, many months before,

fixed upon candidates, good Protestants, whom no exertions must be spared to carry, in defiance of the King

and of the Lord Lieutenant; and these candidates were now generally returned without opposition.

The Prince gave strict orders that no person in the public service should, on this occasion, practise those arts

which had brought so much obloquy on the late government. He especially directed that no soldiers should be

suffered to appear in any town where an election was going on.628 His admirers were able to boast, and his

enemies seem not to have been able to deny, that the sense of the constituent bodies was fairly taken. It is true

that he risked little. The party which was attached to him was triumphant, enthusiastic, full of life and energy.

The party from which alone he could expect serious opposition was disunited and disheartened, out of

humour with itself, and still more out of humour with its natural chief. A great majority, therefore, of the

It was not over England alone that William's guardianship now extended. Scotland had risen on her tyrants.

All the regular soldiers by whom she had long been held down had been summoned by James to his help

against the Dutch invaders, with the exception of a very small force, which, under the command of the Duke

of Gordon, a great Roman Catholic Lord, garrisoned the Castle of Edinburgh. Every mail which had gone

northward during the eventful month of November had carried news which stirred the passions of the

oppressed Scots. While the event of the military operations was still doubtful, there were at Edinburgh riots

and clamours which became more menacing after James had retreated from Salisbury. Great crowds

assembled at first by night, and then by broad daylight. Popes were publicly burned: loud shouts were raised

for a free Parliament: placards were stuck up setting prices on the heads of the ministers of the crown. Among

those ministers Perth, as filling the great place of Chancellor, as standing high in the royal favour, as an

apostate from the reformed faith, and as the man who had first introduced the thumbscrew into the

jurisprudence of his country, was the most detested. His nerves were weak, his spirit abject; and the only

courage which he possessed was that evil courage which braves infamy, and which looks steadily on the

torments of others. His post, at such a time, was at the head of the Council board: but his heart failed him;

and he determined to take refuge at his country seat from the danger which, as he judged by the looks and

cries of the fierce and resolute populace of Edinburgh, was not remote. A strong guard escorted him safe to

Castle Drummond: but scarcely had he departed when the city rose up. A few troops tried to suppress the

insurrection, but were overpowered. The palace of Holyrood, which had been turned into a Roman Catholic

seminary and printing house, was stormed and sacked. Huge heaps of Popish books, beads, crucifixes, and

pictures were burned in the High Street. In the midst of the agitation came down the tidings of the King's

flight. The members of the government gave up all thought of contending with the popular fury, and changed

sides with a promptitude then common among Scottish politicians. The Privy Council by one proclamation

ordered that all Papists should be disarmed, and by another invited Protestants to muster for the defence of

pure religion. The nation had not waited for the call. Town and country were already up in arms for the

Prince of Orange. Nithisdale and Clydesdale were the only regions in which there was the least chance that

the Roman Catholics would make head; and both Nithisdale and Clydesdale were soon occupied by bands of

armed Presbyterians. Among the insurgents were some fierce and moody men who had formerly disowned

Argyle, and who were now equally eager to disown William. His Highness, they said, was plainly a

malignant. There was not a word about the Covenant in his Declaration. The Dutch were a people with whom

no true servant of the Lord would unite. They consorted with Lutherans; and a Lutheran was as much a child

of perdition as a Jesuit. The general voice of the kingdom, however, effectually drowned the growl of this

The commotion soon reached the neighbourhood of Castle Drummond. Perth found that he was no longer

safe among his own servants and tenants. He gave himself up to an agony as bitter as that into which his

merciless tyranny had often thrown better men. He wildly tried to find consolation in the rites of his new

Church. He importuned his priests for comfort, prayed, confessed, and communicated: but his faith was

weak; and he owned that, in spite of all his devotions, the strong terrors of death were upon him. At this time

he learned that he had a chance of escaping on board of a ship which lay off Brentisland. He disguised

himself as well as he could, and, after a long and difficult journey by unfrequented paths over the Ochill

mountains, which were then deep in snow, he succeeded in embarking: but, in spite of all his precautions, he

had been recognised, and the alarm had been given. As soon as it was known that the cruel renegade was on

the waters, and that he had gold with him, pursuers, inflamed at once by hatred and by avarice, were on his

track, A skiff, commanded by an old buccaneer, overtook the flying vessel and boarded her. Perth was

dragged out of the hold on deck in woman's clothes, stripped, hustled, and plundered. Bayonets were held to

his breast. Begging for life with unmanly cries, he was hurried to the shore and flung into the common gaol

of Kirkaldy. Thence, by order of the Council over which he had lately presided, and which was filled with

men who had been partakers in his guilt, he was removed to Stirling Castle. It was on a Sunday, during the

time of public worship, that he was conveyed under a guard to his place of confinement: but even rigid

Puritans forgot the sanctity of the day and of the work. The churches poured forth their congregations as the

torturer passed by, and the noise of threats, execrations, and screams of hatred accompanied him to the gate

Several eminent Scotsmen were in London when the Prince arrived there; and many others now hastened

thither to pay their court to him. On the seventh of January he requested them to attend him at Whitehall. The

assemblage was large and respectable. The Duke of Hamilton and his eldest son, the Earl of Arran, the chiefs

of a house of almost regal dignity, appeared at the head of the procession. They were accompanied by thirty

Lords and about eighty gentlemen of note. William desired them to consult together, and to let him know in

what way he could best promote the welfare of their country. He then withdrew, and left them to deliberate

unrestrained by his presence. They repaired to the Council chamber, and put Hamilton into the chair. Though

there seems to have been little difference of opinion, their debates lasted three days, a fact which is

sufficiently explained by the circumstance that Sir Patrick Hume was one of the debaters. Arran ventured to

recommend a negotiation with the King. But this motion was ill received by the mover's father and by the

whole assembly, and did not even find a seconder. At length resolutions were carried closely resembling the

resolutions which the English Lords and Commoners had presented to the Prince a few days before. He was

requested to call together a Convention of the Estates of Scotland, to fix the fourteenth of March for the day

of meeting, and, till that day, to take on himself the civil and military administration. To this request he

acceded; and thenceforth the government of the whole island was in his hands.631

The decisive moment approached; and the agitation of the public mind rose to the height. Knots of politicians

were everywhere whispering and consulting. The coffeehouses were in a ferment. The presses of the capital

never rested. Of the pamphlets which appeared at that time, enough may still be collected to form several

volumes; and from those pamphlets it is not difficult to gather a correct notion of the state of parties.

There was a very small faction which wished to recall James without stipulations. There was also a very

small faction which wished to set up a commonwealth, and to entrust the administration to a council of state

under the presidency of the Prince of Orange. But these extreme opinions were generally held in abhorrence.

Nineteen twentieths , of the nation consisted of persons in whom love of hereditary monarchy and love of

constitutional freedom were combined, though in different proportions, and who were equally opposed to the

total abolition of the kingly office and to the unconditional restoration of the King.

But, in the wide interval which separated the bigots who still clung to the doctrines of Filmer from the

enthusiasts who still dreamed the dreams of Harrington, there was room for many shades of opinion. If we

neglect minute subdivisions, we shall find that the great majority of the nation and of the Convention was

divided into four bodies. Three of these bodies consisted of Tories. The Whig party formed the fourth.

The amity of the Whigs and Tories had not survived the peril which had produced it. On several occasions,

during the Prince's march from the West, dissension had appeared among his followers. While the event of

his enterprise was doubtful, that dissension had, by his skilful management, been easily quieted. But, from

the day on which he entered Saint James's palace in triumph, such management could no longer be practised.

His victory, by relieving the nation from the strong dread of Popish tyranny, had deprived him of half his

influence. Old antipathies, which had slept when Bishops were in the Tower, when Jesuits were at the

Council board, when loyal clergymen were deprived of their bread by scores, when loyal gentlemen were put

out of the commission of the peace by hundreds, were again strong and active. The Royalist shuddered at the

thought that he was allied with all that from his youth up he had most hated, with old parliamentary Captains

who had stormed his country house, with old parliamentary Commissioners who had sequestrated his estate,

with men who had plotted the Rye House butchery and headed the Western rebellion. That beloved Church,

too, for whose sake he had, after a painful struggle, broken through his allegiance to the throne, was she

really in safety? Or had he rescued her from one enemy only that she might be exposed to another? The

Popish priests, indeed, were in exile, in hiding, or in prison. No Jesuit or Benedictine who valued his life now

dared to show himself in the habit of his order. But the Presbyterian and Independent teachers went in long

procession to salute the chief of the government, and were as graciously received as the true successors of the

Apostles. Some schismatics avowed the hope that every fence which excluded them from ecclesiastical

preferment would soon be levelled; that the Articles would be softened down; that the Liturgy would be

garbled; that Christmas would cease to be a feast; that Good Friday would cease to be a fast; that canons on

whom no Bishop had ever laid his hand would, without the sacred vestment of white linen, distribute, in the

choirs of Cathedrals, the eucharistic bread and wine to communicants lolling on benches. The Prince, indeed,

was not a fanatical Presbyterian; but he was at best a Latitudinarian. He had no scruple about communicating

in the Anglican form; but he cared not in what form other people communicated. His wife, it was to be

feared, had imbibed too much of his spirit. Her conscience was under the direction of Burnet. She heard

preachers of different Protestant sects. She had recently said that she saw no essential difference between the

Church of England and the other reformed Churches.632 It was necessary, therefore, that the Cavaliers

should, at this conjuncture, follow the example set by their fathers in 1641, should draw off from Roundheads

and sectaries, and should, in spite of all the faults of the hereditary monarch, uphold the cause of hereditary

The body which was animated by these sentiments was large and respectable. It included about one half of

the House of Lords, about one third of the House of Commons, a majority of the country gentlemen, and at

least nine tenths of the clergy; but it was torn by dissensions, and beset on every side by difficulties.

One section of this great party, a section which was especially strong among divines, and of which Sherlock

was the chief organ, wished that a negotiation should be opened with James, and that he should be invited to

return to Whitehall on such conditions as might fully secure the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the

realm.633 It is evident that this plan, though strenuously supported by the clergy, was altogether inconsistent

with the doctrines which the clergy had been teaching during many years. It was, in truth, an attempt to make

a middle way where there was no room for a middle way, to effect a compromise between two things which

do not admit of compromise, resistance and nonresistance. The Tories had formerly taken their stand on the

principle of nonresistance. But that ground most of them had now abandoned, and were not disposed again to

occupy. The Cavaliers of England had, as a class, been so deeply concerned, directly or indirectly, in the late

rising against the King, that they could not, for very shame, talk at that moment about the sacred duty of

obeying Nero; nor, indeed, were they disposed to recall the prince under whose misgovernment they had

suffered so much, without exacting from him terms which might make it impossible for him again to abuse

his power. They were, therefore, in a false position. Their old theory, sound or unsound, was at least complete

and coherent. If that theory were sound, the King ought to be immediately invited back, and permitted, if

such were his pleasure, to put Seymour and Danby, the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Bristol, to death

for high treason, to reestablish the Ecclesiastical Commission, to fill the Church with Popish dignitaries, and

to place the army under the command of Popish officers. But if, as the Tories themselves now seemed to

confess, that theory was unsound, why treat with the King? If it was admitted that he might lawfully be

excluded till be gave satisfactory guarantees for the security of the constitution in Church and State, it was

not easy to deny that he might lawfully be excluded for ever. For what satisfactory guarantee could he give?

How was it possible to draw up an Act of Parliament in language clearer than the language of the Acts of

Parliament which required that the Dean of Christ Church should be a Protestant? How was it possible to put

any promise into words stronger than those in which James had repeatedly declared that he would strictly

respect the legal rights of the Anglican clergy? If law or honour could have bound him, he would never have

been forced to fly from his kingdom. If neither law nor honour could bind him, could he safely be permitted

It is probable, however, that, in spite of these arguments, a motion for opening a negotiation with James

would have been made in the Convention, and would have been supported by the great body of Tories, had he

not been, on this, as on every other occasion, his own worst enemy. Every post which arrived from Saint

Germains brought intelligence which damped the ardour of his adherents. He did not think it worth his while

to feign regret for his past errors, or to promise amendment. He put forth a manifesto, telling his people that it

had been his constant care to govern them with justice and moderation, and that they had been cheated into

ruin by imaginary grievances.634 The effect of his folly and obstinacy was that those who were most

desirous to see him restored to his throne on fair conditions felt that, by proposing at that moment to treat

with him, they should injure the cause which they wished to serve. They therefore determined to coalesce

with another body of Tories of whom Sancroft was the chief. Sancroft fancied that he had found out a device

by which provision might be made for the government of the country without recalling James, and yet

without despoiling him of his crown. This device was a Regency. The most uncompromising of those divines

who had inculcated the doctrine of passive obedience had never maintained that such obedience was due to a

babe or to a madman. It was universally acknowledged that, when the rightful sovereign was intellectually

incapable of performing his office, a deputy might be appointed to act in his stead, and that any person who

should resist the deputy, and should plead as an excuse for doing so the command of a prince who was in the

cradle, or who was raving, would justly incur the penalties of rebellion. Stupidity, perverseness, and

superstition, such was the reasoning of the Primate, had made James as unfit to rule his dominions as any

child in swaddling clothes, or as any maniac who was grinning and chattering in the straw of Bedlam. That

course must therefore be taken which had been taken when Henry the Sixth was an infant, and again when he

became lethargic. James could not be King in effect: but he must still continue to be King in semblance.

Writs must still run in his name. His image and superscription must still appear on the coin and on the Great

Seal. Acts of Parliament must still be called from the years of his reign. But the administration must be taken

from him and confided to a Regent named by the Estates of the Realm. In this way, Sancroft gravely

maintained, the people would remain true to their allegiance: the oaths of fealty which they had sworn to their

King would be strictly fulfilled; and the most orthodox Churchmen might, without any scruple of conscience,

The opinion of Sancroft had great weight with the whole Tory party, and especially with the clergy. A week

before the day for which the Convention had been summoned, a grave party assembled at Lambeth Palace,

heard prayers in the chapel, dined with the Primate, and then consulted on the state of public affairs. Five

suffragans of the Archbishop, who had shared his perils and his glory in the preceding summer, were present.

The Earls of Clarendon and Ailesbury represented the Tory laity. The unanimous sense of the meeting

appeared to be that those who had taken the oath of allegiance to James might justifiably withdraw their

obedience from him, but could not with a safe conscience call any other by the name of King.636

Thus two sections of the Tory party, a section which looked forward to an accommodation with James, and a

section which was opposed to any such accommodation, agreed in supporting the plan of Regency. But a

third section, which, though not very numerous, had great weight and influence, recommended a very

different plan. The leaders of this small band were Danby and the Bishop of London in the House of Lords,

and Sir Robert Sawyer in the House of Commons. They conceived that they had found out a way of effecting

a complete revolution under strictly legal forms. It was contrary to all principle, they said, that the King

should be deposed by his subjects; nor was it necessary to depose him. He had himself, by his flight,

abdicated his power and dignity. A demise had actually taken place. All constitutional lawyers held that the

throne of England could not be one moment vacant. The next heir had therefore succeeded. Who, then, was

the next heir? As to the infant who had been carried into France, his entrance into the world had been

attended by many suspicious circumstances. It was due to the other members of the royal family and to the

nation that all doubts should be cleared up. An investigation had been solemnly demanded, in the name of the

Princess of Orange, by her husband, and would have been instituted if the parties who were accused of fraud

had not taken a course which, in any ordinary case, would have been considered as a decisive proof of guilt.

They had not chosen to await the issue of a solemn parliamentary proceeding: they had stolen away into a

foreign country: they had carried with them the child: they had carried with them all those French and Italian

women of the bedchamber who, if there had been foul play, must have been privy to it, and who ought

therefore to have been subjected to a rigorous cross examination. To admit the boy's claim without inquiry

was impossible; and those who called themselves his parents had made inquiry impossible. Judgment must

therefore go against him by default. If he was wronged, he was wronged, not by the nation, but by those

whose strange conduct at the time of his birth had justified the nation in demanding investigation, and who

had then avoided investigation by flight. He might therefore, with perfect equity, be considered as a

pretender. And thus the crown had legally devolved on the Princess of Orange. She was actually Queen

Regnant. The Houses had nothing to do but to proclaim her. She might, if such were her pleasure, make her

husband her first minister, and might even, with the consent of Parliament, bestow on him the title of King.

The persons who preferred this scheme to any other were few; and it was certain to be opposed, both by all

who still bore any good will to James, and by all the adherents of William. Yet Danby, confident in his own

knowledge of parliamentary tactics, and well aware how much, when great parties are nearly balanced, a

small flying squadron can effect, was not without hopes of being able to keep the event of the contest in

suspense till both Whigs and Tories, despairing of complete victory, and afraid of the consequences of delay,

should suffer him to act as umpire. Nor is it impossible that he might have succeeded if his efforts had been

seconded, nay, if they had not been counteracted, by her whom he wished to raise to the height of human

greatness. Quicksighted as he was and versed in affairs, he was altogether ignorant of the character of Mary,

and of the feeling with which she regarded her husband; nor was her old preceptor, Compton, better

informed. William's manners were dry and cold, his constitution was infirm, and his temper by no means

bland; he was not a man who would commonly be thought likely to inspire a fine young woman of

twentysix with a violent passion. It was known that he had not always been strictly constant to his wife; and

talebearers had reported that she did not live happily with him. The most acute politicians therefore never

suspected that, with all his faults, he had obtained such an empire over her heart as princes the most

renowned for their success in gallantry, Francis the First and Henry the Fourth, Lewis the Fourteenth and

Charles the Second, had never obtained over the heart of any woman, and that the three kingdoms of her

forefathers were valuable in her estimation chiefly because, by bestowing them on him, she could prove to

him the intensity and disinterestedness of her affection. Danby, in profound ignorance of her sentiments,

assured her that he would defend her rights, and that, if she would support him, he hoped to place her alone

The course of the Whigs, meanwhile, was simple and consistent. Their doctrine was that the foundation of

our government was a contract expressed on one side by the oath of allegiance, and on the other by the

coronation oath, and that the duties imposed by this contract were mutual. They held that a sovereign who

grossly abused his power might lawfully be withstood and dethroned by his people. That James had grossly

abused his power was not disputed; and the whole Whig party was ready to pronounce that he had forfeited it.

Whether the Prince of Wales was supposititious, was a point not worth discussing. There were now far

stronger reasons than any which could be drawn from the circumstances of his birth for excluding him from

the throne. A child, brought to the royal couch in a warming pan, might possibly prove a good King of

England. But there could be no such hope for a child educated by a father who was the most stupid and

obstinate of tyrants, in a foreign country, the seat of despotism and superstition; in a country where the last

traces of liberty had disappeared; where the States General had ceased to meet; where parliaments had long

registered without one remonstrance the most oppressive edicts of the sovereign; where valour, genius,

learning, seemed to exist only for the purpose of aggrandising a single man; where adulation was the main

business of the press, the pulpit, and the stage; and where one chief subject of adulation was the barbarous

persecution of the Reformed Church. Was the boy likely to learn, under such tuition and in such a situation,

respect for the institutions of his native land? Could it be doubted that he would be brought up to be the slave

of the Jesuits and the Bourbons, and that he would be, if possible, more bitterly prejudiced than any preceding

Nor did the Whigs think that, situated as the country then was, a departure from the ordinary rule of

succession was in itself an evil. They were of opinion that, till that rule had been broken, the doctrines of

indefeasible hereditary right and passive obedience would be pleasing to the court, would be inculcated by

the clergy, and would retain a strong hold on the public mind. The notion would still prevail that the kingly

office is the ordinance of God in a sense different from that in which all government is his ordinance. It was

plain that, till this superstition was extinct, the constitution could never be secure. For a really limited

monarchy cannot long exist in a society which regards monarchy as something divine, and the limitations as

mere human inventions. Royalty, in order that it might exist in perfect harmony with our liberties, must be

unable to show any higher or more venerable title than that by which we hold our liberties. The King must be

henceforth regarded as a magistrate, a great magistrate indeed and highly to be honoured, but subject, like all

other magistrates, to the law, and deriving his power from heaven in no other sense than that in which the

Lords and the Commons may be said to derive their power from heaven. The best way of effecting this

salutary change would be to interrupt the course of descent. Under sovereigns who would consider it as little

short of high treason to preach nonresistance and the patriarchal theory of government, under sovereigns

whose authority, springing from resolutions of the two Houses, could never rise higher than its source, there

would be little risk of oppression such as had compelled two generations of Englishmen to rise in arms

against two generations of Stuarts. On these grounds the Whigs were prepared to declare the throne vacant, to

fill it by election, and to impose on the prince of their choice such conditions as might secure the country

The time for the decision of these great questions had now arrived. At break of day, on the twentysecond of

January, the House of Commons was crowded with knights and burgesses. On the benches appeared many

faces which had been well known in that place during the reign of Charles the Second, but had not been seen

there under his successor. Most of those Tory squires, and of those needy retainers of the court, who had been

returned in multitudes to the Parliament of 1685, had given place to the men of the old country party, the men

who had driven the Cabal from power, who had carried the Habeas Corpus Act, and who had sent up the

Exclusion Bill to the Lords. Among them was Powle, deeply read in the history and law of Parliament, and

distinguished by the species of eloquence which is required when grave questions are to be solemnly brought

under the notice of senates; and Sir Thomas Littleton, versed in European politics, and gifted with a vehement

and piercing logic which had often, when, after a long sitting, the candles had been lighted, roused the

languishing House, and decided the event of the debate. There, too, was William Sacheverell, an orator

whose great parliamentary abilities were, many years later, a favourite theme of old men who lived to see the

conflicts of Walpole and Pulteney.638 With these eminent persons was joined Sir Robert Clayton, the

wealthiest merchant of London, whose palace in the Old Jewry surpassed in splendour the aristocratical

mansions of Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden, whose villa among the Surrey hills was described as a

garden of Eden, whose banquets vied with those of Kings, and whose judicious munificence, still attested by

numerous public monuments, had obtained for him in the annals of the City a place second only to that of

Gresham. In the Parliament which met at Oxford in 1681, Clayton had, as member for the capital, and at the

request of his constituents, moved for leave to bring in the Bill of Exclusion, and had been seconded by Lord

Russell. In 1685 the City, deprived of its franchises and governed by the creatures of the court, had returned

four Tory representatives. But the old charter had now been restored; and Clayton had been again chosen by

acclamation.639 Nor must John Birch be passed over. He had begun life as a carter, but had, in the civil wars,

left his team, had turned soldier, had risen to the rank of Colonel in the army of the Commonwealth, had, in

high fiscal offices, shown great talents for business, had sate many years in Parliament, and, though retaining

to the last the rough manners and plebeian dialect of his youth, had, by strong sense and mother wit, gained

the ear of the Commons, and was regarded as a formidable opponent by the most accomplished debaters of

his time.640 These were the most conspicuous among the veterans who now, after a long seclusion, returned

to public life. But they were all speedily thrown into the shade by two younger Whigs, who, on this great day,

took their seats for the first time, who soon rose to the highest honours of the state, who weathered together

the fiercest storms of faction, and who, having been long and widely renowned as statesmen, as orators, and

as munificent patrons of genius and learning, died, within a few months of each other, soon after the

accession of the House of Brunswick. These were Charles Montague and John Somers.

One other name must be mentioned, a name then known only to a small circle of philosophers, but now

pronounced beyond the Ganges and the Mississippi with reverence exceeding that which is paid to the

memory of the greatest warriors and rulers. Among the crowd of silent members appeared the majestic

forehead and pensive face of Isaac Newton. The renowned University on which his genius had already begun

to impress a peculiar character, still plainly discernible after the lapse of a hundred and sixty years, had sent

him to the Convention; and he sate there, in his modest greatness, the unobtrusive but unflinching friend of

The first act of the Commons was to choose a Speaker; and the choice which they made indicated in a

manner not to be mistaken their opinion touching the great questions which they were about to decide. Down

to the very eve of the meeting, it had been understood that Seymour would be placed in the chair. He had

formerly sate there during several years. He had great and various titles to consideration; descent, fortune,

knowledge, experience, eloquence. He had long been at the head of a powerful band of members from the

Western counties. Though a Tory, he had in the last Parliament headed, with conspicuous ability and courage,

the opposition to Popery and arbitrary power. He had been among the first gentlemen who had repaired to the

Dutch head quarters at Exeter, and had been the author of that association by which the Prince's adherents

had bound themselves to stand or fall together. But, a few hours before the Houses met, a rumour was spread

that Seymour was against declaring the throne vacant. As soon, therefore, as the benches had filled, the Earl

of Wiltshire, who represented Hampshire, stood up, and proposed that Powle should be Speaker. Sir Vere

Fane, member for Kent, seconded the motion. A plausible objection might have been raised; for it was known

that a petition was about to be presented against Powle's return: but the general cry of the House called him to

the chair; and the Tories thought it prudent to acquiesce.641 The mace was then laid on the table; the list of

Meanwhile the Peers, about a hundred in number, had met, had chosen Halifax to be their Speaker, and had

appointed several eminent lawyers to perform the functions which, in regular Parliaments, belong to the

judges. There was, in the course of that day, frequent communication between the Houses. They joined in

requesting that the Prince would continue to administer the government till he should hear further from them,

in expressing to him their gratitude for the deliverance which he, under God, had wrought for the nation, and

in directing that the thirty first of January should be observed as a day of thanksgiving for that

Thus far no difference of opinion had appeared: but both sides were preparing for the conflict. The Tories

were strong in the Upper House, and weak in the Lower; and they knew that, at such a conjuncture, the House

which should be the first to come to a resolution would have a great advantage over the other. There was not

the least chance that the Commons would send up to the Lords a vote in favour of the plan of Regency: but, if

such a vote were sent down from the Lords to the Commons, it was not absolutely impossible that many even

of the Whig representatives of the people might be disposed to acquiesce rather than take the grave

responsibility of causing discord and delay at a crisis which required union and expedition. The Commons

had determined that, on Monday the twentyeighth of January, they would take into consideration the state of

the nation. The Tory Lords therefore proposed, on Friday the twentyfifth, to enter instantly on the great

business for which they had been called together. But their motives were clearly discerned and their tactics

frustrated by Halifax, who, ever since his return from Hungerford, had seen that the settlement of the

government could be effected on Whig principles only, and who had therefore, for the time, allied himself

closely with the Whigs. Devonshire moved that Tuesday the twentyninth should be the day. "By that time,"

he said with more truth than discretion, "we may have some lights from below which may be useful for our

guidance." His motion was carried; but his language was severely censured by some of his brother peers as

On the twentyeighth the Commons resolved themselves into a committee of the whole House. A member

who had, more than thirty years before, been one of Cromwell's Lords, Richard Hampden, son of the

illustrious leader of the Roundheads, and father of the unhappy man who had, by large bribes and degrading

submissions, narrowly escaped with life from the vengeance of James, was placed in the chair, and the great

It was soon evident that an overwhelming majority considered James as no longer King. Gilbert Dolben, son

of the late Archbishop of York, was the first who declared himself to be of that opinion. He was supported by

many members, particularly by the bold and vehement Wharton, by Sawyer, whose steady opposition to the

dispensing power had, in some measure, atoned for old offences, by Maynard, whose voice, though so feeble

with age that it could not be heard on distant benches, still commanded the respect of all parties, and by

Somers, whose luminous eloquence and varied stores of knowledge were on that day exhibited, for the first

time, within the walls of Parliament. The unblushing forehead and voluble tongue of Sir William Williams

were found on the same side. Already he had been deeply concerned in the excesses both of the worst of

oppositions and of the worst of governments. He had persecuted innocent Papists and innocent Protestants.

He had been the patron of Oates and the tool of Petre. His name was associated with seditious violence which

was remembered with regret and shame by all respectable Whigs, and with freaks of despotism abhorred by

all respectable Tories. How men live under such infamy it is not easy to understand: but even such infamy

was not enough for Williams. He was not ashamed to attack the fallen master to whom he had hired himself

out for work which no honest man in the Inns of Court would undertake, and from whom he had, within six

Only three members ventured to oppose themselves to what was evidently the general sense of the assembly.

Sir Christopher Musgrave, a Tory gentleman of great weight and ability, hinted some doubts. Heneage Finch

let fall some expressions which were understood to mean that he wished a negotiation to be opened with the

King. This suggestion was so ill received that he made haste to explain it away. He protested that he had been

misapprehended. He was convinced that, under such a prince, there could be no security for religion, liberty,

or property. To recall King James, or to treat with him, would be a fatal course; but many who would never

consent that he should exercise the regal power had conscientious scruples about depriving him of the royal

title. There was one expedient which would remove all difficulties, a Regency. This proposition found so

little favour that Finch did not venture to demand a division. Richard Fanshaw, Viscount Fanshaw of the

kingdom of Ireland, said a few words in behalf of James, and recommended an adjournment: but the

recommendation was met by a general outcry. Member after member stood up to represent the importance of

despatch. Every moment, it was said, was precious, the public anxiety was intense, trade was suspended. The

minority sullenly submitted, and suffered the predominant party to take its own course.

What that course would be was not perfectly clear. For the majority was made up of two classes. One class

consisted of eager and vehement Whigs, who, if they had been able to take their own course, would have

given to the proceedings of the Convention a decidedly revolutionary character. The other class admitted that

a revolution was necessary, but regarded it as a necessary evil, and wished to disguise it, as much as possible,

under the show of legitimacy. The former class demanded a distinct recognition of the right of subjects to

dethrone bad princes. The latter class desired to rid the country of one bad prince, without promulgating any

doctrine which might be abused for the purpose of weakening the just and salutary authority of future

monarchs. The former class dwelt chiefly on the King's misgovernment; the latter on his flight. The former

class considered him as having forfeited his crown; the latter as having resigned it. It was not easy to draw up

any form of words which would please all whose assent it was important to obtain; but at length, out of many

suggestions offered from different quarters, a resolution was framed which gave general satisfaction. It was

moved that King James the Second, having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of the kingdom by

breaking the original contract between King and people, and, by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked

persons, having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, had

This resolution has been many times subjected to criticism as minute and severe as was ever applied to any

sentence written by man, and perhaps there never was a sentence written by man which would bear such

criticism less. That a King by grossly abusing his power may forfeit it is true. That a King, who absconds

without making any provision for the administration, and leaves his people in a state of anarchy, may,

without any violent straining of language, be said to have abdicated his functions is also true. But no accurate

writer would affirm that long continued misgovernment and desertion, added together, make up an act of

abdication. It is evident too that the mention of the Jesuits and other evil advisers of James weakens, instead

of strengthening, the case against him. For surely more indulgence is due to a man misled by pernicious

counsel than to a man who goes wrong from the mere impulse of his own mind. It is idle, however, to

examine these memorable words as we should examine a chapter of Aristotle or of Hobbes. Such words are

to be considered, not as words, but as deeds. If they effect that which they are intended to effect, they are

rational, though they may be contradictory. It they fail of attaining their end, they are absurd, though they

carry demonstration with them. Logic admits of no compromise. The essense of politics is compromise. It is

therefore not strange that some of the most important and most useful political instruments in the world

should be among the most illogical compositions that ever were penned. The object of Somers, of Maynard,

and of the other eminent men who shaped this celebrated motion was, not to leave to posterity a model of

definition and partition, but to make the restoration of a tyrant impossible, and to place on the throne a

sovereign under whom law and liberty might be secure. This object they attained by using language which, in

a philosophical treatise, would justly be reprehended as inexact and confused. They cared little whether their

major agreed with their conclusion, if the major secured two hundred votes, and the conclusion two hundred

more. In fact the one beauty of the resolution is its inconsistency. There was a phrase for every subdivision of

the majority. The mention of the original contract gratified the disciples of Sidney. The word abdication

conciliated politicians of a more timid school. There were doubtless many fervent Protestants who were

pleased with the censure cast on the Jesuits. To the real statesman the single important clause was that which

declared the throne vacant; and, if that clause could be carried, he cared little by what preamble it might be

introduced. The force which was thus united made all resistance hopeless. The motion was adopted by the

Committee without a division. It was ordered that the report should be instantly made. Powle returned to the

chair: the mace was laid on the table: Hampden brought up the resolution: the House instantly agreed to it,

On the following morning the Lords assembled early. The benches both of the spiritual and of the temporal

peers were crowded. Hampden appeared at the bar, and put the resolution of the Commons into the hands of

Halifax. The Upper House then resolved itself into a committee; and Danby took the chair. The discussion

was soon interrupted by the reappearance of Hampden with another message. The House resumed and was

informed that the Commons had just voted it inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant nation

to be governed by a Popish King. To this resolution, irreconcilable as it obviously was with the doctrine of

indefeasible hereditary right, the Peers gave an immediate and unanimous assent. The principle which was

thus affirmed has always, down to our own time, been held sacred by all Protestant statesmen, and has never

been considered by any reasonable Roman Catholic as objectionable. If, indeed, our sovereigns were, like the

Presidents of the United States, mere civil functionaries, it would not be easy to vindicate such a restriction.

But the headship of the English Church is annexed to the English crown; and there is no intolerance in saying

that a Church ought not to be subjected to a head who regards her as schismatical and heretical.645

After this short interlude the Lords again went into committee. The Tories insisted that their plan should be

discussed before the vote of the Commons which declared the throne vacant was considered. This was

conceded to them; and the question was put whether a Regency, exercising kingly power during the life of

James, in his name, would be the best expedient for preserving the laws and liberties of the nation?

The contest was long and animated. The chief speakers in favour of a Regency were Rochester and

Nottingham. Halifax and Danby led the other side. The Primate, strange to say, did not make his appearance,

though earnestly importuned by the Tory peers to place himself at their head. His absence drew on him many

contumelious censures; nor have even his eulogists been able to find any explanation of it which raises his

character.646 The plan of Regency was his own. He had, a few days before, in a paper written with his own

hand, pronounced that plan to be clearly the best that could be adopted. The deliberations of the Lords who

supported that plan had been carried on under his roof. His situation made it his clear duty to declare publicly

what he thought. Nobody can suspect him of personal cowardice or of vulgar cupidity. It was probably from a

nervous fear of doing wrong that, at this great conjuncture, he did nothing: but he should have known that,

situated as he was, to do nothing was to do wrong. A man who is too scrupulous to take on himself a grave

responsibility at an important crisis ought to be too scrupulous to accept the place of first minister of the

It is not strange, however, that Sancroft's mind should have been ill at case; for he could hardly be blind to

the obvious truth that the scheme which he had recommended to his friends was utterly inconsistent with all

that he and his brethren had been teaching during many years. That the King had a divine and indefeasible

right to the regal power, and that the regal power, even when most grossly abused, could not without sin, be

resisted, was the doctrine in which the Anglican Church had long gloried. Did this doctrine then really mean

only that the King had a divine and indefeasible right to have his effigy and name cut on a seal which was to

be daily employed in despite of him for the purpose of commissioning his enemies to levy war on him, and of

sending his friends to the gallows for obeying him? Did the whole duty of a good subject consist in using the

word King? If so, Fairfax at Naseby and Bradshaw in the High Court of justice had performed all the duty of

good subjects. For Charles had been designated by the generals who commanded against him, and even by

the judges who condemned him, as King. Nothing in the conduct of the Long Parliament had been more

severely blamed by the Church than the ingenious device of using the name of Charles against himself. Every

one of her ministers had been required to sign a declaration condemning as traitorous the fiction by which the

authority of the sovereign had been separated from his person.647 Yet this traitorous fiction was now

considered by the Primate and by many of his suffragans as the only basis on which they could, in strict

The distinction which Sancroft had borrowed from the Roundheads of the preceding generation subverted

from the foundation that system of politics which the Church and the Universities pretended to have learned

from Saint Paul. The Holy Spirit, it had been a thousand times repeated, had commanded the Romans to be

subject to Nero. The meaning of the precept now appeared to be only that the Romans were to call Nero

Augustus. They were perfectly at liberty to chase him beyond the Euphrates, to leave him a pensioner on the

bounty of the Parthians, to withstand him by force if he attempted to return, to punish all who aided him or

corresponded with him, and to transfer the Tribunitian power and the Consular power, the Presidency of the

The analogy which the Archbishop imagined that he had discovered between the case of a wrongheaded King

and the case of a lunatic King will not bear a moment's examination. It was plain that James was not in that

state of mind in which, if he had been a country gentleman or a merchant, any tribunal would have held him

incapable of executing a contract or a will. He was of unsound mind only as all bad Kings are of unsound

mind; as Charles the First had been of unsound mind when he went to seize the five members; as Charles the

Second had been of unsound mind when he concluded the treaty of Dover. If this sort of mental unsoundness

did not justify subjects in withdrawing their obedience from princes, the plan of a Regency was evidently

indefensible. If this sort of mental unsoundness did justify subjects in withdrawing their obedience from

princes, the doctrine of nonresistance was completely given up; and all that any moderate Whig had ever

As to the oath of allegiance about which Sancroft and his disciples were so anxious, one thing at least is clear,

that, whoever might be right, they were wrong. The Whigs held that, in the oath of allegiance, certain

conditions were implied, that the King had violated these conditions, and that the oath had therefore lost its

force. But, if the Whig doctrine were false, if the oath were still binding, could men of sense really believe

that they escaped the guilt of perjury by voting for a Regency? Could they affirm that they bore true

allegiance to James while they were in defiance of his protestations made before all Europe, authorising

another person to receive the royal revenues, to summon and prorogue parliaments, to create Dukes and

Earls, to name Bishops and judges, to pardon offenders, to command the forces of the state, and to conclude

treaties with foreign powers? Had Pascal been able to find, in all the folios of the Jesuitical casuists, a

sophism more contemptible than that which now, as it seemed, sufficed to quiet the consciences of the fathers

Nothing could be more evident than that the plan of Regency could be defended only on Whig principles.

Between the rational supporters of that plan and the majority of the House of Commons there could he no

dispute as to the question of right. All that remained was a question of expediency. And would any statesman

seriously contend that it was expedient to constitute a government with two heads, and to give to one of those

heads regal power without regal dignity, and to the other regal dignity without regal power? It was notorious

that such an arrangement, even when made necessary by the infancy or insanity of a prince, had serious

disadvantages. That times of Regency were times of weakness, of trouble and of disaster, was a truth proved

by the whole history of England, of France, and of Scotland, and had almost become a proverb. Yet, in a case

of infancy or of insanity, the King was at least passive. He could not actively counterwork the Regent. What

was now proposed was that England should have two first magistrate, of ripe age and sound mind, waging

with each other an irreconcilable war. It was absurd to talk of leaving James merely the kingly name, and

depriving him of all the kingly power. For the name was a part of the power. The word King was a word of

conjuration. It was associated in the minds of many Englishmen with the idea of a mysterious character

derived from above, and in the minds of almost all Englishmen with the idea of legitimate and venerable

authority. Surely, if the title carried with it such power, those who maintained that James ought to be

And how long was the anomalous government planned by the genius of Sancroft to last? Every argument

which could be urged for setting it up at all might be urged with equal force for retaining it to the end of time.

If the boy who had been carried into France was really born of the Queen, he would hereafter inherit the

divine and indefeasible right to be called King. The same right would very probably be transmitted from

Papist to Papist through the whole of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Both the Houses had

unanimously resolved that England should not be governed by a Papist. It might well be, therefore, that, from

generation to generation, Regents would continue to administer the government in the name of vagrant and

mendicant Kings. There was no doubt that the Regents must be appointed by Parliament. The effect,

therefore, of this contrivance, a contrivance intended to preserve unimpaired the sacred principle of

Another unanswerable reason was urged against Sancroft's plan. There was in the statute book a law which

had been passed soon after the close of the long and bloody contest between the Houses of York and

Lancaster, and which had been framed for the purpose of averting calamities such as the alternate victories of

those Houses had brought on the nobility and gentry of the realm. By this law it was provided that no person

should, by adhering to a King in possession, incur the penalties of treason. When the regicides were brought

to trial after the Restoration, some of them insisted that their case lay within the equity of this act. They had

obeyed, they said, the government which was in possession, and were therefore not traitors. The Judges

admitted that this would have been a good defence if the prisoners had acted under the authority of an usurper

who, like Henry the Fourth and Richard the Third, bore the regal title, but declared that such a defence could

not avail men who had indicted, sentenced, and executed one who, in the indictment, in the sentence, and in

the death warrant, was designated as King. It followed, therefore, that whoever should support a Regent in

opposition to James would run great risk of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, if ever James should recover

supreme power; but that no person could, without such a violation of law as Jeffreys himself would hardly

venture to commit, be punished for siding with a King who was reigning, though wrongfully, at Whitehall,

It should seem that these arguments admit of no reply; and they were doubtless urged with force by Danby,

who had a wonderful power of making every subject which he treated clear to the dullest mind, and by

Halifax, who, in fertility of thought and brilliancy of diction, had no rival among the orators of that age. Yet

so numerous and powerful were the Tories in the Upper House that, notwithstanding the weakness of their

case, the defection of their leader, and the ability of their opponents, they very nearly carried the day. A

hundred Lords divided. Forty nine voted for a Regency, fiftyone against it. In the minority were the natural

children of Charles, the brothers in law of James, the Dukes of Somerset and Ormond, the Archbishop of

York and eleven Bishops. No prelate voted in the majority except Compton and Trelawney.649

It was near nine in the evening before the House rose. The following day was the thirtieth of January, the

anniversary of the death of Charles the First. The great body of the Anglican clergy had, during many years,

thought it a sacred duty to inculcate on that day the doctrines of nonresistance and passive obedience. Their

old sermons were now of little use; and many divines were even in doubt whether they could venture to read

the whole Liturgy. The Lower House had declared that the throne was vacant. The Upper had not yet

expressed any opinion. It was therefore not easy to decide whether the prayers for the sovereign ought to be

used. Every officiating minister took his own course. In most of the churches of the capital the petitions for

James were omitted: but at Saint Margaret's, Sharp, Dean of Norwich, who had been requested to preach

before the Commons, not only read to their faces the whole service as it stood in the book, but, before his

sermon, implored, in his own words, a blessing on the King, and, towards the close of his discourse,

declaimed against the Jesuitical doctrine that princes might lawfully be deposed by their subjects. The

Speaker, that very afternoon, complained to the House of this affront. "You pass a vote one day," he said;

"and on the next day it is contradicted from the pulpit in your own hearing." Sharp was strenuously defended

by the Tories, and had friends even among the Whigs: for it was not forgotten that he had incurred serious

danger in the evil times by the courage with which, in defiance of the royal injunction, he had preached

against Popery. Sir Christopher Musgrave very ingeniously remarked that the House had not ordered the

resolution which declared the throne vacant to be published. Sharp, therefore, was not only not bound to

know anything of that resolution, but could not have taken notice of it without a breach of privilege for which

he might have been called to the bar and reprimanded on his knees. The majority felt that it was not wise at

that conjuncture to quarrel with the clergy; and the subject was suffered to drop.650

While the Commons were discussing Sharp's sermon, the Lords had again gone into a committee on the state

of the nation, and had ordered the resolution which pronounced the throne vacant to be read clause by clause.

The first expression on which a debate arose was that which recognised the original contract between King

and people. It was not to be expected that the Tory peers would suffer a phrase which contained the

quintessence of Whiggism to pass unchallenged. A division took place; and it was determined by fiftythree

The severe censure passed by the Commons on the administration of James was next considered, and was

approved without one dissentient voice. Some verbal objections were made to the proposition that James had

abdicated the government. It was urged that he might more correctly be said to have deserted it. This

amendment was adopted, it should seem, with scarcely any debate, and without a division. By this time it was

Up to this moment the small body of peers which was under the guidance of Danby had acted in firm union

with Halifax and the Whigs. The effect of this union had been that the plan of Regency had been rejected, and

the doctrine of the original contract affirmed. The proposition that James had ceased to be King had been the

rallying point of the two parties which had made up the majority. But from that point their path diverged. The

next question to be decided was whether the throne was vacant; and this was a question not merely verbal,

but of grave practical importance. If the throne was vacant, the Estates of the Realm might place William in

it. If it was not vacant, he could succeed to it only after his wife, after Anne, and after Anne's posterity.

It was, according to the followers of Danby, an established maxim that our country could not be, even for a

moment, without a rightful prince. The man might die; but the magistrate was immortal. The man might

abdicate; but the magistrate was irremoveable. If, these politicians said, we once admit that the throne is

vacant, we admit that it is elective. The sovereign whom we may place on it will be a sovereign, not after the

English, but after the Polish, fashion. Even if we choose the very person who would reign by right of birth,

still that person will reign not by right of birth, but in virtue of our choice, and will take as a gift what ought

to be regarded as an inheritance. That salutary reverence with which the blood royal and the order of

primogeniture have hitherto been regarded will be greatly diminished. Still more serious will the evil be, if

we not only fill the throne by election, but fill it with a prince who has doubtless the qualities of a great and

good ruler, and who has wrought a wonderful deliverance for us, but who is not first nor even second in the

order of succession. If we once say that, merit, however eminent, shall be a title to the crown, we disturb the

very foundations of our polity, and furnish a precedent of which every ambitious warrior or statesman who

may have rendered any great service to the public will be tempted to avail himself. This danger we avoid if

we logically follow out the principles of the constitution to their consequences. There has been a demise of

the crown. At the instant of the demise the next heir became our lawful sovereign. We consider the Princess

of Orange as next heir; and we hold that she ought, without any delay, to be proclaimed, what she already is,

The Whigs replied that it was idle to apply ordinary rules to a country in a state of revolution, that the great

question now depending was not to be decided by the saws of pedantic Templars, and that, if it were to be so

decided, such saws might be quoted on one side as well as the other. If it were a legal maxim that the throne

could never be vacant, it was also a legal maxim that a living man could have no heir. James was still living.

How then could the Princess of Orange be his heir? The truth was that the laws of England had made full

provision for the succession when the power of a sovereign and his natural life terminated together, but had

made no provision for the very rare cases in which his power terminated before the close of his natural life;

and with one of those very rare cases the Convention had now to deal. That James no longer filled the throne

both Houses had pronounced. Neither common law nor statute law designated any person as entitled to fill

the throne between his demise and his decease. It followed that the throne was vacant, and that the Houses

might invite the Prince of Orange to fill it. That he was not next in order of birth was true: but this was no

disadvantage: on the contrary, it was a positive recommendation. Hereditary monarchy was a good political

institution, but was by no means more sacred than other good political institutions. Unfortunately, bigoted

and servile theologians had turned it into a religious mystery, almost as awful and as incomprehensible as

transubstantiation itself. To keep the institution, and yet to get rid of the abject and noxious superstitions with

which it had of late years been associated and which had made it a curse instead of a blessing to society,

ought to be the first object of English statesmen; and that object would be best attained by slightly deviating

Many attempts were made to prevent an open breach between the party of the Prince and the party of the

Princess. A great meeting was held at the Earl of Devonshire's House, and the dispute was warm. Halifax was

the chief speaker for William, Danby for Mary. Of the mind of Mary Danby knew nothing. She had been

some time expected in London, but had been detained in Holland, first by masses of ice which had blocked

up the rivers, and, when the thaw came, by strong westerly winds. Had she arrived earlier the dispute would

probably have been at once quieted. Halifax on the other side had no authority to say anything in William's

name. The Prince, true to his promise that he would leave the settlement of the government to the

Convention, had maintained an impenetrable reserve, and had not suffered any word, look, or gesture,

indicative either of satisfaction or of displeasure, to escape him. One of his countrymen, who had a large

share of his confidence, had been invited to the meeting, and was earnestly pressed by the Peers to give them

some information. He long excused himself. At last he so far yielded to their urgency as to say, "I can only

guess at His Highness's mind. If you wish to know what I guess, I guess that he would not like to be his wife's

gentleman usher: but I know nothing." "I know something now, however," said Danby. "I know enough, and

On the thirtyfirst of January the debate which had terminated thus in private was publicly renewed in the

House of Peers. That day had been fixed for the national thanksgiving. An office had been drawn up for the

occasion by several Bishops, among whom were Ken and Sprat. It is perfectly free both from the adulation

and from the malignity by which such compositions were in that age too often deformed, and sustains, better

perhaps than any occasional service which has been framed during two centuries, a comparison with that

great model of chaste, lofty, and pathetic eloquence, the Book of Common Prayer. The Lords went in the

morning to Westminster Abbey. The Commons had desired Burnet to preach before them at Saint Margaret's.

He was not likely to fall into the same error which had been committed in the same place on the preceding

day. His vigorous and animated discourse doubtless called forth the loud hums of his auditors. It was not only

printed by command of the House, but was translated into French for the edification of foreign

Protestants.653 The day closed with the festivities usual on such occasions. The whole town shone brightly

with fireworks and bonfires: the roar of guns and the pealing of bells lasted till the night was far spent; but,

before the lights were extinct and the streets silent, an event had taken place which threw a damp on the

The Peers had repaired from the Abbey to their house, and had resumed the discussion on the state of the

nation. The last words of the resolution of the Commons were taken into consideration; and it soon became

clear that the majority was not disposed to assent to those words. To near fifty Lords who held that the regal

title still belonged to James were now added seven or eight who held that it had already devolved on Mary.

The Whigs, finding themselves outnumbered, tried to compromise the dispute. They proposed to omit the

words which pronounced the throne vacant, and simply to declare the Prince and Princess King and Queen. It

was manifest that such a declaration implied, though it did not expressly affirm, all that the Tories were

unwilling to concede. For nobody could pretend that William had succeeded to the regal office by right of

birth. To pass a resolution acknowledging him as King was therefore an act of election; and how could there

be an election without a vacancy? The proposition of the Whig Lords was rejected by fiftytwo votes to

fortyseven. The question was then put whether the throne was vacant. The contents were only fortyone: the

During the two following days London was in an unquiet and anxious state. The Tories began to hope that

they might be able again to bring forward their favourite plan of Regency with better success. Perhaps the

Prince himself, when he found that he had no chance of wearing the crown, might prefer Sancroft's scheme to

Danby's. It was better doubtless to be a King than to be a Regent: but it was better to be a Regent than to be a

gentleman usher. On the other side the lower and fiercer class of Whigs, the old emissaries of Shaftesbury,

the old associates of College, began to stir in the City. Crowds assembled in Palace Yard, and held

threatening language. Lord Lovelace, who was suspected of having encouraged these assemblages, informed

the Peers that he was charged with a petition requesting them instantly to declare the Prince and Princess of

Orange King and Queen. He was asked by whom the petition was signed. "There are no hands to it yet," he

answered; "but, when I bring it here next, there shall be hands enough." This menace alarmed and disgusted

his own party. The leading Whigs were, in truth, even more anxious than the Tories that the deliberations of

the Convention should be perfectly free, and that it should not be in the power of any adherent of James to

allege that either House had acted under force. A petition, similar to that which had been entrusted to

Lovelace, was brought into the House of Commons, but was contemptuously rejected. Maynard was foremost

in protesting against the attempt of the rabble in the streets to overawe the Estates of the Realm. William sent

for Lovelace, expostulated with him strongly, and ordered the magistrates to act with vigour against all

unlawful assemblies.655 Nothing in the history of our revolution is more deserving of admiration and of

imitation than the manner in which the two parties in the Convention, at the very moment at which their

disputes ran highest, joined like one man to resist the dictation of the mob of the capital.

But, though the Whigs were fully determined to maintain order and to respect the freedom of debate, they

were equally determined to make no concession. On Saturday the second of February the Commons, without

a division, resolved to adhere to their resolution as it originally stood. James, as usual, came to the help of his

enemies. A letter from him to the Convention had just arrived in London. It had been transmitted to Preston

by the apostate Melfort, who was now high in favour at Saint Germains. The name of Melfort was an

abomination to every Churchman. That he was still a confidential minister was alone sufficient to prove that

his master's folly and perverseness were incurable. No member of either House ventured to propose that a

paper which came from such a quarter should be read. The contents, however, were well known to all the

town. His Majesty exhorted the Lords and Commons not to despair of his clemency, and graciously assured

them that he would pardon those who had betrayed him, some few excepted, whom he did not name. How

was it possible to do any thing for a prince who, vanquished, deserted, banished, living on alms, told those

who were the arbiters of his fate that, if they would set him on his throne again, he would hang only a few of

The contest between the two branches of the legislature lasted some days longer. On Monday the fourth of

February the Peers resolved that they would insist on their amendments but a protest to which thirtynine

names were subscribed was entered on the journals.657 On the following day the Tories determined to try

their strength in the Lower House. They mustered there in great force. A motion was made to agree to the

amendments of the Lords. Those who were for the plan of Sancroft and those who were for the plan of Danby

divided together; but they were beaten by two hundred and eightytwo votes to a hundred and fiftyone. The

At the same time strenuous efforts were making without the walls of Parliament to bring the dispute between

the two branches of the legislature to a close. Burnet thought that the importance of the crisis justified him in

publishing the great secret which the Princess had confided to him. He knew, he said, from her own lips, that

it had long been her full determination, even if she came to the throne in the regular course of descent, to

surrender her power, with the sanction of Parliament, into the hands of her husband. Danby received from her

an earnest, and almost angry, reprimand. She was, she wrote, the Prince's wife; she had no other wish than to

be subject to him; the most cruel injury that could be done to her would be to set her up as his competitor;

and she never could regard any person who took such a course as her true friend.659 The Tories had still one

hope. Anne might insist on her own rights, and on those of her children. No effort was spared to stimulate her

ambition, and to alarm her conscience. Her uncle Clarendon was especially active. A few weeks only had

elapsed since the hope of wealth and greatness had impelled him to bely the boastful professions of his whole

life, to desert the royal cause, to join with the Wildmans and Fergusons, nay, to propose that the King should

be sent a prisoner to a foreign land and immured in a fortress begirt by pestilential marshes. The lure which

had produced this strange transformation was the Viceroyalty of Ireland. Soon, however, it appeared that the

proselyte had little chance of obtaining the splendid prize on which his heart was set. He found that others

were consulted on Irish affairs. His advice was never asked, and, when obtrusively and importunately offered,

was coldly received. He repaired many times to Saint James's Palace, but could scarcely obtain a word or a

look. One day the Prince was writing, another day he wanted fresh air and must ride in the Park; on a third he

was closeted with officers on military business and could see nobody. Clarendon saw that he was not likely to

gain anything by the sacrifice of his principles, and determined to take them back again. In December

ambition had converted him into a rebel. In January disappointment reconverted him into a royalist. The

uneasy consciousness that he had not been a consistent Tory gave a peculiar acrimony to his Toryism.660 In

the House of Lords he had done all in his power to prevent a settlement. He now exerted, for the same end, all

his influence over the Princess Anne. But his influence over her was small indeed when compared with that

of the Churchills, who wisely called to their help two powerful allies, Tillotson, who, as a spiritual director,

had, at that time, immense authority, and Lady Russell, whose noble and gentle virtues, proved by the most

cruel of all trials, had gained for her the reputation of a saint. The Princess of Denmark, it was soon known,

was willing that William should reign for life; and it was evident that to defend the cause of the daughters of

And now William thought that the time had come when he ought to explain himself. He accordingly sent for

Halifax, Danby, Shrewsbury, and some other political leaders of great note, and, with that air of stoical

apathy under which he had, from a boy, been in the habit of concealing his strongest emotions, addressed to

He had hitherto, he said, remained silent; he had used neither solicitation nor menace: he had not even

suffered a hint of his opinions or wishes to get abroad: but a crisis had now arrived at which it was necessary

for him to declare his intentions. He had no right and no wish to dictate to the Convention. All that he

claimed was the privilege of declining any office which he felt that he could not hold with honour to himself

A strong party was for a Regency. It was for the Houses to determine whether such an arrrangement would be

for the interest of the nation. He had a decided opinion on that point; and he thought it right to say distinctly

Another party was for placing the Princess on the throne, and for giving to him, during her life, the title of

King, and such a share in the administration as she might be pleased to allow him. He could not stoop to such

a post. He esteemed the Princess as much as it was possible for man to esteem woman: but not even from her

would he accept a subordinate and a precarious place in the government. He was so made that he could not

submit to be tied to the apron strings even of the best of wives. He did not desire to take any part in English

affairs; but, if he did consent to take a part, there was one part only which he could usefully or honourably

take. If the Estates offered him the crown for life, he would accept it. If not, he should, without repining,

return to his native country. He concluded by saying that he thought it reasonable that the Lady Anne and her

posterity should be preferred in the succession to any children whom he might have by any other wife than

The meeting broke up; and what the Prince had said was in a few hours known all over London. That he must

be King was now clear. The only question was whether he should hold the regal dignity alone or conjointly

with the Princess. Halifax and a few other politicians, who saw in a strong light the danger of dividing the

supreme executive authority, thought it desirable that, during William's life, Mary should be only Queen

Consort and a subject. But this arrangement, though much might doubtless be said for it in argument, shocked

the general feeling even of those Englishmen who were most attached to the Prince. His wife had given an

unprecedented proof of conjugal submission and affection; and the very least return that could be made to her

would be to bestow on her the dignity of Queen Regnant. William Herbert, one of the most zealous of the

Prince's adherents, was so much exasperated that he sprang out of the bed to which he was confined by gout,

and vehemently declared that he never would have drawn a sword in His Highness's cause if he had foreseen

that so shameful an arrangement would be made. No person took the matter up so eagerly as Burnet. His

blood boiled at the wrong done to his kind patroness. He expostulated vehemently with Bentinck, and begged

to be permitted to resign the chaplainship. "While I am His Highness's servant," said the brave and honest

divine, "it would be unseemly in me to oppose any plan which may have his countenance. I therefore desire

to be set free, that I may fight the Princess's battle with every faculty that God has given me." Bentinck

prevailed on Burnet to defer an open declaration of hostilities till William's resolution should be distinctly

known. In a few hours the scheme which had excited so much resentment was entirely given up; and all those

who considered James as no longer king were agreed as to the way in which the throne must be filled.

William and Mary must be King and Queen. The heads of both must appear together on the coin: writs must

run in the names of both: both must enjoy all the personal dignities and immunities of royalty: but the

administration, which could not be safely divided, must belong to William alone.663

And now the time arrived for the free conference between the Houses. The managers for the Lords, in their

robes, took their seats along one side of the table in the Painted Chamber: but the crowd of members of the

House of Commons on the other side was so great that the gentlemen who were to argue the question in vain

tried to get through. It was not without much difficulty and long delay that the Serjeant at Arms was able to

At length the discussion began. A full report of the speeches on both sides has come down to us. There are

few students of history who have not taken up that report with eager curiosity and laid it down with

disappointment. The question between the Houses was argued on both sides as a question of law. The

objections which the Lords made, to the resolution of the Commons were verbal and technical, and were met

by verbal and technical answers. Somers vindicated the use of the word abdication by quotations from

Grotius and Brissonius, Spigelius and Bartolus. When he was challenged to show any authority for the

proposition that England could be without a sovereign, he produced the Parliament roll of the year 1399, in

which it was expressly set forth that the kingly office was vacant during the interval between the resignation

of Richard the Second and the enthroning of Henry the Fourth. The Lords replied by producing the

Parliament roll of the first year of Edward the Fourth, from which it appeared that the record of 1399 had

been solemnly annulled. They therefore maintained that the precedent on which Somers relied was no longer

valid. Treby then came to Somers's assistance, and brought forth the Parliament roll of the first year of Henry

the Seventh, which repealed the act of Edward the Fourth, and consequently restored the validity of the

record of 1399. After a colloquy of several hours the disputants separated.665 The Lords assembled in their

own house. It was well understood that they were about to yield, and that the conference had been a mere

form. The friends of Mary had found that, by setting her up as her husband's rival, they had deeply displeased

her. Some of the Peers who had formerly voted for a Regency had determined to absent themselves or to

support the resolution of the Lower House. Their opinion, they said, was unchanged: but any government was

better than no government, and the country could not bear a prolongation of this agony of suspense. Even

Nottingham, who, in the Painted Chamber, had taken the lead against the Commons, declared that, though his

own conscience would not suffer him to give way, he was glad that the consciences of other men were less

squeamish. Several Lords who had not yet voted in the Convention had been induced to attend; Lord

Lexington, who had just hurried over from the Continent; the Earl of Lincoln, who was half mad; the Earl of

Carlisle, who limped in on crutches; and the Bishop of Durham, who had been in hiding and had intended to

fly beyond sea, but had received an intimation that, if he would vote for the settling of the government, his

conduct in the Ecclesiastical Commission should not be remembered against him. Danby, desirous to heal the

schism which he had caused, exhorted the House, in a speech distinguished by even more than his usual

ability, not to persevere in a contest which might be fatal to the state. He was strenuously supported by

Halifax. The spirit of the opposite party was quelled. When the question was put whether King James had

abdicated the government only three lords said Not Content. On the question whether the throne was vacant,

a division was demanded. The Contents were sixtytwo; the Not Contents forty seven. It was immediately

proposed and carried, without a division, that the Prince and Princess of Orange should be declared King and

Nottingham then moved that the wording of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy should be altered in such a

way that they might be conscientiously taken by persons who, like himself, disapproved of what the

Convention had done, and yet fully purposed to be loyal and dutiful subjects of the new sovereigns. To this

proposition no objection was made. Indeed there can be little doubt that there was an understanding on the

subject between the Whig leaders and those Tory Lords whose votes had turned the scale on the last division.

The new oaths were sent down to the Commons, together with the resolution that the Prince and Princess

It was now known to whom the crown would be given. On what conditions it should be given, still remained

to be decided. The Commons had appointed a committee to consider what steps it might be advisable to take,

in order to secure law and liberty against the aggressions of future sovereigns; and the committee had made a

report.668 This report recommended, first, that those great principles of the constitution which had been

violated by the dethroned King should be solemnly asserted, and, secondly, that many new laws should be

enacted, for the purpose of curbing the prerogative and purifying the administration of justice. Most of the

suggestions of the committee were excellent; but it was utterly impossible that the Houses could, in a month,

or even in a year, deal properly with matters so numerous, so various, and so important. It was proposed,

among other things, that the militia should be remodelled, that the power which the sovereign possessed of

proroguing and dissolving Parliaments should be restricted; that the duration of Parliaments should be

limited; that the royal pardon should no longer be pleadable to a parliamentary impeachment; that toleration

should be granted to Protestant Dissenters; that the crime of high treason should be more precisely defined;

that trials for high treason should be conducted in a manner more favourable to innocence; that the judges

should hold their places for life; that the mode of appointing Sheriffs should be altered; that juries should be

nominated in such a way as might exclude partiality and corruption; that the practice of filing criminal

informations in the King's Bench should be abolished; that the Court of Chancery should be reformed; that

the fees of public functionaries should be regulated; and that the law of Quo Warranto should be amended. It

was evident that cautious and deliberate legislation on these subjects must be the work of more than one

laborious session; and it was equally evident that hasty and crude legislation on subjects so grave could not

but produce new grievances, worse than those which it might remove. If the committee meant to give a list of

the reforms which ought to be accomplished before the throne was filled, the list was absurdly long. If, on the

other hand, the committee meant to give a list of all the reforms which the legislature would do well to make

in proper season, the list was strangely imperfect. Indeed, as soon as the report had been read, member after

member rose to suggest some addition. It was moved and carried that the selling of offices should be

prohibited, that the Habeas Corpus Act should be made more efficient, and that the law of Mandamus should

be revised. One gentleman fell on the chimneymen, another on the excisemen; and the House resolved that

the malpractices of both chimneymen and excisemen should be restrained. It is a most remarkable

circumstance that, while the whole political, military, judicial, and fiscal system of the kingdom was thus

passed in review, not a single representative of the people proposed the repeal of the statute which subjected

the press to a censorship. It was not yet understood, even by the most enlightened men, that the liberty of

The House was greatly perplexed. Some orators vehemently said that too much time had already been lost,

and that the government ought to be settled without the delay of a day. Society was unquiet: trade was

languishing: the English colony in Ireland was in imminent danger of perishing, a foreign war was

impending: the exiled King might, in a few weeks, be at Dublin with a French army, and from Dublin he

might soon cross to Chester. Was it not insanity, at such a crisis, to leave the throne unfilled, and, while the

very existence of Parliaments was in jeopardy, to waste time in debating whether Parliaments should be

prorogued by the sovereign or by themselves? On the other side it was asked whether the Convention could

think that it had fulfilled its mission by merely pulling down one prince and putting up another. Surely now

or never was the time to secure public liberty by such fences as might effectually prevent the encroachments

of prerogative.670 There was doubtless great weight in what was urged on both sides. The able chiefs of the

Whig party, among whom Somers was fast rising to ascendency, proposed a middle course. The House had,

they said, two objects in view, which ought to be kept distinct. One object was to secure the old polity of the

realm against illegal attacks: the other was to improve that polity by legal reforms. The former object might

be attained by solemnly putting on record, in the resolution which called the new sovereigns to the throne, the

claim of the English nation to its ancient franchises, so that the King might hold his crown, and the people

their privileges, by one and the same title deed. The latter object would require a whole volume of elaborate

statutes. The former object might be attained in a day; the latter, scarcely in five years. As to the former

object, all parties were agreed: as to the latter, there were innumerable varieties of opinion. No member of

either House would hesitate for a moment to vote that the King could not levy taxes without the consent of

Parliament: but it would be hardly possible to frame any new law of procedure in cases of high treason which

would not give rise to long debate, and be condemned by some persons as unjust to the prisoner, and by

others as unjust to the crown. The business of an extraordinary convention of the Estates of the Realm was

not to do the ordinary work of Parliaments, to regulate the fees of masters in Chancery, and to provide against

the exactions of gaugers, but to put right the great machine of government. When this had been done, it

would be time to inquire what improvement our institutions needed: nor would anything be risked by delay;

for no sovereign who reigned merely by the choice of the nation could long refuse his assent to any

On these grounds the Commons wisely determined to postpone all reforms till the ancient constitution of the

kingdom should have been restored in all its parts, and forthwith to fill the throne without imposing on

William and Mary any other obligation than that of governing according to the existing laws of England. In

order that the questions which had been in dispute between the Stuarts and the nation might never again be

stirred, it was determined that the instrument by which the Prince and Princess of Orange were called to the

throne, and by which the order of succession was settled, should set forth, in the most distinct and solemn

manner, the fundamental principles of the constitution. This instrument, known by the name of the

Declaration of Right, was prepared by a committee, of which Somers was chairman. The fact that the low

born young barrister was appointed to so honourable and important a post in a Parliament filled with able and

experienced men, only ten days after he had spoken in the House of Commons for the first time, sufficiently

proves the superiority of his abilities. In a few hours the Declaration was framed and approved by the

Commons. The Lords assented to it with some amendments of no great importance.671

The Declaration began by recapitulating the crimes and errors which had made a revolution necessary. James

had invaded the province of the legislature; had treated modest petitioning as a crime; had oppressed the

Church by means of an illegal tribunal; had, without the consent of Parliament, levied taxes and maintained a

standing army in time of peace; had violated the freedom of election, and perverted the course of justice.

Proceedings which could lawfully be questioned only in Parliament had been made the subjects of

prosecution in the King's Bench. Partial and corrupt juries had been returned: excessive bail had been

required from prisoners, excessive fines had been imposed: barbarous and unusual punishments had been

inflicted: the estates of accused persons had been granted away before conviction. He, by whose authority

these things had been done, had abdicated the government. The Prince of Orange, whom God had made the

glorious instrument of delivering the nation from superstition and tyranny, had invited the Estates of the

Realm to meet and to take counsel together for the securing of religion, of law, and of freedom. The Lords

and Commons, having deliberated, had resolved that they would first, after the example of their ancestors,

assert the ancient rights and liberties of England. Therefore it was declared that the dispensing power, lately

assumed and exercised, had no legal existence; that, without grant of Parliament, no money could be exacted

by the sovereign from the subject; that, without consent of Parliament, no standing army could be kept up in

time of peace. The right of subjects to petition, the right of electors to choose representatives freely, the right

of Parliaments to freedom of debate, the right of the nation to a pure and merciful administration of justice

according to the spirit of its own mild laws, were solemnly affirmed. All these things the Convention

claimed, in the name of the whole nation, as the undoubted inheritance of Englishmen. Having thus

vindicated the principles of the constitution, the Lords and Commons, in the entire confidence that the

deliverer would hold sacred the laws and liberties which he had saved, resolved that William and Mary,

Prince and Princess of Orange, should be declared King and Queen of England for their joint and separate

lives, and that, during their joint lives, the administration of the government should be in the Prince alone.

After them the crown was settled on the posterity of Mary, then on Anne and her posterity, and then on the

By this time the wind had ceased to blow from the west. The ship in which the Princess of Orange had

embarked lay off Margate on the eleventh of February, and, on the following morning, anchored at

Greenwich.672 She was received with many signs of joy and affection: but her demeanour shocked the

Tories, and was not thought faultless even by the Whigs. A young woman, placed, by a destiny as mournful

and awful as that which brooded over the fabled houses of Labdacus and Pelops, in such a situation that she

could not, without violating her duty to her God, her husband, and her country, refuse to take her seat on the

throne from which her father had just been hurled, should have been sad, or at least serious. Mary was not

merely in high, but in extravagant, spirits. She entered Whitehall, it was asserted, with a girlish delight at

being mistress of so fine a house, ran about the rooms, peeped into the closets, and examined the quilt of the

state bed, without seeming to remember by whom those magnificent apartments had last been occupied.

Burnet, who had, till then, thought her an angel in human form, could not, on this occasion, refrain from

blaming her. He was the more astonished because, when he took leave of her at the Hague, she had, though

fully convinced that she was in the path of duty, been deeply dejected. To him, as to her spiritual guide, she

afterwards explained her conduct. William had written to inform her that some of those who had tried to

separate her interest from his still continued their machinations: they gave it out that she thought herself

wronged; and, if she wore a gloomy countenance, the report would be confirmed. He therefore intreated her

to make her first appearance with an air of cheerfulness. Her heart, she said, was far indeed from cheerful; but

she had done her best; and, as she was afraid of not sustaining well a part which was uncongenial to her

feelings, she had overacted it. Her deportment was the subject of reams of scurrility in prose and verse: it

lowered her in the opinion of some whose esteem she valued; nor did the world know, till she was beyond the

reach of praise and censure, that the conduct which had brought on her the reproach of levity and insensibility

was really a signal instance of that perfect disinterestedness and selfdevotion of which man seems to be

On the morning of Wednesday, the thirteenth of February, the court of Whitehall and all the neighbouring

streets were filled with gazers. The magnificent Banqueting House, the masterpiece of Inigo, embellished by

masterpieces of Rubens, had been prepared for a great ceremony. The walls were lined by the yeomen of the

guard. Near the northern door, on the right hand, a large number of Peers had assembled. On the left were the

Commons with their Speaker, attended by the mace. The southern door opened: and the Prince and Princess

of Orange, side by side, entered, and took their place under the canopy of state.

Both Houses approached bowing low. William and Mary advanced a few steps. Halifax on the right, and

Powle on the left, stood forth; and Halifax spoke. The Convention, he said, had agreed to a resolution which

he prayed Their Highnesses to hear. They signified their assent; and the clerk of the House of Lords read, in a

loud voice, the Declaration of Right. When he had concluded, Halifax, in the name of all the Estates of the

William, in his own name and in that of his wife, answered that the crown was, in their estimation, the more

valuable because it was presented to them as a token of the confidence of the nation. "We thankfully accept,"

he said, "what you have offered us." Then, for himself, he assured them that the laws of England, which he

had once already vindicated, should be the rules of his conduct, that it should be his study to promote the

welfare of the kingdom, and that, as to the means of doing so, he should constantly recur to the advice of the

Houses, and should be disposed to trust their judgment rather than his own.674 These words were received

with a shout of joy which was heard in the streets below, and was instantly answered by huzzas from many

thousands of voices. The Lords and Commons then reverently retired from the Banqueting House and went in

procession to the great gate of Whitehall, where the heralds and pursuivants were waiting in their gorgeous

tabards. All the space as far as Charing Cross was one sea of heads. The kettle drums struck up; the trumpets

pealed: and Garter King at arms, in a loud voice, proclaimed the Prince and Princess of Orange King and

Queen of England, charged all Englishmen to pay, from that moment, faith and true allegiance to the new

sovereigns, and besought God, who had already wrought so signal a deliverance for our Church and nation, to

Thus was consummated the English Revolution. When we compare it with those revolutions which have,

during the last sixty years, overthrown so many ancient governments, we cannot but be struck by its peculiar

character. Why that character was so peculiar is sufficiently obvious, and yet seems not to have been always

The continental revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries took place in countries where all trace

of the limited monarchy of the middle ages had long been effaced. The right of the prince to make laws and

to levy money had, during many generations, been undisputed. His throne was guarded by a great regular

army. His administration could not, without extreme peril, be blamed even in the mildest terms. His subjects

held their personal liberty by no other tenure than his pleasure. Not a single institution was left which had,

within the memory of the oldest man, afforded efficient protection to the subject against the utmost excess of

tyranny. Those great councils which had once curbed the regal power had sunk into oblivion. Their

composition and their privileges were known only to antiquaries. We cannot wonder, therefore, that, when

men who had been thus ruled succeeded in wresting supreme power from a government which they had long

in secret hated, they should have been impatient to demolish and unable to construct, that they should have

been fascinated by every specious novelty, that they should have proscribed every title, ceremony, and phrase

associated with the old system, and that, turning away with disgust from their own national precedents and

traditions, they should have sought for principles of government in the writings of theorists, or aped, with

ignorant and ungraceful affectation, the patriots of Athens and Rome. As little can we wonder that the violent

action of the revolutionary spirit should have been followed by reaction equally violent, and that confusion

should speedily have engendered despotism sterner than that from which it had sprung.

Had we been in the same situation; had Strafford succeeded in his favourite scheme of Thorough; had he

formed an army as numerous and as well disciplined as that which, a few years later, was formed by

Cromwell; had a series of judicial decisions, similar to that which was pronounced by the Exchequer

Chamber in the case of shipmoney, transferred to the crown the right of taxing the people; had the Star

Chamber and the High Commission continued to fine, mutilate, and imprison every man who dared to raise

his voice against the government; had the press been as completely enslaved here as at Vienna or at Naples;

had our Kings gradually drawn to themselves the whole legislative power; had six generations of Englishmen

passed away without a single session of parliament; and had we then at length risen up in some moment of

wild excitement against our masters, what an outbreak would that have been! With what a crash, heard and

felt to the farthest ends of the world, would the whole vast fabric of society have fallen! How many thousands

of exiles, once the most prosperous and the most refined members of this great community, would have

begged their bread in continental cities, or have sheltered their heads under huts of bark in the uncleared

forests of America! How often should we have seen the pavement of London piled up in barricades, the

houses dinted with bullets, the gutters foaming with blood! How many times should we have rushed wildly

from extreme to extreme, sought refuge from anarchy in despotism, and been again driven by despotism into

anarchy! How many years of blood and confusion would it have cost us to learn the very rudiments of

political science! How many childish theories would have duped us! How many rude and ill poised

constitutions should we have set up, only to see them tumble down! Happy would it have been for us if a

sharp discipline of half a century had sufficed to educate us into a capacity of enjoying true freedom.

These calamities our Revolution averted. It was a revolution strictly defensive, and had prescription and

legitimacy on its side. Here, and here only, a limited monarchy of the thirteenth century had come down

unimpaired to the seventeenth century. Our parliamentary institutions were in full vigour. The main

principles of our government were excellent. They were not, indeed, formally and exactly set forth in a single

written instrument; but they were to be found scattered over our ancient and noble statutes; and, what was of

far greater moment, they had been engraven on the hearts of Englishmen during four hundred years. That,

without the consent of the representatives of the nation, no legislative act could be passed, no tax imposed, no

regular soldiery kept up, that no man could be imprisoned, even for a day, by the arbitrary will of the

sovereign, that no tool of power could plead the royal command as a justification for violating any right of

the humblest subject, were held, both by Whigs and Tories, to be fundamental laws of the realm. A realm of

But, though a new constitution was not needed, it was plain that changes were required. The misgovernment

of the Stuarts, and the troubles which that misgovernment had produced, sufficiently proved that there was

somewhere a defect in our polity; and that defect it was the duty of the Convention to discover and to supply.

Some questions of great moment were still open to dispute. Our constitution had begun to exist in times when

statesmen were not much accustomed to frame exact definitions. Anomalies, therefore, inconsistent with its

principles and dangerous to its very existence, had sprung up almost imperceptibly, and, not having, during

many years, caused any serious inconvenience, had gradually acquired the force of prescription. The remedy

for these evils was to assert the rights of the people in such language as should terminate all controversy, and

When this had been done it would be impossible for our rulers to misunderstand the law: but, unless

something more were done, it was by no means improbable that they might violate it. Unhappily the Church

had long taught the nation that hereditary monarchy, alone among our institutions, was divine and inviolable;

that the right of the House of Commons to a share in the legislative power was a right merely human, but that

the right of the King to the obedience of his people was from above; that the Great Charter was a statute

which might be repealed by those who had made it, but that the rule which called the princes of the blood

royal to the throne in order of succession was of celestial origin, and that any Act of Parliament inconsistent

with that rule was a nullity. It is evident that, in a society in which such superstitions prevail, constitutional

freedom must ever be insecure. A power which is regarded merely as the ordinance of man cannot be an

efficient check on a power which is regarded as the ordinance of God. It is vain to hope that laws, however

excellent, will permanently restrain a King who, in his own opinion, and in that of a great part of his people,

has an authority infinitely higher in kind than the authority which belongs to those laws. To deprive royalty

of these mysterious attributes, and to establish the principle that Kings reigned by a right in no respect

differing from the right by which freeholders chose knights of the shire, or from the right by which judges

granted writs of Habeas Corpus, was absolutely necessary to the security of our liberties.

Thus the Convention had two great duties to perform. The first was to clear the fundamental laws of the

realm from ambiguity. The second was to eradicate from the minds, both of the governors and of the

governed, the false and pernicious notion that the royal prerogative was something more sublime and holy

than those fundamental laws. The former object was attained by the solemn recital and claim with which the

Declaration of Right commences; the latter by the resolution which pronounced the throne vacant, and invited

The change seems small. Not a single flower of the crown was touched. Not a single new right was given to

the people. The whole English law, substantive and adjective, was, in the judgment of all the greatest

lawyers, of Holt and Treby, of Maynard and Somers, exactly the same after the Revolution as before it. Some

controverted points had been decided according to the sense of the best jurists; and there had been a slight

deviation from the ordinary course of succession. This was all; and this was enough.

As our Revolution was a vindication of ancient rights, so it was conducted with strict attention to ancient

formalities. In almost every word and act may be discerned a profound reverence for the past. The Estates of

the Realm deliberated in the old halls and according to the old rules. Powle was conducted to his chair

between his mover and his seconder with the accustomed forms. The Serjeant with his mace brought up the

messengers of the Lords to the table of the Commons; and the three obeisances were duly made. The

conference was held with all the antique ceremonial. On one side of the table, in the Painted Chamber, the

managers of the Lords sate covered and robed in ermine and gold. The managers of the Commons stood

bareheaded on the other side. The speeches present an almost ludicrous contrast to the revolutionary oratory

of every other country. Both the English parties agreed in treating with solemn respect the ancient

constitutional traditions of the state. The only question was, in what sense those traditions were to be

understood. The assertors of liberty said not a word about the natural equality of men and the inalienable

sovereignty of the people, about Harmodius or Timoleon, Brutus the elder or Brutus the younger. When they

were told that, by the English law, the crown, at the moment of a demise, must descend to the next heir, they

answered that, by the English law, a living man could have no heir. When they were told that there was no

precedent for declaring the throne vacant, they produced from among the records in the Tower a roll of

parchment, near three hundred years old, on which, in quaint characters and barbarous Latin, it was recorded

that the Estates of the Realm had declared vacant the throne of a perfidious and tyrannical Plantagenet. When

at length the dispute had been accommodated, the new sovereigns were proclaimed with the old pageantry.

All the fantastic pomp of heraldry was there, Clarencieux and Norroy, Portcullis and Rouge Dragon, the

trumpets, the banners, the grotesque coats embroidered with lions and lilies. The title of King of France,

assumed by the conqueror of Cressy, was not omitted in the royal style. To us, who have lived in the year

1848, it may seem almost an abuse of terms to call a proceeding, conducted with so much deliberation, with

so much sobriety, and with such minute attention to prescriptive etiquette, by the terrible name of Revolution.

And yet this revolution, of all revolutions the least violent, has been of all revolutions the most beneficent. It

finally decided the great question whether the popular element which had, ever since the age of Fitzwalter

and De Montfort, been found in the English polity, should be destroyed by the monarchical element, or

should be suffered to develope itself freely, and to become dominant. The strife between the two principles

had been long, fierce, and doubtful. It had lasted through four reigns. It had produced seditions,

impeachments, rebellions, battles, sieges, proscriptions, judicial massacres. Sometimes liberty, sometimes

royalty, had seemed to be on the point of perishing. During many years one half of the energy of England had

been employed in counteracting the other half. The executive power and the legislative power had so

effectually impeded each other that the state had been of no account in Europe. The King at Arms, who

proclaimed William and Mary before Whitehall Gate, did in truth announce that this great struggle was over;

that there was entire union between the throne and the Parliament; that England, long dependent and

degraded, was again a power of the first rank; that the ancient laws by which the prerogative was bounded

would henceforth be held as sacred as the prerogative itself, and would be followed out to all their

consequences; that the executive administration would be conducted in conformity with the sense of the

representatives of the nation; and that no reform, which the two Houses should, after mature deliberation,

propose, would be obstinately withstood by the sovereign. The Declaration of Right, though it made nothing

law which had not been law before, contained the germ of the law which gave religious freedom to the

Dissenter, of the law which secured the independence of the judges, of the law which limited the duration of

Parliaments, of the law which placed the liberty of the press under the protection of juries, of the law which

prohibited the slave trade, of the law which abolished the sacramental test, of the law which relieved the

Roman Catholics from civil disabilities, of the law which reformed the representative system, of every good

law which has been passed during a hundred and sixty years, of every good law which may hereafter, in the

course of ages, be found necessary to promote the public weal, and to satisfy the demands of public opinion.

The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the revolution of 1688 is this, that it was our last revolution.

Several generations have now passed away since any wise and patriotic Englishman has meditated resistance

to the established government. In all honest and reflecting minds there is a conviction, daily strengthened by

experience, that the means of effecting every improvement which the constitution requires may be found

Now, if ever, we ought to be able to appreciate the whole importance of the stand which was made by our

forefathers against the House of Stuart. All around us the world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations.

Governments which lately seemed likely to stand during ages have been on a sudden shaken and overthrown.

The proudest capitals of Western Europe have streamed with civil blood. All evil passions, the thirst of gain

and the thirst of vengeance, the antipathy of class to class, the antipathy of race to race, have broken loose

from the control of divine and human laws. Fear and anxiety have clouded the faces and depressed the hearts

of millions. Trade has been suspended, and industry paralysed. The rich have become poor; and the poor have

become poorer. Doctrines hostile to all sciences, to all arts, to all industry, to all domestic charities, doctrines

which, if carried into effect, would, in thirty years, undo all that thirty centuries have done for mankind, and

would make the fairest provinces of France and Germany as savage as Congo or Patagonia, have been

avowed from the tribune and defended by the sword. Europe has been threatened with subjugation by

barbarians, compared with whom the barbarians who marched under Attila and Alboin were enlightened and

humane. The truest friends of the people have with deep sorrow owned that interests more precious than any

political privileges were in jeopardy, and that it might be necessary to sacrifice even liberty in order to save

civilisation. Meanwhile in our island the regular course of government has never been for a day interrupted.

The few bad men who longed for license and plunder have not had the courage to confront for one moment

the strength of a loyal nation, rallied in firm array round a parental throne. And, if it be asked what has made

us to differ from others, the answer is that we never lost what others are wildly and blindly seeking to regain.

It is because we had a preserving revolution in the seventeenth century that we have not had a destroying

revolution in the nineteenth. It is because we had freedom in the midst of servitude that we have order in the

midst of anarchy. For the authority of law, for the security of property, for the peace of our streets, for the

happiness of our houses, our gratitude is due, under Him who raises and pulls down nations at his pleasure, to

FN 1 Avaux Neg., Aug. 6/16 1685; Despatch of Citters and his colleagues, enclosing the treaty, Aug. Lewis

FN 2 Instructions headed, "For my son the Prince of Wales, 1692," in the Stuart Papers.

FN 3 "The Habeas Corpus," said Johnson, the most bigoted of Tories, to Boswell, "is the single advantage

which our government has over that of other countries;" and T. B. Macaulay is the most bigoted of Whigs in

FN 4 See the Historical Records of Regiments, published under the supervision of the Adjutant General.

FN 5 Barillon, Dec. 3/13 1685. He had studied the subject much. "C'est un detail," he says, "dont j'ai

connoissance." it appears from the Treasury Warrant Book that the charge of the army for the year 1687 was

FN 9 Council Book. The erasure is dated Oct. 21. 1685. Halifax to Chesterfield; Barillon, Oct. 19/29.

FN 10 Barillon, Oct. 26/Nov. 5. 1685; Lewis to Barillon, Oct. 27 / Nov. 6. Nov. 6/16.

FN 11 There is a remarkable account of the first appearance of the symptoms of discontent among the Tories

in a letter of Halifax to Chesterfield, written in October, 1685. Burnet, i. 684.

FN 12 The contemporary tracts in various languages on the subject of this persecution are innumerable. An

eminently clear, terse, and spirited summary will be found in Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV.

FN 13 "Misionarios embotados," says Ronquillo. "Apostoli armati," says Innocent. There is, in the

Mackintosh Collection, a remarkable letter on this subject from Ronquillo, dated March 26./April 5. 1686 See

Venier, Relatione di Francia, 1689, quoted by Professor Ranke in his Romische Papste, book viii.

FN 14 "Mi dicono che tutti questi parlamentarii no hanno voluto copia, il che assolutamente avra causate

FN 15 Lords' Journals, Nov. 9. 1685. "Vengo assicurato," says Adda, "che S. M. stessa abbia composto il

FN 16 Commons' Journals; Bramston's Memoirs; James von Leeuwen to the States General, Nov. 10/20

1685. Leeuwen was secretary of the Dutch embassy, and conducted the correspondence in the absence of

FN 18 Dodd's Church History, Leeuwen, Nov. 17/27 1685; Barillon, Dec. 24. 1685. Barillon says of Adda,

"On l'avoit fait prevenir que la surete et l'avantage des Catholiques consistoient dans une reunion entiere de sa

Majeste Britannique et de son parlement." Letters of Innocent to James, dated July 27/Aug. 8 and Sept. 23 /

Oct. 3. 1685; Despatches of Adda, Nov. 9/19. and Nov. 1685. The very interesting correspondence of Adda,

copied from the Papal archives, is in the British Museum; Additional MSS. No. 15395.

FN 19 The most remarkable despatch bears date the 9/19th of November 1685, and will be found in the

FN 20 Commons' Journals, Nov. 12. 1685; Leeuwen, Nov.; Barillon, Nov. 16/26.; Sir John Bramston's

Memoirs. The best report of the debates of the Commons in November, 1685, is one of which the history is

somewhat curious. There are two manuscript copies of it in the British Museum, Harl. 7187.; Lans. 253. In

these copies the names of the speakers are given at length. The author of the Life of James published in 1702

transcribed this report, but gave only the initials, of the speakers. The editors of Chandler's Debates and of the

Parliamentary History guessed from these initials at the names, and sometimes guessed wrong. They ascribe

to Wailer a very remarkable speech, which will hereafter be mentioned, and which was really made by

Windham, member for Salisbury. It was with some concern that I found myself forced to give up the belief

FN 21 Commons' Journals, Nov. 13. 1685; Bramston's Memoirs; Reresby's Memoirs; Barillon, Nov. 16/26.;

Leeuwen, Nov. 13/23.; Memoirs of Sir Stephen Fox, 1717; The Case of the Church of England fairly stated;

FN 23 The conflict of testimony on this subject is most extraordinary; and, after long consideration, I must

own that the balance seems to me to be exactly poised. In the Life of James (1702), the motion is represented

as a court motion. This account is confirmed by a remarkable passage in the Stuart Papers, which was

corrected by the Pretender himself. (Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii. 55.) On the other hand, Reresby,

who was present, and Barillon, who ought to have been well informed, represent the motion as an opposition

motion. The Harleian and Lansdowne manuscripts differ in the single word on which the whole depends.

Unfortunately Bramston was not at the House that day. James Van Leeuwen mentions the motion and the

division, but does not add a word which can throw the smallest light on the state of parties. I must own

myself unable to draw with confidence any inference from the names of the tellers, Sir Joseph Williamson

and Sir Francis Russell for the majority, and Lord Ancram and Sir Henry Goodricke for the minority. I

should have thought Lord Ancram likely to go with the court, and Sir Henry Goodricke likely to go with the

FN 26 Commons' Journals, Nov. 18. 1685; Harl. MS. 7187.; Lans. MS. 253.; Burnet, i. 667.

FN 27 Lonsdale's Memoirs. Burnet tells us (i. 667.) that a sharp debate about elections took place in the

House of Commons after Coke's committal. It must therefore have been on the 19th of November; for Coke

was committed late on the 18th, and the Parliament was prorogued on the 20th. Burnet's narrative is

confirmed by the Journals, from which it appears that several elections were under discussion on the 19th.

FN 28 Burnet, i. 560.; Funeral Sermon of the Duke of Devonshire, preached by Kennet, 1708; Travels of

FN 29 Bramston's Memoirs. Burnet is incorrect both as to the time when the remark was made and as to the

person who made it. In Halifax's Letter to a Dissenter will be found a remarkable allusion to this discussion.

FN 32 Barillon has given the best account of this debate. I will extract his report of Mordaunt's speech.

"Milord Mordaunt, quoique jeune, parla avec eloquence et force. Il dit que la question n'etoit pas reduite,

comme la Chambre des Communes le pretendoit, a guerir des jalousies et defiances, qui avoient lieu dans les

choses incertaines; mais que ce qui ce passoit ne l'etoit pas, qu'il y avoit une armee sur pied qui subsistoit, et

qui etoit remplie d'officiers Catholiques, qui ne pouvoit etre conservee que pour le renversement des loix, et

que la subsistance de l'armee, quand il n'y a aucune guerre ni au dedans ni au dehors, etoit l'etablissement du

gouvernement arbitraire, pour lequel les Anglois ont une aversion si bien fondee."

FN 33 He was very easily moved to tears. "He could not," says the author of the Panegyric, "refrain from

weeping on bold affronts." And again "They talk of his hectoring and proud carriage; what could be more

humble than for a man in his great post to cry and sob?" In the answer to the Panegyric it is said that "his

FN 34 Lords' Journals, Nov. 19. 1685; Barillon, Nov. 23 / Dec. 3. Dutch Despatch, Nov. 20/30.; Luttrell's

Diary, Nov. 19.; Burnet, i. 665. The closing speeds of Halifax is mentioned by the Nuncio in his despatch of

Nov. 16/26. Adda, about a month later, hears strong testimony to Halifax's powers,

"Da questo uomo che ha gran credito nel parlamento, e grande eloquenza, non si possono attendere che fiere

contradizioni, e nel parlito Regio non vi e un uomo da contrapporsi." Dec. 21/31.

FN 39 The trial in the Collection of State Trials; Bramston's Memoirs Burnet, 1. 647.; Lords' Journals, Dec.

FN 42 Fu una funzione piena di gravita, di ordine, e di gran speciosita. Adda, Jan. 15/25. 1686.

FN 43 The Trial is in the Collection of State Trials. Leeuwen, Jan. 15/25. 19/29. 1686.

FN 48 Leeuwen, Jan. 1/11 and 12/22 1686. Her letter, though very long and very absurd, was thought worth

FN 49 See his trial in the Collection of State Trials, and his curious manifesto, printed in 1681.

FN 50 Memoires de Grammont; Pepys's Diary, Aug. 19. 1662. Bonrepaux to Seignelay, Feb. 1/11 1686.

FN 52 Memoires de Grammont; Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon; Correspondence of Henry, Earl of

Clarendon, passim, particularly the letter dated Dec. 29. 1685; Sheridan MS. among the Stuart Papers; Ellis

FN 53 See his later correspondence, passim; St. Evremond, passim; Madame de Sevigne's Letters in the

beginning of 1689. See also the instructions to Tallard after the peace of Ryswick, in the French Archives.

FN 54 St. Simon, Memoires, 1697, 1719; St. Evremond; La Fontaine; Bonrepaux to Seignelay, Jan. 28/Feb.

FN 55 Adda, Nov. 16/26, Dec. 7/17. and Dec. 21/31. 1685. In these despatches Adda gives strong reasons for

compromising matters by abolishing the penal laws and leaving the test. He calls the quarrel with the

Parliament a "gran disgrazia." He repeatedly hints that the King might, by a constitutional policy, have

obtained much for the Roman Catholics, and that the attempt to relieve them illegally is likely to bring great

FN 57 This was the practice of his daughter Anne; and Marlborough said that she had learned it from her

FN 58 Down to the time of the trial of the Bishops, James went on telling Adda that all the calamities of

FN 59 Barillon, Nov. 16/26. 1685; Lewis to Barillon, Nov. 28/Dec. 6. 26. In a highly curious paper which

was written in 1687, almost certainly by Bonrepaux, and which is now in the French archives, Sunderland is

described thus"La passion qu'il a pour le jeu, et les pertes considerables quil y fait, incommodent fort ses

FN 60 It appears from the Council Book that he took his place as president on the 4th of December, 1685.

FN 61 Bonrepaux was not so easily deceived as James. "En son particulier il (Sunderland) n'en professe

aucune (religion), et en parle fort librement. Ces sortes de discours seroient en execration en France. Ici ils

sont ordinaires parmi un certain nombre de gens du pais."Bonrepaux to Seignelay, May 25/June 4 1687.

FN 62 Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii, 74. 77. Orig. Mem.; Sheridan MS.; Barillon, March 19/29 1686.

FN 63 Reresby's Memoirs; Luttrell's Diary, Feb. 2. 1685/6 Barillon, Feb. Jan. 25/Feb 4.

FN 64 Dartmouth's note on Burnet, i. 621. In a contemporary satire it is remarked that Godolphin

"Beats time with politic head, and all approves, Pleased with the charge of the Queen's muff and gloves."

FN 68 The chief materials for the history of this intrigue are the despatches of Barillon and Bonrepaux at the

beginning of the year 1686. See Barillon, Jan 25./Feb 4. Feb. 1/11. Feb. 8/18. Feb. 19/29. and Bonrepaux

under the first four Dates; Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 29.; Reresby's Memoirs; Burnet, i. 682.; Sheridan MS.;

Chaillot MS.; Adda's Despatches, Jan 22/Feb 1. and Jan 29/Feb 8 1686. Adda writes like a pious, but weak

FN 69 The meditation hears date 1685/6. Bonrepaux, in his despatch of the same day, says, "L'intrigue avoit

ete conduite par Milord Rochester et sa femme. . . . Leur projet etoit de faire gouverner le Roy d'Angleterre

par la nouvelle comtesse. Ils s'etoient assures d'elle." While Bonrepaux was writing thus, Rochester was

writing as follows: "Oh God, teach me so to number my days that I may apply my heart unto wisdom. Teach

me to number the days that I have spent in vanity and idleness, and teach me to number those that I have

spent in sin and wickedness. Oh God, teach me to number the days of my affliction too, and to give thanks

for all that is come to me from thy hand. Teach me likewise to number the days of this world's greatness, of

which I have so great a share; and teach me to look upon them as vanity and vexation of spirit."

FN 70 "Je vis Milord Rochester comme il sortoit de conseil fort chagrin; et, sur la fin du souper, il lui en

echappe quelque chose." Bonrepaux, Feb. 18/28. 1656. See also Barillon, March 1/11, 4/14.

FN 72 London Gazette, Feb. 11. 1685/6; Luttrell's Diary, Feb. 8; Leeuwen, Feb. 9/19.; Clarke's Life of James

FN 74 Barillon, April 26/May 6. May 3/13. i686; Citters, May 7/17; Evelyn's Diary, May 5.; Luttrell's Diary

FN 75 Lady Russell to Dr. Fitzwilliam, Jan. 22. 1686; Barillon, Feb 22/Mar 4 1686. "Ce prince temoigne,"

says Barillon, "une grande aversion pour eux, et aurait bien voulu se dispenser de la collecte, qui est ordonnee

FN 78 "Le Roi d'Angleterre connait bien que les gens mal intentionnes pour lui sont les plus prompts et les

plus disposes a donner considerablement. . . . Sa Majeste Britannique connoit bien qu'il auroit a propos de ne

point ordonner de collecte, et que les gens mal intentionnes contre la religion Catholique et contre lui se

FN 79 Barillon, Feb 15/25 Feb 22/Mar 4. April 19/29, Lewis to Barillon Mar 5/15.

FN 80 Barillon, April 19/29. 1686; Lady Russell to Dr. Fitzwilliam, April 14. "He sent away many," she says

FN 83 London Gazette, April 22. and 29. i686; Barillon, April 19/29.; Evelyn's Diary, June 2.; Luttrell, June

FN 86 See the account of the case in the Collection of State Trials; Citters, May 4/14., June 22/July 2 1686;

Evelyn's Diary, June 27.; Luttrell's Diary, June 25. As to Street, see Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 27. 1688.

FN 88 See the letters patent in Gutch's Collectanca Curiosa. The date is the 3d of May, 1686. Sclater's

Consensus Veterum; Gee's reply, entitled Veteres Vindicati; Dr. Anthony Horneck's account of Mr. Sclater's

recantation of the errors of Popery on the 5th of May, 1689; Dodd's Church History, part viii. book ii. art. 3.

FN 89 Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa; Dodd, viii. ii. 3.; Wood, Ath. Ox.; Ellis Correspondence, Feb. 27. 1686;

FN 90 Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa; Wood's Athenae Oxonienses; Dialogue between a Churchman and a

FN 93 "Ce prince m'a dit que Dieu avoit permie que toutes les loix qui ont ete faites pour etablir la religion

Protestante, et detruire la religion Catholique, servent presentement de fondement ce qu'il veut faire pour

l'etablissement de la vraie religion, et le mettent en droit d'exercer un pouvoir encore plus grand que celui

qu'ont les role Catholiques sur les affaires ecclesiastiques dans les autres pays."Barillon, July 12/22. 1686.

To Adda His Majesty said, a few days later, "Che l'autorita concessale dal parlamento sopra l'Ecclesiastico

senza alcun limite con fine contrario fosse adesso per servire al vantaggio de' medesimi Cattolici." July

FN 94 The whole question is lucidly and unanswerably argued in a little contemporary tract, entitled "The

King's Power in Matters Ecclesiastical fairly stated." See also a concise but forcible argument by Archbishop

FN 96 The best account of these transactions is in the Life of Sharp, by his son. Citters, June 29/July 9 1686.

FN 97 Barillon, July 21/Aug 1 1686. Citters, July 16/26; Privy Council Book, July 17. ; Ellis

Correspondence, July 17.; Evelyn's Diary, July 14.; Luttrell's Diary, Aug. 5, 6.

FN 98 The device was a rose and crown. Before the device was the initial letter of the Sovereign's name; after

it the letter R. Round the seal was this inscription, "Sigillum commissariorum regiae majestatis ad causas

FN 99 Appendix to Clarendon's Diary; Citters, Oct. 8/18 1686; Barillon, Oct. 11/21; Doyly's Life of Sancroft.

FN 102 Burnet, i. 677.; Barillon, Sept. 6/16. 1686. The public proceedings are in the Collection of State

FN 108 Ellis Correspondence, April 27. 1686; Barillon, April 19/29 Citters, April 20/30; Privy Council Book,

March 26; Luttrell's Diary; Adda Feb 26/Mar 8 March 26/April 5, April 2/12 April 23/May 3

FN 112 Ellis Correspondence, June 26. 1686; Citters, July 2/12 Luttrell's Diary, July 19.

FN 113 See the contemporary poems, entitled Hounslow Heath and Caesar's Ghost; Evelyn's Diary, June 2.

"I liked the place beyond expressing, I ne'er saw a camp so fine, Not a maid in a plain dressing, But might

FN 115 See the memoirs of Johnson, prefixed to the folio edition of his life, his Julian, and his answers to his

FN 116 Life of Johnson, prefixed to his works; Secret History of the happy Revolution, by Hugh Speke; State

Trials; Citters, Nov 23/Dec 3 1686. Citters gives the best account of the trial. I have seen a broadside which

FN 118 This I can attest from my own researches. There is an excellent collection in the British Museum.

Birch tells us, in his Life of Tillotson, that Archbishop Wake had not been able to form even a perfect

FN 119 Cardinal Howard spoke strongly to Burnet at Rome on this subject Burnet, i. 662. There is a curious

passage to the same effect in a despatch of Barillon but I have mislaid the reference.

One of the Roman Catholic divines who engaged in this controversy, a Jesuit named Andrew Patton, whom

Mr. Oliver, in his biography of the Order, pronounces to have been a man of distinguished ability, very

frankly owns his deficiencies. "A. P. having been eighteen years out of his own country, pretends not yet to

any perfection of the English expression or orthography." His orthography is indeed deplorable. In one of his

letters wright is put for write, woed for would. He challenged Tenison to dispute with him in Latin, that they

might be on equal terms. In a contemporary satire, entitled The Advice, is the following couplet

"Send Pulton to be lashed at Bushy's school, That he in print no longer play the fool."

Another Roman Catholic, named William Clench, wrote a treatise on the Pope's supremacy, and dedicated it

to the Queen in Italian. The following specimen of his style may suffice. "O del sagro marito fortunata

consorte! O dolce alleviamento d' affari alti! O grato ristoro di pensieri noiosi, nel cui petto latteo, lucente

specchio d'illibata matronal pudicizia, nel cui seno odorato, come in porto damor, si ritira il Giacomo! O

beata regia coppia! O felice inserto tra l'invincibil leoni e le candide aquile!"

Clench's English is of a piece with his Tuscan. For example, "Peter signifies an inexpugnable rock, able to

evacuate all the plots of hell's divan, and naufragate all the lurid designs of empoisoned heretics."

Another Roman Catholic treatise, entitled "The Church of England truly represented," begins by informing us

that "the ignis fatuus of reformation, which had grown to a comet by many acts of spoil and rapine, had been

ushered into England, purified of the filth which it had contracted among the lakes of the Alps."

FN 130 Fountainhall, Jan. 31. and Feb. 1. 1685/6.; Burnet, i. 678,; Trials of David Mowbray and Alexander

FN 132 Fountainhall, Feb. 16.; Wodrow, book iii. chap. x. sec. 3. "We require," His Majesty graciously

FN 138 Some words of Barillon deserve to be transcribed. They would alone suffice to decide a question

which ignorance and party spirit have done much to perplex. "Cette liberte accordee aux nonconformistes a

faite une grande difficulte, et a ete debattue pendant plusieurs jours. Le Roy d'Angleterre avoit fort envie que

les Catholiques eussent seuls la liberte de l'exercice de leur religion." April 19/29 1686.

FN 142 Citters, May 11/21 1686. Citters informed the States that he had his intelligence from a sure hand. I

will transcribe part of his narrative. It is an amusing specimen of the pyebald dialect in which the Dutch

"Des konigs missive, boven en behalven den Hoog Commissaris aensprake, aen het parlement afgesonden,

gelyck dat altoos gebruyckelyck is, waerby Syne Majesteyt ny in genere versocht hieft de mitigatie der

rigoureuse ofte sanglante wetten von het Ryck jegens het Pausdom, in het Generale Comitee des Articles (soo

men het daer naemt) na ordre gestelt en gelesen synde, in 't voteren, den Hertog van Hamilton onder anderen

klaer uyt seyde dat hy daertoe niet soude verstaen, dat by anders genegen was den konig in allen voorval

getrouw te dienen volgens het dictamen syner conscientie: 't gene reden gaf aen de Lord Cancelier de Grave

Perts te seggen dat het woort conscientie niets en beduyde, en alleen een individuum vagum was, waerop der

Chevalier Locqnard dan verder gingh; wil man niet verstaen de betyckenis van het woordt conscientie, soo

sal ik in fortioribus seggen dat wy meynen volgens de fondamentale wetten van het ryck."

There is, in the Hind Let Loose, a curious passage to which I should have given no credit, but for this

despatch of Citters. "They cannot endure so much as to hear of the name of conscience. One that was well

acquaint with the Council's humour in this point told a gentleman that was going before them, `I beseech you,

whatever you do, speak nothing of conscience before the Lords, for they cannot abide to hear that word.'"

FN 149 The provisions of the Irish Act of Supremacy, 2 Eliz. chap. I., are substantially the same with those of

the English Act of Supremacy, I Eliz. chap. I. hut the English act was soon found to he defective and the

defect was supplied by a more stringent act, 5 Eliz. chap. I No such supplementary law was made in Ireland.

That the construction mentioned in the text was put on the Irish Act of Supremacy, we are told by Archbishop

King: State of Ireland, chap. ii. sec. 9. He calls this construction Jesuitical but I cannot see it in that light.

FN 151 Political Anatomy of Ireland, 1672; Irish Hudibras, 1689; John Dunton's Account of Ireland, 1699.

FN 154 Statute 10 11 Charles I. chap. 16; King's State of the Protestants of Ireland, chap. ii. sec. 8.

FN 155 King, chap. ii. sec. 8. Miss Edgeworth's King Corny belongs to a later and much more civilised

generation; but whoever has studied that admirable portrait can form some notion of what King Corny's great

FN 157 Sheridan MS.; Preface to the first volume of the Hibernia Anglicana, 1690; Secret Consults of the

FN 158 "There was a free liberty of conscience by connivance, though not by the law."King, chap. iii. sec.

FN 159 In a letter to James found among Bishop Tyrrel's papers, and dated Aug. 14. 1686, are some

remarkable expressions. "There are few or none Protestants in that country but such as are joined with the

Whigs against the common enemy." And again: "Those that passed for Tories here (that is in England)

"publicly espouse the Whig quarrel on the other side the water." Swift said the same thing to King William a

few years later "I remember when I was last in England, I told the King that the highest Tories we had with

FN 160 The wealth and negligence of the established clergy of Ireland are mentioned in the strongest terms

FN 161 Clarendon reminds the King of this in a letter dated March 14. "It certainly is," Clarendon adds, "a

FN 162 Clarendon strongly recommended this course, and was of opinion that the Irish Parliament would do

FN 163 It was an O'Neill of great eminence who said that it did not become him to writhe his mouth to

FN 164 Sheridan MS. among the Stuart Papers. I ought to acknowledge the courtesy with which Mr. Glover

assisted me in my search for this valuable manuscript. James appears, from the instructions which he drew up

for his son in 1692, to have retained to the last the notion that Ireland could not without danger be entrusted

FN 166 Clarendon to Rochester, Jan. 19. 1685/6; Secret Consults of the Romish Party in Ireland, 1690.

FN 168 Clarendon to Rochester and Sunderland, March 2. 1685/6; and to Rochester, March 14.

FN 174 Sunderland to Clarendon, May 22. 1686; Clarendon to Ormond, May 30.; Clarendon to Sunderland,

FN 175 Clarendon to Rochester and Sunderland, June 1. 1686; to Rochester, June 12. King's State of the

Protestants of Ireland, chap. ii. sec. 6, 7. Apology for the Protestants of Ireland, 1689.

FN 180 Clarendon to Rochester, June 26. and July 4. 1686; Apology for the Protestants of Ireland, 1689.

FN 181 Clarendon to Rochester, July 4. 22. 1686; to Sunderland, July 6; to the King, Aug. 14.

FN 184 Sheridan MS. King's State of the Protestants of Ireland, chap. iii. sec. 3. sec. 8. There is a most

striking instance of Tyrconnel's impudent mendacity in Clarendon's letter to Rochester, July 22. 1686.

FN 186 Clarendon to Rochester, Sept. 23. and Oct. 2. 1686 Secret Consults of the Romish Party in Ireland,

FN 195 Barillon, Dec. 2/12 1686; Burnet, i. 684.; Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii. 100.; Dodd's Church

History. I have tried to frame a fair narrative out of these conflicting materials. It seems clear to me, from

Rochester's own papers that he was on this occasion by no means so stubborn as he has been represented by

FN 201 Rochester's Minutes, Dec. 19 1686; Barillon, Dec 30 / Jan 9 1686/7; Burnet, i. 685. Clarke's Life of

FN 202 Bishop Malony in a letter to Bishop Tyrrel says, "Never a Catholic or other English will ever think or

make a step, nor suffer the King to make a step for your restauration, but leave you as you were hitherto, and

leave your enemies over your heads: nor is there any Englishman, Catholic or other, of what quality or degree

soever alive, that will stick to sacrifice all Ireland for to save the least interest of his own in England, and

would as willingly see all Ireland over inhabited by English of whatsoever religion as by the Irish."

FN 204 Sheridan MS.; Oldmixon's Memoirs of Ireland; King's State of the Protestants of Ireland, particularly

FN 206 London Gazette, Jan. 6. and March 14. 1686/7; Evelyn's Diary, March 10 Etherege's letter to Dover

FN 207 "Pare che gli animi sono inaspriti della voce che corre per il popolo, desser cacciato il detto ministro

per non essere Cattolico, percio tirarsi al esterminio de' Protestanti."Adda, 1687.

FN 208 The chief materials from which I have taken my description of the Prince of Orange will be found in

Burnet's History, in Temple's and Gourville's Memoirs, in the Negotiations of the Counts of Estrades and

Avaux, in Sir George Downing's Letters to Lord Chancellor Clarendon, in Wagenaar's voluminous History,

in Van Kamper's Karakterkunde der Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis, and, above all, in William's own

confidential correspondence, of which the Duke of Portland permitted Sir James Mackintosh to take a copy.

FN 209 William was earnestly intreated by his friends, after the peace of Ryswick, to speak seriously to the

French ambassador about the schemes of assassination which the Jacobites of St. Germains were constantly

contriving. The cold magnanimity with which these intimations of danger were received is singularly

characteristic. To Bentinck, who had sent from Paris very alarming intelligence, William merely replied at

the end of a long letter of business,"Pour les assasins je ne luy en ay pas voulu parler, croiant que c'etoit au

desous de moy." May 2/12 1698. I keep the original orthography, if it is to be so called.

FN 210 From Windsor he wrote to Bentinck, then ambassador at Paris. "Jay pris avant hier un cerf dans la

forest avec les chains du Pr. de Denm. et ay fait on assez jolie chasse, autant que ce vilain paiis le permest.

March 20/April 1 1698. The spelling is bad, but not worse than Napoleon's. William wrote in better humour

from Loo. "Nous avons pris deux gros cerfs, le premier dans Dorewaert, qui est un des plus gros que je sache

FN 212 "Voila en peu de mot le detail de nostre St. Hubert. Et j'ay eu soin que M. Woodstoc" (Bentinck's

eldest son) "n'a point este a la chasse, bien moin au soupe, quoyqu'il fut icy. Vous pouvez pourtant croire que

de n'avoir pas chasse l'a on peu mortifie, mais je ne l'ay pas ause prendre sur moy, puisque vous m'aviez dit

FN 216 Henry Sidney's Journal of March 31. 1680, in Mr. Blencowe's interesting collection.

FN 218 No person has contradicted Burnet more frequently or with more asperity than Dartmouth. Yet

Dartmouth wrote, "I do not think he designedly published anything he believed to he false." At a later period

Dartmouth, provoked by some remarks on himself in the second volume of the Bishop's history, retracted this

praise but to such a retraction little importance can be attached. Even Swift has the justice to say, "After all,

he was a man of generosity and good nature."Short Remarks on Bishop Burnet's History.

It is usual to censure Burnet as a singularly inaccurate historian; hut I believe the charge to be altogether

unjust. He appears to be singularly inaccurate only because his narrative has been subjected to a scrutiny

singularly severe and unfriendly. If any Whig thought it worth while to subject Reresby's Memoirs, North's

Examen, Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution, or the Life of James the Second, edited by Clarke, to a

similar scrutiny, it would soon appear that Burnet was far indeed from being the most inexact writer of his

FN 219 Dr. Hooper's MS. narrative, published in the Appendix to Lord Dungannon's Life of William.

FN 221 I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting Massillon's unfriendly, yet discriminating and noble,

character of William. "Un prince profond dans ses vues; habile a former des ligues et a reunir les esprits; plus

heureux a exciter les guerres qu'a combatire; plus a craindre encore dans le secret du cabinet, qu'a la tete des

armees; un ennemi que la haine du nom Francais avoit rendu capable d'imaginer de grandes choses et de les

executer; un de ces genies qui semblent etre nes pour mouvoir a leur gre les peuples et les souverains; un

grand homme, s'il n'avoit jamais voulu etre roi."Oraison funebre de M. le Dauphin.

FN 222 For example, "Je crois M. Feversham un tres brave et honeste homme. Mais je doute s'il a assez

d'experience diriger une si grande affaire qu'il a sur le bras. Dieu lui donne un succes prompt et heureux.

Mais je ne suis pas hors d'inquietude." July 7/17 1685. Again, after he had received the news of the battle of

Sedgemoor, "Dieu soit loue du bon succes que les troupes du Roy ont eu contre les rebelles. Je ne doute pas

que cette affaire ne soit entierement assoupie, et que le regne du Roy sera heureux, Ce que Dieu veuille." July

FN 228 Our information about Wycherly is very scanty; but two things are certain, that in his later years he

called himself a Papist, and that he received money from James. I have very little doubt that he was a hired

FN 230 See James Quin's account of Haines in Davies's Miscellanies; Tom Brown's Works; Lives of

FN 231 This fact, which escaped the minute researches of Malone, appears from the Treasury Letter Book of

FN 233 Barillon, Jan 31/Feb 10 1686/7. "Je crois que, dans le fond, si on ne pouvoit laisser que la religion

Anglicane et la Catholique etablies par les loix, le Roy d'Angleterre en seroit bien plus content."

FN 236 Barillon Feb 20/March 10 1686/7; Citters, Feb. 16/23; Reresby's Memoirs Bonrepaux, May 25/June 4

FN 237 Barillon, March 14/24 1687; Lady Russell to Dr. Fitzwilliam, April 1.; Burnet, i. 671. 762. The

conversation is somewhat differently related in Clarke's Life of James, ii. 204. But that passage is not part of

FN 240 Warrant Book of the Treasury. See particularly the instructions dated March 8, 1687/8 Burnet, i. 715.

Reflections on his Majesty's Proclamation for a Toleration in Scotland; Letters containing some Reflections

on his Majesty's Declaration for Liberty of Conscience; Apology for the Church of England with a relation to

the spirit of Persecution for which she is accused, 1687/8. But it is impossible for me to cite all the pamphlets

FN 243 London Gazette, April 21. 1687 Animadversions on a late paper entituled A Letter to a Dissenter, by

FN 244 Lestrange's Answer to a Letter to a Dissenter; Care's Animadversions on A letter to a Dissenter;

Dialogue between Harry and Roger; that is to say, Harry Care and Roger Lestrange.

FN 245 The letter was signed T. W. Care says, in his Animadversions, "This Sir Politic T. W., or W. T. for

FN 246 Ellis Correspondence, March 15. July 27. 1686 Barillon, Feb 28/Mar 10; March 3/13. March 6/16.

FN 247 Wood's Athenae Oxonienses; Observator; Heraclitus Ridens, passim. But Care's own writings furnish

FN 248 Calamy's Account of the Ministers ejected or silenced after the Restoration, Northamptonshire;

FN 249 State Trials; Samuel Rosewell's Life of Thomas Rosewell, 1718; Calamy's Account.

FN 250 London Gazette, March 15 1685/6; Nichols's Defence of the Church of England; Pierce's Vindication

FN 253 Calamy's Life of Howe. The share which the Hampden family had in the matter I learned from a

FN 255 Young classes Bunyan's prose with Durfey's poetry. The people of fashion in the Spiritual Quixote

rank the Pilgrim's Progress with Jack the Giantkiller. Late in the eighteenth century Cowper did not venture

"I name thee not, lest so despis'd a name Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame."

FN 257 Kiffin's Memoirs; Luson's Letter to Brooke, May 11. 1773, in the Hughes Correspondence.

FN 258 See, among other contemporary pamphlets, one entitled a Representation of the threatening Dangers

FN 260 Le Prince d'Orange, qui avoit elude jusqu'alors de faire une reponse positive, dit qu'il ne consentira

jamais a la suppression du ces loix qui avoient ete etablies pour le maintien et la surete de la religion

Protestante, et que sa conscience ne le lui permettoit point non seulement pour la succession du royaume

d'Angleterre, mais meme pour l'empire du monde; en sorte que le roi d'Angleterre est plus aigri contre lui

FN 263 Burnet, i. 72673 1.; Answer to the Criminal Letters issued out against Dr. Burnet; Avaux Neg., July

7/17 14/24, July 28/Aug 7 Jan 19/29 1688; Lewis to Barillon, Dec 30 1687/Jan 9 1688; Johnstone of

Waristoun, Feb. 21. 1688; Lady Russell to Dr. Fitzwilliam, Oct. 5, 1687. As it has been suspected that

Burnet, who certainly was not in the habit of underrating his own importance, exaggerated the danger to

which he was exposed, I will give the words of Lewis and of Johnstone. "Qui que ce soit," says Lewis, "qui

entreprenne de l'enlever en Hollande trouvera non seulement une retraite assuree et une entiere protection

dans mes etats, mais aussi toute l'assistance qu'il pourra desirer pour faire conduire surement ce scelerat en

Angleterre." "The business of Bamfield (Burnet) is certainly true," says Johnstone. "No man doubts of it here,

and some concerned do not deny it. His friends say they hear he takes no care of himself, but out of vanity, to

show his courage, shows his folly; so that, if ill happen on it, all people will laugh at it. Pray tell him so much

from Jones (Johnstone). If some could be catched making their coup d'essai on him, it will do much to

FN 264 Burnet, a. 708.; Avaux Neg., Jan. 3/13 Feb. 6/16. 1687; Van Kampen, Karakterkunde der

FN 265 Burnet, i 711. Dykvelt's despatches to the States General contain, as far as I have seen or can learn,

not a word about the real object of his mission. His correspondence with the Prince of Orange was strictly

FN 268 Johnstone's Correspondence; Mackay's Memoirs; Arbuthnot's John Bull; Swift's writings from 1710

to 1714, passim; Whiston's Letter to the Earl of Nottingham, and the Earl's answer.

FN 269 Kennet's funeral sermon on the Duke of Devonshire, and Memoirs of the family of Cavendish; State

Trials; Privy Council Book, March 5. 1685/6; Barillon, June 30/July 10 1687; Johnstone, Dec. 8/18. 1687;

Lords' journals, May 6. 1689. "Ses amis et ses proches," says Barillon, "lui conseillent de prendre le bon

parti, mais il persiste jusqu'a prasent a ne se point soumettre. S'il vouloit se bien conduire et renoncer a etre

populaire, il ne payeroit pas l'amende, mais s'il opiniatre, il lui en coutera trente mille pieces et il demeurera

FN 270 The motive which determined the conduct of the Churchills is shortly and plainly set forth in the

Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. "It was," she says, "evident to all the world that, as things were

carried on by King James, everybody sooner or later must be ruined, who would not become a Roman

Catholic. This consideration made me very well pleased at the Prince of Orange's undertaking to rescue us

FN 272 It would be endless to recount all the books from which I have formed my estimate of the duchess's

character. Her own letters, her own vindication, and the replies which it called forth, have been my chief

FN 273 The formal epistle which Dykvelt carried back to the States is in the Archives at the Hague. The other

FN 274 Sunderland to William, Aug. 24. 1686; William to Sunderland, Sept. 2/12 1686; Barillon, May 6/16

May 26/June 5 Oct. 3/13 Nov 28/Dec 8. 1687; Lewis to Barillon, Oct. 14/24 1687: Memorial of Albeville,

Dec. 15/25. 1687; James to William, Jan. 17. Feb. 16. March 2. 13. 1688; Avaux Neg., March 1/11 6/16 8/18

FN 276 The Professor of Greek in the College De Propaganda Fide expressed his admiration in some

detestable hexameters and pentameters, of which the following specimen may suffice:

Rogerion de akepsomenos lamproio thriambon, oka mal eissen kai theen ochlos apas thaumazousa de ten

"His glorious train and passing pomp to view, A pomp that even to Rome itself was new, Each age, each sex,

FN 277 Correspondence of James and Innocent, in the British Museum; Burnet, i 703 705.; Welwood's

Memoirs; Commons' Journals, Oct. 28. 1689; An Account of his Excellency Roger Earl of Castelmaine's

Embassy, by Michael Wright, chief steward of his Excellency's house at Rome, 1688.

FN 279 Memoirs of the Duke of Somerset; Citters, July 5/15. 1687; Eachard's History of the Revolution;

FN 280 London Gazette, July 7. 1687; Citters, July 7/17 Account of the ceremony reprinted among the

FN 282 See the statutes 18 Henry 6. C. 19.; 2 3 Ed. 6. C. 2.; Eachard's History of the Revolution; Kennet, iii.

468.; North's Life of Guildford, 247.; London Gazette, April 18. May 23. 1687; Vindication of the E. of R,

FN 283 Dryden's Prologues and Cibber's Memoirs contain abundant proofs of the estimation in which the

FN 284 See the poem called Advice to the Painter upon the Defeat of the Rebels in the West. See also

another poem, a most detestable one, on the same subject, by Stepney, who was then studying at Trinity

FN 285 Mackay's character of Sheffield, with Swift's note; the Satire on the Deponents, 1688; Life of John,

Duke of Buckinghamshire, 1729; Barillon, Aug. 30. 1687. I have a manuscript lampoon on Mulgrave, dated

Peters (Petre) today and Burnet tomorrow, Knaves of all sides and religions he'll woo.

FN 286 See the proceedings against the University of Cambridge in the collection of State Trials.

FN 287 Wood's Athenae Oxonienses; Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber; Citters,

FN 288 Burnet, i. 697.; Letter of Lord Ailesbury printed in the European Magazine for April 1795.

FN 291 Burnet, i. 697.; Tanner's Notitia Monastica. At the visitation in the twentysixth year of Henry the

Eighth it appeared that the annual revenue of King's College was 751l.; of New College, 487l.; of Magdalene,

FN 293 See the London Gazette, from August 18 to September 1. 1687 Barillon, September 19/29

FN 294 "Penn, chef des Quakers, qu'on sait etre dans les interets du Roi d'Angleterre, est si fort decrie parmi

ceux de son parti qu'ils n'ont plus aucune confiance en lui."Bonrepaux to Seignelay, Sept. 12/22 1687. The

evidence of Gerard Croese is to the same effect. "Etiam Quakeri Pennum iron amplius, ut ante, ita amabant ac

magnifaciebant, quidam aversabantur ac fugiebant." Historia Quakeriana, lib, ii. 1695.

FN 296 London Gazette, Sept. 5.; Sheridan MS.; Barillon, Sept. 1687. "Le Roi son maitre," says Barillon, "a

temoigne une grande satisfaction des mesures qu'il a prises, et a autorise ce qu'il a fait en faveur des

Catholiques. Il les etablit dans les emplois et les charges, en sorte que l'autorite se trouvera bientot entre leurs

mains. Il reste encore beaucoup de choses a faire en ce pays la pour retirer les biens injustement otes aux

Catholiques. Mais cela ne peut s'executer qu'avec le tems et dans l'assemblee d'un parlement en Irlande."

FN 298 Proceedings against Magdalene College, in Oxon, for not electing Anthony Farmer president of the

said College, in the Collection of State Trials, Howell's edition; Luttrell's Diary, June 15. 17., Oct. 24., Dec.

10. 1687; Smith's Narrative; Letter of Dr. Richard Rawlinson, dated Oct. 31. 1687; Reresby's Memoirs;

Burnet, i. 699.; Cartwright's Diary; Citters, Oct 25/Nov 4, Oct 28/Nov 7 Nov 8/18 Nov 18/28 1687.

FN 299 "Quand on connoit le dedans de cette cour aussi intimement que je la connois, on peut croire que sa

Majeste Britannique donnera volontiers dans ces sortes de projets."Bonrepaux to Seignelay, March 18/28

FN 300 "Que, quand pour etablir la religion Catholique et pour la confirmer icy, il (James) devroit se rendre

en quelque facon dependant de la France, et mettre la decision de la succession a la couronne entre les mains

de ce monarque la, qu'il seroit oblige de le faire, parcequ'il vaudroit mieux pour ses sujets qu'ils devinssent

vassaux du Roy de France, etant Catholiques, que de demeurer comme esclaves du Diable." This paper is in

FN 302 Barillon, Sept. 13/23 1686. "La succession est une matiere fort delicate a traiter. Je sais pourtant

qu'on en parle au Roy d'Angleterre, et qu'on ne desespere pas avec le temps de trouver des moyens pour faire

FN 304 Bonrepaux to Seignelay, Aug 25/Sept 4 1687. I will quote a few words from this most remarkable

despatch: "je scay bien certainement que l'intention du Roy d'Angleterre est de faire perdre ce royaume

(Ireland) a son successeur, et de le fortifier en sorte que tous ses sujets Catholiques y puissent avoir un asile

assure. Son projet est de mettre les choses en cet estat dans le cours de cinq annees." In the Secret Consults of

the Romish Party in Ireland, printed in 1690, there is a passage which shows that this negotiation had not

been kept strictly secret. "Though the King kept it private from most of his council, yet certain it is that he

had promised the French King the disposal of that government and kingdom when things had attained to that

FN 305 Citters, Oct 28/Nov 7, Nov 22/Dec 2 1687; the Princess Anne to the Princess of Orange, March 14.

and 20. 1687/8; Barillon, Dec. 1/11 1687; Revolution Politics; the song "Two Toms and a Nat;" Johnstone,

FN 306 The king's uneasiness on this subject is strongly described by Ronquillo, Dec. 12/22 1687 "Un

Principe de Vales y un Duque de York y otro di Lochaosterna (Lancaster, I suppose,) no bastan a reducir la

gente; porque el Rey tiene 54 anos, y vendra a morir, dejando los hijos pequenos, y que entonces el reyno se

apoderara dellos, y los nombrara tutor, y los educara en la religion protestante, contra la disposicion que

FN 307 Three lists framed at this time are extant; one in the French archives, the other two in the archives of

the Portland family. In these lists every peer is entered under one of three heads, For the Repeal of the Test,

Against the Repeal, and Doubtful. According to one list the numbers were, 31 for, 86 against, and 20

doubtful; according to another, 33 for, 87 against, and 19 doubtful; according to the third, 35 for, 92 against,

FN 308 There is in the British Museum a letter of Dryden to Etherege, dated Feb. 1688. I do not remember to

have seen it in print. "Oh," says Dryden, "that our monarch would encourage noble idleness by his own

example, as he of blessed memory did before him. For my mind misgives me that he will not much advance

FN 310 Told by Lord Bradford, who was present, to Dartmouth; note on Burnet, i. 755.

FN 312 Bonrepaux to Seignelay, Nov. 14/24.; Citters, Nov. 15/25.; Lords' Journals,

FN 314 Halstead's Succinct Genealogy of the Family of Vere, 1685; Collins's Historical Collections. See in

the Lords' Journals, and in Jones's Reports, the proceedings respecting the earldom of Oxford, in March and

April 1625/6. The exordium of the speech of Lord Chief Justice Crew is among the finest specimens of the

FN 315 Coxe's Shrewsbury Correspondence; Mackay's Memoirs; Life of Charles Duke of Shrewsbury, 1718;

Burnet, i. 762.; Birch's Life of Tillotson, where the reader will find a letter from Tillotson to Shrewsbury,

FN 316 The King was only Nell's Charles III. Whether Dorset or Major Hart had the honour of being her

Charles I is a point open to dispute. But the evidence in favour of Dorset's claim seems to me to preponderate.

See the suppressed passage of Burnet, i. 263.; and Pepys's Diary, Oct. 26. 1667.

FN 317 Pepys's Diary; Prior's dedication of his poems to the Duke of Dorset; Johnson's Life of Dorset;

Dryden's Essay on Satire, and Dedication of the Essay on Dramatic Poesy. The affection of Dorset for his

wife and his strict fidelity to her are mentioned with great contempt by that profligate coxcomb Sir George

Etherege in his letters from Ratisbon, Dec. 9/19 1687, and Jan. 16/26 1688; Shadwell's Dedication of the

Squire of Alsatia; Burnet, i. 264.; Mackay's Characters. Some parts of Dorset's character are well touched in

"Yet soft his nature, though severe his lay" and again: "Blest courtier, who could king and country please,

FN 325 Rochester's offensive warmth on this occasion is twice noticed by Johnstone, Nov. 25. and Dec. 8.

FN 332 The anxiety about Lancashire is mentioned by Citters, in a despatch dated Nov. 18/28. 1687; the

FN 337 About twenty years before this time a Jesuit had noticed the retiring character of the Roman Catholic

country gentlemen of England. "La nobilta Inglese, senon se legata in servigio, di Corte, o in opera di

maestrato, vive, e gode il piu dell' anno alla campagna, ne' suoi palagi e poderi, dove son liberi e padroni; e

cio tanto piu sollecitamente I Cattolici quanto piu utilmente, si come meno osservati cola."L'lnghilterra

"Many of the Popish Sheriffs," Johnstone wrote, "have estates, and declare that whoever expects false returns

from them will be disappointed. The Popish gentry that live at their houses in the country are much different

from those that live here in town. Several of them have refused to be Sheriffs or Deputy Lieutenants." Dec. 8.

Ronquillo says the same. "Algunos Catolicos que fueron nombrados per sherifes se han excusado," Jan. 9/19.

1688. He some months later assured his court that the Catholic country gentlemen would willingly consent to

a compromise of which the terms should be that the penal laws should be abolished and the test retained.

"Estoy informado," he says, "que los Catolicos de las provincias no lo reprueban, pues no pretendiendo

oficios, y siendo solo algunos de la Corte los provechosos, les parece que mejoran su estado, quedando

seguros ellos y sus descendientes en la religion, en la quietud, y en la seguridad de sus haciendas." July

FN 339 Records of the Corporation, quoted in Brand's History of Newcastle. Johnstone, Feb. 21. 1687/8

FN 343 In the margin of the Privy Council Book may be observed the words "Second regulation," and "Third

FN 352 Ibid. April 6 1688; Treasury Letter Book, March 14. 1687; Ronquillo, April 16/26.

FN 355 London Gazette, Dec. 15. 1687. See the proceedings against Williams in the Collection of State

Trials. "Ha hecho," says Ronquillo, "grande susto el haber nombrado el abogado Williams, que fue el orador

y el mas arrabiado de toda la casa de los comunes en los ultimos terribles parlamentos del Rey difunto. Nov

FN 360 That very remarkable man, the late Alexander Knox, whose eloquent conversation and elaborate

letters had a great influence on the minds of his contemporaries, learned, I suspect, much of his theological

system from Fowler's writings. Fowler's book on the Design of Christianity was assailed by John Bunyan

with a ferocity which nothing can justify, but which the birth and breeding of the honest tinker in some

FN 361 Johnstone, May 23. 1688. There is a satirical poem on this meeting entitled the Clerical Cabal.

FN 363 Extracts from Tanner MS. in Howell's State Trials; Life of Prideaux; Clarendon's Diary, May 16.

FN 365 Sancroft's Narrative printed from the Tanner MS.; Citters, May 22/June 1 1688.

FN 368 Citters, May 22/June 1688 . Burnet, i. 740.; and Lord Dartmouth's note; Southey's Life of Wesley.

FN 372 Barillon, May 24/June 3 May 31/June 10 1688; Citters, July, 1/11 Adda, May 25/June 4, May

FN 373 Burnet, i. 740.; Life of Prideaux; Citters, June 12/22 15/25 1688. Tanner MS.; Life and

FN 375 Burnet, i. 741.; Citters, June 8/18 12/22. 1688; Luttrell's Diary, June 8.; Evelyn's Diary; Letter of Dr.

Nalson to his wife, dated June 14., and printed from the Tanner MS.; Reresby's Memoirs.

FN 377 Correspondence between Anne and Mary, in Dalrymple; Clarendon's Diary, Oct. 31. 1688.

FN 381 Johnstone gives in a very few words an excellent summary of the case against the King. "The

generality of people conclude all is a trick; because they say the reckoning is changed, the Princess sent

away, none of the Clarendon family nor the Dutch Ambassador sent for, the suddenness of the thing, the

FN 382 Ronquillo, July 26/Aug 5. Ronquillo adds, that what Zulestein said of the state of public opinion was

FN 384 For the events of this day see the State Trials; Clarendon's Diary Luttrell's Diary; Citters. June 15/25

FN 387 This fact was communicated to me in the most obliging manner by the Reverend R. S. Hawker of

FN 390 Sunderland's own narrative is, of course, not to be implicitly trusted, but he vouched Godolphin as a

FN 391 Barillon June 21/June 28 June 28/July 8 1688; Adda, June 29/July 9 Citters June 26/July 6;

FN 396 Johnstone, July 2. 1688. The editor of Levinz's reports expresses great wonder that, after the

Revolution, Levinz was not replaced on the bench. The facts related by Johnstone may perhaps explain the

FN 397 I draw this inference from a letter of Compton to Sancroft, dated the 12th of June.

FN 399 This is the expression of an eye witness. It is in a newsletter in the Mackintosh Collection.

FN 400 See the proceedings in the Collection of State Trials. I have taken some touches from Johnstone, and

FN 401 Johnstone, July 2. 1688; Letter from Mr. Ince to the Archbishop, dated at six o'clock in the morning;

FN 403 State Trials; Oldmixon, 739.; Clarendon's Diary, June 25, 1688; Johnstone, July 2.; Citters, July 3/13

FN 404 Citters, July 3/13 The gravity with which he tells the story has a comic effect. "Den Bisschop van

Chester, wie seer de partie van het hof houdt, om te voldoen aan syne gewoone nieusgierigheyt, hem op dien

tyt in Westminster Hall mede hebbende laten vinden, in het uytgaan doorgaans was uytgekreten voor een

grypende wolf in schaaps kleederen; en by synde een beer van hooge stature en vollyvig, spotsgewyse

alomme geroepen was dat men voor hem plaats moeste maken, om te laten passen, gelyck ook geschiede, om

dat soo sy uytschreeuwden en hem in het aansigt seyden, by den Paus in syn buyck hadde."

FN 405 Luttrell; Citters, July 3/13. 1688. "Soo syn in tegendeel gedagte jurys met de uyterste acclamatie en

alle teyckenen van genegenheyt en danckbaarheyt in het door passeren van de gemeente ontvangen.

Honderden vielen haar om den hals met alle bedenckelycke wewensch van segen en geluck over hare

persoonen en familien, om dat sy haar so heusch en eerlyck buyten verwagtinge als het ware in desen

gedragen hadden. Veele van de grooten en kleynen adel wierpen in het wegryden handen vol gelt onder tie

armen luyden, om op de gesontheyt van den Coning, der Heeren Prelaten, en de Jurys te drincken."

FN 406 "Mi trovava con Milord Sunderland la stessa mattina, quando venne l'Avvocato Generale a rendergli

conto del successo, e disse, che mai piu a memoria d'huomini si era sentito un applauso, mescolato di voci e

lagrime di giubilo, egual a quello che veniva egli di vedere in quest' occasione." Adda, July 6/16. 1688.

FN 408 See a very curious narrative published among other papers, in 1710, by Danby, then Duke of Leeds.

There is an amusing account of the ceremony of burning a Pope in North's Examen, 570. See also the note on

FN 409 Reresby's Memoirs; Citters, 3/13 July 17. 1688; Adda 6/16 July; Barillon, July 2/12 Luttrell's Diary;

FN 411 This document will be found in the first of the twelve collections of papers relating to the affairs of

England, printed at the end of 1688 and the beginning of 1689. It was put forth on the 26th of July, not quite a

month after the trial. Lloyd of Saint Asaph about the same time told Henry Wharton that the Bishops

purposed to adopt an entirely new policy towards the Protestant Dissenters; "Omni modo curaturos ut

ecelesia sordibus et corruptelis penitus exueretur; ut sectariis reformatis reditus in ecclesiae sinum exoptati

occasio ac ratio concederetur, si qui sobrii et pii essent; ut pertinacibus interim jugum le aretur, extinctis

FN 412 This change in the opinion of a section of the Tory party is well illustrated by a little tract published

at the beginning of 1689, and entitled "A Dialogue between Two Friends, wherein the Church of England is

FN 415 Sidney's Diary and Correspondence, edited by Mr. Blencowe; Mackay's Memoirs with Swift's note;

FN 416 Burnet, i. 764.; Letter in cipher to William, dated June 18. 1688, in Dalrymple.

FN 418 As to Montaigne, see Halifax's Letter to Cotton. I am not sure that the head of Halifax in Westminster

Abbey does not give a more lively notion of him than any painting or engraving that I have seen.

FN 419 See Danby's Introduction to the papers which he published in 1710; Burnet, i. 764.

FN 420 Burnet, i. 764.; Sidney to the Prince of Orange, June 30. 1688, in Dalrymple.

FN 427 As to the relation in which the Stadtholder and the city of Amsterdam stood towards each other, see

FN 433 In one of the numerous ballads of that time are the following lines: "Both our Britons are fooled,

FN 436 London Gazette, July 9. 1688; Adda, July 13/23 Evelyn's Diary, July 12. Johnstone, Dec. 8/18 1687,

FN 438 London Gazette, July 26. 1688; Adda, Ju1y 27/Aug 6.; Newsletter in the Mackintosh Collection, July

FN 441 Ellis Correspondence, August 4. 7. 1688; Bishop Sprat's relation of the Conference of Nov. 6. 1688.

FN 443 This is told us by three writers who could well remember that time, Kennet, Eachard, and Oldmixon.

FN 446 King's State of the Protestants of Ireland; Secret Consults of the Romish Party in Ireland.

FN 448 History of the Desertion, 1689; compare the first and second editions; Barillon, Sept. 8/18 1688;

Citters of the same date; Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii. 168. The compiler of the last mentioned work

says that Churchill moved the court to sentence the six officers to death. This story does not appear to have

been taken from the King's papers; I therefore regard it as one of the thousand fictions invented at Saint

Germains for the purpose of blackening a character which was black enough without such daubing. That

Churchill may have affected great indignation on this occasion, in order to hide the treason which he

meditated, is highly probable. But it is impossible to believe that a man of his sense would have urged the

members of a council of war to inflict a punishment which was notoriously beyond their competence.

FN 449 The song of Lillibullero is among the State Poems, to Percy's Relics the first part will be found, but

not the second part, which was added after William's landing. In the Examiner and in several pamphlets of

FN 450 See the Negotiations of the Count of Avaux. It would be almost impossible for me to cite all the

passages which have furnished me with materials for this part of my narrative. The most important will be

found under the following dates: 1685, Sept. 20, Sept. 24, Oct. 5, Dec. 20; 1686, Jan. 3, Nov. 22; 1687, Oct.

2, Nov. 6, Nov. 19 1688, July 29, Aug. 20. Lord Lonsdale, in his Memoirs, justly remarks that, but for the

mismanagement of Lewis, the city of Amsterdam would have prevented the Revolution.

FN 452 Burnet, i. 758.; Lewis paper bears date Aug 27/Sept 6 1688. It will be found in the Recueil des

FN 453 For the consummate dexterity with which he exhibited two different views of his policy to two

different parties he was afterwards bitterly reviled by the Court of Saint Germains. "Licet Foederatis publicus

ille preado haud aliud aperte proponat nisi ut Galici imperii exuberans amputetur potesias, veruntamen sibi et

suis ex haeretica faece complicibus, ut pro comperto habemus, longe aliud promittit, nempe ut, exciso vel

enervato Francorum regno, ubi Catholicarum partium summum jam robur situm est, haeretica ipsorum

pravitas per orbem Christisnum universum praevaleat."Letter of James to the Pope; evidently written in

FN 460 Secret Consults of the Romish Party in Ireland. This account is strongly confirmed by what

Bonrepaux wrote to Seignelay, Sept. 12/22 1687. "Il (Sunderland) amassera beaucoup d'argent, le roi son

maitre lui donnant la plus grande partie de celui qui provient des confiscations on des accommodemens que

FN 462 Compare Evelyn's account of her with what the Princess of Denmark wrote about her to the Hague,

FN 464 See her letters in the Sidney Diary and Correspondence lately published. Mr. Fox, in his copy of

Barillon's despatches, marked the 30th of August N.S. 1688, as the date from which it was quite certain that

FN 467 Avaux, July 19/29 July 31/Aug 10 Aug.11/21 1688; Lewis to Barillon, Aug. 2/12, 16/26.

FN 468 Barillon, Aug. 20/30 Aug 23/Sept 2 1688 Adda, Aug 24/Sept 3; Clarke's Life of James, ii. 177. Orig.

FN 471 "Che l'adulazione e la vanita gli avevano tornato il capo"Adda, Aug 31/Sept 10 1688.

FN 472 Citters, Sept. 11/21 1688 Avaux, Sept. 17/27 Sept 27/Oct 7 Oct. 3 Wagenaar, book lx.; Sunderland's

Apology. It has been often asserted that James declined the help of a French army. The truth is that no such

army was offered. Indeed, the French troops would have served James much more effectually by menacing

FN 476 Witsen MS. quoted by Wagenaar; Lord Lonsdale's Memoirs; Avaux, Oct. 4/14 5/15 1688. The

formal declaration of the States General, dated Oct. 18/28 will be found in the Recueil des Traites, vol. iv. no.

FN 477 Abrege de la Vie de Frederic Duc de Schomberg, 1690; Sidney to William, June 30. 1688; Burnet, i.

FN 481 Pepys's Memoirs relating to the Royal Navy, 1690. Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii. 186 Orig.

FN 482 Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii. 186. Orig. Mem.; Adda, Sept 14/Oct 2 Citters, Sept 21/Oct 1

FN 483 Adda, Sept 28/Oct. 8. 1688. This despatch describes strongly James's dread of an universal defection

FN 484 All the scanty light which we have respecting this negotiation is derived from Reresby. His informant

was a lady whom he does not name, and who certainly was not to be implicitly trusted.

FN 486 Tanner MSS.; Burnet, i. 784. Burnet has, I think, confounded this audience with an audience which

FN 489 Ibid. Oct. 15. 1688; Adda, Oct. 12/22 The Nuncio, though generally an enemy to violent courses,

seems to have opposed the restoration of Hough, probably from regard for the interests of Giffard and the

other Roman Catholics who were quartered in Magdalene College. Leyburn declared himself "nel sentimento

che fosse stato non spoglio, e che il possesso in cui si trovano ora li Cattolici fosse violento ed illegale, onde

non era privar questi di no dritto acquisto, ma rendere agli altri quello che era stato levato con violenza."

FN 491 "Vento Papista." says Adda Oct 24/Nov 3 1688. The expression Protestant wind seems to have been

first applied to the wind which kept Tyrconnel, during some time, from taking possession of the government

FN 492 All the evidence on this point is collected in Howell's edition of the State Trials.

FN 493 It will be found with much illustrative matter in Howell's edition of the State Trials.

FN 494 Barillon, Oct. 8/18 16/26 18/28 Oct 25/Nov 4 Oct.27/Nov 6 Oct 29/Nov 8 1688; Adda, Oct 26/Nov 5

FN 496 Register of the Proceedings of the States of Holland and West Friesland; Burnet, i. 782.

FN 497 London Gazette, Oct. 29. 1688; Burnet, i. 782.; Bentinck to his wife, Oct. 21/31 Oct. 22/Nov 1 Oct

FN 499 Ronquillo, Nov. 12/22 i688. "Estas respuestas," says Ronquillo, "son ciertas, aunque mas las

FN 502 Burnet, i. 787.; Rapin; Whittle's Exact Diary; Expedition of the Prince of Orange to England, 1688;

FN 503 Avaux, July 12/22 Aug. 14/24 1688. On this subject, Mr. De Jonge, who is connected by affinity

with the descendants of the Dutch Admiral Evertsen, has kindly communicated to me some interesting

information derived from family papers. In a letter to Bentinck, dated Sept. 6/16 1688, William insists

strongly on the importance of avoiding an action, and begs Bentinck to represent this to Herbert. "Ce n'est pas

le tems de faire voir sa bravoure, ni de se battre si l'on le peut eviter. Je luy l'ai deja dit: mais il sera necessaire

FN 504 Rapin's History; Whittle's Exact Diary. I have seen a contemporary Dutch chart of the order in which

FN 505 Adda, Nov. 1688; Newsletter in the Mackintosh Collection; Citters Nov 6/16

FN 506 Burnet, i. 788.; Extracts from the Legge Papers in the Mackintosh Collection.

FN 507 I think that nobody who compares Burnet's account of this conversation with Dartmouth's can doubt

FN 508 I have seen a contemporary Dutch print of the disembarkation. Some men are bringing the Prince's

FN 510 On Nov. 9. 1688, James wrote to Dartmouth thus: "Nobody could work otherwise than you did. I am

sure all knowing seamen must be of the same mind." But see Clarke's Life of James, ii. 207. Orig. Mem,

FN 512 See Whittle's Diary, the Expedition of his Highness, and the Letter from Exon published at the time. I

have myself seen two manuscript newsletters describing the pomp of the Prince's entrance into Exeter. A few

months later a bad poet wrote a play, entitled "The late Revolution." One scene is laid at Exeter. "Enter

battalions of the Prince's army, on their march into the city, with colours flying, drums beating, and the

citizens shouting." A nobleman named Misopapas says, "can you guess, my Lord, How dreadful guilt and

fear has represented Your army in the court? Your number and your stature Are both advanced; all six foot

high at least, In bearskins clad, Swiss, Swedes, and Brandenburghers." In a song which appeared just after the

entrance into Exeter, the Irish are described as mere dwarfs in comparison of the giants whom William

commanded: "Poor Berwick, how will thy dear joys Oppose this famed viaggio? Thy tallest sparks wilt be

mere toys To Brandenburgh and Swedish boys, Coraggio! Coraggio! Addison alludes, in the Freeholder, to

FN 513 Expedition of the Prince of Orange; Oldmixon, 755.; Whittle's Diary; Eachard, iii. 911.; London

FN 515 Clarke's Life of James, ii. 210. Orig. Mem.; Sprat's Narrative, Citters, Nov 6/16 1688

FN 516 Luttrell's Diary; Newsletter in the Mackintosh Collection; Adda, Nov 16/26 1688

FN 521 Clarke's Life of James, ii. 215.; Orig. Mem.; Burnet, i. 790. Clarendon's Diary, Nov. 15 1688;

FN 522 Clarke's Life of James, ii. 218.; Clarendon's Diary, Nov. 15. 1688 Citters, Nov. 16/26

FN 526 Clarke's Life of James, ii. 212. Orig. Mem.; Clarendon's Diary, Nov. 17.1688; Citters, Nov 20/30;

Burnet, i. 79i.; Some Reflections upon the most Humble Petition to the King's most Excellent Majesty, 1688;

Modest Vindication of the Petition; First Collection of Papers relating to English Affairs, 1688.

FN 530 Seymour's reply to William is related by many writers. It much resembles a story which is told of the

Manriquez family. They, it is said, took for their device the words, "Nos no descendemos de los Reyes, sino

FN 532 Burnet, i. 792.; History of the Desertion; Second Collection of Papers, 1688.

FN 536 Cibber's Apology History of the Desertion; Luttrell's Diary; Second Collection of Papers, 1688.

FN 538 Clarke's Life of James, i. 222. Orig. Mem; Barillon, Nov 21/Dec 1 1688; Sheridan MS.

FN 540 Letter from Middleton to Preston dated Salisbury, Nov. 25. "Villany upon villany," says Middleton,

"the last still greater than the former. Clarke's Life of James, ii. 224, 225. Orig. Mem.

FN 543 Clarendon's Diary, Nov. 26.; Clarke's Life of James, ii. 224.; Prince George's letter to the King has

FN 545 Clarendon's Diary, Nov. 25, 26. 1688; Citters, Nov 26/Dec 6; Ellis Correspondence, Dec. 19.;

Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication; Burnet, i. 792; Compton to the Prince of Orange, Dec. 2. 1688, in

Dalrymple. The Bishop's military costume is mentioned in innumerable pamphlets and lampoons.

FN 546 Dartmouth's note on Burnet, i. 792.; Citters Nov 26/Dec 6 1688; Clarke's Life of James, i. 226. Orig.

FN 547 Clarke's Life of James, ii. 236. Orig. Mem.; Burnet, i. 794.: Luttrell's Diary; Clarendon's Diary, Nov.

Citters evidently had his intelligence from one of the Lords who were present. As the matter is important I

will give two short passages from his despatches. The King said, "Dat het by na voor hem unmogelyck was to

pardoneren persoonen wie so hoog in syn reguarde schuldig stonden, vooral seer uytvarende jegens den Lord

Churchill, wien hy hadde groot gemaakt, en nogtans meynde de eenigste oorsake van alle dese desertie en

van de retraite van hare Coninglycke Hoogheden te wesen." One of the lords, probably Halifax or

Nottingham, "seer hadde geurgeert op de securiteyt van de lords die nu met syn Hoogheyt geengageert staan.

Soo hoor ick," says Citters, "dat syn Majesteyt onder anderen soude gesegt hebben; 'Men spreekt al voor de

securiteyt voor andere, en niet voor de myne.' Waar op een der Pairs resolut dan met groot respect soude

geantwoordt hebben dat, soo syne Majesteyt's wapenen in staat warm om hem te connen mainteneren, dat dan

sulk syne securiteyte koude wesen; soo niet, en soo de difficulteyt dan nog to surmonteren was, dat het den

moeste geschieden door de meeste condescendance, en hoe meer die was, en hy genegen om aan de natie

FN 548 Letter of the Bishop of St. Asaph to the Prince of Orange, Dec. 17, 1688.

FN 554 Second Collection of Papers, 1688; Dartmouth's Letter, dated December 3. 1688, will be found in

Dalrymple; Clarke's Life of James, ii. 233. Orig. Mem. James accuses Dartmouth of having got up an address

from the fleet demanding a Parliament. This is a mere calumny. The address is one of thanks to the King for

having called a Parliament, and was framed before Dartmouth had the least suspicion that His Majesty was

FN 557 The Nuncio says, "Se lo avesse fatto prima di ora, per il Re ne sarebbe stato meglio."

FN 558 See the Secret History of the Revolution, by Hugh Speke, 1715. In the London Library is a copy of

FN 560 An account of what passed at Norwich may still be seen in several collections on the original

FN 561 Clarke's Life of James, ii. 233.; MS. Memoir of the Harley family in the Mackintosh Collection.

FN 562 Citters, Dec. 9/19 1688. Letter of the Bishop of Bristol to the Prince of Orange, Dec 5. 1688, in

FN 563 Citters, Nov 27/Dec 7 1688; Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 11.; Song on Lord Lovelace's entry into Oxford,

FN 569 History of the Desertion; Citters, Dec. 9/19 1688; Exact Diary; Oldmixon, 760.

FN 570 See a very interesting note on the fifth canto of Sir Walter Scott's Rokeby.

FN 571 My account of what passed at Hungerford is taken from Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 8, 9. 1688; Burnet,

i. 794; the Paper delivered to the Prince by the Commissioners, and the Prince's Answer; Sir Patrick Hume's

FN 572 Clarke's Life of James, ii. 237. Burnet, strange to say, had not heard, or had forgotten, that the prince

FN 573 Clarke's Life of James, ii. 246.; Pere d'Orleans, Revolutions d'Angleterre, xi.; Madame de Sevigne,

Dec. 14/24. 1688; Dangeau, Memoires, Dec. 13/23. As to Lauzun, see the Memoirs of Mademoiselle and of

FN 574 History of the Desertion; Clarke's Life Of James. ii. 251. Orig. Mem.; Mulgrave's Account of the

FN 575 History of the Desertion; Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution; Fachard's History of the Revolution.

FN 577 Clarke's Life of James, ii. 259.; Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution; Legge Papers in the

FN 578 London Gazette, Dec. 13 1688; Barillon, Dec. 14/24.; Citters, same date; Luttrell's Diary; Clarke's

Life of James, ii. 256. Orig. Mem; Ellis Correspondence, Dec. 13.; Consultation of the Spanish Council of

State, Jan. 19/29, 1689. It appears that Ronquillo complained bitterly to his government of his losses;

"Sirviendole solo de consuelo el haber tenido prevencion de poder consumir El Santisimo."

FN 579 London Gazette, Dec. 13 1688; Luttrell's Diary; Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution; Consultation

of the Spanish Council of State, Jan. 19/29 1689. Something was said about reprisals: but the Spanish council

treated the suggestion with contempt. "Habiendo sido este hecho por un furor de pueblo, sin consentimiento

del gobierno y antes contra su voluntad, como lo ha mostrado la satisfaccion que le han dado y le han

prometido, parece que no hay juicio humano que puede aconsejar que se pase a semejante remedio."

FN 580 North's Life of Guildford, 220.; Jeffreys' Elegy; Luttrell's Diary; Oldmixon, 762. Oldmixon was in

the crowd, and was, I doubt not, one of the most furious there. He tells the story well. Ellis Correspondence;

FN 582 Citters, Dec. 14/24. 1688; Luttrell's Diary; Ellis Correspondence; Oldmixon, 761.; Speke's Secret

History of the Revolution; Clarke's Life of James, ii. 257.; Eachard's History of the Revolution; History of the

FN 585 Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 13. 1688; Citters, Dec 14/24; Eachard's History of the Revolution.

FN 587 Clarke's Life of James ii. 251. Orig. Mem.; Letter printed in Tindal's Continuation of Rapin. This

FN 588 Reresby was told, by a lady whom he does not name, that the King had no intention of withdrawing

till he received a letter from Halifax, who was then at Hungerford. The letter, she said, informed His Majesty

that, if he staid, his life would be in danger. This is certainly a mere romance. The King, before the

Commissioners left London, had told Barillon that their embassy was a mere feint, and had expressed a full

resolution to leave the country. It is clear from Reresby's own narrative that Halifax thought himself

FN 595 Clarke's Life of James, ii. 262. Orig. Mem.; Barnet, i. 799 In the History of the Desertion (1689), it is

affirmed that the shouts on this occasion were uttered merely by some idle boys, and that the great body of

the people looked on in silence. Oldmixon, who was in the crowd, says the same; and Ralph, whose

prejudices were very different from Oldmixon's, tells us that the information which he had received from a

respectable eye witness was to the same effect. The truth probably is that the signs of joy were in themselves

slight, but seemed extraordinary because a violent explosion of public indignation had been expected.

Barillon mentions that there had been acclamations and some bonfires, but adds, "Le people dans le fond est

FN 596 London Gazette, Dec. 16. 1688; Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution; History of the Desertion;

FN 600 Burnet i. 800.; Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 17 1688; Citters, Dec. 18/28. 1688.

FN 601 Burnet, i. 800.; Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough; Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution.

Clarendon says nothing of this under the proper date; but see his Diary, August 19. 1689.

FN 603 Clarke's Life of James ii. 264. mostly from Orig. Mem.; Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution;

Rapin de Thoyras. It must be remembered that in these events Rapin was himself an actor.

FN 604 Clarke's Life of James, ii. 265. Orig. Mem.; Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution; Burnet, i, 801.;

FN 605 Citters, Dec. 18/28. 1688; Evelyn's Diary, same date; Clarke's Life of James, ii. 266, 267. Orig. Mem.

FN 607 Luttrell's Diary; Evelyn's Diary; Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 18. 1688; Revolution Politics.

FN 608 Fourth Collection of papers relating to the present juncture of affairs in England, 1688; Burnet, i.

FN 611 History of the Desertion; Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 21. 1688; Burnet, i. 803. and Onslow's note.

FN 613 Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 21, 22. 1688; Clarke's Life of James, ii. 268. 270. Orig. Mem.

FN 614 Clarendon, Dec. 23, 1688; Clarke's Life of James, ii. 271. 273. 275. Orig. Mem.

FN 616 Halifax's notes; Lansdowne MS. 255.; Clarendon's Diary, Dec. 24. 1688; London Gazette, Dec. 31.

FN 618 The objector was designated in contemporary books and pamphlets only by his initials; and these

were sometimes misinterpreted. Eachard attributes the cavil to Sir Robert Southwell. But I have no doubt that

FN 619 History of the Desertion; Life of William, 1703; Citters, Dec 28/Jan 7 1688/9

FN 621 London Gazette, Jan. 10 17. 1688/9; Luttrell's Diary; Legge Papers; Citters, 1/11 4/14 11/21. 1689;

Ronquillo, Jan. 15/25 Feb 23/Mar 5; Consultation of the Spanish Council of State. March 26/April 5

FN 622 Burnet, i,. 802; Ronquillo, Jan. 2/12 Feb. 8/18. 1689. The originals of these despatches were

entrusted to me by the kindness of the late Lady Holland and of the present Lord Holland. Prom the latter

despatch I will quote a very few words: "La tema de S. M. Britanica a seguir imprudentes consejos perdio a

los Catolicos aquella quietud en que les dexo Carlos segundo. V. E. asegure a su Santidad que mas sacare del

FN 623 On December 13/23. 1688, the Admiral of Castile gave his opinion thus: "Esta materia es de calidad

que no puede dexar de padecer nuestra sagrada religion o el servicio de V. M.; porque, si e1 Principe de

Orange tiene buenos succesos, nos aseguraremos de Franceses, pero peligrara la religion." The Council was

much pleased on February 16/26 by a letter of the Prince, in which he promised "que los Catolicos que se

portaren con prudencia no sean molestados, y gocen libertad de conciencia, por ser contra su dictamen el

FN 624 In the chapter of La Bruyere, entitled "Sur les Jugemens," is a passage which deserves to be read, as

showing in what light our revolution appeared to a Frenchman of distinguished abilities.

FN 625 My account of the reception of James and his wife in France is taken chiefly from the letters of

FN 627 "'Tis hier nu Hosanna: maar 't zal, veelligt, haast Kruist hem kruist hem, zyn." Witsen, MS. in

Wagenaar, book lxi. It is an odd coincidence that, a very few years before, Richard Duke, a Tory poet, once

well known, but now scarcely remembered except by Johnson's biographical sketch, had used exactly the

same illustration about James "Was not of old the Jewish rabble's cry, Hosannah first, and after crucify?" The

Review. Despatch of the Dutch Ambassadors Extraordinary, Jan. 8/18. 1689; Citters, same date.

FN 629 The Sixth Collection of Papers, 1689; Wodrow, III. xii. 4. App. 150, 151; Faithful Contendings

FN 630 Perth to Lady Errol, Dec. 29. 1688; to Melfort, Dec. 21. 1688; Sixth Collection of Papers, 1689.

FN 633 See the pamphlet entitled Letter to a Member of the Convention, and the answer, 1689; Burnet, i.

FN 634 Letter to the Lords of the Council, Jan. 4/14. 1688/9; Clarendon's Diary, Jan 9/19

FN 635 It seems incredible that any man should really have been imposed upon by such nonsense. I therefore

think it right to quote Sancroft's words,which are still extant in his own handwriting:

"The political capacity or authority of the King, and his name in the government, are perfect and cannot fail;

but his person being human and mortal, and not otherwise privileged than the rest of mankind, is subject to

all the defects and failings of it. He may therefore be incapable of directing the government and dispensing

the public treasure, either by absence, by infancy, lunacy, deliracy, or apathy, whether by nature or casual

infirmity, or lastly, by some invincible prejudices of mind, contracted and fixed by education and habit, with

unalterable resolutions superinduced, in matters wholly inconsistent and incompatible with the laws, religion,

peace, and true policy of the kingdom. In all these cases (I say) there must be some one or more persons

appointed to supply such defect, and vicariously to him, and by his power and authority, to direct public

affairs. And this done I say further, that all proceedings, authorities, commissions, grants, issued as formerly,

are legal and valid to all intents, and the people's allegiance is the same still, their oaths and obligations no

way thwarted . . . . So long as the government moves by the Kings authority, and in his name, all those sacred

ties and settled forms of proceedings are kept, and no man's conscience burthened with anything he needs

scruple to undertake."Tanner MS.; Doyly's Life of Sancroft. It was not altogether without reason that the

FN 637 Clarendon's Diary, Dee. 24 1688; Burnet, i. 819.; Proposals humbly offered in behalf of the Princess

FN 639 Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 26. 1672, Oct. 12. 1679, July 13. 1700; Seymour's Survey of London.

FN 642 Lords' and Commons' Journals, Jan. 22. 1688; Citters and Clarendon's Diary of the same date.

FN 644 Commons' Journals, Jan. 28. 1688/9; Grey's Debates, Citters Jan 29/Feb 8 If the report in Grey's

FN 646 Clarendon's Diary, Jan. 21. 1688/9; Burnet, i. 810; Doyly's Life of Sancroft;

FN 648 Stat. 2 Hen. 7. c. I.: Lord Coke's Institutes, part iii. chap i.; Trial of Cook for high treason, in the

FN 649 Lords Journals Jan. 29. 1688/9; Clarendon's Diary; Evelyn's Diary; Citters; Eachard's History of the

Revolution; Barnet, i. 813.; History of the Reestablishment of the Government, 1689. The numbers of the

Contents and Not Contents are not given in the journals, and are differently reported by different writers. I

have followed Clarendon, who took the trouble to make out lists of the majority and minority.

FN 650 Grey's Debates; Evelyn's Diary; Life of Archbishop Sharp, by his son; Apology for the New

FN 652 Dartmouth's note on Burnet i. 393. Dartmouth says that it was from Fagel that the Lords extracted the

hint. This was a slip of the pen very pardonable in a hasty marginal note; but Dalrymple and others ought not

to have copied so palpable a blunder. Fagel died in Holland, on the 5th of December 1688, when William was

at Salisbury and James at Whitehall. The real person was, I suppose, Dykvelt, Bentinck, or Zulestein, most

FN 653 Both the service and Burnet's sermon are still to be found in our great libraries, and will repay the

FN 655 Citters, Feb. 5/15. 1689; Clarendon's Diary, Feb. 2. The story is greatly exaggerated in the work

entitled Revolution Politics, an eminently absurd book, yet of some value as a record of the foolish reports of

FN 656 The letter of James, dated Jan 24/Feb 3 1689, will be found in Kennet. It is most disingenuously

garbled in Clarke's Life of James. See Clarendon's Diary, Feb. 2. 4.; Grey's Debates; Lords' Journals, Feb. 2.

FN 657 It has been asserted by several writers, and, among others, by Ralph and by M. Mazure, that Danby

signed this protest. This is a mistake. Probably some person who examined the journals before they were

printed mistook Derby for Danby. Lords' Journals, Feb. 4. 1688/9. Evelyn, a few days before, wrote Derby,

FN 660 Clarendon's Diary, Jan. 1, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 1688/9; Burnet, i. 807.

FN 661 Clarendon's Diary, Feb, 5. 168/9; Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication; Mulgrave's Account of the

FN 662 Burnet, i. 820. Burnet says that he has not related the events of this stirring time in chronological

order. I have therefore been forced to arrange them by guess: but I think that I can scarcely be wrong in

supposing that the letter of the Princess of Orange to Danby arrived, and that the Prince's explanation of his

views was given, between Thursday the 31st of January, and Wednesday the 6th of February.

FN 663 Mulgrave's Account of the Revolution. In the first three editions, I told this story incorrectly. The

fault was chiefly my own but partly Burnet's, by whose careless use of the pronoun _he_, I was misled.

FN 665 See the Lords' and Commons' Journals of Feb. 6. 1688/9 and the Report of the Conference.

FN 666 Lords' Journals, Feb. 6. 1688/9; Clarendon's Diary; Burnet, i. 822. and Dartmouth's note; Citters, Feb.

8/18,. I have followed Clarendon as to the numbers. Some writers make the majority smaller and some larger.

FN 671 Commons' Journals, Feb. 4. 8. 11, 12.; Lords' Journals, Feb. 9. 11. 12, 1688/9

FN 673 Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication; Review of the Vindication; Burnet, i. 781. 825. and

FN 674 Lords' and Commons' Journals, Feb. 14 1688/9; Citters, Feb. 15/25. Citters puts into William's mouth

stronger expressions of respect for the authority of Parliament than appear in the journals; but it is clear from

FN 675 London Gazette, Feb. 14. 1688/9; Lords' and Commons' Journals, Feb. 13.; Citters, Feb 15/25;

William and Mary proclaimed in LondonRejoicings throughout England; Rejoicings in

HollandDiscontent of the Clergy and of the ArmyReaction of Public FeelingTemper of the Tories

AffairsDanbyHalifaxNottingham Shrewsbury The Board of Admiralty; the Board of TreasuryThe

Great SealThe JudgesThe HouseholdSubordinate Appointments The Convention turned into a

ParliamentThe Members of the two Houses required to take the Oaths Questions relating to the

RevenueAbolition of the Hearth MoneyRepayment of the Expenses of the United ProvincesMutiny

at IpswichThe first Mutiny BillSuspension of the Habeas Corpus ActUnpopularity of

WilliamPopularity of MaryThe Court removed from Whitehall to Hampton CourtThe Court at

Kensington; William's foreign FavouritesGeneral MaladministrationDissensions among Men in

OfficeDepartment of Foreign AffairsReligious DisputesThe High Church PartyThe Low Church

PartyWilliam's Views concerning Ecclesiastical PolityBurnet, Bishop of Salisbury Nottingham's

Views concerning Ecclesiastical PolityThe Toleration BillThe Comprehension BillThe Bill for

settling the Oaths of Allegiance and SupremacyThe Bill for settling the Coronation OathThe

CoronationPromotionsThe Coalition against France; the Devastation of the PalatinateWar declared

THE Revolution had been accomplished. The decrees of the Convention were everywhere received with

submission. London, true during fifty eventful years to the cause of civil freedom and of the reformed

religion, was foremost in professing loyalty to the new Sovereigns. Garter King at arms, after making

proclamation under the windows of Whitehall, rode in state along the Strand to Temple Bar. He was followed

by the maces of the two Houses, by the two Speakers, Halifax and Powle, and by a long train of coaches

filled with noblemen and gentlemen. The magistrates of the City threw open their gates and joined the

procession. Four regiments of militia lined the way up Ludgate Hill, round Saint Paul's Cathedral, and along

Cheapside. The streets, the balconies, and the very housetops were crowded with gazers. All the steeples

from the Abbey to the Tower sent forth a joyous din. The proclamation was repeated, with sound of trumpet,

In the evening every window from Whitechapel to Piccadilly was lighted up. The state rooms of the palace

were thrown open, and were filled by a gorgeous company of courtiers desirous to kiss the hands of the King

and Queen. The Whigs assembled there, flushed with victory and prosperity. There were among them some

who might be pardoned if a vindictive feeling mingled with their joy. The most deeply injured of all who had

survived the evil times was absent. Lady Russell, while her friends were crowding the galleries of Whitehall,

remained in her retreat, thinking of one who, if he had been still living, would have held no undistinguished

place in the ceremonies of that great day. But her daughter, who had a few months before become the wife of

Lord Cavendish, was presented to the royal pair by his mother the Countess of Devonshire. A letter is still

extant in which the young lady described with great vivacity the roar of the populace, the blaze in the streets,

the throng in the presence chamber, the beauty of Mary, and the expression which ennobled and softened the

harsh features of William. But the most interesting passage is that in which the orphan girl avowed the stern

delight with which she had witnessed the tardy punishment of her father's murderer.1

The example of London was followed by the provincial towns. During three weeks the Gazettes were filled

with accounts of the solemnities by which the public joy manifested itself, cavalcades of gentlemen and

yeomen, processions of Sheriffs and Bailiffs in scarlet gowns, musters of zealous Protestants with orange

flags and ribands, salutes, bonfires, illuminations, music, balls, dinners, gutters running with ale and conduits

Still more cordial was the rejoicing among the Dutch, when they learned that the first minister of their

Commonwealth had been raised to a throne. On the very day of his accession he had written to assure the

States General that the change in his situation had made no change in the affection which he bore to his

native land, and that his new dignity would, he hoped, enable him to discharge his old duties more efficiently

than ever. That oligarchical party, which had always been hostile to the doctrines of Calvin and to the House

of Orange, muttered faintly that His Majesty ought to resign the Stadtholdership. But all such mutterings

were drowned by the acclamations of a people proud of the genius and success of their great countryman. A

day of thanksgiving was appointed. In all the cities of the Seven Provinces the public joy manifested itself by

festivities of which the expense was chiefly defrayed by voluntary gifts. Every class assisted. The poorest

labourer could help to set up an arch of triumph, or to bring sedge to a bonfire. Even the ruined Huguenots of

France could contribute the aid of their ingenuity. One art which they had carried with them into banishment

was the art of making fireworks; and they now, in honour of the victorious champion of their faith, lighted up

To superficial observers it might well seem that William was, at this time, one of the most enviable of human

beings. He was in truth one of the most anxious and unhappy. He well knew that the difficulties of his task

were only beginning. Already that dawn which had lately been so bright was overcast; and many signs

It was observed that two important classes took little or no part in the festivities by which, all over England,

the inauguration of the new government was celebrated. Very seldom could either a priest or a soldier be seen

in the assemblages which gathered round the market crosses where the King and Queen were proclaimed.

The professional pride both of the clergy and of the army had been deeply wounded. The doctrine of

nonresistance had been dear to the Anglican divines. It was their distinguishing badge. It was their favourite

theme. If we are to judge by that portion of their oratory which has come down to us, they had preached about

the duty of passive obedience at least as often and as zealously as about the Trinity or the Atonement.4 Their

attachment to their political creed had indeed been severely tried, and had, during a short time, wavered. But

with the tyranny of James the bitter feeling which that tyranny had excited among them had passed away. The

parson of a parish was naturally unwilling to join in what was really a triumph over those principles which,

during twentyeight years, his flock had heard him proclaim on every anniversary of the Martyrdom and on

The soldiers, too, were discontented. They hated Popery indeed; and they had not loved the banished King.

But they keenly felt that, in the short campaign which had decided the fate of their country, theirs had been an

inglorious part. Forty fine regiments, a regular army such as had never before marched to battle under the

royal standard of England, had retreated precipitately before an invader, and had then, without a struggle,

submitted to him. That great force had been absolutely of no account in the late change, had done nothing

towards keeping William out, and had done nothing towards bringing him in. The clowns, who, armed with

pitchforks and mounted on carthorses, had straggled in the train of Lovelace or Delamere, had borne a greater

part in the Revolution than those splendid household troops, whose plumed hats, embroidered coats, and

curvetting chargers the Londoners had so often seen with admiration in Hyde Park. The mortification of the

army was increased by the taunts of the foreigners, taunts which neither orders nor punishments could

entirely restrain.5 At several places the anger which a brave and highspirited body of men might, in such

circumstances, be expected to feel, showed itself in an alarming manner. A battalion which lay at Cirencester

put out the bonfires, huzzaed for King James, and drank confusion to his daughter and his nephew. The

garrison of Plymouth disturbed the rejoicings of the County of Cornwall: blows were exchanged, and a man

The ill humour of the clergy and of the army could not but be noticed by the most heedless; for the clergy and

the army were distinguished from other classes by obvious peculiarities of garb. "Black coats and red coats,"

said a vehement Whig in the House of Commons, "are the curses of the nation." 7 But the discontent was not

confined to the black coats and the red coats. The enthusiasm with which men of all classes had welcomed

William to London at Christmas had greatly abated before the close of February. The new king had, at the

very moment at which his fame and fortune reached the highest point, predicted the coming reaction. That

reaction might, indeed, have been predicted by a less sagacious observer of human affairs. For it is to be

chiefly ascribed to a law as certain as the laws which regulate the succession of the seasons and the course of

the trade winds. It is the nature of man to overrate present evil, and to underrate present good; to long for

what he has not, and to be dissatisfied with what he has. This propensity, as it appears in individuals, has

often been noticed both by laughing and by weeping philosophers. It was a favourite theme of Horace and of

Pascal, of Voltaire and of Johnson. To its influence on the fate of great communities may be ascribed most of

the revolutions and counterrevolutions recorded in history. A hundred generations have elapsed since the first

great national emancipation, of which an account has come down to us. We read in the most ancient of books

that a people bowed to the dust under a cruel yoke, scourged to toil by hard taskmasters, not supplied with

straw, yet compelled to furnish the daily tale of bricks, became sick of life, and raised such a cry of misery as

pierced the heavens. The slaves were wonderfully set free: at the moment of their liberation they raised a

song of gratitude and triumph: but, in a few hours, they began to regret their slavery, and to murmur against

the leader who had decoyed them away from the savoury fare of the house of bondage to the dreary waste

which still separated them from the land flowing with milk and honey. Since that time the history of every

great deliverer has been the history of Moses retold. Down to the present hour rejoicings like those on the

shore of the Red Sea have ever been speedily followed by murmurings like those at the Waters of Strife.8

The most just and salutary revolution must produce much suffering. The most just and salutary revolution

cannot produce all the good that had been expected from it by men of uninstructed minds and sanguine

tempers. Even the wisest cannot, while it is still recent, weigh quite fairly the evils which it has caused

against the evils which it has removed. For the evils which it has caused are felt; and the evils which it has

Thus it was now in England. The public was, as it always is during the cold fits which follow its hot fits,

sullen, hard to please, dissatisfied with itself, dissatisfied with those who had lately been its favourites. The

truce between the two great parties was at an end. Separated by the memory of all that had been done and

suffered during a conflict of half a century, they had been, during a few months, united by a common danger.

But the danger was over: the union was dissolved; and the old animosity broke forth again in all its strength.

James had during the last year of his reign, been even more hated by the Tories than by the Whigs; and not

without cause for the Whigs he was only an enemy; and to the Tories he had been a faithless and thankless

friend. But the old royalist feeling, which had seemed to be extinct in the time of his lawless domination, had

been partially revived by his misfortunes. Many lords and gentlemen, who had, in December, taken arms for

the Prince of Orange and a Free Parliament, muttered, two months later, that they had been drawn in; that

they had trusted too much to His Highness's Declaration; that they had given him credit for a

disinterestedness which, it now appeared, was not in his nature. They had meant to put on King James, for his

own good, some gentle force, to punish the Jesuits and renegades who had misled him, to obtain from him

some guarantee for the safety of the civil and ecclesiastical institutions of the realm, but not to uncrown and

banish him. For his maladministration, gross as it had been, excuses were found. Was it strange that, driven

from his native land, while still a boy, by rebels who were a disgrace to the Protestant name, and forced to

pass his youth in countries where the Roman Catholic religion was established, he should have been

captivated by that most attractive of all superstitions? Was it strange that, persecuted and calumniated as he

had been by an implacable faction, his disposition should have become sterner and more severe than it had

once been thought, and that, when those who had tried to blast his honour and to rob him of his birthright

were at length in his power, he should not have sufficiently tempered justice with mercy? As to the worst

charge which had been brought against him, the charge of trying to cheat his daughters out of their

inheritance by fathering a supposititious child, on what grounds did it rest? Merely on slight circumstances,

such as might well be imputed to accident, or to that imprudence which was but too much in harmony with

his character. Did ever the most stupid country justice put a boy in the stocks without requiring stronger

evidence than that on which the English people had pronounced their King guilty of the basest and most

odious of all frauds? Some great faults he had doubtless committed, nothing could be more just or

constitutional than that for those faults his advisers and tools should be called to a severe reckoning; nor did

any of those advisers and tools more richly deserve punishment than the Roundhead sectaries whose

adulation had encouraged him to persist in the fatal exercise of the dispensing power. It was a fundamental

law of the land that the King could do no wrong, and that, if wrong were done by his authority, his

counsellors and agents were responsible. That great rule, essential to our polity, was now inverted. The

sycophants, who were legally punishable, enjoyed impunity: the King, who was not legally punishable, was

punished with merciless severity. Was it possible for the Cavaliers of England, the sons of the warriors who

had fought under Rupert, not to feel bitter sorrow and indignation when they reflected on the fate of their

rightful liege lord, the heir of a long line of princes, lately enthroned in splendour at Whitehall, now an exile,

a suppliant, a mendicant? His calamities had been greater than even those of the Blessed Martyr from whom

he sprang. The father had been slain by avowed and mortal foes: the ruin of the son had been the work of his

own children. Surely the punishment, even if deserved, should have been inflicted by other hands. And was it

altogether deserved? Had not the unhappy man been rather weak and rash than wicked? Had he not some of

the qualities of an excellent prince? His abilities were certainly not of a high order: but he was diligent: he

was thrifty: he had fought bravely: he had been his own minister for maritime affairs, and had, in that

capacity, acquitted himself respectably: he had, till his spiritual guides obtained a fatal ascendency over his

mind, been regarded as a man of strict justice; and, to the last, when he was not misled by them, he generally

spoke truth and dealt fairly. With so many virtues he might, if he had been a Protestant, nay, if he had been a

moderate Roman Catholic, have had a prosperous and glorious reign. Perhaps it might not be too late for him

to retrieve his errors. It was difficult to believe that he could be so dull and perverse as not to have profited by

the terrible discipline which he had recently undergone; and, if that discipline had produced the effects which

might reasonably be expected from it, England might still enjoy, under her legitimate ruler, a larger measure

of happiness and tranquillity than she could expect from the administration of the best and ablest usurper.

We should do great injustice to those who held this language, if we supposed that they had, as a body, ceased

to regard Popery and despotism with abhorrence. Some zealots might indeed be found who could not bear the

thought of imposing conditions on their King, and who were ready to recall him without the smallest

assurance that the Declaration of Indulgence should not be instantly republished, that the High Commission

should not be instantly revived, that Petre should not be again seated at the Council Board, and that the

fellows of Magdalene should not again be ejected. But the number of these men was small. On the other

hand, the number of those Royalists, who, if James would have acknowledged his mistakes and promised to

observe the laws, were ready to rally round him, was very large. It is a remarkable fact that two able and

experienced statesmen, who had borne a chief part in the Revolution, frankly acknowledged, a few days after

the Revolution had been accomplished, their apprehension that a Restoration was close at hand. "If King

James were a Protestant," said Halifax to Reresby, "we could not keep him out four months." "If King

James," said Danby to the same person about the same time, "would but give the country some satisfaction

about religion, which he might easily do, it would be very hard to make head against him."9 Happily for

England, James was, as usual, his own worst enemy. No word indicating that he took blame to himself on

account of the past, or that he intended to govern constitutionally for the future, could be extracted from him.

Every letter, every rumour, that found its way from Saint Germains to England made men of sense fear that,

if, in his present temper, he should be restored to power, the second tyranny would be worse than the first.

Thus the Tories, as a body, were forced to admit, very unwillingly, that there was, at that moment, no choice

but between William and public ruin. They therefore, without altogether relinquishing the hope that he who

was King by right might at some future time be disposed to listen to reason, and without feeling any thing

like loyalty towards him who was King in possession, discontentedly endured the new government.

It may be doubted whether that government was not, during the first months of its existence, in more danger

from the affection of the Whigs than from the disaffection of the Tories. Enmity can hardly be more annoying

than querulous, jealous, exacting fondness; and such was the fondness which the Whigs felt for the Sovereign

of their choice. They were loud in his praise. They were ready to support him with purse and sword against

foreign and domestic foes. But their attachment to him was of a peculiar kind. Loyalty such as had animated

the gallant gentlemen who fought for Charles the First, loyalty such as had rescued Charles the Second from

the fearful dangers and difficulties caused by twenty years of maladministration, was not a sentiment to

which the doctrines of Milton and Sidney were favourable; nor was it a sentiment which a prince, just raised

to power by a rebellion, could hope to inspire. The Whig theory of government is that kings exist for the

people, and not the people for the kings; that the right of a king is divine in no other sense than that in which

the right of a member of parliament, of a judge, of a juryman, of a mayor, of a headborough, is divine; that,

while the chief magistrate governs according to law, he ought to be obeyed and reverenced; that, when he

violates the law, he ought to be withstood; and that, when he violates the law grossly, systematically and

pertinaciously, he ought to be deposed. On the truth of these principles depended the justice of William's title

to the throne. It is obvious that the relation between subjects who held these principles, and a ruler whose

accession had been the triumph of these principles, must have been altogether different from the relation

which had subsisted between the Stuarts and the Cavaliers. The Whigs loved William indeed: but they loved

him not as a King, but as a party leader; and it was not difficult to foresee that their enthusiasm would cool

fast if he should refuse to be the mere leader of their party, and should attempt to be King of the whole

nation. What they expected from him in return for their devotion to his cause was that he should be one of

themselves, a stanch and ardent Whig; that he should show favour to none but Whigs; that he should make all

the old grudges of the Whigs his own; and there was but too much reason to apprehend that, if he

disappointed this expectation, the only section of the community which was zealous in his cause would be

Such were the difficulties by which, at the moment of his elevation, he found himself beset. Where there was

a good path he had seldom failed to choose it. But now he had only a choice among paths every one of which

seemed likely to lead to destruction. From one faction he could hope for no cordial support. The cordial

support of the other faction he could retain only by becoming himself the most factious man in his kingdom,

a Shaftesbury on the throne. If he persecuted the Tories, their sulkiness would infallibly be turned into fury. If

he showed favour to the Tories, it was by no means certain that he would gain their goodwill; and it was but

too probable that he might lose his hold on the hearts of the Whigs. Something however he must do:

something he must risk: a Privy Council must be sworn in: all the great offices, political and judicial, must be

filled. It was impossible to make an arrangement that would please every body, and difficult to make an

What is now called a ministry he did not think of forming. Indeed what is now called a ministry was never

known in England till he had been some years on the throne. Under the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the

Stuarts, there had been ministers; but there had been no ministry. The servants of the Crown were not, as

now, bound in frankpledge for each other. They were not expected to be of the same opinion even on

questions of the gravest importance. Often they were politically and personally hostile to each other, and

made no secret of their hostility. It was not yet felt to be inconvenient or unseemly that they should accuse

each other of high crimes, and demand each other's heads. No man had been more active in the impeachment

of the Lord Chancellor Clarendon than Coventry, who was a Commissioner of the Treasury. No man had

been more active in the impeachment of the Lord Treasurer Danby than Winnington, who was Solicitor

General. Among the members of the Government there was only one point of union, their common head, the

Sovereign. The nation considered him as the proper chief of the administration, and blamed him severely if

he delegated his high functions to any subject. Clarendon has told us that nothing was so hateful to the

Englishmen of his time as a Prime Minister. They would rather, he said, be subject to an usurper like Oliver,

who was first magistrate in fact as well as in name, than to a legitimate King who referred them to a Grand

Vizier. One of the chief accusations which the country party had brought against Charles the Second was that

he was too indolent and too fond of pleasure to examine with care the balance sheets of public accountants

and the inventories of military stores. James, when he came to the crown, had determined to appoint no Lord

High Admiral or Board of Admiralty, and to keep the entire direction of maritime affairs in his own hands;

and this arrangement, which would now be thought by men of all parties unconstitutional and pernicious in

the highest degree, was then generally applauded even by people who were not inclined to see his conduct in

a favourable light. How completely the relation in which the King stood to his Parliament and to his ministers

had been altered by the Revolution was not at first understood even by the most enlightened statesmen. It was

universally supposed that the government would, as in time past, be conducted by functionaries independent

of each other, and that William would exercise a general superintendence over them all. It was also fully

expected that a prince of William's capacity and experience would transact much important business without

There were therefore no complaints when it was understood that he had reserved to himself the direction of

foreign affairs. This was indeed scarcely matter of choice: for, with the single exception of Sir William

Temple, whom nothing would induce to quit his retreat for public life, there was no Englishman who had

proved himself capable of conducting an important negotiation with foreign powers to a successful and

honourable issue. Many years had elapsed since England had interfered with weight and dignity in the affairs

of the great commonwealth of nations. The attention of the ablest English politicians had long been almost

exclusively occupied by disputes concerning the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of their own country.

The contests about the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill, the Habeas Corpus Act and the Test Act, had

produced an abundance, it might almost be said a glut, of those talents which raise men to eminence in

societies torn by internal factions. All the Continent could not show such skilful and wary leaders of parties,

such dexterous parliamentary tacticians, such ready and eloquent debaters, as were assembled at

Westminister. But a very different training was necessary to form a great minister for foreign affairs; and the

Revolution had on a sudden placed England in a situation in which the services of a great minister for foreign

William was admirably qualified to supply that in which the most accomplished statesmen of his kingdom

were deficient. He had long been preeminently distinguished as a negotiator. He was the author and the soul

of the European coalition against the French ascendency. The clue, without which it was perilous to enter the

vast and intricate maze of Continental politics, was in his hands. His English counsellors, therefore, however

able and active, seldom, during his reign, ventured to meddle with that part of the public business which he

The internal government of England could be carried on only by the advice and agency of English ministers.

Those ministers William selected in such a manner as showed that he was determined not to proscribe any set

of men who were willing to support his throne. On the day after the crown had been presented to him in the

Banqueting House, the Privy Council was sworn in. Most of the Councillors were Whigs; but the names of

several eminent Tories appeared in the list.12 The four highest offices in the state were assigned to four

In practical ability and official experience Danby had no superior among his contemporaries. To the gratitude

of the new Sovereigns he had a strong claim; for it was by his dexterity that their marriage had been brought

about in spite of difficulties which had seemed insuperable. The enmity which he had always borne to France

was a scarcely less powerful recommendation. He had signed the invitation of the thirtieth of June, had

excited and directed the northern insurrection, and had, in the Convention, exerted all his influence and

eloquence in opposition to the scheme of Regency. Yet the Whigs regarded him with unconquerable distrust

and aversion. They could not forget that he had, in evil days, been the first minister of the state, the head of

the Cavaliers, the champion of prerogative, the persecutor of dissenters. Even in becoming a rebel, he had not

ceased to be a Tory. If he had drawn the sword against the Crown, he had drawn it only in defence of the

Church. If he had, in the Convention, done good by opposing the scheme of Regency, he had done harm by

obstinately maintaining that the throne was not vacant, and that the Estates had no right to determine who

should fill it. The Whigs were therefore of opinion that he ought to think himself amply rewarded for his

recent merits by being suffered to escape the punishment of those offences for which he had been impeached

ten years before. He, on the other hand, estimated his own abilities and services, which were doubtless

considerable, at their full value, and thought himself entitled to the great place of Lord High Treasurer, which

he had formerly held. But he was disappointed. William, on principle, thought it desirable to divide the power

and patronage of the Treasury among several Commissioners. He was the first English King who never, from

the beginning to the end of his reign, trusted the white staff in the hands of a single subject. Danby was

offered his choice between the Presidency of the Council and a Secretaryship of State. He sullenly accepted

the Presidency, and, while the Whigs murmured at seeing him placed so high, hardly attempted to conceal his

Halifax, the most illustrious man of that small party which boasted that it kept the balance even between

Whigs and Tories, took charge of the Privy Seal, and continued to be Speaker of the House of Lords.14 He

had been foremost in strictly legal opposition to the late Government, and had spoken and written with great

ability against the dispensing power: but he had refused to know any thing about the design of invasion: he

had laboured, even when the Dutch were in full march towards London, to effect a reconciliation; and he had

never deserted James till James had deserted the throne. But, from the moment of that shameful flight, the

sagacious Trimmer, convinced that compromise was thenceforth impossible, had taken a decided part. He had

distinguished himself preeminently in the Convention: nor was it without a peculiar propriety that he had

been appointed to the honourable office of tendering the crown, in the name of all the Estates of England, to

the Prince and Princess of Orange; for our Revolution, as far as it can be said to bear the character of any

single mind, assuredly bears the character of the large yet cautious mind of Halifax. The Whigs, however,

were not in a temper to accept a recent service as an atonement for an old offence; and the offence of Halifax

had been grave indeed. He had long before been conspicuous in their front rank during a hard fight for

liberty. When they were at length victorious, when it seemed that Whitehall was at their mercy, when they

had a near prospect of dominion and revenge, he had changed sides; and fortune had changed sides with him.

In the great debate on the Exclusion Bill, his eloquence had struck them dumb, and had put new life into the

inert and desponding party of the Court. It was true that, though he had left them in the day of their insolent

prosperity, he had returned to them in the day of their distress. But, now that their distress was over, they

forgot that he had returned to them, and remembered only that he had left them.15

The vexation with which they saw Danby presiding in the Council, and Halifax bearing the Privy Seal, was

not diminished by the news that Nottingham was appointed Secretary of State. Some of those zealous

churchmen who had never ceased to profess the doctrine of nonresistance, who thought the Revolution

unjustifiable, who had voted for a Regency, and who had to the last maintained that the English throne could

never be one moment vacant, yet conceived it to be their duty to submit to the decision of the Convention.

They had not, they said, rebelled against James. They had not selected William. But, now that they saw on

the throne a Sovereign whom they never would have placed there, they were of opinion that no law, divine or

human, bound them to carry the contest further. They thought that they found, both in the Bible and in the

Statute Book, directions which could not be misunderstood. The Bible enjoins obedience to the powers that

be. The Statute Book contains an act providing that no subject shall be deemed a wrongdoer for adhering to

the King in possession. On these grounds many, who had not concurred in setting up the new government,

believed that they might give it their support without offence to God or man. One of the most eminent

politicians of this school was Nottingham. At his instance the Convention had, before the throne was filled,

made such changes in the oath of allegiance as enabled him and those who agreed with him to take that oath

without scruple. "My principles," he said, "do not permit me to bear any part in making a King. But when a

King has been made, my principles bind me to pay him an obedience more strict than he can expect from

those who have made him." He now, to the surprise of some of those who most esteemed him, consented to

sit in the council, and to accept the seals of Secretary. William doubtless hoped that this appointment would

be considered by the clergy and the Tory country gentlemen as a sufficient guarantee that no evil was

meditated against the Church. Even Burnet, who at a later period felt a strong antipathy to Nottingham,

owned, in some memoirs written soon after the Revolution, that the King had judged well, and that the

influence of the Tory Secretary, honestly exerted in support of the new Sovereigns, had saved England from

The other Secretary was Shrewsbury.17 No man so young had within living memory occupied so high a post

in the government. He had but just completed his twentyeighth year. Nobody, however, except the solemn

formalists at the Spanish embassy, thought his youth an objection to his promotion.18 He had already secured

for himself a place in history by the conspicuous part which he had taken in the deliverance of his country.

His talents, his accomplishments, his graceful manners, his bland temper, made him generally popular. By the

Whigs especially he was almost adored. None suspected that, with many great and many amiable qualities, he

had such faults both of head and of heart as would make the rest of a life which had opened under the fairest

The naval administration and the financial administration were confided to Boards. Herbert was First

Commissioner of the Admiralty. He had in the late reign given up wealth and dignities when he found that he

could not retain them with honour and with a good conscience. He had carried the memorable invitation to

the Hague. He had commanded the Dutch fleet during the voyage from Helvoetsluys to Torbay. His character

for courage and professional skill stood high. That he had had his follies and vices was well known. But his

recent conduct in the time of severe trial had atoned for all, and seemed to warrant the hope that his future

career would be glorious. Among the commissioners who sate with him at the Admiralty were two

distinguished members of the House of Commons, William Sacheverell, a veteran Whig, who had great

authority in his party, and Sir John Lowther, an honest and very moderate Tory, who in fortune and

Mordaunt, one of the most vehement of the Whigs, was placed at the head of the Treasury; why, it is difficult

to say. His romantic courage, his flighty wit, his eccentric invention, his love of desperate risks and startling

effects, were not qualities likely to be of much use to him in financial calculations and negotiations.

Delamere, a more vehement Whig, if possible, than Mordaunt, sate second at the board, and was Chancellor

of the Exchequer. Two Whig members of the House of Commons were in the Commission, Sir Henry Capel,

brother of that Earl of Essex who died by his own hand in the Tower, and Richard Hampden, son of the great

leader of the Long Parliament. But the Commissioner on whom the chief weight of business lay was

Godolphin. This man, taciturn, clearminded, laborious, inoffensive, zealous for no government and useful to

every government, had gradually become an almost indispensable part of the machinery of the state. Though

a churchman, he had prospered in a Court governed by Jesuits. Though he had voted for a Regency, he was

the real head of a treasury filled with Whigs. His abilities and knowledge, which had in the late reign supplied

the deficiencies of Bellasyse and Dover, were now needed to supply the deficiencies of Mordaunt and

There were some difficulties in disposing of the Great Seal. The King at first wished to confide it to

Nottingham, whose father had borne it during several years with high reputation.21 Nottingham, however,

declined the trust; and it was offered to Halifax, but was again declined. Both these Lords doubtless felt that it

was a trust which they could not discharge with honour to themselves or with advantage to the public. In old

times, indeed, the Seal had been generally held by persons who were not lawyers. Even in the seventeenth

century it had been confided to two eminent men, who had never studied at any Inn of Court. Dean Williams

had been Lord Keeper to James the First. Shaftesbury had been Lord Chancellor to Charles the Second. But

such appointments could no longer be made without serious inconvenience. Equity had been gradually

shaping itself into a refined science, which no human faculties could master without long and intense

application. Even Shaftesbury, vigorous as was his intellect, had painfully felt his want of technical

knowledge;22 and, during the fifteen years which had elapsed since Shaftesbury had resigned the Seal,

technical knowledge had constantly been becoming more and more necessary to his successors. Neither

Nottingham therefore, though he had a stock of legal learning such as is rarely found in any person who has

not received a legal education, nor Halifax, though, in the judicial sittings of the House of Lords, the

quickness of his apprehension and the subtlety of his reasoning had often astonished the bar, ventured to

accept the highest office which an English layman can fill. After some delay the Seal was confided to a

The choice of judges did honour to the new government. Every Privy Councillor was directed to bring a list.

The lists were compared; and twelve men of conspicuous merit were selected.24 The professional attainments

and Whig principles of Pollexfen gave him pretensions to the highest place. But it was remembered that he

had held briefs for the Crown, in the Western counties, at the assizes which followed the battle of Sedgemoor.

It seems indeed from the reports of the trials that he did as little as he could do if he held the briefs at all, and

that he left to the Judges the business of browbeating witnesses and prisoners. Nevertheless his name was

inseparably associated in the public mind with the Bloody Circuit. He, therefore, could not with propriety be

put at the head of the first criminal court in the realm.25 After acting during a few weeks as Attorney

General, he was made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Sir John Holt, a young man, but distinguished by

learning, integrity, and courage, became Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Sir Robert Atkyns, an eminent

lawyer, who had passed some years in rural retirement, but whose reputation was still great in Westminster

Hall, was appointed Chief Baron. Powell, who had been disgraced on account of his honest declaration in

favour of the Bishops, again took his seat among the judges. Treby succeeded Pollexfen as Attorney General;

Two of the chief places in the Royal household were filled by two English noblemen eminently qualified to

adorn a court. The high spirited and accomplished Devonshire was named Lord Steward. No man had done

more or risked more for England during the crisis of her fate. In retrieving her liberties he had retrieved also

the fortunes of his own house. His bond for thirty thousand pounds was found among the papers which James

Dorset became Lord Chamberlain, and employed the influence and patronage annexed to his functions, as he

had long employed his private means, in encouraging genius and in alleviating misfortune. One of the first

acts which he was under the necessity of performing must have been painful to a man of so generous a nature,

and of so keen a relish for whatever was excellent in arts and letters. Dryden could no longer remain Poet

Laureate. The public would not have borne to see any Papist among the servants of their Majesties; and

Dryden was not only a Papist, but an apostate. He had moreover aggravated the guilt of his apostasy by

calumniating and ridiculing the Church which he had deserted. He had, it was facetiously said, treated her as

the Pagan persecutors of old treated her children. He had dressed her up in the skin of a wild beast, and then

baited her for the public amusement.28 He was removed; but he received from the private bounty of the

magnificent Chamberlain a pension equal to the salary which had been withdrawn. The deposed Laureate,

however, as poor of spirit as rich in intellectual gifts, continued to complain piteously, year after year, of the

losses which he had not suffered, till at length his wailings drew forth expressions of well merited contempt

from brave and honest Jacobites, who had sacrificed every thing to their principles without deigning to utter

In the Royal household were placed some of those Dutch nobles who stood highest in the favour of the King.

Bentinck had the great office of Groom of the Stole, with a salary of five thousand pounds a year. Zulestein

took charge of the robes. The Master of the Horse was Auverquerque, a gallant soldier, who united the blood

of Nassau to the blood of Horn, and who wore with just pride a costly sword presented to him by the States

General in acknowledgment of the courage with which he had, on the bloody day of Saint Dennis, saved the

The place of Vice Chamberlain to the Queen was given to a man who had just become conspicuous in public

life, and whose name will frequently recur in the history of this reign. John Howe, or, as he was more

commonly called, Jack Howe, had been sent up to the Convention by the borough of Cirencester. His

appearance was that of a man whose body was worn by the constant workings of a restless and acrid mind.

He was tall, lean, pale, with a haggard eager look, expressive at once of flightiness and of shrewdness. He

had been known, during several years, as a small poet; and some of the most savage lampoons which were

handed about the coffeehouses were imputed to him. But it was in the House of Commons that both his parts

and his illnature were most signally displayed. Before he had been a member three weeks, his volubility, his

asperity, and his pertinacity had made him conspicuous. Quickness, energy, and audacity, united, soon raised

him to the rank of a privileged man. His enemies, and he had many enemies, said that he consulted his

personal safety even in his most petulant moods, and that he treated soldiers with a civility which he never

showed to ladies or to Bishops. But no man had in larger measure that evil courage which braves and even

courts disgust and hatred. No decencies restrained him: his spite was implacable: his skill in finding out the

vulnerable parts of strong minds was consummate. All his great contemporaries felt his sting in their turns.

Once it inflicted a wound which deranged even the stern composure of William, and constrained him to utter

a wish that he were a private gentleman, and could invite Mr. Howe to a short interview behind Montague

House. As yet, however, Howe was reckoned among the most strenuous supporters of the new government,

The subordinate places in every public office were divided between the two parties: but the Whigs had the

larger share. Some persons, indeed, who did little honour to the Whig name, were largely recompensed for

services which no good man would have performed. Wildman was made Postmaster General. A lucrative

sinecure in the Excise was bestowed on Ferguson. The duties of the Solicitor of the Treasury were both very

important and very invidious. It was the business of that officer to conduct political prosecutions, to collect

the evidence, to instruct the counsel for the Crown, to see that the prisoners were not liberated on insufficient

bail, to see that the juries were not composed of persons hostile to the government. In the days of Charles and

James, the Solicitors of the Treasury had been with too much reason accused of employing all the vilest

artifices of chicanery against men obnoxious to the Court. The new government ought to have made a choice

which was above all suspicion. Unfortunately Mordaunt and Delamere pitched upon Aaron Smith, an

acrimonious and unprincipled politician, who had been the legal adviser of Titus Oates in the days of the

Popish Plot, and who had been deeply implicated in the Rye House Plot. Richard Hampden, a man of decided

opinions but of moderate temper, objected to this appointment. His objections however were overruled. The

Jacobites, who hated Smith and had reason to hate him, affirmed that he had obtained his place by bullying

the Lords of the Treasury, and particularly by threatening that, if his just claims were disregarded, he would

Some weeks elapsed before all the arrangements which have been mentioned were publicly announced: and

meanwhile many important events had taken place. As soon as the new Privy Councillors had been sworn in,

it was necessary to submit to them a grave and pressing question. Could the Convention now assembled be

turned into a Parliament? The Whigs, who had a decided majority in the Lower House, were all for the

affirmative. The Tories, who knew that, within the last month, the public feeling had undergone a

considerable change, and who hoped that a general election would add to their strength, were for the

negative. They maintained that to the existence of a Parliament royal writs were indispensably necessary. The

Convention had not been summoned by such writs: the original defect could not now be supplied: the Houses

It was answered that the royal writ was mere matter of form, and that to expose the substance of our laws and

liberties to serious hazard for the sake of a form would be the most senseless superstition. Wherever the

Sovereign, the Peers spiritual and temporal, and the Representatives freely chosen by the constituent bodies

of the realm were met together, there was the essence of a Parliament. Such a Parliament was now in being;

and what could be more absurd than to dissolve it at a conjuncture when every hour was precious, when

numerous important subjects required immediate legislation, and when dangers, only to be averted by the

combined efforts of King, Lords, and Commons, menaced the State? A Jacobite indeed might consistently

refuse to recognise the Convention as a Parliament. For he held that it had from the beginning been an

unlawful assembly, that all its resolutions were nullities, and that the Sovereigns whom it had set up were

usurpers. But with what consistency could any man, who maintained that a new Parliament ought to be

immediately called by writs under the great seal of William and Mary, question the authority which had

placed William and Mary on the throne? Those who held that William was rightful King must necessarily

hold that the body from which he derived his right was itself a rightful Great Council of the Realm. Those

who, though not holding him to be rightful King, conceived that they might lawfully swear allegiance to him

as King in fact, might surely, on the same principle, acknowledge the Convention as a Parliament in fact. It

was plain that the Convention was the fountainhead from which the authority of all future Parliaments must

be derived, and that on the validity of the votes of the Convention must depend the validity of every future

statute. And how could the stream rise higher than the source? Was it not absurd to say that the Convention

was supreme in the state, and yet a nullity; a legislature for the highest of all purposes, and yet no legislature

for the humblest purposes; competent to declare the throne vacant, to change the succession, to fix the

landmarks of the constitution, and yet not competent to pass the most trivial Act for the repairing of a pier or

These arguments would have had considerable weight, even if every precedent had been on the other side.

But in truth our history afforded only one precedent which was at all in point; and that precedent was decisive

in favour of the doctrine that royal writs are not indispensably necessary to the existence of a Parliament. No

royal writ had summoned the Convention which recalled Charles the Second. Yet that Convention had, after

his Restoration, continued to sit and to legislate, had settled the revenue, had passed an Act of amnesty, had

abolished the feudal tenures. These proceedings had been sanctioned by authority of which no party in the

state could speak without reverence. Hale had borne a considerable share in them, and had always maintained

that they were strictly legal. Clarendon, little as he was inclined to favour any doctrine derogatory to the

rights of the Crown, or to the dignity of that seal of which he was keeper, had declared that, since God had, at

a most critical conjuncture, given the nation a good Parliament, it would be the height of folly to look for

technical flaws in the instrument by which that Parliament was called together. Would it be pretended by any

Tory that the Convention of 1660 had a more respectable origin than the Convention of 1689? Was not a

letter written by the first Prince of the Blood, at the request of the whole peerage, and of hundreds of

gentlemen who had represented counties and towns, at least as good a warrant as a vote of the Rump?

Weaker reasons than these would have satisfied the Whigs who formed the majority of the Privy Council.

The King therefore, on the fifth day after he had been proclaimed, went with royal state to the House of

Lords, and took his seat on the throne. The Commons were called in; and he, with many gracious

expressions, reminded his hearers of the perilous situation of the country, and exhorted them to take such

steps as might prevent unnecessary delay in the transaction of public business. His speech was received by

the gentlemen who crowded the bar with the deep hum by which our ancestors were wont to indicate

approbation, and which was often heard in places more sacred than the Chamber of the Peers.32 As soon as

he had retired, a Bill declaring the Convention a Parliament was laid on the table of the Lords, and rapidly

passed by them. In the Commons the debates were warm. The House resolved itself into a Committee; and so

great was the excitement that, when the authority of the Speaker was withdrawn, it was hardly possible to

preserve order. Sharp personalities were exchanged. The phrase, "hear him," a phrase which had originally

been used only to silence irregular noises, and to remind members of the duty of attending to the discussion,

had, during some years, been gradually becoming what it now is; that is to say, a cry indicative, according to

the tone, of admiration, acquiescence, indignation, or derision. On this occasion, the Whigs vociferated

"Hear, hear," so tumultuously that the Tories complained of unfair usage. Seymour, the leader of the

minority, declared that there could be no freedom of debate while such clamour was tolerated. Some old

Whig members were provoked into reminding him that the same clamour had occasionally been heard when

he presided, and had not then been repressed. Yet, eager and angry as both sides were, the speeches on both

sides indicated that profound reverence for law and prescription which has long been characteristic of

Englishmen, and which, though it runs sometimes into pedantry and sometimes into superstition, is not

without its advantages. Even at that momentous crisis, when the nation was still in the ferment of a

revolution, our public men talked long and seriously about all the circumstances of the deposition of Edward

the Second and of the deposition of Richard the Second, and anxiously inquired whether the assembly which,

with Archbishop Lanfranc at its head, set aside Robert of Normandy, and put William Rufus on the throne,

did or did not afterwards continue to act as the legislature of the realm. Much was said about the history of

writs; much about the etymology of the word Parliament. It is remarkable, that the orator who took the most

statesmanlike view of the subject was old Maynard. In the civil conflicts of fifty eventful years he had learned

that questions affecting the highest interests of the commonwealth were not to be decided by verbal cavils

and by scraps of Law French and Law Latin; and, being by universal acknowledgment the most subtle and

the most learned of English jurists, he could express what he felt without the risk of being accused of

ignorance and presumption. He scornfully thrust aside as frivolous and out of place all that blackletter

learning, which some men, far less versed in such matters than himself, had introduced into the discussion.

"We are," he said, "at this moment out of the beaten path. If therefore we are determined to move only in that

path, we cannot move at all. A man in a revolution resolving to do nothing which is not strictly according to

established form resembles a man who has lost himself in the wilderness, and who stands crying 'Where is

the king's highway? I will walk nowhere but on the king's highway.' In a wilderness a man should take the

track which will carry him home. In a revolution we must have recourse to the highest law, the safety of the

state." Another veteran Roundhead, Colonel Birch, took the same side, and argued with great force and

keenness from the precedent of 1660. Seymour and his supporters were beaten in the Committee, and did not

venture to divide the House on the Report. The Bill passed rapidly, and received the royal assent on the tenth

The law which turned the Convention into a Parliament contained a clause providing that no person should,

after the first of March, sit or vote in either House without taking the oaths to the new King and Queen. This

enactment produced great agitation throughout society. The adherents of the exiled dynasty hoped and

confidently predicted that the recusants would be numerous. The minority in both Houses, it was said, would

be true to the cause of hereditary monarchy. There might be here and there a traitor; but the great body of

those who had voted for a Regency would be firm. Only two Bishops at most would recognise the usurpers.

Seymour would retire from public life rather than abjure his principles. Grafton had determined to fly to

France and to throw himself at the feet of his uncle. With such rumours as these all the coffeehouses of

London were filled during the latter part of February. So intense was the public anxiety that, if any man of

rank was missed, two days running, at his usual haunts, it was immediately whispered that he had stolen

The second of March arrived; and the event quieted the fears of one party, and confounded the hopes of the

other. The Primate indeed and several of his suffragans stood obstinately aloof: but three Bishops and

seventythree temporal peers took the oaths. At the next meeting of the Upper House several more prelates

came in. Within a week about a hundred Lords had qualified themselves to sit. Others, who were prevented

by illness from appearing, sent excuses and professions of attachment to their Majesties. Grafton refuted all

the stories which had been circulated about him by coming to be sworn on the first day. Two members of the

Ecclesiastical Commission, Mulgrave and Sprat, hastened to make atonement for their fault by plighting their

faith to William. Beaufort, who had long been considered as the type of a royalist of the old school, submitted

after a very short hesitation. Aylesbury and Dartmouth, though vehement Jacobites, had as little scruple about

taking the oath of allegiance as they afterwards had about breaking it.35 The Hydes took different paths.

Rochester complied with the law; but Clarendon proved refractory. Many thought it strange that the brother

who had adhered to James till James absconded should be less sturdy than the brother who had been in the

Dutch camp. The explanation perhaps is that Rochester would have sacrificed much more than Clarendon by

refusing to take the oaths. Clarendon's income did not depend on the pleasure of the Government but

Rochester had a pension of four thousand a year, which he could not hope to retain if he refused to

acknowledge the new Sovereigns. Indeed, he had so many enemies that, during some months, it seemed

doubtful whether he would, on any terms, be suffered to retain the splendid reward which he had earned by

persecuting the Whigs and by sitting in the High Commission. He was saved from what would have been a

fatal blow to his fortunes by the intercession of Burnet, who had been deeply injured by him, and who

In the Lower House four hundred members were sworn in on the second of March; and among them was

Seymour. The spirit of the Jacobites was broken by his defection; and the minority with very few exceptions

Before the day fixed for the taking of the oaths, the Commons had begun to discuss a momentous question

which admitted of no delay. During the interregnum, William had, as provisional chief of the administration,

collected the taxes and applied them to the public service; nor could the propriety of this course be questioned

by any person who approved of the Revolution. But the Revolution was now over: the vacancy of the throne

had been supplied: the Houses were sitting: the law was in full force; and it became necessary immediately to

Nobody denied that all the lands and hereditaments of the Crown had passed with the Crown to the new

Sovereigns. Nobody denied that all duties which had been granted to the Crown for a fixed term of years

might be constitutionally exacted till that term should expire. But large revenues had been settled by

Parliament on James for life; and whether what had been settled on James for life could, while he lived, be

Holt, Treby, Pollexfen, indeed all the eminent Whig lawyers, Somers excepted, held that these revenues had

been granted to the late King, in his political capacity, but for his natural life, and ought therefore, as long as

he continued to drag on his existence in a strange land, to be paid to William and Mary. It appears from a

very concise and unconnected report of the debate that Somers dissented from this doctrine. His opinion was

that, if the Act of Parliament which had imposed the duties in question was to be construed according to the

spirit, the word life must be understood to mean reign, and that therefore the term for which the grant had

been made had expired. This was surely the sound opinion: for it was plainly irrational to treat the interest of

James in this grant as at once a thing annexed to his person and a thing annexed to his office; to say in one

breath that the merchants of London and Bristol must pay money because he was naturally alive, and that his

successors must receive that money because he was politically defunct. The House was decidedly with

Somers. The members generally were bent on effecting a great reform, without which it was felt that the

Declaration of Rights would be but an imperfect guarantee for public liberty. During the conflict which

fifteen successive Parliaments had maintained against four successive Kings, the chief weapon of the

Commons had been the power of the purse; and never had the representatives of the people been induced to

surrender that weapon without having speedy cause to repent of their too credulous loyalty. In that season of

tumultuous joy which followed the Restoration, a large revenue for life had been almost by acclamation

granted to Charles the Second. A few months later there was scarcely a respectable Cavalier in the kingdom

who did not own that the stewards of the nation would have acted more wisely if they had kept in their hands

the means of checking the abuses which disgraced every department of the government. James the Second

had obtained from his submissive Parliament, without a dissentient voice, an income sufficient to defray the

ordinary expenses of the state during his life; and, before he had enjoyed that income half a year, the great

majority of those who had dealt thus liberally with him blamed themselves severely for their liberality. If

experience was to be trusted, a long and painful experience, there could be no effectual security against

maladministration, unless the Sovereign were under the necessity of recurring frequently to his Great Council

for pecuniary aid. Almost all honest and enlightened men were therefore agreed in thinking that a part at least

of the supplies ought to be granted only for short terms. And what time could be fitter for the introduction of

this new practice than the year 1689, the commencement of a new reign, of a new dynasty, of a new era of

constitutional government? The feeling on this subject was so strong and general that the dissentient minority

gave way. No formal resolution was passed; but the House proceeded to act on the supposition that the grants

It was impossible to make a new settlement of the revenue without inquiry and deliberation. The Exchequer

was ordered to furnish such returns as might enable the House to form estimates of the public expenditure

and income. In the meantime, liberal provision was made for the immediate exigencies of the state. An

extraordinary aid, to be raised by direct monthly assessment, was voted to the King. An Act was passed

indemnifying all who had, since his landing, collected by his authority the duties settled on James; and those

Along William's whole line of march, from Torbay to London, he had been importuned by the common

people to relieve them from the intolerable burden of the hearth money. In truth, that tax seems to have united

all the worst evils which can be imputed to any tax. It was unequal, and unequal in the most pernicious way:

for it pressed heavily on the poor, and lightly on the rich. A peasant, all whose property was not worth twenty

pounds, was charged ten shillings. The Duke of Ormond, or the Duke of Newcastle, whose estates were

worth half a million, paid only four or five pounds. The collectors were empowered to examine the interior of

every house in the realm, to disturb families at meals, to force the doors of bedrooms, and, if the sum

demanded were not punctually paid, to sell the trencher on which the barley loaf was divided among the poor

children, and the pillow from under the head of the lyingin woman. Nor could the Treasury effectually

restrain the chimneyman from using his powers with harshness: for the tax was farmed; and the government

was consequently forced to connive at outrages and exactions such as have, in every age made the name of

William had been so much moved by what he had heard of these grievances that, at one of the earliest sittings

of the Privy Council, he introduced the subject. He sent a message requesting the House of Commons to

consider whether better regulations would effectually prevent the abuses which had excited so much

discontent. He added that he would willingly consent to the entire abolition of the tax if it should appear that

the tax and the abuses were inseparable.39 This communication was received with loud applause. There were

indeed some financiers of the old school who muttered that tenderness for the poor was a fine thing; but that

no part of the revenue of the state came in so exactly to the day as the hearth money; that the goldsmiths of

the City could not always be induced to lend on the security of the next quarter's customs or excise, but that

on an assignment of hearth money there was no difficulty in obtaining advances. In the House of Commons,

those who thought thus did not venture to raise their voices in opposition to the general feeling. But in the

Lords there was a conflict of which the event for a time seemed doubtful. At length the influence of the

Court, strenuously exerted, carried an Act by which the chimney tax was declared a badge of slavery, and

The Commons granted, with little dispute, and without a division, six hundred thousand pounds for the

purpose of repaying to the United Provinces the charges of the expedition which had delivered England. The

facility with which this large sum was voted to a shrewd, diligent and thrifty people, our allies, indeed,

politically, but commercially our most formidable rivals, excited some murmurs out of doors, and was,

during many years, a favourite subject of sarcasm with Tory pamphleteers.41 The liberality of the House

admits however of an easy explanation. On the very day on which the subject was under consideration,

alarming news arrived at Westminster, and convinced many, who would at another time have been disposed

to scrutinise severely any account sent in by the Dutch, that our country could not yet dispense with the

France had declared war against the States General; and the States General had consequently demanded from

the King of England those succours which he was bound by the treaty of Nimeguen to furnish.42 He had

ordered some battalions to march to Harwich, that they might be in readiness to cross to the Continent. The

old soldiers of James were generally in a very bad temper; and this order did not produce a soothing effect.

The discontent was greatest in the regiment which now ranks as first of the line. Though borne on the English

establishment, that regiment, from the time when it first fought under the great Gustavus, had been almost

exclusively composed of Scotchmen; and Scotchmen have never, in any region to which their adventurous

and aspiring temper has led them, failed to note and to resent every slight offered to Scotland. Officers and

men muttered that a vote of a foreign assembly was nothing to them. If they could be absolved from their

allegiance to King James the Seventh, it must be by the Estates at Edinburgh, and not by the Convention at

Westminster. Their ill humour increased when they heard that Schomberg had been appointed their colonel.

They ought perhaps to have thought it an honour to be called by the name of the greatest soldier in Europe.

But, brave and skilful as he was, he was not their countryman: and their regiment, during the fifty six years

which had elapsed since it gained its first honourable distinctions in Germany, had never been commanded

but by a Hepburn or a Douglas. While they were in this angry and punctilious mood, they were ordered to

join the forces which were assembling at Harwich. There was much murmuring; but there was no outbreak

till the regiment arrived at Ipswich. There the signal of revolt was given by two captains who were zealous

for the exiled King. The market place was soon filled with pikemen and musketeers running to and fro.

Gunshots were wildly fired in all directions. Those officers who attempted to restrain the rioters were

overpowered and disarmed. At length the chiefs of the insurrection established some order, and marched out

of Ipswich at the head of their adherents. The little army consisted of about eight hundred men. They had

seized four pieces of cannon, and had taken possession of the military chest, which contained a considerable

sum of money. At the distance of half a mile from the town a halt was called: a general consultation was held;

and the mutineers resolved that they would hasten back to their native country, and would live and die with

When the news reached London the dismay was great. It was rumoured that alarming symptoms had

appeared in other regiments, and particularly that a body of fusileers which lay at Harwich was likely to

imitate the example set at Ipswich. "If these Scots," said Halifax to Reresby, "are unsupported, they are lost.

But if they have acted in concert with others, the danger is serious indeed."44 The truth seems to be that there

was a conspiracy which had ramifications in many parts of the army, but that the conspirators were awed by

the firmness of the government and of the Parliament. A committee of the Privy Council was sitting when the

tidings of the mutiny arrived in London. William Harbord, who represented the borough of Launceston, was

at the board. His colleagues entreated him to go down instantly to the House of Commons, and to relate what

had happened. He went, rose in his place, and told his story. The spirit of the assembly rose to the occasion.

Howe was the first to call for vigorous action. "Address the King," he said, "to send his Dutch troops after

these men. I know not who else can be trusted." "This is no jesting matter," said old Birch, who had been a

colonel in the service of the Parliament, and had seen the most powerful and renowned House of Commons

that ever sate twice purged and twice expelled by its own soldiers; "if you let this evil spread, you will have

an army upon you in a few days. Address the King to send horse and foot instantly, his own men, men whom

he can trust, and to put these people down at once." The men of the long robe caught the flame. "It is not the

learning of my profession that is needed here," said Treby. "What is now to be done is to meet force with

force, and to maintain in the field what we have done in the senate." "Write to the Sheriffs," said Colonel

Mildmay, member for Essex. "Raise the militia. There are a hundred and fifty thousand of them: they are

good Englishmen: they will not fail you." It was resolved that all members of the House who held

commissions in the army should be dispensed from parliamentary attendance, in order that they might repair

instantly to their military posts. An address was unanimously voted requesting the King to take effectual

steps for the suppression of the rebellion, and to put forth a proclamation denouncing public vengeance on the

rebels. One gentleman hinted that it might be well to advise his Majesty to offer a pardon to those who should

peaceably submit: but the House wisely rejected the suggestion. "This is no time," it was well said, "for any

thing that looks like fear." The address was instantly sent up to the Lords. The Lords concurred in it. Two

peers, two knights of shires, and two burgesses were sent with it to Court. William received them graciously,

and informed them that he had already given the necessary orders. In fact, several regiments of horse and

dragoons had been sent northward under the command of Ginkell, one of the bravest and ablest officers of the

Meanwhile the mutineers were hastening across the country which lies between Cambridge and the Wash.

Their road lay through a vast and desolate fen, saturated with all the moisture of thirteen counties, and

overhung during the greater part of the year by a low grey mist, high above which rose, visible many miles,

the magnificent tower of Ely. In that dreary region, covered by vast flights of wild fowl, a half savage

population, known by the name of the Breedlings, then led an amphibious life, sometimes wading, and

sometimes rowing, from one islet of firm ground to another.46 The roads were amongst the worst in the

island, and, as soon as rumour announced the approach of the rebels, were studiously made worse by the

country people. Bridges were broken down. Trees were laid across the highways to obstruct the progress of

the cannon. Nevertheless the Scotch veterans not only pushed forward with great speed, but succeeded in

carrying their artillery with them. They entered Lincolnshire, and were not far from Sleaford, when they

learned that Ginkell with an irresistible force was close on their track. Victory and escape were equally out of

the question. The bravest warriors could not contend against fourfold odds. The most active infantry could

not outrun horsemen. Yet the leaders, probably despairing of pardon, urged the men to try the chance of

battle. In that region, a spot almost surrounded by swamps and pools was without difficulty found. Here the

insurgents were drawn up; and the cannon were planted at the only point which was thought not to be

sufficiently protected by natural defences. Ginkell ordered the attack to be made at a place which was out of

the range of the guns; and his dragoons dashed gallantly into the water, though it was so deep that their horses

were forced to swim. Then the mutineers lost heart. They beat a parley, surrendered at discretion, and were

brought up to London under a strong guard. Their lives were forfeit: for they had been guilty, not merely of

mutiny, which was then not a legal crime, but of levying war against the King. William, however, with politic

clemency, abstained from shedding the blood even of the most culpable. A few of the ringleaders were

brought to trial at the next Bury assizes, and were convicted of high treason; but their lives were spared. The

rest were merely ordered to return to their duty. The regiment, lately so refractory, went submissively to the

Continent, and there, through many hard campaigns, distinguished itself by fidelity, by discipline, and by

This event facilitated an important change in our polity, a change which, it is true, could not have been long

delayed, but which would not have been easily accomplished except at a moment of extreme danger. The

time had at length arrived at which it was necessary to make a legal distinction between the soldier and the

citizen. Under the Plantagenets and the Tudors there had been no standing army. The standing army which

had existed under the last kings of the House of Stuart had been regarded by every party in the state with

strong and not unreasonable aversion. The common law gave the Sovereign no power to control his troops.

The Parliament, regarding them as mere tools of tyranny, had not been disposed to give such power by

statute. James indeed had induced his corrupt and servile judges to put on some obsolete laws a construction

which enabled him to punish desertion capitally. But this construction was considered by all respectable

jurists as unsound, and, had it been sound, would have been far from effecting all that was necessary for the

purpose of maintaining military discipline. Even James did not venture to inflict death by sentence of a court

martial. The deserter was treated as an ordinary felon, was tried at the assizes by a petty jury on a bill found

by a grand jury, and was at liberty to avail himself of any technical flaw which might be discovered in the

The Revolution, by altering the relative position of the prince and the parliament, had altered also the relative

position of the army and the nation. The King and the Commons were now at unity; and both were alike

menaced by the greatest military power which had existed in Europe since the downfall of the Roman empire.

In a few weeks thirty thousand veterans, accustomed to conquer, and led by able and experienced captains,

might cross from the ports of Normandy and Brittany to our shores. That such a force would with little

difficulty scatter three times that number of militia, no man well acquainted with war could doubt. There

must then be regular soldiers; and, if there were to be regular soldiers, it must be indispensable, both to their

efficiency, and to the security of every other class, that they should be kept under a strict discipline. An ill

disciplined army has ever been a more costly and a more licentious militia, impotent against a foreign enemy,

and formidable only to the country which it is paid to defend. A strong line of demarcation must therefore be

drawn between the soldiers and the rest of the community. For the sake of public freedom, they must, in the

midst of freedom, be placed under a despotic rule. They must be subject to a sharper penal code, and to a

more stringent code of procedure, than are administered by the ordinary tribunals. Some acts which in the

citizen are innocent must in the soldier be crimes. Some acts which in the citizen are punished with fine or

imprisonment must in the soldier be punished with death. The machinery by which courts of law ascertain the

guilt or innocence of an accused citizen is too slow and too intricate to be applied to an accused soldier. For,

of all the maladies incident to the body politic, military insubordination is that which requires the most

prompt and drastic remedies. If the evil be not stopped as soon as it appears, it is certain to spread; and it

cannot spread far without danger to the very vitals of the commonwealth. For the general safety, therefore, a

summary jurisdiction of terrible extent must, in camps, be entrusted to rude tribunals composed of men of the

But, though it was certain that the country could not at that moment be secure without professional soldiers,

and equally certain that professional soldiers must be worse than useless unless they were placed under a rule

more arbitrary and severe than that to which other men were subject, it was not without great misgivings that

a House of Commons could venture to recognise the existence and to make provision for the government of a

standing army. There was scarcely a public man of note who had not often avowed his conviction that our

polity and a standing army could not exist together. The Whigs had been in the constant habit of repeating

that standing armies had destroyed the free institutions of the neighbouring nations. The Tories had repeated

as constantly that, in our own island, a standing army had subverted the Church, oppressed the gentry, and

murdered the King. No leader of either party could, without laying himself open to the charge of gross

inconsistency, propose that such an army should henceforth be one of the permanent establishments of the

realm. The mutiny at Ipswich, and the panic which that mutiny produced, made it easy to effect what would

otherwise have been in the highest degree difficult. A short bill was brought in which began by declaring, in

explicit terms, that standing armies and courts martial were unknown to the law of England. It was then

enacted that, on account of the extreme perils impending at that moment over the state, no man mustered on

pay in the service of the crown should, on pain of death, or of such lighter punishment as a court martial

should deem sufficient, desert his colours or mutiny against his commanding officers. This statute was to be

in force only six months; and many of those who voted for it probably believed that it would, at the close of

that period, be suffered to expire. The bill passed rapidly and easily. Not a single division was taken upon it

in the House of Commons. A mitigating clause indeed, which illustrates somewhat curiously the manners of

that age, was added by way of rider after the third reading. This clause provided that no court martial should

pass sentence of death except between the hours of six in the morning and one in the afternoon. The dinner

hour was then early; and it was but too probable that a gentleman who had dined would be in a state in which

he could not safely be trusted with the lives of his fellow creatures. With this amendment, the first and most

concise of our many Mutiny Bills was sent up to the Lords, and was, in a few hours, hurried by them through

Thus was made, without one dissentient voice in Parliament, without one murmur in the nation, the first step

towards a change which had become necessary to the safety of the state, yet which every party in the state

then regarded with extreme dread and aversion. Six months passed; and still the public danger continued. The

power necessary to the maintenance of military discipline was a second time entrusted to the crown for a

short term. The trust again expired, and was again renewed. By slow degrees familiarity reconciled the public

mind to the names, once so odious, of standing army and court martial. It was proved by experience that, in a

well constituted society, professional soldiers may be terrible to a foreign enemy, and yet submissive to the

civil power. What had been at first tolerated as the exception began to be considered as the rule. Not a session

passed without a Mutiny Bill. When at length it became evident that a political change of the highest

importance was taking place in such a manner as almost to escape notice, a clamour was raised by some

factious men desirous to weaken the hands of the government, and by some respectable men who felt an

honest but injudicious reverence for every old constitutional tradition, and who were unable to understand

that what at one stage in the progress of society is pernicious may at another stage be indispensable. This

clamour however, as years rolled on, became fainter and fainter. The debate which recurred every spring on

the Mutiny Bill came to be regarded merely as an occasion on which hopeful young orators fresh from

Christchurch were to deliver maiden speeches, setting forth how the guards of Pisistratus seized the citadel of

Athens, and how the Praetorian cohorts sold the Roman empire to Didius. At length these declamations

became too ridiculous to be repeated. The most oldfashioned, the most eccentric, politician could hardly, in

the reign of George the Third, contend that there ought to be no regular soldiers, or that the ordinary law,

administered by the ordinary courts, would effectually maintain discipline among such soldiers. All parties

being agreed as to the general principle, a long succession of Mutiny Bills passed without any discussion,

except when some particular article of the military code appeared to require amendment. It is perhaps because

the army became thus gradually, and almost imperceptibly, one of the institutions of England, that it has

acted in such perfect harmony with all her other institutions, has never once, during a hundred and sixty

years, been untrue to the throne or disobedient to the law, has never once defied the tribunals or overawed the

constituent bodies. To this day, however, the Estates of the Realm continue to set up periodically, with

laudable jealousy, a landmark on the frontier which was traced at the time of the Revolution. They solemnly

reassert every year the doctrine laid down in the Declaration of Rights; and they then grant to the Sovereign

an extraordinary power to govern a certain number of soldiers according to certain rules during twelve

In the same week in which the first Mutiny Bill was laid on the table of the Commons, another temporary

law, made necessary by the unsettled state of the kingdom, was passed. Since the flight of James many

persons who were believed to have been deeply implicated in his unlawful acts, or to be engaged in plots for

his restoration, had been arrested and confined. During the vacancy of the throne, these men could derive no

benefit from the Habeas Corpus Act. For the machinery by which alone that Act could be carried into

execution had ceased to exist; and, through the whole of Hilary term, all the courts in Westminster Hall had

remained closed. Now that the ordinary tribunals were about to resume their functions, it was apprehended

that all those prisoners whom it was not convenient to bring instantly to trial would demand and obtain their

liberty. A bill was therefore brought in which empowered the King to detain in custody during a few weeks

such persons as he should suspect of evil designs against his government. This bill passed the two Houses

with little or no opposition.49 But the malecontents out of doors did not fail to remark that, in the late reign,

the Habeas Corpus Act had not been one day suspended. It was the fashion to call James a tyrant, and

William a deliverer. Yet, before the deliverer had been a month on the throne, he had deprived Englishmen of

a precious right which the tyrant had respected.50 This is a kind of reproach which a government sprung from

a popular revolution almost inevitably incurs. From such a government men naturally think themselves

entitled to demand a more gentle and liberal administration than is expected from old and deeply rooted

power. Yet such a government, having, as it always has, many active enemies, and not having the strength

derived from legitimacy and prescription, can at first maintain itself only by a vigilance and a severity of

which old and deeply rooted power stands in no need. Extraordinary and irregular vindications of public

liberty are sometimes necessary: yet, however necessary, they are almost always followed by some temporary

abridgments of that very liberty; and every such abridgment is a fertile and plausible theme for sarcasm and

Unhappily sarcasm and invective directed against William were but too likely to find favourable audience.

Each of the two great parties had its own reasons for being dissatisfied with him; and there were some

complaints in which both parties joined. His manners gave almost universal offence. He was in truth far

better qualified to save a nation than to adorn a court. In the highest parts of statesmanship, he had no equal

among his contemporaries. He had formed plans not inferior in grandeur and boldness to those of Richelieu,

and had carried them into effect with a tact and wariness worthy of Mazarin. Two countries, the seats of civil

liberty and of the Reformed Faith, had been preserved by his wisdom and courage from extreme perils.

Holland he had delivered from foreign, and England from domestic foes. Obstacles apparently

insurmountable had been interposed between him and the ends on which he was intent; and those obstacles

his genius had turned into stepping stones. Under his dexterous management the hereditary enemies of his

house had helped him to mount a throne; and the persecutors of his religion had helped him to rescue his

religion from persecution. Fleets and armies, collected to withstand him, had, without a struggle, submitted to

his orders. Factions and sects, divided by mortal antipathies, had recognised him as their common head.

Without carnage, without devastation, he had won a victory compared with which all the victories of

Gustavus and Turenne were insignificant. In a few weeks he had changed the relative position of all the states

in Europe, and had restored the equilibrium which the preponderance of one power had destroyed. Foreign

nations did ample justice to his great qualities. In every Continental country where Protestant congregations

met, fervent thanks were offered to God, who, from among the progeny of His servants, Maurice, the

deliverer of Germany, and William, the deliverer of Holland, had raised up a third deliverer, the wisest and

mightiest of all. At Vienna, at Madrid, nay, at Rome, the valiant and sagacious heretic was held in honour as

the chief of the great confederacy against the House of Bourbon; and even at Versailles the hatred which he

Here he was less favourably judged. In truth, our ancestors saw him in the worst of all lights. By the French,

the Germans, and the Italians, he was contemplated at such a distance that only what was great could be

discerned, and that small blemishes were invisible. To the Dutch he was brought close: but he was himself a

Dutchman. In his intercourse with them he was seen to the best advantage, he was perfectly at his ease with

them; and from among them he had chosen his earliest and dearest friends. But to the English he appeared in

a most unfortunate point of view. He was at once too near to them and too far from them. He lived among

them, so that the smallest peculiarity of temper or manner could not escape their notice. Yet he lived apart

One of the chief functions of our Sovereigns had long been to preside over the society of the capital. That

function Charles the Second had performed with immense success. His easy bow, his good stories, his style

of dancing and playing tennis, the sound of his cordial laugh, were familiar to all London. One day he was

seen among the elms of Saint James's Park chatting with Dryden about poetry.51 Another day his arm was on

Tom Durfey's shoulder; and his Majesty was taking a second, while his companion sang "Phillida, Phillida,"

or "To horse, brave boys, to Newmarket, to horse."52 James, with much less vivacity and good nature, was

accessible, and, to people who did not cross him, civil. But of this sociableness William was entirely

destitute. He seldom came forth from his closet; and, when he appeared in the public rooms, he stood among

the crowd of courtiers and ladies, stern and abstracted, making no jest and smiling at none. His freezing look,

his silence, the dry and concise answers which he uttered when he could keep silence no longer, disgusted

noblemen and gentlemen who had been accustomed to be slapped on the back by their royal masters, called

Jack or Harry, congratulated about race cups or rallied about actresses. The women missed the homage due to

their sex. They observed that the King spoke in a somewhat imperious tone even to the wife to whom he

owed so much, and whom he sincerely loved and esteemed.53 They were amused and shocked to see him,

when the Princess Anne dined with him, and when the first green peas of the year were put on the table,

devour the whole dish without offering a spoonful to her Royal Highness; and they pronounced that this great

One misfortune, which was imputed to him as a crime, was his bad English. He spoke our language, but not

well. His accent was foreign: his diction was inelegant; and his vocabulary seems to have been no larger than

was necessary for the transaction of business. To the difficulty which he felt in expressing himself, and to his

consciousness that his pronunciation was bad, must be partly ascribed the taciturnity and the short answers

which gave so much offence. Our literature he was incapable of enjoying or of understanding. He never once,

during his whole reign, showed himself at the theatre.55 The poets who wrote Pindaric verses in his praise

complained that their flights of sublimity were beyond his comprehension.56 Those who are acquainted with

the panegyrical odes of that age will perhaps be of opinion that he did not lose much by his ignorance.

It is true that his wife did her best to supply what was wanting, and that she was excellently qualified to be

the head of the Court. She was English by birth, and English also in her tastes and feelings. Her face was

handsome, her port majestic, her temper sweet and lively, her manners affable and graceful. Her

understanding, though very imperfectly cultivated, was quick. There was no want of feminine wit and

shrewdness in her conversation; and her letters were so well expressed that they deserved to be well spelt.

She took much pleasure in the lighter kinds of literature, and did something towards bringing books into

fashion among ladies of quality. The stainless purity of her private life and the strict attention which she paid

to her religious duties were the more respectable, because she was singularly free from censoriousness, and

discouraged scandal as much as vice. In dislike of backbiting indeed she and her husband cordially agreed;

but they showed their dislike in different and in very characteristic ways. William preserved profound silence,

and gave the talebearer a look which, as was said by a person who had once encountered it, and who took

good care never to encounter it again, made your story go back down your throat.57 Mary had a way of

interrupting tattle about elopements, duels, and playdebts by asking the tattlers, very quietly yet significantly,

whether they had ever read her favourite sermon, Doctor Tillotson's on Evil Speaking. Her charities were

munificent and judicious; and, though she made no ostentatious display of them, it was known that she

retrenched from her own state in order to relieve Protestants whom persecution had driven from France and

Ireland, and who were starving in the garrets of London. So amiable was her conduct, that she was generally

spoken of with esteem and tenderness by the most respectable of those who disapproved of the manner in

which she had been raised to the throne, and even of those who refused to acknowledge her as Queen. In the

Jacobite lampoons of that time, lampoons which, in virulence and malignity, far exceed any thing that our age

has produced, she was not often mentioned with severity. Indeed she sometimes expressed her surprise at

finding that libellers who respected nothing else respected her name. God, she said, knew where her

weakness lay. She was too sensitive to abuse and calumny; He had mercifully spared her a trial which was

beyond her strength; and the best return which she could make to Him was to discountenance all malicious

reflections on the characters of others. Assured that she possessed her husband's entire confidence and

affection, she turned the edge of his sharp speeches sometimes by soft and sometimes by playful answers, and

employed all the influence which she derived from her many pleasing qualities to gain the hearts of the

If she had long continued to assemble round her the best society of London, it is probable that her kindness

and courtesy would have done much to efface the unfavourable impression made by his stern and frigid

demeanour. Unhappily his physical infirmities made it impossible for him to reside at Whitehall. The air of

Westminster, mingled with tile fog of the river which in spring tides overflowed the courts of his palace, with

the smoke of seacoal from two hundred thousand chimneys, and with the fumes of all the filth which was

then suffered to accumulate in the streets, was insupportable to him; for his lungs were weak, and his sense of

smell exquisitely keen. His constitutional asthma made rapid progress. His physicians pronounced it

impossible that he could live to the end of the year. His face was so ghastly that he could hardly be

recognised. Those who had to transact business with him were shocked to hear him gasping for breath, and

coughing till the tears ran down his cheeks.59 His mind, strong as it was, sympathized with his body. His

judgment was indeed as clear as ever. But there was, during some months, a perceptible relaxation of that

energy by which he had been distinguished. Even his Dutch friends whispered that he was not the man that he

had been at the Hague.60 It was absolutely necessary that he should quit London. He accordingly took up his

residence in the purer air of Hampton Court. That mansion, begun by the magnificent Wolsey, was a fine

specimen of the architecture which flourished in England under the first Tudors; but the apartments were not,

according to the notions of the seventeenth century, well fitted for purposes of state. Our princes therefore

had, since the Restoration, repaired thither seldom, and only when they wished to live for a time in

retirement. As William purposed to make the deserted edifice his chief palace, it was necessary for him to

build and to plant; nor was the necessity disagreeable to him. For he had, like most of his countrymen, a

pleasure in decorating a country house; and next to hunting, though at a great interval, his favourite

amusements were architecture and gardening. He had already created on a sandy heath in Guelders a

paradise, which attracted multitudes of the curious from Holland and Westphalia. Mary had laid the first

stone of the house. Bentinck had superintended the digging of the fishponds. There were cascades and

grottoes, a spacious orangery, and an aviary which furnished Hondekoeter with numerous specimens of

manycoloured plumage.61 The King, in his splendid banishment, pined for this favourite seat, and found

some consolation in creating another Loo on the banks of the Thames. Soon a wide extent of ground was laid

out in formal walks and parterres. Much idle ingenuity was employed in forming that intricate labyrinth of

verdure which has puzzled and amused five generations of holiday visitors from London. Limes thirty years

old were transplanted from neighbouring woods to shade the alleys. Artificial fountains spouted among the

flower beds. A new court, not designed with the purest taste, but stately, spacious, and commodious, rose

under the direction of Wren. The wainscots were adorned with the rich and delicate carvings of Gibbons. The

staircases were in a blaze with the glaring frescoes of Verrio. In every corner of the mansion appeared a

profusion of gewgaws, not yet familiar to English eyes. Mary had acquired at the Hague a taste for the

porcelain of China, and amused herself by forming at Hampton a vast collection of hideous images, and of

vases on which houses, trees, bridges, and mandarins were depicted in outrageous defiance of all the laws of

perspective. The fashion, a frivolous and inelegant fashion it must be owned, which was thus set by the

amiable Queen, spread fast and wide. In a few years almost every great house in the kingdom contained a

museum of these grotesque baubles. Even statesmen and generals were not ashamed to be renowned as

judges of teapots and dragons; and satirists long continued to repeat that a fine lady valued her mottled green

pottery quite as much as she valued her monkey, and much more than she valued her husband.62 But the new

palace was embellished with works of art of a very different kind. A gallery was erected for the cartoons of

Raphael. Those great pictures, then and still the finest on our side of the Alps, had been preserved by

Cromwell from the fate which befell most of the other masterpieces in the collection of Charles the First, but

had been suffered to lie during many years nailed up in deal boxes. They were now brought forth from

obscurity to be contemplated by artists with admiration and despair. The expense of the works at Hampton

was a subject of bitter complaint to many Tories, who had very gently blamed the boundless profusion with

which Charles the Second had built and rebuilt, furnished and refurnished, the dwelling of the Duchess of

Portsmouth.63 The expense, however, was not the chief cause of the discontent which William's change of

residence excited. There was no longer a Court at Westminster. Whitehall, once the daily resort of the noble

and the powerful, the beautiful and the gay, the place to which fops came to show their new peruques, men of

gallantry to exchange glances with fine ladies, politicians to push their fortunes, loungers to hear the news,

country gentlemen to see the royal family, was now, in the busiest season of the year, when London was full,

when Parliament was sitting, left desolate. A solitary sentinel paced the grassgrown pavement before that

door which had once been too narrow for the opposite streams of entering and departing courtiers. The

services which the metropolis had rendered to the King were great and recent; and it was thought that he

might have requited those services better than by treating it as Lewis had treated Paris. Halifax ventured to

hint this, but was silenced by a few words which admitted of no reply. "Do you wish," said William

In a short time it was found that Hampton Court was too far from the Houses of Lords and Commons, and

from the public offices, to be the ordinary abode of the Sovereign. Instead, however, of returning to

Whitehall, William determined to have another dwelling, near enough to his capital for the transaction of

business, but not near enough to be within that atmosphere in which he could not pass a night without risk of

suffocation. At one time he thought of Holland House, the villa of the noble family of Rich; and he actually

resided there some weeks.65 But he at length fixed his choice on Kensington House, the suburban residence

of the Earl of Nottingham. The purchase was made for eighteen thousand guineas, and was followed by more

building, more planting, more expense, and more discontent.66 At present Kensington House is considered as

a part of London. It was then a rural mansion, and could not, in those days of highwaymen and scourers, of

roads deep in mire and nights without lamps, be the rallying point of fashionable society.

It was well known that the King, who treated the English nobility and gentry so ungraciously, could, in a

small circle of his own countrymen, be easy, friendly, even jovial, could pour out his feelings garrulously,

could fill his glass, perhaps too often; and this was, in the view of our forefathers, an aggravation of his

offences. Yet our forefathers should have had the sense and the justice to acknowledge that the patriotism

which they considered as a virtue in themselves, could not be a fault in him. It was unjust to blame him for

not at once transferring to our island the love which he bore to the country of his birth. If, in essentials, he did

his duty towards England, he might well be suffered to feel at heart an affectionate preference for Holland.

Nor is it a reproach to him that he did not, in this season of his greatness, discard companions who had played

with him in his childhood, who had stood by him firmly through all the vicissitudes of his youth and

manhood, who had, in defiance of the most loathsome and deadly forms of infection, kept watch by his

sickbed, who had, in the thickest of the battle, thrust themselves between him and the French swords, and

whose attachment was, not to the Stadtholder or to the King, but to plain William of Nassau. It may be added

that his old friends could not but rise in his estimation by comparison with his new courtiers. To the end of

his life all his Dutch comrades, without exception, continued to deserve his confidence. They could be out of

humour with him, it is true; and, when out of humour, they could be sullen and rude; but never did they, even

when most angry and unreasonable, fail to keep his secrets and to watch over his interests with gentlemanlike

and soldierlike fidelity. Among his English councillors such fidelity was rare.67 It is painful, but it is no more

than just, to acknowledge that he had but too good reason for thinking meanly of our national character. That

character was indeed, in essentials, what it has always been. Veracity, uprightness, and manly boldness were

then, as now, qualities eminently English. But those qualities, though widely diffused among the great body

of the people, were seldom to be found in the class with which William was best acquainted. The standard of

honour and virtue among our public men was, during his reign, at the very lowest point. His predecessors had

bequeathed to him a court foul with all the vices of the Restoration, a court swarming with sycophants, who

were ready, on the first turn of fortune, to abandon him as they had abandoned his uncle. Here and there, lost

in that ignoble crowd, was to be found a man of true integrity and public spirit. Yet even such a man could

not long live in such society without much risk that the strictness of his principles would be relaxed, and the

delicacy of his sense of right and wrong impaired. It was unjust to blame a prince surrounded by flatterers

and traitors for wishing to keep near him four or five servants whom he knew by proof to be faithful even to

Nor was this the only instance in which our ancestors were unjust to him. They had expected that, as soon as

so distinguished a soldier and statesman was placed at the head of affairs, he would give some signal proof,

they scarcely knew what, of genius and vigour. Unhappily, during the first months of his reign, almost every

thing went wrong. His subjects, bitterly disappointed, threw the blame on him, and began to doubt whether he

merited that reputation which he had won at his first entrance into public life, and which the splendid success

of his last great enterprise had raised to the highest point. Had they been in a temper to judge fairly, they

would have perceived that for the maladministration of which they with good reason complained he was not

responsible. He could as yet work only with the machinery which he had found; and the machinery which he

had found was all rust and rottenness. From the time of the Restoration to the time of the Revolution, neglect

and fraud had been almost constantly impairing the efficiency of every department of the government.

Honours and public trusts, peerages, baronetcies, regiments, frigates, embassies, governments,

commissionerships, leases of crown lands, contracts for clothing, for provisions, for ammunition, pardons for

murder, for robbery, for arson, were sold at Whitehall scarcely less openly than asparagus at Covent Garden

or herrings at Billingsgate. Brokers had been incessantly plying for custom in the purlieus of the court; and of

these brokers the most successful had been, in the days of Charles, the harlots, and in the days of James, the

priests. From the palace which was the chief seat of this pestilence the taint had diffused itself through every

office and through every rank in every office, and had every where produced feebleness and disorganization.

So rapid was the progress of the decay that, within eight years after the time when Oliver had been the umpire

of Europe, the roar of the guns of De Ruyter was heard in the Tower of London. The vices which had brought

that great humiliation on the country had ever since been rooting themselves deeper and spreading themselves

wider. James had, to do him justice, corrected a few of the gross abuses which disgraced the naval

administration. Yet the naval administration, in spite of his attempts to reform it, moved the contempt of men

who were acquainted with the dockyards of France and Holland. The military administration was still worse.

The courtiers took bribes from the colonels; the colonels cheated the soldiers: the commissaries sent in long

bills for what had never been furnished: the keepers of the arsenals sold the public stores and pocketed the

price. But these evils, though they had sprung into existence and grown to maturity under the government of

Charles and James, first made themselves severely felt under the government of William. For Charles and

James were content to be the vassals and pensioners of a powerful and ambitious neighbour: they submitted

to his ascendency: they shunned with pusillanimous caution whatever could give him offence; and thus, at the

cost of the independence and dignity of that ancient and glorious crown which they unworthily wore, they

avoided a conflict which would instantly have shown how helpless, under their misrule, their once formidable

kingdom had become. Their ignominious policy it was neither in William's power nor in his nature to follow.

It was only by arms that the liberty and religion of England could be protected against the most formidable

enemy that had threatened our island since the Hebrides were strown with the wrecks of the Armada. The

body politic, which, while it remained in repose, had presented a superficial appearance of health and vigour,

was now under the necessity of straining every nerve in a wrestle for life or death, and was immediately

found to be unequal to the exertion. The first efforts showed an utter relaxation of fibre, an utter want of

training. Those efforts were, with scarcely an exception, failures; and every failure was popularly imputed,

not to the rulers whose mismanagement had produced the infirmities of the state, but to the ruler in whose

William might indeed, if he had been as absolute as Lewis, have used such sharp remedies as would speedily

have restored to the English administration that firm tone which had been wanting since the death of Oliver.

But the instantaneous reform of inveterate abuses was a task far beyond the powers of a prince strictly

restrained by law, and restrained still more strictly by the difficulties of his situation.68

Some of the most serious difficulties of his situation were caused by the conduct of the ministers on whom,

new as he was to the details of English affairs, he was forced to rely for information about men and things.

There was indeed no want of ability among his chief counsellors: but one half of their ability was employed

in counteracting the other half. Between the Lord President and the Lord Privy Seal there was an inveterate

enmity.69 It had begun twelve years before when Danby was Lord High Treasurer, a persecutor of

nonconformists, an uncompromising defender of prerogative, and when Halifax was rising to distinction as

one of the most eloquent leaders of the country party. In the reign of James, the two statesmen had found

themselves in opposition together; and their common hostility to France and to Rome, to the High

Commission and to the dispensing power, had produced an apparent reconciliation; but as soon as they were

in office together the old antipathy revived. The hatred which the Whig party felt towards them both ought, it

should seem, to have produced a close alliance between them: but in fact each of them saw with complacency

the danger which threatened the other. Danby exerted himself to rally round him a strong phalanx of Tories.

Under the plea of ill health, he withdrew from court, seldom came to the Council over which it was his duty

to preside, passed much time in the country, and took scarcely any part in public affairs except by grumbling

and sneering at all the acts of the government, and by doing jobs and getting places for his personal

retainers.70 In consequence of this defection, Halifax became prime minister, as far any minister could, in

that reign, be called prime minister. An immense load of business fell on him; and that load he was unable to

sustain. In wit and eloquence, in amplitude of comprehension and subtlety of disquisition, he had no equal

among the statesmen of his time. But that very fertility, that very acuteness, which gave a singular charm to

his conversation, to his oratory and to his writings, unfitted him for the work of promptly deciding practical

questions. He was slow from very quickness. For he saw so many arguments for and against every possible

course that he was longer in making up his mind than a dull man would have been. Instead of acquiescing in

his first thoughts, he replied on himself, rejoined on himself, and surrejoined on himself. Those who heard

him talk owned that he talked like an angel: but too often, when he had exhausted all that could be said, and

Meanwhile the two Secretaries of State were constantly labouring to draw their master in diametrically

opposite directions. Every scheme, every person, recommended by one of them was reprobated by the other.

Nottingham was never weary of repeating that the old Roundhead party, the party which had taken the life of

Charles the First and had plotted against the life of Charles the Second, was in principle republican, and that

the Tories were the only true friends of monarchy. Shrewsbury replied that the Tories might be friends of

monarchy, but that they regarded James as their monarch. Nottingham was always bringing to the closet

intelligence of the wild daydreams in which a few old eaters of calf's head, the remains of the once

formidable party of Bradshaw and Ireton, still indulged at taverns in the city. Shrewsbury produced ferocious

lampoons which the Jacobites dropped every day in the coffeehouses. "Every Whig," said the Tory Secretary,

"is an enemy of your Majesty's prerogative." "Every Tory," said the Whig Secretary, "is an enemy of your

At the treasury there was a complication of jealousies and quarrels.72 Both the First Commissioner,

Mordaunt, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Delamere, were zealous Whigs but, though they held the

same political creed, their tempers differed widely. Mordaunt was volatile, dissipated, and generous. The wits

of that time laughed at the way in which he flew about from Hampton Court to the Royal Exchange, and from

the Royal Exchange back to Hampton Court. How he found time for dress, politics, lovemaking and

balladmaking was a wonder.73 Delamere was gloomy and acrimonious, austere in his private morals, and

punctual in his devotions, but greedy of ignoble gain. The two principal ministers of finance, therefore,

became enemies, and agreed only in hating their colleague Godolphin. What business had he at Whitehall in

these days of Protestant ascendency, he who had sate at the same board with Papists, he who had never

scrupled to attend Mary of Modena to the idolatrous worship of the Mass? The most provoking circumstance

was that Godolphin, though his name stood only third in the commission, was really first Lord. For in

financial knowledge and in habits of business Mordaunt and Delamere were mere children when compared

Similar feuds raged at the other great boards and through all the subordinate ranks of public functionaries. In

every customhouse, in every arsenal, were a Shrewsbury and a Nottingham, a Delamere and a Godolphin.

The Whigs complained that there was no department in which creatures of the fallen tyranny were not to be

found. It was idle to allege that these men were versed in the details of business, that they were the

depositaries of official traditions, and that the friends of liberty, having been, during many years, excluded

from public employment, must necessarily be incompetent to take on themselves at once the whole

management of affairs. Experience doubtless had its value: but surely the first of all the qualifications of a

servant was fidelity; and no Tory could be a really faithful servant of the new government. If King William

were wise, he would rather trust novices zealous for his interest and honour than veterans who might indeed

possess ability and knowledge, but who would use that ability and that knowledge to effect his ruin.

The Tories, on the other hand, complained that their share of power bore no proportion to their number and

their weight in the country, and that every where old and useful public servants were, for the crime of being

friends to monarchy and to the Church, turned out of their posts to make way for Rye House plotters and

haunters of conventicles. These upstarts, adepts in the art of factious agitation, but ignorant of all that

belonged to their new calling, would be just beginning to learn their business when they had undone the

nation by their blunders. To be a rebel and a schismatic was surely not all that ought to be required of a man

in high employment. What would become of the finances, what of the marine, if Whigs who could not

understand the plainest balance sheet were to manage the revenue, and Whigs who had never walked over a

The truth is that the charges which the two parties brought against each other were, to a great extent, well

founded, but that the blame which both threw on William was unjust. Official experience was to be found

almost exclusively among the Tories, hearty attachment to the new settlement almost exclusively among the

Whigs. It was not the fault of the King that the knowledge and the zeal, which, combined, make a valuable

servant of the state must at that time be had separately or not at all. If he employed men of one party, there

was great risk of mistakes. If he employed men of the other party, there was great risk of treachery. If he

employed men of both parties, there was still some risk of mistakes; there was still some risk of treachery;

and to these risks was added the certainty of dissension. He might join Whigs and Tories; but it was beyond

his power to mix them. In the same office, at the same desk, they were still enemies, and agreed only in

murmuring at the Prince who tried to mediate between them. It was inevitable that, in such circumstances, the

administration, fiscal, military, naval, should be feeble and unsteady; that nothing should be done in quite the

right way or at quite the right time; that the distractions from which scarcely any public office was exempt

should produce disasters, and that every disaster should increase the distractions from which it had sprung.

There was indeed one department of which the business was well conducted; and that was the department of

Foreign Affairs. There William directed every thing, and, on important occasions, neither asked the advice

nor employed the agency of any English politician. One invaluable assistant he had, Anthony Heinsius, who,

a few weeks after the Revolution had been accomplished, became Pensionary of Holland. Heinsius had

entered public life as a member of that party which was jealous of the power of the House of Orange, and

desirous to be on friendly terms with France. But he had been sent in 1681 on a diplomatic mission to

Versailles; and a short residence there had produced a complete change in his views. On a near acquaintance,

he was alarmed by the power and provoked by the insolence of that Court of which, while he contemplated it

only at a distance, he had formed a favourable opinion. He found that his country was despised. He saw his

religion persecuted. His official character did not save him from some personal affronts which, to the latest

day of his long career, he never forgot. He went home a devoted adherent of William and a mortal enemy of

The office of Pensionary, always important, was peculiarly important when the Stadtholder was absent from

the Hague. Had the politics of Heinsius been still what they once were, all the great designs of William might

have been frustrated. But happily there was between these two eminent men a perfect friendship which, till

death dissolved it, appears never to have been interrupted for one moment by suspicion or ill humour. On all

large questions of European policy they cordially agreed. They corresponded assiduously and most

unreservedly. For though William was slow to give his confidence, yet, when he gave it, he gave it entire.

The correspondence is still extant, and is most honourable to both. The King's letters would alone suffice to

prove that he was one of the greatest statesmen whom Europe has produced. While he lived, the Pensionary

was content to be the most obedient, the most trusty, and the most discreet of servants. But, after the death of

the master, the servant proved himself capable of supplying with eminent ability the master's place, and was

renowned throughout Europe as one of the great Triumvirate which humbled the pride of Lewis the

The foreign policy of England, directed immediately by William in close concert with Heinsius, was, at this

time, eminently skilful and successful. But in every other part of the administration the evils arising from the

mutual animosity of factions were but too plainly discernible. Nor was this all. To the evils arising from the

mutual animosity of factions were added other evils arising from the mutual animosity of sects.

The year 1689 is a not less important epoch in the ecclesiastical than in the civil history of England. In that

year was granted the first legal indulgence to Dissenters. In that year was made the last serious attempt to

bring the Presbyterians within the pale of the Church of England. From that year dates a new schism, made,

in defiance of ancient precedents, by men who had always professed to regard schism with peculiar

abhorrence, and ancient precedents with peculiar veneration. In that year began the long struggle between two

great parties of conformists. Those parties indeed had, under various forms, existed within the Anglican

communion ever since the Reformation; but till after the Revolution they did not appear marshalled in regular

and permanent order of battle against each other, and were therefore not known by established names. Some

time after the accession of William they began to be called the High Church party and the Low Church party;

In the summer of 1688 the breaches which had long divided the great body of English Protestants had seemed

to be almost closed. Disputes about Bishops and Synods, written prayers and extemporaneous prayers, white

gowns and black gowns, sprinkling and dipping, kneeling and sitting, had been for a short space intermitted.

The serried array which was then drawn up against Popery measured the whole of the vast interval which

separated Sancroft from Bunyan. Prelates recently conspicuous as persecutors now declared themselves

friends of religious liberty, and exhorted their clergy to live in a constant interchange of hospitality and of

kind offices with the separatists. Separatists, on the other hand, who had recently considered mitres and lawn

sleeves as the livery of Antichrist, were putting candles in windows and throwing faggots on bonfires in

These feelings continued to grow till they attained their greatest height on the memorable day on which the

common oppressor finally quitted Whitehall, and on which an innumerable multitude, tricked out in orange

ribands, welcomed the common deliverer to Saint James's. When the clergy of London came, headed by

Compton, to express their gratitude to him by whose instrumentality God had wrought salvation for the

Church and the State, the procession was swollen by some eminent nonconformist divines. It was delightful

to many good men to learn that pious and learned Presbyterian ministers had walked in the train of a Bishop,

had been greeted by him with fraternal kindness, and had been announced by him in the presence chamber as

his dear and respected friends, separated from him indeed by some differences of opinion on minor points,

but united to him by Christian charity and by common zeal for the essentials of the reformed faith. There had

never before been such a day in England; and there has never since been such a day. The tide of feeling was

already on the turn; and the ebb was even more rapid than the flow had been. In a very few hours the High

Churchman began to feel tenderness for the enemy whose tyranny was now no longer feared, and dislike of

the allies whose services were now no longer needed. It was easy to gratify both feelings by imputing to the

dissenters the misgovernment of the exiled King. His Majestysuch was now the language of too many

Anglican divines would have been an excellent sovereign had he not been too confiding, too forgiving. He

had put his trust in a class of men who hated his office, his family, his person, with implacable hatred. He had

ruined himself in the vain attempt to conciliate them. He had relieved them, in defiance of law and of the

unanimous sense of the old royalist party, from the pressure of the penal code; had allowed them to worship

God publicly after their own mean and tasteless fashion; had admitted them to the bench of justice and to the

Privy Council; had gratified them with fur robes, gold chains, salaries, and pensions. In return for his

liberality, these people, once so uncouth in demeanour, once so savage in opposition even to legitimate

authority, had become the most abject of flatterers. They had continued to applaud and encourage him when

the most devoted friends of his family had retired in shame and sorrow from his palace. Who had more foully

sold the religion and liberty of his country than Titus? Who had been more zealous for the dispensing power

than Alsop? Who had urged on the persecution of the seven Bishops more fiercely than Lobb? What chaplain

impatient for a deanery had ever, even when preaching in the royal presence on the thirtieth of January or the

twentyninth of May, uttered adulation more gross than might easily be found in those addresses by which

dissenting congregations had testified their gratitude for the illegal Declaration of Indulgence? Was it strange

that a prince who had never studied law books should have believed that he was only exercising his rightful

prerogative, when he was thus encouraged by a faction which had always ostentatiously professed hatred of

arbitrary power? Misled by such guidance, he had gone further and further in the wrong path: he had at length

estranged from him hearts which would once have poured forth their best blood in his defence: he had left

himself no supporters except his old foes; and, when the day of peril came, he had found that the feeling of

his old foes towards him was still what it had been when they had attempted to rob him of his inheritance,

and when they had plotted against his life. Every man of sense had long known that the sectaries bore no love

to monarchy. It had now been found that they bore as little love to freedom. To trust them with power would

be an error not less fatal to the nation than to the throne. If, in order to redeem pledges somewhat rashly

given, it should be thought necessary to grant them relief, every concession ought to be accompanied by

limitations and precautions. Above all, no man who was an enemy to the ecclesiastical constitution of the

Between the nonconformists and the rigid conformists stood the Low Church party. That party contained, as

it still contains, two very different elements, a Puritan element and a Latitudinarian element. On almost every

question, however, relating either to ecclesiastical polity or to the ceremonial of public worship, the Puritan

Low Churchman and the Latitudinarian Low Churchman were perfectly agreed. They saw in the existing

polity and in the existing ceremonial no defect, no blemish, which could make it their duty to become

dissenters. Nevertheless they held that both the polity and the ceremonial were means and not ends, and that

the essential spirit of Christianity might exist without episcopal orders and without a Book of Common

Prayer. They had, while James was on the throne, been mainly instrumental in forming the great Protestant

coalition against Popery and tyranny; and they continued in 1689 to hold the same conciliatory language

which they had held in 1688. They gently blamed the scruples of the nonconformists. It was undoubtedly a

great weakness to imagine that there could be any sin in wearing a white robe, in tracing a cross, in kneeling

at the rails of an altar. But the highest authority had given the plainest directions as to the manner in which

such weakness was to be treated. The weak brother was not to be judged: he was not to be despised: believers

who had stronger minds were commanded to soothe him by large compliances, and carefully to remove out

of his path every stumbling block which could cause him to offend. An apostle had declared that, though he

had himself no misgivings about the use of animal food or of wine, he would eat herbs and drink water rather

than give scandal to the feeblest of his flock. What would he have thought of ecclesiastical rulers who, for the

sake of a vestment, a gesture, a posture, had not only torn the Church asunder, but had filled all the gaols of

England with men of orthodox faith and saintly life? The reflections thrown by the High Churchmen on the

recent conduct of the dissenting body the Low Churchmen pronounced to be grossly unjust. The wonder was,

not that a few nonconformists should have accepted with thanks an indulgence which, illegal as it was, had

opened the doors of their prisons and given security to their hearths, but that the nonconformists generally

should have been true to the cause of a constitution from the benefits of which they had been long excluded.

It was most unfair to impute to a great party the faults of a few individuals. Even among the Bishops of the

Established Church James had found tools and sycophants. The conduct of Cartwright and Parker had been

much more inexcusable than that of Alsop and Lobb. Yet those who held the dissenters answerable for the

errors of Alsop and Lobb would doubtless think it most unreasonable to hold the Church answerable for the

The Low Church clergymen were a minority, and not a large minority, of their profession: but their weight

was much more than proportioned to their numbers: for they mustered strong in the capital: they had great

influence there; and the average of intellect and knowledge was higher among them than among their order

generally. We should probably overrate their numerical strength, if we were to estimate them at a tenth part

of the priesthood. Yet it will scarcely be denied that there were among them as many men of distinguished

eloquence and learning as could be found in the other nine tenths. Among the laity who conformed to the

established religion the parties were not unevenly balanced. Indeed the line which separated them deviated

very little from the line which separated the Whigs and the Tories. In the House of Commons, which had

been elected when the Whigs were triumphant, the Low Church party greatly preponderated. In the Lords

there was an almost exact equipoise; and very slight circumstances sufficed to turn the scale.

The head of the Low Church party was the King. He had been bred a Presbyterian: he was, from rational

conviction, a Latitudinarian; and personal ambition, as well as higher motives, prompted him to act as

mediator among Protestant sects. He was bent on effecting three great reforms in the laws touching

ecclesiastical matters. His first object was to obtain for dissenters permission to celebrate their worship in

freedom and security. His second object was to make such changes in the Anglican ritual and polity as,

without offending those to whom that ritual and polity were dear, might conciliate the moderate

nonconformists. His third object was to throw open civil offices to Protestants without distinction of sect. All

his three objects were good; but the first only was at that time attainable. He came too late for the second, and

A few days after his accession, he took a step which indicated, in a manner not to be mistaken, his sentiments

touching ecclesiastical polity and public worship. He found only one see unprovided with a Bishop. Seth

Ward, who had during many years had charge of the diocese of Salisbury, and who had been honourably

distinguished as one of the founders of the Royal Society, having long survived his faculties, died while the

country was agitated by the elections for the Convention, without knowing that great events, of which not the

least important had passed under his own roof, had saved his Church and his country from ruin. The choice of

a successor was no light matter. That choice would inevitably be considered by the country as a prognostic of

the highest import. The King too might well be perplexed by the number of divines whose erudition,

eloquence, courage, and uprightness had been conspicuously displayed during the contentions of the last

three years. The preference was given to Burnet. His claims were doubtless great. Yet William might have

had a more tranquil reign if he had postponed for a time the well earned promotion of his chaplain, and had

bestowed the first great spiritual preferment, which, after the Revolution, fell to the disposal of the Crown, on

some eminent theologian, attached to the new settlement, yet not generally hated by the clergy. Unhappily the

name of Burnet was odious to the great majority of the Anglican priesthood. Though, as respected doctrine,

he by no means belonged to the extreme section of the Latitudinarian party, he was popularly regarded as the

personification of the Latitudinarian spirit. This distinction he owed to the prominent place which he held in

literature and politics, to the readiness of his tongue and of his pert, and above all to the frankness and

boldness of his nature, frankness which could keep no secret, and boldness which flinched from no danger.

He had formed but a low estimate of the character of his clerical brethren considered as a body; and, with his

usual indiscretion, he frequently suffered his opinion to escape him. They hated him in return with a hatred

which has descended to their successors, and which, after the lapse of a century and a half, does not appear to

As soon as the King's decision was known, the question was every where asked, What will the Archbishop

do? Sancroft had absented himself from the Convention: he had refused to sit in the Privy Council: he had

ceased to confirm, to ordain, and to institute; and he was seldom seen out of the walls of his palace at

Lambeth. He, on all occasions, professed to think himself still bound by his old oath of allegiance. Burnet he

regarded as a scandal to the priesthood, a Presbyterian in a surplice. The prelate who should lay hands on that

unworthy head would commit more than one great sin. He would, in a sacred place, and before a great

congregation of the faithful, at once acknowledge an usurper as a King, and confer on a schismatic the

character of a Bishop. During some time Sancroft positively declared that he would not obey the precept of

William. Lloyd of Saint Asaph, who was the common friend of the Archbishop and of the Bishop elect,

intreated and expostulated in vain. Nottingham, who, of all the laymen connected with the new government,

stood best with the clergy, tried his influence, but to no better purpose. The Jacobites said every where that

they were sure of the good old Primate; that he had the spirit of a martyr; that he was determined to brave, in

the cause of the Monarchy and of the Church, the utmost rigour of those laws with which the obsequious

parliaments of the sixteenth century had fenced the Royal Supremacy. He did in truth hold out long. But at

the last moment his heart failed him, and he looked round him for some mode of escape. Fortunately, as

childish scruples often disturbed his conscience, childish expedients often quieted it. A more childish

expedient than that to which he now resorted is not to be found in all the tones of the casuists. He would not

himself bear a part in the service. He would not publicly pray for the Prince and Princess as King and Queen.

He would not call for their mandate, order it to be read, and then proceed to obey it. But he issued a

commission empowering any three of his suffragans to commit, in his name, and as his delegates, the sins

which he did not choose to commit in person. The reproaches of all parties soon made him ashamed of

himself. He then tried to suppress the evidence of his fault by means more discreditable than the fault itself.

He abstracted from among the public records of which he was the guardian the instrument by which he had

authorised his brethren to act for him, and was with difficulty induced to give it up.79

Burnet however had, under the authority of this instrument, been consecrated. When he next waited on Mary,

she reminded him of the conversations which they had held at the Hague about the high duties and grave

responsibility of Bishops. "I hope," she said, "that you will put your notions in practice." Her hope was not

disappointed. Whatever may be thought of Burnet's opinions touching civil and ecclesiastical polity, or of the

temper and judgment which he showed in defending those opinions, the utmost malevolence of faction could

not venture to deny that he tended his flock with a zeal, diligence, and disinterestedness worthy of the purest

ages of the Church. His jurisdiction extended over Wiltshire and Berkshire. These counties he divided into

districts which he sedulously visited. About two months of every summer he passed in preaching,

catechizing, and confirming daily from church to church. When he died there was no corner of his diocese in

which the people had not had seven or eight opportunities of receiving his instructions and of asking his

advice. The worst weather, the worst roads, did not prevent him from discharging these duties. On one

occasion, when the floods were out, he exposed his life to imminent risk rather than disappoint a rural

congregation which was in expectation of a discourse from the Bishop. The poverty of the inferior clergy was

a constant cause of uneasiness to his kind and generous heart. He was indefatigable and at length successful

in his attempts to obtain for them from the Crown that grant which is known by the name of Queen Anne's

Bounty.80 He was especially careful, when he travelled through his diocese, to lay no burden on them.

Instead of requiring them to entertain him, he entertained them. He always fixed his headquarters at a market

town, kept a table there, and, by his decent hospitality and munificent charities, tried to conciliate those who

were prejudiced against his doctrines. When he bestowed a poor benefice, and he had many such to bestow,

his practice was to add out of his own purse twenty pounds a year to the income. Ten promising young men,

to each of whom he allowed thirty pounds a year, studied divinity under his own eye in the close of Salisbury.

He had several children but he did not think himself justified in hoarding for them. Their mother had brought

him a good fortune. With that fortune, he always said, they must be content: He would not, for their sakes, be

guilty of the crime of raising an estate out of revenues sacred to piety and charity. Such merits as these will,

in the judgment of wise and candid men, appear fully to atone for every offence which can be justly imputed

When he took his seat in the House of Lords, he found that assembly busied in ecclesiastical legislation. A

statesman who was well known to be devoted to the Church had undertaken to plead the cause of the

Dissenters. No subject in the realm occupied so important and commanding a position with reference to

religious parties as Nottingham. To the influence derived from rank, from wealth, and from office, he added

the higher influence which belongs to knowledge, to eloquence, and to integrity. The orthodoxy of his creed,

the regularity of his devotions, and the purity of his morals gave a peculiar weight to his opinions on

questions in which the interests of Christianity were concerned. Of all the ministers of the new Sovereigns, he

had the largest share of the confidence of the clergy. Shrewsbury was certainly a Whig, and probably a

freethinker: he had lost one religion; and it did not very clearly appear that he had found another. Halifax had

been during many years accused of scepticism, deism, atheism. Danby's attachment to episcopacy and the

liturgy was rather political than religious. But Nottingham was such a son as the Church was proud to own.

Propositions, therefore, which, if made by his colleagues, would infallibly produce a violent panic among the

clergy, might, if made by him, find a favourable reception even in universities and chapter houses. The

friends of religious liberty were with good reason desirous to obtain his cooperation; and, up to a certain

point, he was not unwilling to cooperate with them. He was decidedly for a toleration. He was even for what

was then called a comprehension: that is to say, he was desirous to make some alterations in the Anglican

discipline and ritual for the purpose of removing the scruples of the moderate Presbyterians. But he was not

prepared to give up the Test Act. The only fault which he found with that Act was that it was not sufficiently

stringent, and that it left loopholes through which schismatics sometimes crept into civil employments. In

truth it was because he was not disposed to part with the Test that he was willing to consent to some changes

in the Liturgy. He conceived that, if the entrance of the Church were but a very little widened, great numbers

who had hitherto lingered near the threshold would press in. Those who still remained without would then not

be sufficiently numerous or powerful to extort any further concession, and would be glad to compound for a

The opinion of the Low Churchmen concerning the Test Act differed widely from his. But many of them

thought that it was of the highest importance to have his support on the great questions of Toleration and

Comprehension. From the scattered fragments of information which have come down to us, it appears that a

compromise was made. It is quite certain that Nottingham undertook to bring in a Toleration Bill and a

Comprehension Bill, and to use his best endeavours to carry both bills through the House of Lords. It is

highly probable that, in return for this great service, some of the leading Whigs consented to let the Test Act

There was no difficulty in framing either the Toleration Bill or the Comprehension Bill. The situation of the

dissenters had been much discussed nine or ten years before, when the kingdom was distracted by the fear of

a Popish plot, and when there was among Protestants a general disposition to unite against the common

enemy. The government had then been willing to make large concessions to the Whig party, on condition that

the crown should be suffered to descend according to the regular course. A draught of a law authorising the

public worship of the nonconformists, and a draught of a law making some alterations in the public worship

of the Established Church, had been prepared, and would probably have been passed by both Houses without

difficulty, had not Shaftesbury and his coadjutors refused to listen to any terms, and, by grasping at what was

beyond their reach, missed advantages which might easily have been secured. In the framing of these

draughts, Nottingham, then an active member of the House of Commons, had borne a considerable part. He

now brought them forth from the obscurity in which they had remained since the dissolution of the Oxford

Parliament, and laid them, with some slight alterations, on the table of the Lords.83

The Toleration Bill passed both Houses with little debate. This celebrated statute, long considered as the

Great Charter of religious liberty, has since been extensively modified, and is hardly known to the present

generation except by name. The name, however, is still pronounced with respect by many who will perhaps

learn with surprise and disappointment the real nature of the law which they have been accustomed to hold in

Several statutes which had been passed between the accession of Queen Elizabeth and the Revolution

required all people under severe penalties to attend the services of the Church of England, and to abstain from

attending conventicles. The Toleration Act did not repeal any of these statutes, but merely provided that they

should not be construed to extend to any person who should testify his loyalty by taking the Oaths of

Allegiance and Supremacy, and his Protestantism by subscribing the Declaration against Transubstantiation.

The relief thus granted was common between the dissenting laity and the dissenting clergy. But the dissenting

clergy had some peculiar grievances. The Act of Uniformity had laid a mulct of a hundred pounds on every

person who, not having received episcopal ordination, should presume to administer the Eucharist. The Five

Mile Act had driven many pious and learned ministers from their houses and their friends, to live among

rustics in obscure villages of which the name was not to be seen on the map. The Conventicle Act had

imposed heavy fines on divines who should preach in any meeting of separatists; and, in direct opposition to

the humane spirit of our common law, the Courts were enjoined to construe this Act largely and beneficially

for the suppressing of dissent and for the encouraging of informers. These severe statutes were not repealed,

but were, with many conditions and precautions, relaxed. It was provided that every dissenting minister

should, before he exercised his function, profess under his hand his belief in the articles of the Church of

England, with a few exceptions. The propositions to which he was not required to assent were these; that the

Church has power to regulate ceremonies; that the doctrines set forth in the Book of Homilies are sound; and

that there is nothing superstitious and idolatrous in the ordination service. If he declared himself a Baptist, he

was also excused from affirming that the baptism of infants is a laudable practice. But, unless his conscience

suffered him to subscribe thirtyfour of the thirtynine articles, and the greater part of two other articles, he

could not preach without incurring all the punishments which the Cavaliers, in the day of their power and

their vengeance, had devised for the tormenting and ruining of schismatical teachers.

The situation of the Quaker differed from that of other dissenters, and differed for the worse. The

Presbyterian, the Independent, and the Baptist had no scruple about the Oath of Supremacy. But the Quaker

refused to take it, not because he objected to the proposition that foreign sovereigns and prelates have no

jurisdiction in England, but because his conscience would not suffer him to swear to any proposition

whatever. He was therefore exposed to the severity of part of that penal code which, long before Quakerism

existed, had been enacted against Roman Catholics by the Parliaments of Elizabeth. Soon after the

Restoration, a severe law, distinct from the general law which applied to all conventicles, had been passed

against meetings of Quakers. The Toleration Act permitted the members of this harmless sect to hold their

assemblies in peace, on condition of signing three documents, a declaration against Transubstantiation, a

promise of fidelity to the government, and a confession of Christian belief. The objections which the Quaker

had to the Athanasian phraseology had brought on him the imputation of Socinianism; and the strong

language in which he sometimes asserted that he derived his knowledge of spiritual things directly from

above had raised a suspicion that he thought lightly of the authority of Scripture. He was therefore required to

profess his faith in the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and in the inspiration of the Old and New

Such were the terms on which the Protestant dissenters of England were, for the first time, permitted by law

to worship God according to their own conscience. They were very properly forbidden to assemble with

barred doors, but were protected against hostile intrusion by a clause which made it penal to enter a meeting

As if the numerous limitations and precautions which have been mentioned were insufficient, it was

emphatically declared that the legislature did not intend to grant the smallest indulgence to any Papist, or to

any person who denied the doctrine of the Trinity as that doctrine is set forth in the formularies of the Church

Of all the Acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the Toleration Act is perhaps that which most

strikingly illustrates the peculiar vices and the peculiar excellences of English legislation. The science of

Politics bears in one respect a close analogy to the science of Mechanics. The mathematician can easily

demonstrate that a certain power, applied by means of a certain lever or of a certain system of pulleys, will

suffice to raise a certain weight. But his demonstration proceeds on the supposition that the machinery is such

as no load will bend or break. If the engineer, who has to lift a great mass of real granite by the

instrumentality of real timber and real hemp, should absolutely rely on the propositions which he finds in

treatises on Dynamics, and should make no allowance for the imperfection of his materials, his whole

apparatus of beams, wheels, and ropes would soon come down in ruin, and, with all his geometrical skill, he

would be found a far inferior builder to those painted barbarians who, though they never heard of the

parallelogram of forces, managed to pile up Stonehenge. What the engineer is to the mathematician, the

active statesman is to the contemplative statesman. It is indeed most important that legislators and

administrators should be versed in the philosophy of government, as it is most important that the architect,

who has to fix an obelisk on its pedestal, or to hang a tubular bridge over an estuary, should be versed in the

philosophy of equilibrium and motion. But, as he who has actually to build must bear in mind many things

never noticed by D'Alembert and Euler, so must he who has actually to govern be perpetually guided by

considerations to which no allusion can be found in the writings of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. The

perfect lawgiver is a just temper between the mere man of theory, who can see nothing but general principles,

and the mere man of business, who can see nothing but particular circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom the

speculative element has prevailed to the exclusion of the practical, the world has during the last eighty years

been singularly fruitful. To their wisdom Europe and America have owed scores of abortive constitutions,

scores of constitutions which have lived just long enough to make a miserable noise, and have then gone off

in convulsions. But in the English legislature the practical element has always predominated, and not seldom

unduly predominated, over the speculative. To think nothing of symmetry and much of convenience; never to

remove an anomaly merely because it is an anomaly; never to innovate except when some grievance is felt;

never to innovate except so far as to get rid of the grievance; never to lay down any proposition of wider

extent than the particular case for which it is necessary to provide; these are the rules which have, from the

age of John to the age of Victoria, generally guided the deliberations of our two hundred and fifty

Parliaments. Our national distaste for whatever is abstract in political science amounts undoubtedly to a fault.

But it is, perhaps, a fault on the right side. That we have been far too slow to improve our laws must be

admitted. But, though in other countries there may have occasionally been more rapid progress, it would not

be easy to name any other country in which there has been so little retrogression.

The Toleration Act approaches very near to the idea of a great English law. To a jurist, versed in the theory of

legislation, but not intimately acquainted with the temper of the sects and parties into which the nation was

divided at the time of the Revolution, that Act would seem to be a mere chaos of absurdities and

contradictions. It will not bear to be tried by sound general principles. Nay, it will not bear to be tried by any

principle, sound or unsound. The sound principle undoubtedly is, that mere theological error ought not to be

punished by the civil magistrate. This principle the Toleration Act not only does not recognise, but positively

disclaims. Not a single one of the cruel laws enacted against nonconformists by the Tudors or the Stuarts is

repealed. Persecution continues to be the general rule. Toleration is the exception. Nor is this all. The

freedom which is given to conscience is given in the most capricious manner. A Quaker, by making a

declaration of faith in general terms, obtains the full benefit of the Act without signing one of the thirtynine

Articles. An Independent minister, who is perfectly willing to make the declaration required from the Quaker,

but who has doubts about six or seven of the Articles, remains still subject to the penal laws. Howe is liable

to punishment if he preaches before he has solemnly declared his assent to the Anglican doctrine touching the

Eucharist. Penn, who altogether rejects the Eucharist, is at perfect liberty to preach without making any

These are some of the obvious faults which must strike every person who examines the Toleration Act by that

standard of just reason which is the same in all countries and in all ages. But these very faults may perhaps

appear to be merits, when we take into consideration the passions and prejudices of those for whom the

Toleration Act was framed. This law, abounding with contradictions which every smatterer in political

philosophy can detect, did what a law framed by the utmost skill of the greatest masters of political

philosophy might have failed to do. That the provisions which have been recapitulated are cumbrous, puerile,

inconsistent with each other, inconsistent with the true theory of religious liberty, must be acknowledged. All

that can be said in their defence is this; that they removed a vast mass of evil without shocking a vast mass of

prejudice; that they put an end, at once and for ever, without one division in either House of Parliament,

without one riot in the streets, with scarcely one audible murmur even from the classes most deeply tainted

with bigotry, to a persecution which had raged during four generations, which had broken innumerable

hearts, which had made innumerable firesides desolate, which had filled the prisons with men of whom the

world was not worthy, which had driven thousands of those honest, diligent and godfearing yeomen and

artisans, who are the true strength of a nation, to seek a refuge beyond the ocean among the wigwams of red

Indians and the lairs of panthers. Such a defence, however weak it may appear to some shallow speculators,

The English, in 1689, were by no means disposed to admit the doctrine that religious error ought to be left

unpunished. That doctrine was just then more unpopular than it had ever been. For it had, only a few months

before, been hypocritically put forward as a pretext for persecuting the Established Church, for trampling on

the fundamental laws of the realm, for confiscating freeholds, for treating as a crime the modest exercise of

the right of petition. If a bill had then been drawn up granting entire freedom of conscience to all Protestants,

it may be confidently affirmed that Nottingham would never have introduced such a bill; that all the bishops,

Burnet included, would have voted against it; that it would have been denounced, Sunday after Sunday, from

ten thousand pulpits, as an insult to God and to all Christian men, and as a license to the worst heretics and

blasphemers; that it would have been condemned almost as vehemently by Bates and Baxter as by Ken and

Sherlock; that it would have been burned by the mob in half the market places of England; that it would never

have become the law of the land, and that it would have made the very name of toleration odious during

many years to the majority of the people. And yet, if such a bill had been passed, what would it have effected

It is true that the Toleration Act recognised persecution as the rule, and granted liberty of conscience only as

the exception. But it is equally true that the rule remained in force only against a few hundreds of Protestant

dissenters, and that the benefit of the exceptions extended to hundreds of thousands.

It is true that it was in theory absurd to make Howe sign thirty four or thirtyfive of the Anglican articles

before he could preach, and to let Penn preach without signing one of those articles. But it is equally true that,

under this arrangement, both Howe and Penn got as entire liberty to preach as they could have had under the

The progress of the bill was easy. Only one amendment of grave importance was proposed. Some zealous

churchmen in the Commons suggested that it might be desirable to grant the toleration only for a term of

seven years, and thus to bind over the nonconformists to good behaviour. But this suggestion was so

unfavourably received that those who made it did not venture to divide the House.84

The King gave his consent with hearty satisfaction: the bill became law; and the Puritan divines thronged to

the Quarter Sessions of every county to swear and sign. Many of them probably professed their assent to the

Articles with some tacit reservations. But the tender conscience of Baxter would not suffer him to qualify, till

he had put on record an explanation of the sense in which he understood every proposition which seemed to

him to admit of misconstruction. The instrument delivered by him to the Court before which he took the

oaths is still extant, and contains two passages of peculiar interest. He declared that his approbation of the

Athanasian Creed was confined to that part which was properly a Creed, and that he did not mean to express

any assent to the damnatory clauses. He also declared that he did not, by signing the article which

anathematizes all who maintain that there is any other salvation than through Christ, mean to condemn those

who entertain a hope that sincere and virtuous unbelievers may be admitted to partake in the benefits of

Redemption. Many of the dissenting clergy of London expressed their concurrence in these charitable

The history of the Comprehension Bill presents a remarkable contrast to the history of the Toleration Bill.

The two bills had a common origin, and, to a great extent, a common object. They were framed at the same

time, and laid aside at the same time: they sank together into oblivion; and they were, after the lapse of

several years, again brought together before the world. Both were laid by the same peer on the table of the

Upper House; and both were referred to the same select committee. But it soon began to appear that they

would have widely different fates. The Comprehension Bill was indeed a neater specimen of legislative

workmanship than the Toleration Bill, but was not, like the Toleration Bill, adapted to the wants, the feelings,

and the prejudices of the existing generation. Accordingly, while the Toleration Bill found support in all

quarters, the Comprehension Bill was attacked from all quarters, and was at last coldly and languidly

defended even by those who had introduced it. About the same time at which the Toleration bill became law

with the general concurrence of public men, the Comprehension Bill was, with a concurrence not less

general, suffered to drop. The Toleration Bill still ranks among those great statutes which are epochs in our

constitutional history. The Comprehension Bill is forgotten. No collector of antiquities has thought it worth

preserving. A single copy, the same which Nottingham presented to the peers, is still among our

parliamentary records, but has been seen by only two or three persons now living. It is a fortunate

circumstance that, in this copy, almost the whole history of the Bill can be read. In spite of cancellations and

interlineations, the original words can easily be distinguished from those which were inserted in the

The first clause, as it stood when the bill was introduced, dispensed all the ministers of the Established

Church from the necessity of subscribing the Thirtynine Articles. For the Articles was substituted a

Declaration which ran thus; "I do approve of the doctrine and worship and government of the Church of

England by law established, as containing all things necessary to salvation; and I promise, in the exercise of

my ministry, to preach and practice according thereunto." Another clause granted similar indulgence to the

Then it was provided that any minister who had been ordained after the Presbyterian fashion might, without

reordination, acquire all the privileges of a priest of the Established Church. He must, however, be admitted

to his new functions by the imposition of the hands of a bishop, who was to pronounce the following form of

words; "Take thou authority to preach the word of God, and administer the sacraments, and to perform all

other ministerial offices in the Church of England." The person thus admitted was to be capable of holding

Then followed clauses providing that a clergyman might, except in a few churches of peculiar dignity, wear

the surplice or not as he thought fit, that the sign of the cross might be omitted in baptism, that children might

be christened, if such were the wish of their parents, without godfathers or godmothers, and that persons who

The concluding clause was drawn in the form of a petition. It was proposed that the two Houses should

request the King and Queen to issue a commission empowering thirty divines of the Established Church to

revise the liturgy, the canons, and the constitution of the ecclesiastical courts, and to recommend such

The bill went smoothly through the first stages. Compton, who, since Sancroft had shut himself up at

Lambeth, was virtually Primate, supported Nottingham with ardour.87 In the committee, however, it

appeared that there was a strong body of churchmen, who were determined not to give up a single word or

form; to whom it seemed that the prayers were no prayers without the surplice, the babe no Christian if not

marked with the cross, the bread and wine no memorials of redemption or vehicles of grace if not received on

bended knee. Why, these persons asked, was the docile and affectionate son of the Church to be disgusted by

seeing the irreverent practices of a conventicle introduced into her majestic choirs? Why should his feelings,

his prejudices, if prejudices they were, be less considered than the whims of schismatics? If, as Burnet and

men like Burnet were never weary of repeating, indulgence was due to a weak brother, was it less due to the

brother whose weakness consisted in the excess of his love for an ancient, a decent, a beautiful ritual,

associated in his imagination from childhood with all that is most sublime and endearing, than to him whose

morose and litigious mind was always devising frivolous objections to innocent and salutary usages? But, in

truth, the scrupulosity of the Puritan was not that sort of scrupulosity which the Apostle had commanded

believers to respect. It sprang, not from morbid tenderness of conscience, but from censoriousness and

spiritual pride; and none who had studied the New Testament could have failed to observe that, while we are

charged carefully to avoid whatever may give scandal to the feeble, we are taught by divine precept and

example to make no concession to the supercilious and uncharitable Pharisee. Was every thing which was not

of the essence of religion to be given up as soon as it became unpleasing to a knot of zealots whose heads had

been turned by conceit and the love of novelty? Painted glass, music, holidays, fast days, were not of the

essence of religion. Were the windows of King's College Chapel to be broken at the demand of one set of

fanatics? Was the organ of Exeter to be silenced to please another? Were all the village bells to be mute

because Tribulation Wholesome and Deacon Ananias thought them profane? Was Christmas no longer to be

a day of rejoicing? Was Passion week no longer to be a season of humiliation? These changes, it is true, were

not yet proposed. Put if,so the High Churchmen reasoned,we once admit that what is harmless and

edifying is to be given up because it offends some narrow understandings and some gloomy tempers, where

are we to stop? And is it not probable that, by thus attempting to heal one schism, we may cause another? All

those things which the Puritans regard as the blemishes of the Church are by a large part of the population

reckoned among her attractions. May she not, in ceasing to give scandal to a few sour precisians, cease also

to influence the hearts of many who now delight in her ordinances? Is it not to be apprehended that, for every

proselyte whom she allures from the meeting house, ten of her old disciples may turn away from her maimed

rites and dismantled temples, and that these new separatists may either form themselves into a sect far more

formidable than the sect which we are now seeking to conciliate, or may, in the violence of their disgust at a

cold and ignoble worship, be tempted to join in the solemn and gorgeous idolatry of Rome?

It is remarkable that those who held this language were by no means disposed to contend for the doctrinal

Articles of the Church. The truth is that, from the time of James the First, that great party which has been

peculiarly zealous for the Anglican polity and the Anglican ritual has always leaned strongly towards

Arminianism, and has therefore never been much attached to a confession of faith framed by reformers who,

on questions of metaphysical divinity, generally agreed with Calvin. One of the characteristic marks of that

party is the disposition which it has always shown to appeal, on points of dogmatic theology, rather to the

Liturgy, which was derived from Rome, than to the Articles and Homilies, which were derived from Geneva.

The Calvinistic members of the Church, on the other hand, have always maintained that her deliberate

judgment on such points is much more likely to be found in an Article or a Homily than in an ejaculation of

penitence or a hymn of thanksgiving. It does not appear that, in the debates on the Comprehension Bill, a

single High Churchman raised his voice against the clause which relieved the clergy from the necessity of

subscribing the Articles, and of declaring the doctrine contained in the Homilies to be sound. Nay, the

Declaration which, in the original draught, was substituted for the Articles, was much softened down on the

report. As the clause finally stood, the ministers of the Church were required to declare, not that they

approved of her constitution, but merely that they submitted to it. Had the bill become law, the only people in

the kingdom who would have been under the necessity of signing the Articles would have been the dissenting

The easy manner in which the zealous friends of the Church gave up her confession of faith presents a

striking contrast to the spirit with which they struggled for her polity and her ritual. The clause which

admitted Presbyterian ministers to hold benefices without episcopal ordination was rejected. The clause

which permitted scrupulous persons to communicate sitting very narrowly escaped the same fate. In the

Committee it was struck out, and, on the report, was with great difficulty restored. The majority of peers in

the House was against the proposed indulgence, and the scale was but just turned by the proxies.

But by this time it began to appear that the bill which the High Churchmen were so keenly assailing was

menaced by dangers from a very different quarter. The same considerations which had induced Nottingham

to support a comprehension made comprehension an object of dread and aversion to a large body of

dissenters. The truth is that the time for such a scheme had gone by. If, a hundred years earlier, when the

division in the Protestant body was recent, Elizabeth had been so wise as to abstain from requiring the

observance of a few forms which a large part of her subjects considered as Popish, she might perhaps have

averted those fearful calamities which, forty years after her death, afflicted the Church. But the general

tendency of schism is to widen. Had Leo the Tenth, when the exactions and impostures of the Pardoners first

roused the indignation of Saxony, corrected those evil practices with a vigorous hand, it is not improbable

that Luther would have died in the bosom of the Church of Rome. But the opportunity was suffered to

escape; and, when, a few years later, the Vatican would gladly have purchased peace by yielding the original

subject of quarrel, the original subject of quarrel was almost forgotten. The inquiring spirit which had been

roused by a single abuse had discovered or imagined a thousand: controversies engendered controversies:

every attempt that was made to accommodate one dispute ended by producing another; and at length a

General Council, which, during the earlier stages of the distemper, had been supposed to be an infallible

remedy, made the case utterly hopeless. In this respect, as in many others, the history of Puritanism in

England bears a close analogy to the history of Protestantism in Europe. The Parliament of 1689 could no

more put an end to nonconformity by tolerating a garb or a posture than the Doctors of Trent could have

reconciled the Teutonic nations to the Papacy by regulating the sale of indulgences. In the sixteenth century

Quakerism was unknown; and there was not in the whole realm a single congregation of Independents or

Baptists. At the time of the Revolution, the Independents, Baptists, and Quakers were a majority of the

dissenting body; and these sects could not be gained over on any terms which the lowest of Low Churchmen

would have been willing to offer. The Independent held that a national Church, governed by any central

authority whatever, Pope, Patriarch, King, Bishop, or Synod, was an unscriptural institution, and that every

congregation of believers was, under Christ, a sovereign society. The Baptist was even more irreclaimable

than the Independent, and the Quaker even more irreclaimable than the Baptist. Concessions, therefore,

which would once have extinguished nonconformity would not now satisfy even one half of the

nonconformists; and it was the obvious interest of every nonconformist whom no concession would satisfy

that none of his brethren should be satisfied. The more liberal the terms of comprehension, the greater was

the alarm of every separatist who knew that he could, in no case, be comprehended. There was but slender

hope that the dissenters, unbroken and acting as one man, would be able to obtain from the legislature full

admission to civil privileges; and all hope of obtaining such admission must be relinquished if Nottingham

should, by the help of some wellmeaning but shortsighted friends of religious liberty, be enabled to

accomplish his design. If his bill passed, there would doubtless be a considerable defection from the

dissenting body; and every defection must be severely felt by a class already outnumbered, depressed, and

struggling against powerful enemies. Every proselyte too must be reckoned twice over, as a loss to the party

which was even now too weak, and as a gain to the party which was even now too strong. The Church was

but too well able to hold her own against all the sects in the kingdom; and, if those sects were to be thinned

by a large desertion, and the Church strengthened by a large reinforcement, it was plain that all chance of

obtaining any relaxation of the Test Act would be at an end; and it was but too probable that the Toleration

Even those Presbyterian ministers whose scruples the Comprehension Bill was expressly intended to remove

were by no means unanimous in wishing it to pass. The ablest and most eloquent preachers among them had,

since the Declaration of Indulgence had appeared, been very agreeably settled in the capital and in other large

towns, and were now about to enjoy, under the sure guarantee of an Act of Parliament, that toleration which,

under the Declaration of Indulgence, had been illicit and precarious. The situation of these men was such as

the great majority of the divines of the Established Church might well envy. Few indeed of the parochial

clergy were so abundantly supplied with comforts as the favourite orator of a great assembly of

nonconformists in the City. The voluntary contributions of his wealthy hearers, Aldermen and Deputies, West

India merchants and Turkey merchants, Wardens of the Company of Fishmongers and Wardens of the

Company of Goldsmiths, enabled him to become a landowner or a mortgagee. The best broadcloth from

Blackwell Hall, and the best poultry from Leadenhall Market, were frequently left at his door. His influence

over his flock was immense. Scarcely any member of a congregation of separatists entered into a partnership,

married a daughter, put a son out as apprentice, or gave his vote at an election, without consulting his

spiritual guide. On all political and literary questions the minister was the oracle of his own circle. It was

popularly remarked, during many years, that an eminent dissenting minister had only to make his son an

attorney or a physician; that the attorney was sure to have clients, and the physician to have patients. While a

waiting woman was generally considered as a help meet for a chaplain in holy orders of the Established

Church, the widows and daughters of opulent citizens were supposed to belong in a peculiar manner to

nonconformist pastors. One of the great Presbyterian Rabbies, therefore, might well doubt whether, in a

worldly view, he should be benefited by a comprehension. He might indeed hold a rectory or a vicarage,

when he could get one. But in the meantime he would be destitute: his meeting house would be closed: his

congregation would be dispersed among the parish churches: if a benefice were bestowed on him, it would

probably be a very slender compensation for the income which he had lost. Nor could he hope to have, as a

minister of the Anglican Church, the authority and dignity which he had hitherto enjoyed. He would always,

by a large portion of the members of that Church, be regarded as a deserter. He might therefore, on the whole,

There was consequently a division in the Whig party. One section of that party was for relieving the

dissenters from the Test Act, and giving up the Comprehension Bill. Another section was for pushing forward

the Comprehension Bill, and postponing to a more convenient time the consideration of the Test Act. The

effect of this division among the friends of religious liberty was that the High Churchmen, though a minority

in the House of Commons, and not a majority in the House of Lords, were able to oppose with success both

the reforms which they dreaded. The Comprehension Bill was not passed; and the Test Act was not repealed.

Just at the moment when the question of the Test and the question of the Comprehension became complicated

together in a manner which might well perplex an enlightened and honest politician, both questions became

The ancient oaths of allegiance and supremacy contained some expressions which had always been disliked

by the Whigs, and other expressions which Tories, honestly attached to the new settlement, thought

inapplicable to princes who had not the hereditary right. The Convention had therefore, while the throne was

still vacant, framed those oaths of allegiance and supremacy by which we still testify our loyalty to our

Sovereign. By the Act which turned the Convention into a Parliament, the members of both Houses were

required to take the new oaths. As to other persons in public trust, it was hard to say how the law stood. One

form of words was enjoined by statutes, regularly passed, and not yet regularly abrogated. A different form

was enjoined by the Declaration of Right, an instrument which was indeed revolutionary and irregular, but

which might well be thought equal in authority to any statute. The practice was in as much confusion as the

law. It was therefore felt to be necessary that the legislature should, without delay, pass an Act abolishing the

The bill which settled this important question originated in the Upper House. As to most of the provisions

there was little room for dispute. It was unanimously agreed that no person should, at any future time, be

admitted to any office, civil, military, ecclesiastical, or academical, without taking the oaths to William and

Mary. It was also unanimously agreed that every person who already held any civil or military office should

be ejected from it, unless he took the oaths on or before the first of August 1689. But the strongest passions

of both parties were excited by the question whether persons who already possessed ecclesiastical or

academical offices should be required to swear fealty to the King and Queen on pain of deprivation. None

could say what might be the effect of a law enjoining all the members of a great, a powerful, a sacred

profession to make, under the most solemn sanction of religion, a declaration which might be plausibly

represented as a formal recantation of all that they had been writing and preaching during many years. The

Primate and some of the most eminent Bishops had already absented themselves from Parliament, and would

doubtless relinquish their palaces and revenues, rather than acknowledge the new Sovereigns. The example of

these great prelates might perhaps be followed by a multitude of divines of humbler rank, by hundreds of

canons, prebendaries, and fellows of colleges, by thousands of parish priests. To such an event no Tory,

however clear his own conviction that he might lawfully swear allegiance to the King who was in possession,

could look forward without the most painful emotions of compassion for the sufferers and of anxiety for the

There were some persons who went so far as to deny that the Parliament was competent to pass a law

requiring a Bishop to swear on pain of deprivation. No earthly power, they said, could break the tie which

bound the successor of the apostles to his diocese. What God had joined no man could sunder. Dings and

senates might scrawl words on parchment or impress figures on wax; but those words and figures could no

more change the course of the spiritual than the course of the physical world. As the Author of the universe

had appointed a certain order, according to which it was His pleasure to send winter and summer, seedtime

and harvest, so He had appointed a certain order, according to which He communicated His grace to His

Catholic Church; and the latter order was, like the former, independent of the powers and principalities of the

world. A legislature might alter the flames of the months, might call June December, and December June;

but, in spite of the legislature, the snow would fall when the sun was in Capricorn, and the flowers would

bloom when he was in Cancer. And so the legislature might enact that Ferguson or Muggleton should live in

the palace at Lambeth, should sit on the throne of Augustin, should be called Your Grace, and should walk in

processions before the Premier Duke; but, in spite of the legislature, Sancroft would, while Sancroft lived, be

the only true Archbishop of Canterbury; and the person who should presume to usurp the archiepiscopal

functions would be a schismatic. This doctrine was proved by reasons drawn from the budding of Aaron's

rod, and from a certain plate which Saint James the Less, according to a legend of the fourth century, used to

wear on his forehead. A Greek manuscript, relating to the deprivation of bishops, was discovered, about this

time, in the Bodleian Library, and became the subject of a furious controversy. One party held that God had

wonderfully brought this precious volume to light, for the guidance of His Church at a most critical moment.

The other party wondered that any importance could be attached to the nonsense of a nameless scribbler of

the thirteenth century. Much was written about the deprivations of Chrysostom and Photius, of Nicolaus

Mysticus and Cosmas Atticus. But the case of Abiathar, whom Solomon put out of the sacerdotal office for

treason, was discussed with peculiar eagerness. No small quantity of learning and ingenuity was expended in

the attempt to prove that Abiathar, though he wore the ephod and answered by Urim, was not really High

Priest, that he ministered only when his superior Zadoc was incapacitated by sickness or by some ceremonial

pollution, and that therefore the act of Solomon was not a precedent which would warrant King William in

But such reasoning as this, though backed by copious citations from the Misna and Maimonides, was not

generally satisfactory even to zealous churchmen. For it admitted of one answer, short, but perfectly

intelligible to a plain man who knew nothing about Greek fathers or Levitical genealogies. There might be

some doubt whether King Solomon had ejected a high priest; but there could be no doubt at all that Queen

Elizabeth had ejected the Bishops of more than half the sees in England. It was notorious that fourteen

prelates had, without any proceeding in any spiritual court, been deprived by Act of Parliament for refusing to

acknowledge her supremacy. Had that deprivation been null? Had Bonner continued to be, to the end of his

life, the only true Bishop of London? Had his successor been an usurper? Had Parker and Jewel been

schismatics? Had the Convocation of 1562, that Convocation which had finally settled the doctrine of the

Church of England, been itself out of the pale of the Church of Christ? Nothing could be more ludicrous than

the distress of those controversialists who had to invent a plea for Elizabeth which should not be also a plea

for William. Some zealots, indeed, gave up the vain attempt to distingush between two cases which every

man of common sense perceived to be undistinguishable, and frankly owned that the deprivations of 1559

could not be justified. But no person, it was said, ought to be troubled in mind on that account; for, though

the Church of England might once have been schismatical, she had become Catholic when the Bishops

deprived by Elizabeth had ceased to live.91 The Tories, however, were not generally disposed to admit that

the religious society to which they were fondly attached had originated in an unlawful breach of unity. They

therefore took ground lower and more tenable. They argued the question as a question of humanity and of

expediency. They spoke much of the debt of gratitude which the nation owed to the priesthood; of the

courage and fidelity with which the order, from the primate down to the youngest deacon, had recently

defended the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm; of the memorable Sunday when, in all the

hundred churches of the capital, scarcely one slave could be found to read the Declaration of Indulgence; of

the Black Friday when, amidst the blessings and the loud weeping of a mighty population, the barge of the

seven prelates passed through the watergate of the Tower. The firmness with which the clergy had lately, in

defiance of menace and of seduction, done what they conscientiously believed to be right, had saved the

liberty and religion of England. Was no indulgence to be granted to them if they now refused to do what they

conscientiously apprehended to be wrong? And where, it was said, is the danger of treating them with

tenderness? Nobody is so absurd as to propose that they shall be permitted to plot against the Government, or

to stir up the multitude to insurrection. They are amenable to the law, like other men. If they are guilty of

treason, let them be hanged. If they are guilty of sedition, let them be fined and imprisoned. If they omit, in

their public ministrations, to pray for King William, for Queen Mary, and for the Parliament assembled under

those most religious sovereigns, let the penal clauses of the Act of Uniformity be put in force. If this be not

enough, let his Majesty be empowered to tender the oaths to any clergyman; and, if the oaths so tendered are

refused, let deprivation follow. In this way any nonjuring bishop or rector who may be suspected, though he

cannot be legally convicted, of intriguing, of writing, of talking, against the present settlement, may be at

once removed from his office. But why insist on ejecting a pious and laborious minister of religion, who

never lifts a finger or utters a word against the government, and who, as often as he performs morning and

evening service, prays from his heart for a blessing on the rulers set over him by Providence, but who will not

take an oath which seems to him to imply a right in the people to depose a sovereign? Surely we do all that is

necessary if we leave men of this sort to the mercy of the very prince to whom they refuse to swear fidelity. If

he is willing to bear with their scrupulosity, if he considers them, notwithstanding their prejudices, as

The Whigs were vehement on the other side. They scrutinised, with ingenuity sharpened by hatred, the claims

of the clergy to the public gratitude, and sometimes went so far as altogether to deny that the order had in the

preceding year deserved well of the nation. It was true that bishops and priests had stood up against the

tyranny of the late King: but it was equally true that, but for the obstinacy with which they had opposed the

Exclusion Bill, he never would have been King, and that, but for their adulation and their doctrine of passive

obedience, he would never have ventured to be guilty of such tyranny. Their chief business, during a quarter

of a century, had been to teach the people to cringe and the prince to domineer. They were guilty of the blood

of Russell, of Sidney, of every brave and honest Englishman who had been put to death for attempting to save

the realm from Popery and despotism. Never had they breathed a whisper against arbitrary power till arbitrary

power began to menace their own property and dignity. Then, no doubt, forgetting all their old

commonplaces about submitting to Nero, they had made haste to save themselves. Grant,such was the cry

of these eager disputants,grant that, in saving themselves, they saved the constitution. Are we therefore to

forget that they had previously endangered it? And are we to reward them by now permitting them to destroy

it? Here is a class of men closely connected with the state. A large part of the produce of the soil has been

assigned to them for their maintenance. Their chiefs have seats in the legislature, wide domains, stately

palaces. By this privileged body the great mass of the population is lectured every week from the chair of

authority. To this privileged body has been committed the supreme direction of liberal education. Oxford and

Cambridge, Westminster, Winchester, and Eton, are under priestly government. By the priesthood will to a

great extent be formed the character of the nobility and gentry of the next generation. Of the higher clergy

some have in their gift numerous and valuable benefices; others have the privilege of appointing judges who

decide grave questions affecting the liberty, the property, the reputation of their Majesties' subjects. And is an

order thus favoured by the state to give no guarantee to the state? On what principle can it be contended that

it is unnecessary to ask from an Archbishop of Canterbury or from a Bishop of Durham that promise of

fidelity to the government which all allow that it is necessary to demand from every layman who serves the

Crown in the humblest office. Every exciseman, every collector of the customs, who refuses to swear, is to be

deprived of his bread. For these humble martyrs of passive obedience and hereditary right nobody has a word

to say. Yet an ecclesiastical magnate who refuses to swear is to be suffered to retain emoluments, patronage,

power, equal to those of a great minister of state. It is said that it is superfluous to impose the oaths on a

clergyman, because he may be punished if he breaks the laws. Why is not the same argument urged in favour

of the layman? And why, if the clergyman really means to observe the laws, does he scruple to take the

oaths? The law commands him to designate William and Mary as King and Queen, to do this in the most

sacred place, to do this in the administration of the most solemn of all the rites of religion. The law

commands him to pray that the illustrious pair may be defended by a special providence, that they may be

victorious over every enemy, and that their Parliament may by divine guidance be led to take such a course as

may promote their safety, honour, and welfare. Can we believe that his conscience will suffer him to do all

this, and yet will not suffer him to promise that he will be a faithful subject to them?

To the proposition that the nonjuring clergy should be left to the mercy of the King, the Whigs, with some

justice, replied that no scheme could be devised more unjust to his Majesty. The matter, they said, is one of

public concern, one in which every Englishman who is unwilling to be the slave of France and of Rome has a

deep interest. In such a case it would be unworthy of the Estates of the Realm to shrink from the

responsibility of providing for the common safety, to try to obtain for themselves the praise of tenderness and

liberality, and to leave to the Sovereign the odious task of proscription. A law requiring all public

functionaries, civil, military, ecclesiastical, without distinction of persons, to take the oaths is at least equal. It

excludes all suspicion of partiality, of personal malignity, of secret shying and talebearing. But, if an arbitrary

discretion is left to the Government, if one nonjuring priest is suffered to keep a lucrative benefice while

another is turned with his wife and children into the street, every ejection will be considered as an act of

Thus the Parliament had to decide, at the same moment, what quantity of relief should be granted to the

consciences of dissenters, and what quantity of pressure should be applied to the consciences of the clergy of

the Established Church. The King conceived a hope that it might be in his power to effect a compromise

agreeable to all parties. He flattered himself that the Tories might be induced to make some concession to the

dissenters, on condition that the Whigs would be lenient to the Jacobites. He determined to try what his

personal intervention would effect. It chanced that, a few hours after the Lords had read the Comprehension

Bill a second time and the Bill touching the Oaths a first time, he had occasion to go down to Parliament for

the purpose of giving his assent to a law. From the throne he addressed both Houses, and expressed an earnest

wish that they would consent to modify the existing laws in such a manner that all Protestants might be

admitted to public employment.93 It was well understood that he was willing, if the legislature would comply

with his request, to let clergymen who were already beneficed continue to hold their benefices without

swearing allegiance to him. His conduct on this occasion deserves undoubtedly the praise of

disinterestedness. It is honourable to him that he attempted to purchase liberty of conscience for his subjects

by giving up a safeguard of his own crown. But it must be acknowledged that he showed less wisdom than

virtue. The only Englishman in his Privy Council whom he had consulted, if Burnet was correctly informed,

was Richard Hampden;94 and Richard Hampden, though a highly respectable man, was so far from being

able to answer for the Whig party that he could not answer even for his own son John, whose temper,

naturally vindictive, had been exasperated into ferocity by the stings of remorse and shame. The King soon

found that there was in the hatred of the two great factions an energy which was wanting to their love. The

Whigs, though they were almost unanimous in thinking that the Sacramental Test ought to be abolished, were

by no means unanimous in thinking that moment well chosen for the abolition; and even those Whigs who

were most desirous to see the nonconformists relieved without delay from civil disabilities were fully

determined not to forego the opportunity of humbling and punishing the class to whose instrumentality

chiefly was to be ascribed that tremendous reflux of public feeling which had followed the dissolution of the

Oxford Parliament. To put the Janes, the Souths, the Sherlocks into such a situation that they must either

starve, or recant, publicly, and with the Gospel at their lips, all the ostentatious professions of many years,

was a revenge too delicious to be relinquished. The Tory, on the other hand, sincerely respected and pitied

those clergymen who felt scruples about the oaths. But the Test was, in his view, essential to the safety of the

established religion, and must not be surrendered for the purpose of saving any man however eminent from

any hardship however serious. It would be a sad day doubtless for the Church when the episcopal bench, the

chapter houses of cathedrals, the halls of colleges, would miss some men renowned for piety and learning.

But it would be a still sadder day for the Church when an Independent should bear the white staff or a Baptist

sit on the woolsack. Each party tried to serve those for whom it was interested: but neither party would

consent to grant favourable terms to its enemies. The result was that the nonconformists remained excluded

from office in the State, and the nonjurors were ejected from office in the Church.

In the House of Commons, no member thought it expedient to propose the repeal of the Test Act. But leave

was given to bring in a bill repealing the Corporation Act, which had been passed by the Cavalier Parliament

soon after the Restoration, and which contained a clause requiring all municipal magistrates to receive the

sacrament according to the forms of the Church of England. When this bill was about to be committed, it was

moved by the Tories that the committee should be instructed to make no alteration in the law touching the

sacrament. Those Whigs who were zealous for the Comprehension must have been placed by this motion in

an embarrassing position. To vote for the instruction would have been inconsistent with their principles. To

vote against it would have been to break with Nottingham. A middle course was found. The adjournment of

the debate was moved and carried by a hundred and sixteen votes to a hundred and fourteen; and the subject

was not revived.95 In the House of Lords a motion was made for the abolition of the sacramental test, but

was rejected by a large majority. Many of those who thought the motion right in principle thought it ill timed.

A protest was entered; but it was signed only by a few peers of no great authority. It is a remarkable fact that

two great chiefs of the Whig party, who were in general very attentive to their parliamentary duty,

The debate on the Test in the Upper House was speedily followed by a debate on the last clause of the

Comprehension Bill. By that clause it was provided that thirty Bishops and priests should be commissioned

to revise the liturgy and canons, and to suggest amendments. On this subject the Whig peers were almost all

of one mind. They mustered strong, and spoke warmly. Why, they asked, were none but members of the

sacerdotal order to be intrusted with this duty? Were the laity no part of the Church of England? When the

Commission should have made its report, laymen would have to decide on the recommendations contained in

that report. Not a line of the Book of Common Prayer could be altered but by the authority of King, Lords,

and Commons. The King was a layman. Five sixths of the Lords were laymen. All the members of the House

of Commons were laymen. Was it not absurd to say that laymen were incompetent to examine into a matter

which it was acknowledged that laymen must in the last resort determine? And could any thing be more

opposite to the whole spirit of Protestantism than the notion that a certain preternatural power of judging in

spiritual cases was vouchsafed to a particular caste, and to that caste alone; that such men as Selden, as Hale,

as Boyle, were less competent to give an opinion on a collect or a creed than the youngest and silliest

chaplain who, in a remote manor house, passed his life in drinking ale and playing at shovelboard? What God

had instituted no earthly power, lay or clerical, could alter: and of things instituted by human beings a layman

was surely as competent as a clergyman to judge. That the Anglican liturgy and canons were of purely human

institution the Parliament acknowledged by referring them to a Commission for revision and correction. How

could it then be maintained that in such a Commission the laity, so vast a majority of the population, the laity,

whose edification was the main end of all ecclesiastical regulations, and whose innocent tastes ought to be

carefully consulted in the framing of the public services of religion, ought not to have a single representative?

Precedent was directly opposed to this odious distinction. Repeatedly since the light of reformation had

dawned on England Commissioners had been empowered by law to revise the canons; and on every one of

those occasions some of the Commissioners had been laymen. In the present case the proposed arrangement

was peculiarly objectionable. For the object of issuing the commission was the conciliating of dissenters; and

it was therefore most desirable that the Commissioners should be men in whose fairness and moderation

dissenters could confide. Would thirty such men be easily found in the higher ranks of the clerical

profession? The duty of the legislature was to arbitrate between two contending parties, the Nonconformist

divines and the Anglican divines, and it would be the grossest injustice to commit to one of those parties the

On these grounds the Whigs proposed an amendment to the effect that laymen should be joined with

clergymen in the Commission. The contest was sharp. Burnet, who had just taken his seat among the peers,

and who seems to have been bent on winning at almost any price the good will of his brethren, argued with

all his constitutional warmth for the clause as it stood. The numbers on the division proved to be exactly

equal. The consequence was that, according to the rules of the House, the amendment was lost.97

At length the Comprehension Bill was sent down to the Commons. There it would easily have been carried

by two to one, if it had been supported by all the friends of religious liberty. But on this subject the High

Churchmen could count on the support of a large body of Low Churchmen. Those members who wished well

to Nottingham's plan saw that they were outnumbered, and, despairing of a victory, began to meditate a

retreat. Just at this time a suggestion was thrown out which united all suffrages. The ancient usage was that a

Convocation should be summoned together with a Parliament; and it might well be argued that, if ever the

advice of a Convocation could be needed, it must be when changes in the ritual and discipline of the Church

were under consideration. But, in consequence of the irregular manner in which the Estates of the Realm had

been brought together during the vacancy of the throne, there was no Convocation. It was proposed that the

House should advise the King to take measures for supplying this defect, and that the fate of the

Comprehension Bill should not be decided till the clergy had had an opportunity of declaring their opinion

This proposition was received with general acclamation. The Tories were well pleased to see such honour

done to the priesthood. Those Whigs who were against the Comprehension Bill were well pleased to see it

laid aside, certainly for a year, probably for ever. Those Whigs who were for the Comprehension Bill were

well pleased to escape without a defeat. Many of them indeed were not without hopes that mild and liberal

counsels might prevail in the ecclesiastical senate. An address requesting William to summon the

Convocation was voted without a division: the concurrence of the Lords was asked: the Lords concurred, the

address was carried up to the throne by both Houses: the King promised that he would, at a convenient

season, do what his Parliament desired; and Nottingham's Bill was not again mentioned.

Many writers, imperfectly acquainted with the history of that age, have inferred from these proceedings that

the House of Commons was an assembly of High Churchmen: but nothing is more certain than that two thirds

of the members were either Low Churchmen or not Churchmen at all. A very few days before this time an

occurrence had taken place, unimportant in itself, but highly significant as an indication of the temper of the

majority. It had been suggested that the House ought, in conformity with ancient usage, to adjourn over the

Easter holidays. The Puritans and Latitudinarians objected: there was a sharp debate: the High Churchmen

did not venture to divide; and, to the great scandal of many grave persons, the Speaker took the chair at nine

This however was by no means the strongest proof which the Commons gave that they were far indeed from

feeling extreme reverence or tenderness for the Anglican hierarchy. The bill for settling the oaths had just

come down from the Lords framed in a manner favourable to the clergy. All lay functionaries were required

to swear fealty to the King and Queen on pain of expulsion from office. But it was provided that every divine

who already held a benefice might continue to hold it without swearing, unless the Government should see

reason to call on him specially for an assurance of his loyalty. Burnett had, partly, no doubt, from the

goodnature and generosity which belonged to his character, and partly from a desire to conciliate his

brethren, supported this arrangement in the Upper House with great energy. But in the Lower House the

feeling against the Jacobite priests was irresistibly strong. On the very day on which that House voted,

without a division, the address requesting the King to summon the Convocation, a clause was proposed and

carried which required every person who held any ecclesiastical or academical preferment to take the oaths

by the first of August 1689, on pain of suspension. Six months, to be reckoned from that day, were allowed to

the nonjuror for reconsideration. If, on the first of February 1690, he still continued obstinate, he was to be

The bill, thus amended, was sent back to the Lords. The Lords adhered to their original resolution.

Conference after conference was held. Compromise after compromise was suggested. From the imperfect

reports which have come down to us it appears that every argument in favour of lenity was forcibly urged by

Burnet. But the Commons were firm: time pressed: the unsettled state of the law caused inconvenience in

every department of the public service; and the peers very reluctantly gave way. They at the same time added

a clause empowering the King to bestow pecuniary allowances out of the forfeited benefices on a few

nonjuring clergymen. The number of clergymen thus favoured was not to exceed twelve. The allowance was

not to exceed one third of the income forfeited. Some zealous Whigs were unwilling to grant even this

indulgence: but the Commons were content with the victory which they had won, and justly thought that it

These debates were interrupted, during a short time, by the festivities and solemnities of the Coronation.

When the day fixed for that great ceremony drew near, the House of Commons resolved itself into a

committee for the purpose of settling the form of words in which our Sovereigns were thenceforward to enter

into covenant with the nation. All parties were agreed as to the propriety of requiring the King to swear that,

in temporal matters, he would govern according to law, and would execute justice in mercy. But about the

terms of the oath which related to the spiritual institutions of the realm there was much debate. Should the

chief magistrate promise simply to maintain the Protestant religion established by law, or should he promise

to maintain that religion as it should be hereafter established by law? The majority preferred the former

phrase. The latter phrase was preferred by those Whigs who were for a Comprehension. But it was

universally admitted that the two phrases really meant the same thing, and that the oath, however it might be

worded, would bind the Sovereign in his executive capacity only. This was indeed evident from the very

nature of the transaction. Any compact may be annulled by the free consent of the party who alone is entitled

to claim the performance. It was never doubted by the most rigid casuist that a debtor, who has bound himself

under the most awful imprecations to pay a debt, may lawfully withhold payment if the creditor is willing to

cancel the obligation. And it is equally clear that no assurance, exacted from a King by the Estates of his

kingdom, can bind him to refuse compliance with what may at a future time be the wish of those Estates.

A bill was drawn up in conformity with the resolutions of the Committee, and was rapidly passed through

every stage. After the third reading, a foolish man stood up to propose a rider, declaring that the oath was not

meant to restrain the Sovereign from consenting to any change in the ceremonial of the Church, provided

always that episcopacy and a written form of prayer were retained. The gross absurdity of this motion was

exposed by several eminent members. Such a clause, they justly remarked, would bind the King under

pretence of setting him free. The coronation oath, they said, was never intended to trammel him in his

legislative capacity. Leave that oath as it is now drawn, and no prince can misunderstand it. No prince can

seriously imagine that the two Houses mean to exact from him a promise that he will put a Veto on laws

which they may hereafter think necessary to the wellbeing of the country. Or if any prince should so strangely

misapprehend the nature of the contract between him and his subjects, any divine, any lawyer, to whose

advice he may have recourse, will set his mind at ease. But if this rider should pass, it will be impossible to

deny that the coronation oath is meant to prevent the King from giving his assent to bills which may be

presented to him by the Lords and Commons; and the most serious inconvenience may follow. These

arguments were felt to be unanswerable, and the proviso was rejected without a division.100

Every person who has read these debates must be fully convinced that the statesmen who framed the

coronation oath did not mean to bind the King in his legislative capacity.101 Unhappily, more than a hundred

years later, a scruple, which those statesmen thought too absurd to be seriously entertained by any human

being, found its way into a mind, honest, indeed, and religious, but narrow and obstinate by nature, and at

once debilitated and excited by disease. Seldom, indeed, have the ambition and perfidy of tyrants produced

evils greater than those which were brought on our country by that fatal conscientiousness. A conjuncture

singularly auspicious, a conjuncture at which wisdom and justice might perhaps have reconciled races and

sects long hostile, and might have made the British islands one truly United Kingdom, was suffered to pass

away. The opportunity, once lost, returned no more. Two generations of public men have since laboured with

imperfect success to repair the error which was then committed; nor is it improbable that some of the

The Bill by which the oath was settled passed the Upper House without amendment. All the preparations

were complete; and, on the eleventh of April, the coronation took place. In some things it differed from

ordinary coronations. The representatives of the people attended the ceremony in a body, and were

sumptuously feasted in the Exchequer Chamber. Mary, being not merely Queen Consort, but also Queen

Regnant, was inaugurated in all things like a King, was girt with the sword, lifted up into the throne, and

presented with the Bible, the spurs, and the orb. Of the temporal grandees of the realm, and of their wives and

daughters, the muster was great and splendid. None could be surprised that the Whig aristocracy should swell

the triumph of Whig principles. But the Jacobites saw, with concern, that many Lords who had voted for a

Regency bore a conspicuous part in the ceremonial. The King's crown was carried by Grafton, the Queen's by

Somerset. The pointed sword, emblematical of temporal justice, was borne by Pembroke. Ormond was Lord

High Constable for the day, and rode up the Hall on the right hand of the hereditary champion, who thrice

flung down his glove on the pavement, and thrice defied to mortal combat the false traitor who should

gainsay the title of William and Mary. Among the noble damsels who supported the gorgeous train of the

Queen was her beautiful and gentle cousin, the Lady Henrietta Hyde, whose father, Rochester, had to the last

contended against the resolution which declared the throne vacant.102 The show of Bishops, indeed, was

scanty. The Primate did not make his appearance; and his place was supplied by Compton. On one side of

Compton, the paten was carried by Lloyd, Bishop of Saint Asaph, eminent among the seven confessors of the

preceding year. On the other side, Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, lately a member of the High Commission, had

charge of the chalice. Burnet, the junior prelate, preached with all his wonted ability, and more than his

wonted taste and judgment. His grave and eloquent discourse was polluted neither by adulation nor by

malignity. He is said to have been greatly applauded; and it may well be believed that the animated peroration

in which he implored heaven to bless the royal pair with long life and mutual love, with obedient subjects,

wise counsellors, and faithful allies, with gallant fleets and armies, with victory, with peace, and finally with

crowns more glorious and more durable than those which then glittered on the altar of the Abbey, drew forth

On the whole the ceremony went off well, and produced something like a revival, faint, indeed, and transient,

of the enthusiasm of the preceding December. The day was, in London and in many other places, a day of

general rejoicing. The churches were filled in the morning: the afternoon was spent in sport and carousing;

and at night bonfires were lighted, rockets discharged, and windows lighted up. The Jacobites however

contrived to discover or to invent abundant matter for scurrility and sarcasm. They complained bitterly, that

the way from the hall to the western door of the Abbey had been lined by Dutch soldiers. Was it seemly that

an English king should enter into the most solemn of engagements with the English nation behind a triple

hedge of foreign swords and bayonets? Little affrays, such as, at every great pageant, almost inevitably take

place between those who are eager to see the show and those whose business it is to keep the communications

clear, were exaggerated with all the artifices of rhetoric. One of the alien mercenaries had backed his horse

against an honest citizen who pressed forward to catch a glimpse of the royal canopy. Another had rudely

pushed back a woman with the but end of his musket. On such grounds as these the strangers were compared

to those Lord Danes whose insolence, in the old time, had provoked the Anglosaxon population to

insurrection and massacre. But there was no more fertile theme for censure than the coronation medal, which

really was absurd in design and mean in execution. A chariot appeared conspicuous on the reverse; and plain

people were at a loss to understand what this emblem had to do with William and Mary. The disaffected wits

solved the difficulty by suggesting that the artist meant to allude to that chariot which a Roman princess, lost

to all filial affection, and blindly devoted to the interests of an ambitious husband, drove over the still warm

Honours were, as usual, liberally bestowed at this festive season. Three garters which happened to be at the

disposal of the Crown were given to Devonshire, Ormond, and Schomberg. Prince George was created Duke

of Cumberland. Several eminent men took new appellations by which they must henceforth be designated.

Danby became Marquess of Caermarthen, Churchill Earl of Marlborough, and Bentinck Earl of Portland.

Mordaunt was made Earl of Monmouth, not without some murmuring on the part of old Exclusionists, who

still remembered with fondness their Protestant Duke, and who had hoped that his attainder would be

reversed, and that his title would be borne by his descendants. It was remarked that the name of Halifax did

not appear in the list of promotions. None could doubt that he might easily have obtained either a blue riband

or a ducal coronet; and, though he was honourably distinguished from most of his contemporaries by his

scorn of illicit gain, it was well known that he desired honorary distinctions with a greediness of which he

was himself ashamed, and which was unworthy of his fine understanding. The truth is that his ambition was

at this time chilled by his fears. To those whom he trusted he hinted his apprehensions that evil times were at

hand. The King's life was not worth a year's purchase: the government was disjointed, the clergy and the

army disaffected, the parliament torn by factions: civil war was already raging in one part of the empire:

foreign war was impending. At such a moment a minister, whether Whig or Tory, might well be uneasy; but

neither Whig nor Tory had so much to fear as the Trimmer, who might not improbably find himself the

common mark at which both parties would take aim. For these reasons Halifax determined to avoid all

ostentation of power and influence, to disarm envy by a studied show of moderation, and to attach to himself

by civilities and benefits persons whose gratitude might be useful in the event of a counterrevolution. The

next three months, he said, would be the time of trial. If the government got safe through the summer it

Meanwhile questions of external policy were every day becoming more and more important. The work at

which William had toiled indefatigably during many gloomy and anxious years was at length accomplished.

The great coalition was formed. It was plain that a desperate conflict was at hand. The oppressor of Europe

would have to defend himself against England allied with Charles the Second King of Spain, with the

Emperor Leopold, and with the Germanic and Batavian federations, and was likely to have no ally except the

Lewis had, towards the close of the preceding year, taken his enemies at a disadvantage, and had struck the

first blow before they were prepared to parry it. But that blow, though heavy, was not aimed at the part where

it might have been mortal. Had hostilities been commenced on the Batavian frontier, William and his army

would probably have been detained on the continent, and James might have continued to govern England.

Happily, Lewis, under an infatuation which many pious Protestants confidently ascribed to the righteous

judgment of God, had neglected the point on which the fate of the whole civilised world depended, and had

made a great display of power, promptitude, and energy, in a quarter where the most splendid achievements

could produce nothing more than an illumination and a Te Deum. A French army under the command of

Marshal Duras had invaded the Palatinate and some of the neighbouring principalities. But this expedition,

though it had been completely successful, and though the skill and vigour with which it had been conducted

had excited general admiration, could not perceptibly affect the event of the tremendous struggle which was

approaching. France would soon be attacked on every side. It would be impossible for Duras long to retain

possession of the provinces which he had surprised and overrun. An atrocious thought rose in the mind of

Louvois, who, in military affairs, had the chief sway at Versailles. He was a man distinguished by zeal for

what he thought the public interests, by capacity, and by knowledge of all that related to the administration of

war, but of a savage and obdurate nature. If the cities of the Palatinate could not be retained, they might be

destroyed. If the soil of the Palatinate was not to furnish supplies to the French, it might be so wasted that it

would at least furnish no supplies to the Germans. The ironhearted statesman submitted his plan, probably

with much management and with some disguise, to Lewis; and Lewis, in an evil hour for his fame, assented.

Duras received orders to turn one of the fairest regions of Europe into a wilderness. Fifteen years earlier

Turenne had ravaged part of that fine country. But the ravages committed by Turenne, though they have left a

deep stain on his glory, were mere sport in comparison with the horrors of this second devastation. The

French commander announced to near half a million of human beings that he granted them three days of

grace, and that, within that time, they must shift for themselves. Soon the roads and fields, which then lay

deep in snow, were blackened by innumerable multitudes of men, women, and children flying from their

homes. Many died of cold and hunger: but enough survived to fill the streets of all the cities of Europe with

lean and squalid beggars, who had once been thriving farmers and shopkeepers. Meanwhile the work of

destruction began. The flames went up from every marketplace, every hamlet, every parish church, every

country seat, within the devoted provinces. The fields where the corn had been sown were ploughed up. The

orchards were hewn down. No promise of a harvest was left on the fertile plains near what had once been

Frankenthal. Not a vine, not an almond tree, was to be seen on the slopes of the sunny hills round what had

once been Heidelberg. No respect was shown to palaces, to temples, to monasteries, to infirmaries, to

beautiful works of art, to monuments of the illustrious dead. The farfamed castle of the Elector Palatine was

turned into a heap of ruins. The adjoining hospital was sacked. The provisions, the medicines, the pallets on

which the sick lay were destroyed. The very stones of which Mannheim had been built were flung into the

Rhine. The magnificent Cathedral of Spires perished, and with it the marble sepulchres of eight Caesars. The

coffins were broken open. The ashes were scattered to the winds.106 Treves, with its fair bridge, its Roman

amphitheatre, its venerable churches, convents, and colleges, was doomed to the same fate. But, before this

last crime had been perpetrated, Lewis was recalled to a better mind by the execrations of all the

neighbouring nations, by the silence and confusion of his flatterers, and by the expostulations of his wife. He

had been more than two years secretly married to Frances de Maintenon, the governess of his natural

children. It would be hard to name any woman who, with so little romance in her temper, has had so much in

her life. Her early years had been passed in poverty and obscurity. Her first husband had supported himself

by writing burlesque farces and poems. When she attracted the notice of her sovereign, she could no longer

boast of youth or beauty: but she possessed in an extraordinary degree those more lasting charms, which men

of sense, whose passions age has tamed, and whose life is a life of business and care, prize most highly in a

female companion. Her character was such as has been well compared to that soft green on which the eye,

wearied by warm tints and glaring lights, reposes with pleasure. A just understanding; an inexhaustible yet

never redundant flow of rational, gentle, and sprightly conversation; a temper of which the serenity was never

for a moment ruffled, a tact which surpassed the tact of her sex as much as the tact of her sex surpasses the

tact of ours; such were the qualities which made the widow of a buffoon first the confidential friend, and then

the spouse, of the proudest and most powerful of European kings. It was said that Lewis had been with

difficulty prevented by the arguments and vehement entreaties of Louvois from declaring her Queen of

France. It is certain that she regarded Louvois as her enemy. Her hatred of him, cooperating perhaps with

better feelings, induced her to plead the cause of the unhappy people of the Rhine. She appealed to those

sentiments of compassion which, though weakened by many corrupting influences, were not altogether

extinct in her husband's mind, and to those sentiments of religion which had too often impelled him to

cruelty, but which, on the present occasion, were on the side of humanity. He relented: and Treves was

spared.107 In truth he could hardly fail to perceive that he had committed a great error. The devastation of the

Palatinate, while it had not in any sensible degree lessened the power of his enemies, had inflamed their

animosity, and had furnished them with inexhaustible matter for invective. The cry of vengeance rose on

every side. Whatever scruple either branch of the House of Austria might have felt about coalescing with

Protestants was completely removed. Lewis accused the Emperor and the Catholic King of having betrayed

the cause of the Church; of having allied themselves with an usurper who was the avowed champion of the

great schism; of having been accessary to the foul wrong done to a lawful sovereign who was guilty of no

crime but zeal for the true religion. James sent to Vienna and Madrid piteous letters, in which he recounted

his misfortunes, and implored the assistance of his brother kings, his brothers also in the faith, against the

unnatural children and the rebellious subjects who had driven him into exile. But there was little difficulty in

framing a plausible answer both to the reproaches of Lewis and to the supplications of James. Leopold and

Charles declared that they had not, even for purposes of just selfdefence, leagued themselves with heretics,

till their enemy had, for purposes of unjust aggression, leagued himself with Mahometans. Nor was this the

worst. The French King, not content with assisting the Moslem against the Christians, was himself treating

Christians with a barbarity which would have shocked the very Moslem. His infidel allies, to do them justice,

had not perpetrated on the Danube such outrages against the edifices and the members of the Holy Catholic

Church as he who called himself the eldest son of that Church was perpetrating on the Rhine. On these

grounds, the princes to whom James had appealed replied by appealing, with many professions of good will

and compassion, to himself. He was surely too just to blame them for thinking that it was their first duty to

defend their own people against such outrages as had turned the Palatinate into a desert, or for calling in the

aid of Protestants against an enemy who had not scrupled to call in the aid of the Turks.108

During the winter and the earlier part of the spring, the powers hostile to France were gathering their strength

for a great effort, and were in constant communication with one another. As the season for military operations

approached, the solemn appeals of injured nations to the God of battles came forth in rapid succession. The

manifesto of the Germanic body appeared in February; that of the States General in March; that of the House

Here, as soon as the ceremony of the coronation was over, the House of Commons determined to take into

consideration the late proceedings of the French king.110 In the debate, that hatred of the powerful,

unscrupulous and imperious Lewis, which had, during twenty years of vassalage, festered in the hearts of

Englishmen, broke violently forth. He was called the most Christian Turk, the most Christian ravager of

Christendom, the most Christian barbarian who had perpetrated on Christians outrages of which his infidel

allies would have been ashamed.111 A committee, consisting chiefly of ardent Whigs, was appointed to

prepare an address. John Hampden, the most ardent Whig among them, was put into the chair; and he

produced a composition too long, too rhetorical, and too vituperative to suit the lips of the Speaker or the ears

of the King. Invectives against Lewis might perhaps, in the temper in which the House then was, have passed

without censure, if they had not been accompanied by severe reflections on the character and administration

of Charles the Second, whose memory, in spite of all his faults, was affectionately cherished by the Tories.

There were some very intelligible allusions to Charles's dealings with the Court of Versailles, and to the

foreign woman whom that Court had sent to lie like a snake in his bosom. The House was with good reason

dissatisfied. The address was recommitted, and, having been made more concise, and less declamatory and

acrimonious, was approved and presented.112 William's attention was called to the wrongs which France had

done to him and to his kingdom; and he was assured that, whenever he should resort to arms for the redress of

those wrongs, he should be heartily supported by his people. He thanked the Commons warmly. Ambition, he

said, should never induce him to draw the sword: but he had no choice: France had already attacked England;

and it was necessary to exercise the right of selfdefence. A few days later war was proclaimed.113

Of the grounds of quarrel alleged by the Commons in their address, and by the King in his manifesto, the

most serious was the interference of Lewis in the affairs of Ireland. In that country great events had, during

several months, followed one another in rapid succession. Of those events it is now time to relate the history,

State of Ireland at the Time of the Revolution; the Civil Power in the Hands of the Roman CatholicsThe

Military Power in the Hands of the Roman CatholicsMutual Enmity between the Englishry and

KenmareEnniskillenLondonderryClosing of the Gates of LondonderryMountjoy sent to pacify

UlsterWilliam opens a Negotiation with TyrconnelThe Temples consultedRichard Hamilton sent to

Ireland on his ParoleTyrconnel sends Mountjoy and Rice to FranceTyrconnel calls the Irish People to

Arms Devastation of the CountryThe Protestants in the South unable to resistEnniskillen and

Londonderry hold out; Richard Hamilton marches into Ulster with an ArmyJames determines to go to

IrelandAssistance furnished by Lewis to JamesChoice of a French Ambassador to accompany

JamesThe Count of AvauxJames lands at KinsaleJames enters CorkJourney of James from Cork

to DublinDiscontent in EnglandFactions at Dublin Castle James determines to go to UlsterJourney

of James to UlsterThe Fall of Londonderry expectedSuccours arrive from England Treachery of

Lundy; the Inhabitants of Londonderry resolve to defend themselvesTheir CharacterLondonderry

besiegedThe Siege turned into a BlockadeNaval Skirmish in Bantry BayA Parliament summoned by

James sits at DublinA Toleration Act passed; Acts passed for the Confiscation of the Property of

ProtestantsIssue of base MoneyThe great Act of Attainder James prorogues his Parliament;

Persecution of the Protestants in IrelandEffect produced in England by the News from Ireland Actions

of the EnniskillenersDistress of Londonderry Expedition under Kirke arrives in Loch FoyleCruelty

of Rosen The Famine in Londonderry extremeAttack on the BoomThe Siege of Londonderry

raisedOperations against the Enniskilleners Battle of Newton ButlerConsternation of the Irish

WILLIAM had assumed, together with the title of King of England, the title of King of Ireland. For all our

jurists then regarded Ireland as a mere colony, more important indeed than Massachusetts, Virginia, or

Jamaica, but, like Massachusetts, Virginia, and Jamaica, dependent on the mother country, and bound to pay

allegiance to the Sovereign whom the mother country had called to the throne.114

In fact, however, the Revolution found Ireland emancipated from the dominion of the English colony. As

early as the year 1686, James had determined to make that island a place of arms which might overawe Great

Britain, and a place of refuge where, if any disaster happened in Great Britain, the members of his Church

might find refuge. With this view he had exerted all his power for the purpose of inverting the relation

between the conquerors and the aboriginal population. The execution of his design he had intrusted, in spite

of the remonstrances of his English counsellors, to the Lord Deputy Tyrconnel. In the autumn of 1688, the

process was complete. The highest offices in the state, in the army, and in the Courts of justice, were, with

scarcely an exception, filled by Papists. A pettifogger named Alexander Fitton, who had been detected in

forgery, who had been fined for misconduct by the House of Lords at Westminster, who had been many years

in prison, and who was equally deficient in legal knowledge and in the natural good sense and acuteness by

which the want of legal knowledge has sometimes been supplied, was Lord Chancellor. His single merit was

that he had apostatized from the Protestant religion; and this merit was thought sufficient to wash out even

the stain of his Saxon extraction. He soon proved himself worthy of the confidence of his patrons. On the

bench of justice he declared that there was not one heretic in forty thousand who was not a villain. He often,

after hearing a cause in which the interests of his Church were concerned, postponed his decision, for the

purpose, as he avowed, of consulting his spiritual director, a Spanish priest, well read doubtless in

Escobar.115 Thomas Nugent, a Roman Catholic who had never distinguished himself at the bar except by his

brogue and his blunders, was Chief Justice of the King's Bench.116 Stephen Rice, a Roman Catholic, whose

abilities and learning were not disputed even by the enemies of his nation and religion, but whose known

hostility to the Act of Settlement excited the most painful apprehensions in the minds of all who held

property under that Act, was Chief Baron of the Exchequer.117 Richard Nagle, an acute and well read

lawyer, who had been educated in a Jesuit college, and whose prejudices were such as might have been

Keating, a highly respectable Protestant, was still Chief Justice of the Common Pleas: but two Roman

Catholic judges sate with him. It ought to be added that one of those judges, Daly, was a man of sense,

moderation and integrity. The matters however which came before the Court of Common Pleas were not of

great moment. Even the King's Bench was at this time almost deserted. The Court of Exchequer overflowed

with business; for it was the only court at Dublin from which no writ of error lay to England, and

consequently the only court in which the English could be oppressed and pillaged without hope of redress.

Rice, it was said, had declared that they should have from him exactly what the law, construed with the

utmost strictness, gave them, and nothing more. What, in his opinion, the law, strictly construed, gave them,

they could easily infer from a saying which, before he became a judge, was often in his mouth. "I will drive,"

he used to say, "a coach and six through the Act of Settlement." He now carried his threat daily into

execution. The cry of all Protestants was that it mattered not what evidence they produced before him; that,

when their titles were to be set aside, the rankest forgeries, the most infamous witnesses, were sure to have

his countenance. To his court his countrymen came in multitudes with writs of ejectment and writs of

trespass. In his court the government attacked at once the charters of all the cities and boroughs in Ireland;

and he easily found pretexts for pronouncing all those charters forfeited. The municipal corporations, about a

hundred in number, had been instituted to be the strongholds of the reformed religion and of the English

interest, and had consequently been regarded by the Irish Roman Catholics with an aversion which cannot be

thought unnatural or unreasonable. Had those bodies been remodelled in a judicious and impartial manner,

the irregularity of the proceedings by which so desirable a result had been attained might have been

pardoned. But it soon appeared that one exclusive system had been swept away only to make room for

another. The boroughs were subjected to the absolute authority of the Crown. Towns in which almost every

householder was an English Protestant were placed under the government of Irish Roman Catholics. Many of

the new Aldermen had never even seen the places over which they were appointed to bear rule. At the same

time the Sheriffs, to whom belonged the execution of writs and the nomination of juries, were selected in

almost every instance from the caste which had till very recently been excluded from all public trust. It was

affirmed that some of these important functionaries had been burned in the hand for theft. Others had been

servants to Protestants; and the Protestants added, with bitter scorn, that it was fortunate for the country when

this was the case; for that a menial who had cleaned the plate and rubbed down the horse of an English

gentleman might pass for a civilised being, when compared with many of the native aristocracy whose lives

had been spent in coshering or marauding. To such Sheriffs no colonist, even if he had been so strangely

Thus the civil power had, in the space of a few months, been transferred from the Saxon to the Celtic

population. The transfer of the military power had been not less complete. The army, which, under the

command of Ormond, had been the chief safeguard of the English ascendency, had ceased to exist. Whole

regiments had been dissolved and reconstructed. Six thousand Protestant veterans, deprived of their bread,

were brooding in retirement over their wrongs, or had crossed the sea and joined the standard of William.

Their place was supplied by men who had long suffered oppression, and who, finding themselves suddenly

transformed from slaves into masters, were impatient to pay back, with accumulated usury, the heavy debt of

injuries and insults. The new soldiers, it was said, never passed an Englishman without cursing him and

calling him by some foul name. They were the terror of every Protestant innkeeper; for, from the moment

when they came under his roof, they ate and drank every thing: they paid for nothing; and by their rude

Such was the state of Ireland when the Prince of Orange landed at Torbay. From that time every packet which

arrived at Dublin brought tidings, such as could not but increase the mutual fear and loathing of the hostile

races. The colonist, who, after long enjoying and abusing power, had now tasted for a moment the bitterness

of servitude, the native, who, having drunk to the dregs all the bitterness of servitude, had at length for a

moment enjoyed and abused power, were alike sensible that a great crisis, a crisis like that of 1641, was at

hand. The majority impatiently expected Phelim O'Neil to revive in Tyrconnel. The minority saw in William

On which side the first blow was struck was a question which Williamites and Jacobites afterwards debated

with much asperity. But no question could be more idle. History must do to both parties the justice which

neither has ever done to the other, and must admit that both had fair pleas and cruel provocations. Both had

been placed, by a fate for which neither was answerable, in such a situation that, human nature being what it

is, they could not but regard each other with enmity. During three years the government which might have

reconciled them had systematically employed its whole power for the purpose of inflaming their enmity to

madness. It was now impossible to establish in Ireland a just and beneficent government, a government which

should know no distinction of race or of sect, a government which, while strictly respecting the rights

guaranteed by law to the new landowners, should alleviate by a judicious liberality the misfortunes of the

ancient gentry. Such a government James might have established in the day of his power. But the opportunity

had passed away: compromise had become impossible: the two infuriated castes were alike convinced that it

was necessary to oppress or to be oppressed, and that there could be no safety but in victory, vengeance, and

dominion. They agreed only in spurning out of the way every mediator who sought to reconcile them.

During some weeks there were outrages, insults, evil reports, violent panics, the natural preludes of the

terrible conflict which was at hand. A rumour spread over the whole island that, on the ninth of December,

there would be a general massacre of the Englishry. Tyrconnel sent for the chief Protestants of Dublin to the

Castle, and, with his usual energy of diction, invoked on himself all the vengeance of heaven if the report was

not a cursed, a blasted, a confounded lie. It was said that, in his rage at finding his oaths ineffectual, he pulled

off his hat and wig, and flung them into the fire.121 But lying Dick Talbot was so well known that his

imprecations and gesticulations only strengthened the apprehension which they were meant to allay. Ever

since the recall of Clarendon there had been a large emigration of timid and quiet people from the Irish ports

to England. That emigration now went on faster than ever. It was not easy to obtain a passage on board of a

well built or commodious vessel. But many persons, made bold by the excess of fear, and choosing rather to

trust the winds and waves than the exasperated Irishry, ventured to encounter all the dangers of Saint

George's Channel and of the Welsh coast in open boats and in the depth of winter. The English who remained

began, in almost every county, to draw close together. Every large country house became a fortress. Every

visitor who arrived after nightfall was challenged from a loophole or from a barricaded window; and, if he

attempted to enter without pass words and explanations, a blunderbuss was presented to him. On the dreaded

night of the ninth of December, there was scarcely one Protestant mansion from the Giant's Causeway to

Bantry Bay in which armed men were not watching and lights burning from the early sunset to the late

A minute account of what passed in one district at this time has come down to us, and well illustrates the

general state of the kingdom. The southwestern part of Kerry is now well known as the most beautiful tract

in the British isles. The mountains, the glens, the capes stretching far into the Atlantic, the crags on which the

eagles build, the rivulets brawling down rocky passes, the lakes overhung by groves in which the wild deer

find covert, attract every summer crowds of wanderers sated with the business and the pleasures of great

cities. The beauties of that country are indeed too often hidden in the mist and rain which the west wind

brings up from a boundless ocean. But, on the rare days when the sun shines out in all his glory, the

landscape has a freshness and a warmth of colouring seldom found in our latitude. The myrtle loves the soil.

The arbutus thrives better than even on the sunny shore of Calabria.123 The turf is of livelier hue than

elsewhere: the hills glow with a richer purple: the varnish of the holly and ivy is more glossy; and berries of a

brighter red peep through foliage of a brighter green. But during the greater part of the seventeenth century,

this paradise was as little known to the civilised world as Spitzbergen or Greenland. If ever it was mentioned,

it was mentioned as a horrible desert, a chaos of bogs, thickets, and precipices, where the she wolf still

littered, and where some half naked savages, who could not speak a word of English, made themselves

At length, in the year 1670, the benevolent and enlightened Sir William Petty determined to form an English

settlement in this wild district. He possessed a large domain there, which has descended to a posterity worthy

of such an ancestor. On the improvement of that domain he expended, it was said, not less than ten thousand

pounds. The little town which he founded, named from the bay of Kenmare, stood at the head of that bay,

under a mountain ridge, on the summit of which travellers now stop to gaze upon the loveliest of the three

lakes of Killarney. Scarcely any village, built by an enterprising band of New Englanders, far from the

dwellings of their countrymen, in the midst of the hunting grounds of the Red Indians, was more completely

out of the pale of civilisation than Kenmare. Between Petty's settlement and the nearest English habitation the

journey by land was of two days through a wild and dangerous country. Yet the place prospered. Fortytwo

houses were erected. The population amounted to a hundred and eighty. The land round the town was well

cultivated. The cattle were numerous. Two small barks were employed in fishing and trading along the coast.

The supply of herrings, pilchards, mackerel, and salmon was plentiful, and would have been still more

plentiful, had not the beach been, in the finest part of the year, covered by multitudes of seals, which preyed

on the fish of the bay. Yet the seal was not an unwelcome visitor: his fur was valuable,; and his oil supplied

light through the long nights of winter. An attempt was made with great success to set up iron works. It was

not yet the practice to employ coal for the purpose of smelting; and the manufacturers of Kent and Sussex had

much difficulty in procuring timber at a reasonable price. The neighbourhood of Kenmare was then richly

wooded; and Petty found it a gainful speculation to send ore thither. The lovers of the picturesque still regret

the woods of oak and arbutus which were cut down to feed his furnaces. Another scheme had occurred to his

active and intelligent mind. Some of the neighbouring islands abounded with variegated marble, red and

white, purple and green. Petty well knew at what cost the ancient Romans had decorated their baths and

temples with many coloured columns hewn from Laconian and African quarries; and he seems to have

indulged the hope that the rocks of his wild domain in Kerry might furnish embellishments to the mansions of

From the first, the settlers had found that they must be prepared to exercise the right of selfdefence to an

extent which would have been unnecessary and unjustifiable in a well governed country. The law was

altogether without force in the highlands which lie on the south of the vale of Tralee. No officer of justice

willingly ventured into those parts. One pursuivant who in 1680 attempted to execute a warrant there was

murdered. The people of Kenmare seem however to have been sufficiently secured by their union, their

intelligence and their spirit, till the close of the year 1688. Then at length the effects of the policy of

Tyrconnel began to be felt ever, in that remote corner of Ireland. In the eyes of the peasantry of Munster the

colonists were aliens and heretics. The buildings, the boats, the machines, the granaries, the dairies, the

furnaces, were doubtless contemplated by the native race with that mingled envy and contempt with which

the ignorant naturally regard the triumphs of knowledge. Nor is it at all improbable that the emigrants had

been guilty of those faults from which civilised men who settle among an uncivilised people are rarely free.

The power derived from superior intelligence had, we may easily believe, been sometimes displayed with

insolence, and sometimes exerted with injustice. Now therefore, when the news spread from altar to altar, and

from cabin to cabin, that the strangers were to be driven out, and that their houses and lands were to be given

as a booty to the children of the soil, a predatory war commenced. Plunderers, thirty, forty, seventy in a troop,

prowled round the town, some with firearms, some with pikes. The barns were robbed. The horses were

stolen. In one foray a hundred and forty cattle were swept away and driven off through the ravines of

Glengariff. In one night six dwellings were broken open and pillaged. At last the colonists, driven to

extremity, resolved to die like men rather than be murdered in their beds. The house built by Petty for his

agent was the largest in the place. It stood on a rocky peninsula round which the waves of the bay broke. Here

the whole population assembled, seventyfive fighting men, with about a hundred women and children. They

had among them sixty firelocks, and as many pikes and swords. Round the agent's house they threw up with

great speed a wall of turf fourteen feet in height and twelve in thickness. The space enclosed was about half

an acre. Within this rampart all the arms, the ammunition and the provisions of the settlement were collected,

and several huts of thin plank were built. When these preparations were completed, the men of Kenmare

began to make vigorous reprisals on their Irish neighbours, seized robbers, recovered stolen property, and

continued during some weeks to act in all things as an independent commonwealth. The government was

carried on by elective officers, to whom every member of the society swore fidelity on the Holy Gospels.126

While the people of the small town of Kenmare were thus bestirring themselves, similar preparations for

defence were made by larger communities on a larger scale. Great numbers of gentlemen and yeomen quitted

the open country, and repaired to those towns which had been founded and incorporated for the purpose of

bridling the native population, and which, though recently placed under the government of Roman Catholic

magistrates, were still inhabited chiefly by Protestants. A considerable body of armed colonists mustered at

Sligo, another at Charleville, a third at Marlow, a fourth still more formidable at Bandon.127 But the

principal strongholds of the Englishry during this evil time were Enniskillen and Londonderry.

Enniskillen, though the capital of the county of Fermanagh, was then merely a village. It was built on an

island surrounded by the river which joins the two beautiful sheets of water known by the common name of

Lough Erne. The stream and both the lakes were overhung on every side by natural forests. Enniskillen

consisted of about eighty dwellings clustering round an ancient castle. The inhabitants were, with scarcely an

exception, Protestants, and boasted that their town had been true to the Protestant cause through the terrible

rebellion which broke out in 1641. Early in December they received from Dublin an intimation that two

companies of Popish infantry were to be immediately quartered on them. The alarm of the little community

was great, and the greater because it was known that a preaching friar had been exerting himself to inflame

the Irish population of the neighbourhood against the heretics. A daring resolution was taken. Come what

might, the troops should not be admitted. Yet the means of defence were slender. Not ten pounds of powder,

not twenty firelocks fit for use, could be collected within the walls. Messengers were sent with pressing

letters to summon the Protestant gentry of the vicinage to the rescue; and the summons was gallantly obeyed.

In a few hours two hundred foot and a hundred and fifty horse had assembled. Tyrconnel's soldiers were

already at hand. They brought with them a considerable supply of arms to be distributed among the peasantry.

The peasantry greeted the royal standard with delight, and accompanied the march in great numbers. The

townsmen and their allies, instead of waiting to be attacked, came boldly forth to encounter the intruders. The

officers of James had expected no resistance. They were confounded when they saw confronting them a

column of foot, flanked by a large body of mounted gentlemen and yeomen. The crowd of camp followers

ran away in terror. The soldiers made a retreat so precipitate that it might be called a flight, and scarcely

The Protestants, elated by this easy victory, proceeded to make arrangements for the government and defence

of Enniskillen and of the surrounding country. Gustavus Hamilton, a gentleman who had served in the army,

but who had recently been deprived of his commission by Tyrconnel, and had since been living on an estate

in Fermanagh, was appointed Governor, and took up his residence in the castle. Trusty men were enlisted,

and armed with great expedition. As there was a scarcity of swords and pikes, smiths were employed to make

weapons by fastening scythes on poles. All the country houses round Lough Erne were turned into garrisons.

No Papist was suffered to be at large in the town; and the friar who was accused of exerting his eloquence

The other great fastness of Protestantism was a place of more importance. Eighty years before, during the

troubles caused by the last struggle of the houses of O'Neil and O'Donnel against the authority of James the

First, the ancient city of Derry had been surprised by one of the native chiefs: the inhabitants had been

slaughtered, and the houses reduced to ashes. The insurgents were speedily put down and punished: the

government resolved to restore the ruined town: the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of

London were invited to assist in the work; and King James the First made over to them in their corporate

capacity the ground covered by the ruins of the old Derry, and about six thousand English acres in the

This country, then uncultivated and uninhabited, is now enriched by industry, embellished by taste, and

pleasing even to eyes accustomed to the well tilled fields and stately manor houses of England. A new city

soon arose which, on account of its connection with the capital of the empire, was called Londonderry. The

buildings covered the summit and slope of a hill which overlooked the broad stream of the Foyle, then

whitened by vast flocks of wild swans.131 On the highest ground stood the Cathedral, a church which,

though erected when the secret of Gothic architecture was lost, and though ill qualified to sustain a

comparison with the awful temples of the middle ages, is not without grace and dignity. Near the Cathedral

rose the palace of the Bishop, whose see was one of the most valuable in Ireland. The city was in form nearly

an ellipse; and the principal streets formed a cross, the arms of which met in a square called the Diamond.

The original houses have been either rebuilt or so much repaired that their ancient character can no longer be

traced; but many of them were standing within living memory. They were in general two stories in height;

and some of them had stone staircases on the outside. The dwellings were encompassed by a wall of which

the whole circumference was little less than a mile. On the bastions were planted culverins and sakers

presented by the wealthy guilds of London to the colony. On some of these ancient guns, which have done

memorable service to a great cause, the devices of the Fishmongers' Company, of the Vintners' Company,

The inhabitants were Protestants of Anglosaxon blood. They were indeed not all of one country or of one

church but Englishmen and Scotchmen, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, seem to have generally lived

together in friendship, a friendship which is sufficiently explained by their common antipathy to the Irish race

and to the Popish religion. During the rebellion of 1641, Londonderry had resolutely held out against the

native chieftains, and had been repeatedly besieged in vain.133 Since the Restoration the city had prospered.

The Foyle, when the tide was high, brought up ships of large burden to the quay. The fisheries throve greatly.

The nets, it was said, were sometimes so full that it was necessary to fling back multitudes of fish into the

waves. The quantity of salmon caught annually was estimated at eleven hundred thousand pounds'

The people of Londonderry shared in the alarm which, towards the close of the year 1688, was general

among the Protestants settled in Ireland. It was known that the aboriginal peasantry of the neighbourhood

were laying in pikes and knives. Priests had been haranguing in a style of which, it must be owned, the

Puritan part of the Anglosaxon colony had little right to complain, about the slaughter of the Amalekites, and

the judgments which Saul had brought on himself by sparing one of the proscribed race. Rumours from

various quarters and anonymous letters in various hands agreed in naming the ninth of December as the day

fixed for the extirpation of the strangers. While the minds of the citizens were agitated by these reports, news

came that a regiment of twelve hundred Papists, commanded by a Papist, Alexander Macdonnell, Earl of

Antrim, had received orders from the Lord Deputy to occupy Londonderry, and was already on the march

from Coleraine. The consternation was extreme. Some were for closing the gates and resisting; some for

submitting; some for temporising. The corporation had, like the other corporations of Ireland, been

remodelled. The magistrates were men of low station and character. Among them was only one person of

Anglosaxon extraction; and he had turned Papist. In such rulers the inhabitants could place no confidence.135

The Bishop, Ezekiel Hopkins, resolutely adhered to the doctrine of nonresistance, which he had preached

during many years, and exhorted his flock to go patiently to the slaughter rather than incur the guilt of

disobeying the Lord's Anointed.136 Antrim was meanwhile drawing nearer and nearer. At length the citizens

saw from the walls his troops arrayed on the opposite shore of the Foyle. There was then no bridge: but there

was a ferry which kept up a constant communication between the two banks of the river; and by this ferry a

detachment from Antrim's regiment crossed. The officers presented themselves at the gate, produced a

warrant directed to the Mayor and Sheriffs, and demanded admittance and quarters for his Majesty's soldiers.

Just at this moment thirteen young apprentices, most of whom appear, from their names, to have been of

Scottish birth or descent, flew to the guard room, armed themselves, seized the keys of the city, rushed to the

Ferry Gate, closed it in the face of the King's officers, and let down the portcullis. James Morison, a citizen

more advanced in years, addressed the intruders from the top of the wall and advised them to be gone. They

stood in consultation before the gate till they heard him cry, "Bring a great gun this way." They then thought

it time to get beyond the range of shot. They retreated, reembarked, and rejoined their comrades on the other

side of the river. The flame had already spread. The whole city was up. The other gates were secured.

Sentinels paced the ramparts everywhere. The magazines were opened. Muskets and gunpowder were

distributed. Messengers were sent, under cover of the following night, to the Protestant gentlemen of the

neighbouring counties. The bishop expostulated in vain. It is indeed probable that the vehement and daring

young Scotchmen who had taken the lead on this occasion had little respect for his office. One of them broke

in on a discourse with which he interrupted the military preparations by exclaiming, "A good sermon, my

The Protestants of the neighbourhood promptly obeyed the summons of Londonderry. Within fortyeight

hours hundreds of horse and foot came by various roads to the city. Antrim, not thinking himself strong

enough to risk an attack, or not disposed to take on himself the responsibility of commencing a civil war

It might have been expected that the resistance of Enniskillen and Londonderry would have irritated

Tyrconnel into taking some desperate step. And in truth his savage and imperious temper was at first

inflamed by the news almost to madness. But, after wreaking his rage, as usual, on his wig, he became

somewhat calmer. Tidings of a very sobering nature had just reached him. The Prince of Orange was

marching unopposed to London. Almost every county and every great town in England had declared for him.

James, deserted by his ablest captains and by his nearest relatives, had sent commissioners to treat with the

invaders, and had issued writs convoking a Parliament. While the result of the negotiations which were

pending in England was uncertain, the Viceroy could not venture to take a bloody revenge on the refractory

Protestants of Ireland. He therefore thought it expedient to affect for a time a clemency and moderation which

were by no means congenial to his disposition. The task of quieting the Englishry of Ulster was intrusted to

William Stewart, Viscount Mountjoy. Mountjoy, a brave soldier, an accomplished scholar, a zealous

Protestant, and yet a zealous Tory, was one of the very few members of the Established Church who still held

office in Ireland. He was Master of the Ordnance in that kingdom, and was colonel of a regiment in which an

uncommonly large proportion of the Englishry had been suffered to remain. At Dublin he was the centre of a

small circle of learned and ingenious men who had, under his presidency, formed themselves into a Royal

Society, the image, on a small scale, of the Royal Society of London. In Ulster, with which he was peculiarly

connected, his name was held in high honour by the colonists.138 He hastened with his regiment to

Londonderry, and was well received there. For it was known that, though he was firmly attached to hereditary

monarchy, he was not less firmly attached to the reformed religion. The citizens readily permitted him to

leave within their walls a small garrison exclusively composed of Protestants, under the command of his

The news of Mountjoy's visit to Ulster was highly gratifying to the defenders of Enniskillen. Some gentlemen

deputed by that town waited on him to request his good offices, but were disappointed by the reception which

they found. "lily advice to you is," he said, "to submit to the King's authority." "What, my Lord?" said one of

the deputies; "Are we to sit still and let ourselves be butchered?" "The King," said Mountjoy, "will protect

you." "If all that we hear be true," said the deputy, "his Majesty will find it hard enough to protect himself."

The conference ended in this unsatisfactory manner. Enniskillen still kept its attitude of defiance; and

By this time it had indeed become evident that James could not protect himself. It was known in Ireland that

he had fled; that he had been stopped; that he had fled again; that the Prince of Orange had arrived at

Westminster in triumph, had taken on himself the administration of the realm, and had issued letters

Those lords and gentlemen at whose request the Prince had assumed the government, had earnestly intreated

him to take the state of Ireland into his immediate consideration; and he had in reply assured them that he

would do his best to maintain the Protestant religion and the English interest in that kingdom. His enemies

afterwards accused him of utterly disregarding this promise: nay, they alleged that he purposely suffered

Ireland to sink deeper and deeper in calamity. Halifax, they said, had, with cruel and perfidious ingenuity,

devised this mode of placing the Convention under a species of duress; and the trick had succeeded but too

well. The vote which called William to the throne would not have passed so easily but for the extreme

dangers which threatened the state; and it was in consequence of his own dishonest inactivity that those

dangers had become extreme.141 As this accusation rests on no proof, those who repeat it are at least bound

to show that some course clearly better than the course which William took was open to him; and this they

will find a difficult task. If indeed he could, within a few weeks after his arrival in London, have sent a great

expedition to Ireland, that kingdom might perhaps, after a short struggle, or without a struggle, have

submitted to his authority; and a long series of crimes and calamities might have been averted. But the

factious orators and pamphleteers, who, much at their ease, reproached him for not sending such an

expedition, would have been perplexed if they had been required to find the men, the ships, and the funds.

The English army had lately been arrayed against him: part of it was still ill disposed towards him; and the

whole was utterly disorganized. Of the army which he had brought from Holland not a regiment could be

spared. He had found the treasury empty and the pay of the navy in arrear. He had no power to hypothecate

any part of the public revenue. Those who lent him money lent it on no security but his bare word. It was

only by the patriotic liberality of the merchants of London that he was enabled to defray the ordinary charges

of government till the meeting of the Convention. It is surely unjust to blame him for not instantly fitting out,

Perceiving that, till the government of England was settled, it would not be in his power to interfere

effectually by arms in the affairs of Ireland, he determined to try what effect negotiation would produce.

Those who judged after the event pronounced that he had not, on this occasion, shown his usual sagacity. He

ought, they said, to have known that it was absurd to expect submission from Tyrconnel. Such however was

not at the time the opinion of men who had the best means of information, and whose interest was a sufficient

pledge for their sincerity. A great meeting of noblemen and gentlemen who had property in Ireland was held,

during the interregnum, at the house of the Duke of Ormond in Saint James's Square. They advised the Prince

to try whether the Lord Deputy might not be induced to capitulate on honourable and advantageous terms.142

In truth there is strong reason to believe that Tyrconnel really wavered. For, fierce as were his passions, they

never made him forgetful of his interest; and he might well doubt whether it were not for his interest, in

declining years and health, to retire from business with full indemnity for all past offences, with high rank

and with an ample fortune, rather than to stake his life and property on the event of a war against the whole

power of England. It is certain that he professed himself willing to yield. He opened a communication with

the Prince of Orange, and affected to take counsel with Mountjoy, and with others who, though they had not

thrown off their allegiance to James, were yet firmly attached to the Established Church and to the English

In one quarter, a quarter from which William was justified in expecting the most judicious counsel, there was

a strong conviction that the professions of Tyrconnel were sincere. No British statesman had then so high a

reputation throughout Europe as Sir William Temple. His diplomatic skill had, twenty years before, arrested

the progress of the French power. He had been a steady and an useful friend to the United Provinces and to

the House of Nassau. He had long been on terms of friendly confidence with the Prince of Orange, and had

negotiated that marriage to which England owed her recent deliverance. With the affairs of Ireland Temple

was supposed to be peculiarly well acquainted. His family had considerable property there: he had himself

resided there during several years: he had represented the county of Carlow in parliament; and a large part of

his income was derived from a lucrative Irish office. There was no height of power, of rank, or of opulence,

to which he might not have risen, if he would have consented to quit his retreat, and to lend his assistance and

the weight of his name to the new government. But power, rank, and opulence had less attraction for his

Epicurean temper than ease and security. He rejected the most tempting invitations, and continued to amuse

himself with his books, his tulips, and his pineapples, in rural seclusion. With some hesitation, however, he

consented to let his eldest son John enter into the service of William. During the vacancy of the throne, John

Temple was employed in business of high importance; and, on subjects connected with Ireland, his opinion,

which might reasonably be supposed to agree with his father's, had great weight. The young politician

flattered himself that he had secured the services of an agent eminently qualified to bring the negotiation with

This agent was one of a remarkable family which had sprung from a noble Scottish stock, but which had long

been settled in Ireland, and which professed the Roman Catholic religion. In the gay crowd which thronged

Whitehall, during those scandalous years of jubilee which immediately followed the Restoration, the

Hamiltons were preeminently conspicuous. The long fair ringlets, the radiant bloom, and the languishing blue

eyes of the lovely Elizabeth still charm us on the canvass of Lely. She had the glory of achieving no vulgar

conquest. It was reserved for her voluptuous beauty and for her flippant wit to overcome the aversion which

the coldhearted and scoffing Grammont felt for the indissoluble tie. One of her brothers, Anthony, became

the chronicler of that brilliant and dissolute society of which he had been one of the most brilliant and most

dissolute members. He deserves the high praise of having, though not a Frenchman, written the book which

is, of all books, the most exquisitely French, both in spirit and in manner. Another brother, named Richard,

had, in foreign service, gained some military experience. His wit and politeness had distinguished him even

in the splendid circle of Versailles. It was whispered that he had dared to lift his eyes to an exalted lady, the

natural daughter of the Great King, the wife of a legitimate prince of the House of Bourbon, and that she had

not seemed to be displeased by the attentions of her presumptuous admirer.143 The adventurer had

subsequently returned to his native country, had been appointed Brigadier General in the Irish army, and had

been sworn of the Irish Privy Council. When the Dutch invasion was expected, he came across Saint George's

Channel with the troops which Tyrconnel sent to reinforce the royal army. After the flight of James, those

troops submitted to the Prince of Orange. Richard Hamilton not only made his own peace with what was now

the ruling power, but declared himself confident that, if he were sent to Dublin, he could conduct the

negotiation which had been opened there to a happy close. If he failed, he pledged his word to return to

London in three weeks. His influence in Ireland was known to be great: his honour had never been

questioned; and he was highly esteemed by the Temple family. John Temple declared that he would answer

for Richard Hamilton as for himself. This guarantee was thought sufficient; and Hamilton set out for Ireland,

assuring his English friends that he should soon bring Tyrconnel to reason. The offers which he was

authorised to make to the Roman Catholics and to the Lord Deputy personally were most liberal.144

It is not impossible that Hamilton may have really meant to perform his promise. But when he arrived at

Dublin he found that he had undertaken a task which was beyond his power. The hesitation of Tyrconnel,

whether genuine or feigned, was at an end. He had found that he had no longer a choice. He had with little

difficulty stimulated the ignorant and susceptible Irish to fury. To calm them was beyond his skill. Rumours

were abroad that the Viceroy was corresponding with the English; and these rumours had set the nation on

fire. The cry of the common people was that, if he dared to sell them for wealth and honours, they would burn

the Castle and him in it, and would put themselves under the protection of France.145 It was necessary for

him to protest, truly or falsely, that he had never harboured any thought of submission, and that he had

pretended to negotiate only for the purpose of gaining time. Yet, before he openly declared against the

English settlers, and against England herself, what must be a war to the death, he wished to rid himself of

Mountjoy, who had hitherto been true to the cause of James, but who, it was well known, would never

consent to be a party to the spoliation and oppression of the colonists. Hypocritical professions of friendship

and of pacific intentions were not spared. It was a sacred duty, Tyrconnel said, to avert the calamities which

seemed to be impending. King James himself, if he understood the whole case, would not wish his Irish

friends to engage at that moment in an enterprise which must be fatal to them and useless to him. He would

permit them, he would command them, to submit to necessity, and to reserve themselves for better times. If

any man of weight, loyal, able, and well informed, would repair to Saint Germains and explain the state of

things, his Majesty would easily be convinced. Would Mountjoy undertake this most honourable and

important mission? Mountjoy hesitated, and suggested that some person more likely to be acceptable to the

King should be the messenger. Tyrconnel swore, ranted, declared that, unless King James were well advised,

Ireland would sink to the pit of hell, and insisted that Mountjoy should go as the representative of the loyal

members of the Established Church, and should be accompanied by Chief Baron Rice, a Roman Catholic

high in the royal favour. Mountjoy yielded. The two ambassadors departed together, but with very different

commissions. Rice was charged to tell James that Mountjoy was a traitor at heart, and had been sent to France

only that the Protestants of Ireland might be deprived of a favourite leader. The King was to be assured that

he was impatiently expected in Ireland, and that, if he would show himself there with a French force, he

might speedily retrieve his fallen fortunes.146 The Chief Baron carried with him other instructions which

were probably kept secret even from the Court of Saint Germains. If James should be unwilling to put himself

at the head of the native population of Ireland, Rice was directed to request a private audience of Lewis, and

As soon as the two envoys had departed, Tyrconnel set himself to prepare for the conflict which had become

inevitable; and he was strenuously assisted by the faithless Hamilton. The Irish nation was called to arms; and

the call was obeyed with strange promptitude and enthusiasm. The flag on the Castle of Dublin was

embroidered with the words, "Now or never: now and for ever:" and those words resounded through the

whole island.148 Never in modern Europe has there been such a rising up of a whole people. The habits of

the Celtic peasant were such that he made no sacrifice in quitting his potatoe ground for the camp. He loved

excitement and adventure. He feared work far more than danger. His national and religious feelings had,

during three years, been exasperated by the constant application of stimulants. At every fair and market he

had heard that a good time was at hand, that the tyrants who spoke Saxon and lived in slated houses were

about to be swept away, and that the land would again belong to its own children. By the peat fires of a

hundred thousand cabins had nightly been sung rude ballads which predicted the deliverance of the oppressed

race. The priests, most of whom belonged to those old families which the Act of Settlement had ruined, but

which were still revered by the native population, had, from a thousand altars, charged every Catholic to

show his zeal for the true Church by providing weapons against the day when it might be necessary to try the

chances of battle in her cause. The army, which, under Ormond, had consisted of only eight regiments, was

now increased to fortyeight: and the ranks were soon full to overflowing. It was impossible to find at short

notice one tenth of the number of good officers which was required. Commissions were scattered profusely

among idle cosherers who claimed to be descended from good Irish families. Yet even thus the supply of

captains and lieutenants fell short of the demand; and many companies were commanded by cobblers, tailors

The pay of the soldiers was very small. The private had only threepence a day. One half only of this pittance

was ever given him in money; and that half was often in arrear. But a far more seductive bait than his

miserable stipend was the prospect of boundless license. If the government allowed him less than sufficed for

his wants, it was not extreme to mark the means by which he supplied the deficiency. Though four fifths of

the population of Ireland were Celtic and Roman Catholic, more than four fifths of the property of Ireland

belonged to the Protestant Englishry. The garners, the cellars, above all the flocks and herds of the minority,

were abandoned to the majority. Whatever the regular troops spared was devoured by bands of marauders

who overran almost every barony in the island. For the arming was now universal. No man dared to present

himself at mass without some weapon, a pike, a long knife called a skean, or, at the very least, a strong ashen

stake, pointed and hardened in the fire. The very women were exhorted by their spiritual directors to carry

skeans. Every smith, every carpenter, every cutler, was at constant work on guns and blades. It was scarcely

possible to get a horse shod. If any Protestant artisan refused to assist in the manufacture of implements

which were to be used against his nation and his religion, he was flung into prison. It seems probable that, at

the end of February, at least a hundred thousand Irishmen were in arms. Near fifty thousand of them were

soldiers. The rest were banditti, whose violence and licentiousness the Government affected to disapprove,

but did not really exert itself to suppress. The Protestants not only were not protected, but were not suffered

to protect themselves. It was determined that they should be left unarmed in the midst of an armed and hostile

population. A day was fixed on which they were to bring all their swords and firelocks to the parish churches;

and it was notified that every Protestant house in which, after that day, a weapon should be found should be

given up to be sacked by the soldiers. Bitter complaints were made that any knave might, by hiding a spear

head or an old gun barrel in a corner of a mansion, bring utter ruin on the owner.150

Chief Justice Keating, himself a Protestant, and almost the only Protestant who still held a great place in

Ireland, struggled courageously in the cause of justice and order against the united strength of the government

and the populace. At the Wicklow assizes of that spring, he, from the seat of judgment, set forth with great

strength of language the miserable state of the country. Whole counties, he said, were devastated by a rabble

resembling the vultures and ravens which follow the march of an army. Most of these wretches were not

soldiers. They acted under no authority known to the law. Yet it was, he owned, but too evident that they

were encouraged and screened by some who were in high command. How else could it be that a market overt

for plunder should be held within a short distance of the capital? The stories which travellers told of the

savage Hottentots near the Cape of Good Hope were realised in Leinster. Nothing was more common than for

an honest man to lie down rich in flocks and herds acquired by the industry of a long life, and to wake a

beggar. It was however to small purpose that Keating attempted, in the midst of that fearful anarchy, to

uphold the supremacy of the law. Priests and military chiefs appeared on the bench for the purpose of

overawing the judge and countenancing the robbers. One ruffian escaped because no prosecutor dared to

appear. Another declared that he had armed himself in conformity to the orders of his spiritual guide, and to

the example of many persons of higher station than himself, whom he saw at that moment in Court. Two only

of the Merry Boys, as they were called, were convicted: the worst criminals escaped; and the Chief justice

indignantly told the jurymen that the guilt of the public ruin lay at their door.151

When such disorder prevailed in Wicklow, it is easy to imagine what must have been the state of districts

more barbarous and more remote from the seat of government. Keating appears to have been the only

magistrate who strenuously exerted himself to put the law in force. Indeed Nugent, the Chief justice of the

highest criminal court of the realm, declared on the bench at Cork that, without violence and spoliation, the

intentions of the Government could not be carried into effect, and that robbery must at that conjuncture be

The destruction of property which took place within a few weeks would be incredible, if it were not attested

by witnesses unconnected with each other and attached to very different interests. There is a close, and

sometimes almost a verbal, agreement between the description given by Protestants, who, during that reign of

terror, escaped, at the hazard of their lives, to England, and the descriptions given by the envoys,

commissaries, and captains of Lewis. All agreed in declaring that it would take many years to repair the

waste which had been wrought in a few weeks by the armed peasantry.153 Some of the Saxon aristocracy

had mansions richly furnished, and sideboards gorgeous with silver bowls and chargers. All this wealth

disappeared. One house, in which there had been three thousand pounds' worth of plate, was left without a

spoon.154 But the chief riches of Ireland consisted in cattle. Innumerable flocks and herds covered that vast

expanse of emerald meadow, saturated with the moisture of the Atlantic. More than one gentleman possessed

twenty thousand sheep and four thousand oxen. The freebooters who now overspread the country belonged to

a class which was accustomed to live on potatoes and sour whey, and which had always regarded meat as a

luxury reserved for the rich. These men at first revelled in beef and mutton, as the savage invaders, who of

old poured down from the forests of the north on Italy, revelled in Massic and Falernian wines. The

Protestants described with contemptuous disgust the strange gluttony of their newly liberated slaves. The

carcasses, half raw and half burned to cinders, sometimes still bleeding, sometimes in a state of loathsome

decay, were torn to pieces and swallowed without salt, bread, or herbs. Those marauders who preferred

boiled meat, being often in want of kettles, contrived to boil the steer in his own skin. An absurd tragicomedy

is still extant, which was acted in this and the following year at some low theatre for the amusement of the

English populace. A crowd of half naked savages appeared on the stage, howling a Celtic song and dancing

round an ox. They then proceeded to cut steaks out of the animal while still alive and to fling the bleeding

flesh on the coals. In truth the barbarity and filthiness of the banquets of the Rapparees was such as the

dramatists of Grub Street could scarcely caricature. When Lent began, the plunderers generally ceased to

devour, but continued to destroy. A peasant would kill a cow merely in order to get a pair of brogues. Often a

whole flock of sheep, often a herd of fifty or sixty kine, was slaughtered: the beasts were flayed; the fleeces

and hides were carried away; and the bodies were left to poison the air. The French ambassador reported to

his master that, in six weeks, fifty thousand horned cattle had been slain in this manner, and were rotting on

the ground all over the country. The number of sheep that were butchered during the same time was popularly

Any estimate which can now be framed of the value of the property destroyed during this fearful conflict of

races must necessarily be very inexact. We are not however absolutely without materials for such an estimate.

The Quakers were neither a very numerous nor a very opulent class. We can hardly suppose that they were

more than a fiftieth part of the Protestant population of Ireland, or that they possessed more than a fiftieth part

of the Protestant wealth of Ireland. They were undoubtedly better treated than any other Protestant sect.

James had always been partial to them: they own that Tyrconnel did his best to protect them; and they seem

to have found favour even in the sight of the Rapparees.156 Yet the Quakers computed their pecuniary losses

In Leinster, Munster and Connaught, it was utterly impossible for the English settlers, few as they were and

dispersed, to offer any effectual resistance to this terrible outbreak of the aboriginal population. Charleville,

Mallow, Sligo, fell into the hands of the natives. Bandon, where the Protestants had mustered in considerable

force, was reduced by Lieutenant General Macarthy, an Irish officer who was descended from one of the

most illustrious Celtic houses, and who had long served, under a feigned name, in the French Army.158 The

people of Kenmare held out in their little fastness till they were attacked by three thousand regular soldiers,

and till it was known that several pieces of ordnance were coming to batter down the turf wall which

surrounded the agent's house. Then at length a capitulation was concluded. The colonists were suffered to

embark in a small vessel scantily supplied with food and water. They had no experienced navigator on board:

but after a voyage of a fortnight, during which they were crowded together like slaves in a Guinea ship, and

suffered the extremity of thirst and hunger, they reached Bristol in safety.159 When such was the fate of the

towns, it was evident that the country seats which the Protestant landowners had recently fortified in the three

southern provinces could no longer be defended. Many families submitted, delivered up their arms, and

thought themselves happy in escaping with life. But many resolute and highspirited gentlemen and yeomen

were determined to perish rather than yield. They packed up such valuable property as could easily be carried

away, burned whatever they could not remove, and, well armed and mounted, set out for those spots in Ulster

which were the strongholds of their race and of their faith. The flower of the Protestant population of Munster

and Connaught found shelter at Enniskillen. Whatever was bravest and most truehearted in Leinster took the

The spirit of Enniskillen and Londonderry rose higher and higher to meet the danger. At both places the

tidings of what had been done by the Convention at Westminster were received with transports of joy.

William and Mary were proclaimed at Enniskillen with unanimous enthusiasm, and with such pomp as the

little town could furnish.161 Lundy, who commanded at Londonderry, could not venture to oppose himself to

the general sentiment of the citizens and of his own soldiers. He therefore gave in his adhesion to the new

government, and signed a declaration by which he bound himself to stand by that government, on pain of

being considered a coward and a traitor. A vessel from England soon brought a commission from William

To reduce the Protestants of Ulster to submission before aid could arrive from England was now the chief

object of Tyrconnel. A great force was ordered to move northward, under the command of Richard Hamilton.

This man had violated all the obligations which are held most sacred by gentlemen and soldiers, had broken

faith with his friends the Temples, had forfeited his military parole, and was now not ashamed to take the

field as a general against the government to which he was bound to render himself up as a prisoner. His

march left on the face of the country traces which the most careless eye could not during many years fail to

discern. His army was accompanied by a rabble, such as Keating had well compared to the unclean birds of

prey which swarm wherever the scent of carrion is strong. The general professed himself anxious to save

from ruin and outrage all Protestants who remained quietly at their homes; and he most readily gave them

protections tinder his hand. But these protections proved of no avail; and he was forced to own that, whatever

power he might be able to exercise over his soldiers, he could not keep order among the mob of

campfollowers. The country behind him was a wilderness; and soon the country before him became equally

desolate. For at the fame of his approach the colonists burned their furniture, pulled down their houses, and

retreated northward. Some of them attempted to make a stand at Dromore, but were broken and scattered.

Then the flight became wild and tumultuous. The fugitives broke down the bridges and burned the ferryboats.

Whole towns, the seats of the Protestant population, were left in ruins without one inhabitant. The people of

Omagh destroyed their own dwellings so utterly that no roof was left to shelter the enemy from the rain and

wind. The people of Cavan migrated in one body to Enniskillen. The day was wet and stormy. The road was

deep in mire. It was a piteous sight to see, mingled with the armed men, the women and children weeping,

famished, and toiling through the mud up to their knees. All Lisburn fled to Antrim; and, as the foes drew

nearer, all Lisburn and Antrim together came pouring into Londonderry. Thirty thousand Protestants, of both

sexes and of every age, were crowded behind the bulwarks of the City of Refuge. There, at length, on the

verge of the ocean, hunted to the last asylum, and baited into a mood in which men may be destroyed, but

Meanwhile Mountjoy and Rice had arrived in France. Mountjoy was instantly put under arrest and thrown

into the Bastile. James determined to comply with the invitation which Rice had brought, and applied to

Lewis for the help of a French army. But Lewis, though he showed, as to all things which concerned the

personal dignity and comfort of his royal guests, a delicacy even romantic, and a liberality approaching to

profusion, was unwilling to send a large body of troops to Ireland. He saw that France would have to

maintain a long war on the Continent against a formidable coalition: her expenditure must be immense; and,

great as were her resources, he felt it to be important that nothing should be wasted. He doubtless regarded

with sincere commiseration and good will the unfortunate exiles to whom he had given so princely a

welcome. Yet neither commiseration nor good will could prevent him from speedily discovering that his

brother of England was the dullest and most perverse of human beings. The folly of James, his incapacity to

read the characters of men and the signs of the times, his obstinacy, always most offensively displayed when

wisdom enjoined concession, his vacillation, always exhibited most pitiably in emergencies which required

firmness, had made him an outcast from England, and might, if his counsels were blindly followed, bring

great calamities on France. As a legitimate sovereign expelled by rebels, as a confessor of the true faith

persecuted by heretics, as a near kinsman of the House of Bourbon, who had seated himself on the hearth of

that House, he was entitled to hospitality, to tenderness, to respect. It was fit that he should have a stately

palace and a spacious forest, that the household troops should salute him with the highest military honours,

that he should have at his command all the hounds of the Grand Huntsman and all the hawks of the Grand

Falconer. But, when a prince, who, at the head of a great fleet and army, had lost an empire without striking a

blow, undertook to furnish plans for naval and military expeditions; when a prince, who had been undone by

his profound ignorance of the temper of his own countrymen, of his own soldiers, of his own domestics, of

his own children, undertook to answer for the zeal and fidelity of the Irish people, whose language he could

not speak, and on whose land he had never set his foot; it was necessary to receive his suggestions with

caution. Such were the sentiments of Lewis; and in these sentiments he was confirmed by his Minister of War

Louvois, who, on private as well as on public grounds, was unwilling that James should be accompanied by a

large military force. Louvois hated Lauzun. Lauzun was favourite at Saint Germains. He wore the garter, a

badge of honour which has very seldom been conferred on aliens who were not sovereign princes. It was

believed indeed at the French Court that, in order to distinguish him from the other knights of the most

illustrious of European orders, he had been decorated with that very George which Charles the First had, on

the scaffold, put into the hands of Juxon.164 Lauzun had been encouraged to hope that, if French forces were

sent to Ireland, he should command them; and this ambitious hope Louvois was bent on disappointing.165

An army was therefore for the present refused; but every thing else was granted. The Brest fleet was ordered

to be in readiness to sail. Arms for ten thousand men and great quantities of ammunition were put on board.

About four hundred captains, lieutenants, cadets and gunners were selected for the important service of

organizing and disciplining the Irish levies. The chief command was held by a veteran warrior, the Count of

Rosen. Under him were Maumont, who held the rank of lieutenant general, and a brigadier named Pusignan.

Five hundred thousand crowns in gold, equivalent to about a hundred and twelve thousand pounds sterling,

were sent to Brest.166 For James's personal comforts provision was made with anxiety resembling that of a

tender mother equipping her son for a first campaign. The cabin furniture, the camp furniture, the tents, the

bedding, the plate, were luxurious and superb. Nothing, which could be agreeable or useful to the exile was

too costly for the munificence, or too trifling for the attention, of his gracious and splendid host. On the

fifteenth of February, James paid a farewell visit to Versailles. He was conducted round the buildings and

plantations with every mark of respect and kindness. The fountains played in his honour. It was the season of

the Carnival; and never had the vast palace and the sumptuous gardens presented a gayer aspect. In the

evening the two kings, after a long and earnest conference in private, made their appearance before a splendid

circle of lords and ladies. "I hope," said Lewis, in his noblest and most winning manner, "that we are about to

part, never to meet again in this world. That is the best wish that I can form for you. But, if any evil chance

should force you to return, be assured that you will find me to the last such as you have found me hitherto."

On the seventeenth Lewis paid in return a farewell visit to Saint Germains. At the moment of the parting

embrace he said, with his most amiable smile: "We have forgotten one thing, a cuirass for yourself. You shall

have mine." The cuirass was brought, and suggested to the wits of the Court ingenious allusions to the

Vulcanian panoply which Achilles lent to his feebler friend. James set out for Brest; and his wife, overcome

James was accompanied or speedily followed by several of his own subjects, among whom the most

distinguished were his son Berwick, Cartwright Bishop of Chester, Powis, Dover, and Melfort. Of all the

retinue, none was so odious to the people of Great Britain as Melfort. He was an apostate: he was believed by

many to be an insincere apostate; and the insolent, arbitrary and menacing language of his state papers

disgusted even the Jacobites. He was therefore a favourite with his master: for to James unpopularity,

obstinacy, and implacability were the greatest recommendations that a statesman could have.

What Frenchman should attend the King of England in the character of ambassador had been the subject of

grave deliberation at Versailles. Barillon could not be passed over without a marked slight. But his

selfindulgent habits, his want of energy, and, above all, the credulity with which he had listened to the

professions of Sunderland, had made an unfavourable impression on the mind of Lewis. What was to be done

in Ireland was not work for a trifler or a dupe. The agent of France in that kingdom must be equal to much

more than the ordinary functions of an envoy. It would be his right and his duty to offer advice touching

every part of the political and military administration of the country in which he would represent the most

powerful and the most beneficent of allies. Barillon was therefore passed over. He affected to bear his

disgrace with composure. His political career, though it had brought great calamities both on the House of

Stuart and on the House of Bourbon, had been by no means unprofitable to himself. He was old, he said: he

was fat: he did not envy younger men the honour of living on potatoes and whiskey among the Irish bogs; he

would try to console himself with partridges, with champagne, and with the society of the wittiest men and

prettiest women of Paris. It was rumoured, however that he was tortured by painful emotions which he was

studious to conceal: his health and spirits failed; and he tried to find consolation in religious duties. Some

people were much edified by the piety of the old voluptuary: but others attributed his death, which took place

The Count of Avaux, whose sagacity had detected all the plans of William, and who had vainly

recommended a policy which would probably have frustrated them, was the man on whom the choice of

Lewis fell. In abilities Avaux had no superior among the numerous able diplomatists whom his country then

possessed. His demeanour was singularly pleasing, his person handsome, his temper bland. His manners and

conversation were those of a gentleman who had been bred in the most polite and magnificent of all Courts,

who had represented that Court both in Roman Catholic and Protestant countries, and who had acquired in his

wanderings the art of catching the tone of any society into which chance might throw him. He was eminently

vigilant and adroit, fertile in resources, and skilful in discovering the weak parts of a character. His own

character, however, was not without its weak parts. The consciousness that he was of plebeian origin was the

torment of his life. He pined for nobility with a pining at once pitiable and ludicrous. Able, experienced and

accomplished as he was, he sometimes, under the influence of this mental disease, descended to the level of

Moliere's Jourdain, and entertained malicious observers with scenes almost as laughable as that in which the

honest draper was made a Mamamouchi.169 It would have been well if this had been the worst. But it is not

too much to say that of the difference between right and wrong Avaux had no more notion than a brute. One

sentiment was to him in the place of religion and morality, a superstitious and intolerant devotion to the

Crown which he served. This sentiment pervades all his despatches, and gives a colour to all his thoughts and

words. Nothing that tended to promote the interest of the French monarchy seemed to him a crime. Indeed he

appears to have taken it for granted that not only Frenchmen, but all human beings, owed a natural allegiance

to the House of Bourbon, and that whoever hesitated to sacrifice the happiness and freedom of his own native

country to the glory of that House was a traitor. While he resided at the Hague, he always designated those

Dutchmen who had sold themselves to France as the well intentioned party. In the letters which he wrote

from Ireland, the same feeling appears still more strongly. He would have been a more sagacious politician if

he had sympathized more with those feelings of moral approbation and disapprobation which prevail among

the vulgar. For his own indifference to all considerations of justice and mercy was such that, in his schemes,

he made no allowance for the consciences and sensibilities of his neighbours. More than once he deliberately

recommended wickedness so horrible that wicked men recoiled from it with indignation. But they could not

succeed even in making their scruples intelligible to him. To every remonstrance he listened with a cynical

sneer, wondering within himself whether those who lectured him were such fools as they professed to be, or

Such was the man whom Lewis selected to be the companion and monitor of James. Avaux was charged to

open, if possible, a communication with the malecontents in the English Parliament; and he was authorised to

James arrived at Brest on the fifth of March, embarked there on board of a man of war called the Saint

Michael, and sailed within fortyeight hours. He had ample time, however, before his departure, to exhibit

some of the faults by which he had lost England and Scotland, and by which he was about to lose Ireland.

Avaux wrote from the harbour of Brest that it would not be easy to conduct any important business in concert

with the King of England. His Majesty could not keep any secret from any body. The very foremast men of

the Saint Michael had already heard him say things which ought to have been reserved for the ears of his

The voyage was safely and quietly performed; and, on the afternoon of the twelfth of March, James landed in

the harbour of Kinsale. By the Roman Catholic population he was received with shouts of unfeigned

transport. The few Protestants who remained in that part of the country joined in greeting him, and perhaps

not insincerely. For, though an enemy of their religion, he was not an enemy of their nation; and they might

reasonably hope that the worst king would show somewhat more respect for law and property than had been

shown by the Merry Boys and Rapparees. The Vicar of Kinsale was among those who went to pay their duty:

he was presented by the Bishop of Chester, and was not ungraciously received.171

James learned that his cause was prospering. In the three southern provinces of Ireland the Protestants were

disarmed, and were so effectually bowed down by terror that he had nothing to apprehend from them. In the

North there was some show of resistance: but Hamilton was marching against the malecontents; and there

was little doubt that they would easily be crushed. A day was spent at Kinsale in putting the arms and

ammunition out of reach of danger. Horses sufficient to carry a few travellers were with some difficulty

We should greatly err if we imagined that the road by which he entered that city bore any resemblance to the

stately approach which strikes the traveller of the nineteenth century with admiration. At present Cork,

though deformed by many miserable relics of a former age, holds no mean place among the ports of the

empire. The shipping is more than half what the shipping of London was at the time of the Revolution. The

customs exceed the whole revenue which the whole kingdom of Ireland, in the most peaceful and prosperous

times, yielded to the Stuarts. The town is adorned by broad and well built streets, by fair gardens, by a

Corinthian portico which would do honour to Palladio, and by a Gothic college worthy to stand in the High

Street of Oxford. In 1689, the city extended over about one tenth part of the space which it now covers, and

was intersected by muddy streams, which have long been concealed by arches and buildings. A desolate

marsh, in which the sportsman who pursued the waterfowl sank deep in water and mire at every step, covered

the area now occupied by stately buildings, the palaces of great commercial societies. There was only a single

street in which two wheeled carriages could pass each other. From this street diverged to right and left alleys

squalid and noisome beyond the belief of those who have formed their notions of misery from the most

miserable parts of Saint Giles's and Whitechapel. One of these alleys, called, and, by comparison, justly

called, Broad Lane, is about ten feet wide. From such places, now seats of hunger and pestilence, abandoned

to the most wretched of mankind, the citizens poured forth to welcome James. He was received with military

It was impossible for the King to proceed immediately to Dublin; for the southern counties had been so

completely laid waste by the banditti whom the priests had called to arms, that the means of locomotion were

not easily to be procured. Horses had become rarities: in a large district there were only two carts; and those

Avaux pronounced good for nothing. Some days elapsed before the money which had been brought from

France, though no very formidable mass, could be dragged over the few miles which separated Cork from

While the King and his Council were employed in trying to procure carriages and beasts, Tyrconnel arrived

from Dublin. He held encouraging language. The opposition of Enniskillen he seems to have thought

deserving of little consideration. Londonderry, he said, was the only important post held by the Protestants;

At length James was able to leave Cork for the capital. On the road, the shrewd and observant Avaux made

many remarks. The first part of the journey was through wild highlands, where it was not strange that there

should be few traces of art and industry. But, from Kilkenny to the gates of Dublin, the path of the travellers

lay over gently undulating ground rich with natural verdure. That fertile district should have been covered

with flocks and herds, orchards and cornfields: but it was an unfilled and unpeopled desert. Even in the towns

the artisans were very few. Manufactured articles were hardly to be found, and if found could be procured

only at immense prices.174 The truth was that most of the English inhabitants had fled, and that art, industry,

James received on his progress numerous marks of the goodwill of the peasantry; but marks such as, to men

bred in the courts of France and England, had an uncouth and ominous appearance. Though very few

labourers were seen at work in the fields, the road was lined by Rapparees armed with skeans, stakes, and

half pikes, who crowded to look upon the deliverer of their race. The highway along which he travelled

presented the aspect of a street in which a fair is held. Pipers came forth to play before him in a style which

was not exactly that of the French opera; and the villagers danced wildly to the music. Long frieze mantles,

resembling those which Spenser had, a century before, described as meet beds for rebels, and apt cloaks for

thieves, were spread along the path which the cavalcade was to tread; and garlands, in which cabbage stalks

supplied the place of laurels, were offered to the royal hand. The women insisted on kissing his Majesty; but

it should seem that they bore little resemblance to their posterity; for this compliment was so distasteful to

On the twentyfourth of March he entered Dublin. That city was then, in extent and population, the second in

the British isles. It contained between six and seven thousand houses, and probably above thirty thousand

inhabitants.176 In wealth and beauty, however, Dublin was inferior to many English towns. Of the graceful

and stately public buildings which now adorn both sides of the Liffey scarcely one had been even projected.

The College, a very different edifice from that which now stands on the same site, lay quite out of the

city.177 The ground which is at present occupied by Leinster House and Charlemont House, by Sackville

Street and Merrion Square, was open meadow. Most of the dwellings were built of timber, and have long

given place to more substantial edifices. The Castle had in 1686 been almost uninhabitable. Clarendon had

complained that he knew of no gentleman in Pall Mall who was not more conveniently and handsomely

lodged than the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. No public ceremony could be performed in a becoming manner

under the Viceregal roof. Nay, in spite of constant glazing and tiling, the rain perpetually drenched the

apartments.178 Tyrconnel, since he became Lord Deputy, had erected a new building somewhat more

commodious. To this building the King was conducted in state through the southern part of the city. Every

exertion had been made to give an air of festivity and splendour to the district which he was to traverse. The

streets, which were generally deep in mud, were strewn with gravel. Boughs and flowers were scattered over

Tapestry and arras hung from the windows of those who could afford to exhibit such finery. The poor

supplied the place of rich stuffs with blankets and coverlids. In one place was stationed a troop of friars with

a cross; in another a company of forty girls dressed in white and carrying nosegays. Pipers and harpers played

"The King shall enjoy his own again." The Lord Deputy carried the sword of state before his master. The

Judges, the Heralds, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, appeared in all the pomp of office. Soldiers were drawn

up on the right and left to keep the passages clear. A procession of twenty coaches belonging to public

functionaries was mustered. Before the Castle gate, the King was met by the host under a canopy borne by

four bishops of his church. At the sight he fell on his knees, and passed some time in devotion. He then rose

and was conducted to the chapel of his palace, oncesuch are the vicissitudes of human thingsthe riding

house of Henry Cromwell. A Te Deum was performed in honour of his Majesty's arrival. The next morning

he held a Privy Council, discharged Chief Justice Keating from any further attendance at the board, ordered

Avaux and Bishop Cartwright to be sworn in, and issued a proclamation convoking a Parliament to meet at

When the news that James had arrived in Ireland reached London, the sorrow and alarm were general, and

were mingled with serious discontent. The multitude, not making sufficient allowance for the difficulties by

which William was encompassed on every side, loudly blamed his neglect. To all the invectives of the

ignorant and malicious he opposed, as was his wont, nothing but immutable gravity and the silence of

profound disdain. But few minds had received from nature a temper so firm as his; and still fewer had

undergone so long and so rigorous a discipline. The reproaches which had no power to shake his fortitude,

tried from childhood upwards by both extremes of fortune, inflicted a deadly wound on a less resolute heart.

While all the coffeehouses were unanimously resolving that a fleet and army ought to have been long before

sent to Dublin, and wondering how so renowned a politician as his Majesty could have been duped by

Hamilton and Tyrconnel, a gentleman went down to the Temple Stairs, called a boat, and desired to be pulled

to Greenwich. He took the cover of a letter from his pocket, scratched a few lines with a pencil, and laid the

paper on the seat with some silver for his fare. As the boat passed under the dark central arch of London

Bridge, he sprang into the water and disappeared. It was found that he had written these words: "My folly in

undertaking what I could not execute hath done the King great prejudice which cannot be stoppedNo

easier way for me than thisMay his undertakings prosperMay he have a blessing." There was no

signature; but the body was soon found, and proved to be that of John Temple. He was young and highly

accomplished: he was heir to an honourable name; he was united to an amiable woman: he was possessed of

an ample fortune; and he had in prospect the greatest honours of the state. It does not appear that the public

had been at all aware to what an extent he was answerable for the policy which had brought so much obloquy

on the government. The King, stern as he was, had far too great a heart to treat an error as a crime. He had

just appointed the unfortunate young man Secretary at War; and the commission was actually preparing. It is

not improbable that the cold magnanimity of the master was the very thing which made the remorse of the

But, great as were the vexations which William had to undergo, those by which the temper of his

fatherinlaw was at this time tried were greater still. No court in Europe was distracted by more quarrels

and intrigues than were to be found within the walls of Dublin Castle. The numerous petty cabals which

sprang from the cupidity, the jealousy, and the malevolence of individuals scarcely deserve mention. But

there was one cause of discord which has been too little noticed, and which is the key to much that has been

Between English Jacobitism and Irish Jacobitism there was nothing in common. The English Jacobite was

animated by a strong enthusiasm for the family of Stuart; and in his zeal for the interests of that family he too

often forgot the interests of the state. Victory, peace, prosperity, seemed evils to the stanch nonjuror of our

island if they tended to make usurpation popular and permanent. Defeat, bankruptcy, famine, invasion, were,

in his view, public blessings, if they increased the chance of a restoration. He would rather have seen his

country the last of the nations under James the Second or James the Third, than the mistress of the sea, the

umpire between contending potentates, the seat of arts, the hive of industry, under a prince of the House of

The sentiments of the Irish Jacobite were very different, and, it must in candour be acknowledged, were of a

nobler character. The fallen dynasty was nothing to him. He had not, like a Cheshire or Shropshire cavalier,

been taught from his cradle to consider loyalty to that dynasty as the first duty of a Christian and a gentleman.

All his family traditions, all the lessons taught him by his foster mother and by his priests, had been of a very

different tendency. He had been brought up to regard the foreign sovereigns of his native land with the

feeling with which the Jew regarded Caesar, with which the Scot regarded Edward the First, with which the

Castilian regarded Joseph Buonaparte, with which the Pole regards the Autocrat of the Russias. It was the

boast of the highborn Milesian that, from the twelfth century to the seventeenth, every generation of his

family had been in arms against the English crown. His remote ancestors had contended with Fitzstephen and

De Burgh. His greatgrandfather had cloven down the soldiers of Elizabeth in the battle of the Blackwater. His

grandfather had conspired with O'Donnel against James the First. His father had fought under Sir Phelim

O'Neill against Charles the First. The confiscation of the family estate had been ratified by an Act of Charles

the Second. No Puritan, who had been cited before the High Commission by Laud, who had charged under

Cromwell at Naseby, who had been prosecuted under the Conventicle Act, and who had been in hiding on

account of the Rye House Plot, bore less affection to the House of Stuart than the O'Haras and Macmahons,

The fixed purpose of these men was to break the foreign yoke, to exterminate the Saxon colony, to sweep

away the Protestant Church, and to restore the soil to its ancient proprietors. To obtain these ends they would

without the smallest scruple have risen up against James; and to obtain these ends they rose up for him. The

Irish Jacobites, therefore, were not at all desirous that he should again reign at Whitehall: for they could not

but be aware that a Sovereign of Ireland, who was also Sovereign of England, would not, and, even if he

would, could not, long administer the government of the smaller and poorer kingdom in direct opposition to

the feeling of the larger and richer. Their real wish was that the Crowns might be completely separated, and

that their island might, whether under James or without James they cared little, form a distinct state under the

While one party in the Council at Dublin regarded James merely as a tool to be employed for achieving the

deliverance of Ireland, another party regarded Ireland merely as a tool to be employed for effecting the

restoration of James. To the English and Scotch lords and gentlemen who had accompanied him from Brest,

the island in which they sojourned was merely a stepping stone by which they were to reach Great Britain.

They were still as much exiles as when they were at Saint Germains; and indeed they thought Saint Germains

a far more pleasant place of exile than Dublin Castle. They had no sympathy with the native population of the

remote and half barbarous region to which a strange chance had led them. Nay, they were bound by common

extraction and by common language to that colony which it was the chief object of the native population to

root out. They had indeed, like the great body of their countrymen, always regarded the aboriginal Irish with

very unjust contempt, as inferior to other European nations, not only in acquired knowledge, but in natural

intelligence and courage; as born Gibeonites who had been liberally treated, in being permitted to hew wood

and to draw water for a wiser and mightier people. These politicians also thought,and here they were

undoubtedly in the right,that, if their master's object was to recover the throne of England, it would be

madness in him to give himself up to the guidance of the O's and the Macs who regarded England with mortal

enmity. A law declaring the crown of Ireland independent, a law transferring mitres, glebes, and tithes from

the Protestant to the Roman Catholic Church, a law transferring ten millions of acres from Saxons to Celts,

would doubtless be loudly applauded in Clare and Tipperary. But what would be the effect of such laws at

Westminster? What at Oxford? It would be poor policy to alienate such men as Clarendon and Beaufort, Ken

and Sherlock, in order to obtain the applause of the Rapparees of the Bog of Allen.181

Thus the English and Irish factions in the Council at Dublin were engaged in a dispute which admitted of no

compromise. Avaux meanwhile looked on that dispute from a point of view entirely his own. His object was

neither the emancipation of Ireland nor the restoration of James, but the greatness of the French monarchy. In

what way that object might be best attained was a very complicated problem. Undoubtedly a French

statesman could not but wish for a counterrevolution in England. The effect of such a counterrevolution

would be that the power which was the most formidable enemy of France would become her firmest ally, that

William would sink into insignificance, and that the European coalition of which he was the chief would be

dissolved. But what chance was there of such a counterrevolution? The English exiles indeed, after the

fashion of exiles, confidently anticipated a speedy return to their country. James himself loudly boasted that

his subjects on the other side of the water, though they had been misled for a moment by the specious names

of religion, liberty, and property, were warmly attached to him, and would rally round him as soon as he

appeared among them. But the wary envoy tried in vain to discover any foundation for these hopes. He was

certain that they were not warranted by any intelligence which had arrived from any part of Great Britain; and

he considered them as the mere daydreams of a feeble mind. He thought it unlikely that the usurper, whose

ability and resolution he had, during an unintermitted conflict of ten years, learned to appreciate, would easily

part with the great prize which had been won by such strenuous exertions and profound combinations. It was

therefore necessary to consider what arrangements would be most beneficial to France, on the supposition

that it proved impossible to dislodge William from England. And it was evident that, if William could not be

dislodged from England, the arrangement most beneficial to France would be that which had been

contemplated eighteen months before when James had no prospect of a male heir. Ireland must be severed

from the English crown, purged of the English colonists, reunited to the Church of Rome, placed under the

protection of the House of Bourbon, and made, in every thing but name, a French province. In war, her

resources would be absolutely at the command of her Lord Paramount. She would furnish his army with

recruits. She would furnish his navy with fine harbours commanding all the great western outlets of the

English trade. The strong national and religious antipathy with which her aboriginal population regarded the

inhabitants of the neighbouring island would be a sufficient guarantee for their fidelity to that government

On the whole, therefore, it appeared to Avaux that, of the two parties into which the Council at Dublin was

divided, the Irish party was that which it was for the interest of France to support. He accordingly connected

himself closely with the chiefs of that party, obtained from them the fullest avowals of all that they designed,

and was soon able to report to his government that neither the gentry nor the common people were at all

The views of Louvois, incomparably the greatest statesman that France had produced since Richelieu, seem

to have entirely agreed with those of Avaux. The best thing, Louvois wrote, that King James could do would

be to forget that he had reigned in Great Britain, and to think only of putting Ireland into a good condition,

and of establishing himself firmly there. Whether this were the true interest of the House of Stuart may be

About the Scotch and English exiles, and especially about Melfort, Avaux constantly expressed himself with

an asperity hardly to have been expected from a man of so much sense and experience. Melfort was in a

singularly unfortunate position. He was a renegade: he was a mortal enemy of the liberties of his country: he

was of a bad and tyrannical nature; and yet he was, in some sense, a patriot. The consequence was that he was

more universally detested than any man of his time. For, while his apostasy and his arbitrary maxims of

government made him the abhorrence of England and Scotland, his anxiety for the dignity and integrity of the

The first question to be decided was whether James should remain at Dublin, or should put himself at the

head of his army in Ulster. On this question the Irish and British factions joined battle. Reasons of no great

weight were adduced on both sides; for neither party ventured to speak out. The point really in issue was

whether the King should be in Irish or in British hands. If he remained at Dublin, it would be scarcely

possible for him to withhold his assent from any bill presented to him by the Parliament which he had

summoned to meet there. He would be forced to plunder, perhaps to attaint, innocent Protestant gentlemen

and clergymen by hundreds; and he would thus do irreparable mischief to his cause on the other side of Saint

George's Channel. If he repaired to Ulster, he would be within a few hours' sail of Great Britain. As soon as

Londonderry had fallen, and it was universally supposed that the fall of Londonderry could not be long

delayed, he might cross the sea with part of his forces, and land in Scotland, where his friends were supposed

to be numerous. When he was once on British ground, and in the midst of British adherents, it would no

longer be in the power of the Irish to extort his consent to their schemes of spoliation and revenge.

The discussions in the Council were long and warm. Tyrconnel, who had just been created a Duke, advised

his master to stay in Dublin. Melfort exhorted his Majesty to set out for Ulster. Avaux exerted all his

influence in support of Tyrconnel; but James, whose personal inclinations were naturally on the British side

of the question, determined to follow the advice of Melfort.184 Avaux was deeply mortified. In his official

letters he expressed with great acrimony his contempt for the King's character and understanding. On

Tyrconnel, who had said that he despaired of the fortunes of James, and that the real question was between

the King of France and the Prince of Orange, the ambassador pronounced what was meant to be a warm

eulogy, but may perhaps be more properly called an invective. "If he were a born Frenchman he could not be

more zealous for the interests of France."185 The conduct of Melfort, on the other hand, was the subject of an

invective which much resembles eulogy: "He is neither a good Irishman nor a good Frenchman. All his

Since the King was determined to go northward, Avaux did not choose to be left behind. The royal party set

out, leaving Tyrconnel in charge at Dublin, and arrived at Charlemont on the thirteenth of April. The journey

was a strange one. The country all along the road had been completely deserted by the industrious population,

and laid waste by bands of robbers. "This," said one of the French officers, "is like travelling through the

deserts of Arabia."187 Whatever effects the colonists had been able to remove were at Londonderry or

Enniskillen. The rest had been stolen or destroyed. Avaux informed his court that he had not been able to get

one truss of hay for his horses without sending five or six miles. No labourer dared bring any thing for sale

lest some marauder should lay hands on it by the way. The ambassador was put one night into a miserable

taproom full of soldiers smoking, another night into a dismantled house without windows or shutters to keep

out the rain. At Charlemont a bag of oatmeal was with great difficulty, and as a matter of favour, procured for

the French legation. There was no wheaten bread, except at the table of the King, who had brought a little

flour from Dublin, and to whom Avaux had lent a servant who knew how to bake. Those who were honoured

with an invitation to the royal table had their bread and wine measured out to them. Every body else, however

high in rank, ate horsecorn, and drank water or detestable beer, made with oats instead of barley, and

flavoured with some nameless herb as a substitute for hops.188 Yet report said that the country between

Charlemont and Strabane was even more desolate than the country between Dublin and Charlemont. It was

impossible to carry a large stock of provisions. The roads were so bad and the horses so weak, that the

baggage waggons had all been left far behind. The chief officers of the army were consequently in want of

necessaries; and the illhumour which was the natural effect of these privations was increased by the

insensibility of James, who seemed not to be aware that every body about him was not perfectly

On the fourteenth of April the King and his train proceeded to Omagh. The rain fell: the wind blew: the

horses could scarcely make their way through the mud, and in the face of the storm; and the road was

frequently intersected by torrents which might almost be called rivers. The travellers had to pass several fords

where the water was breast high. Some of the party fainted from fatigue and hunger. All around lay a frightful

wilderness. In a journey of forty miles Avaux counted only three miserable cabins. Every thing else was rock,

bog, and moor. When at length the travellers reached Omagh, they found it in ruins. The Protestants, who

were the majority of the inhabitants, had abandoned it, leaving not a wisp of straw nor a cask of liquor. The

windows had been broken: the chimneys had been beaten in: the very locks and bolts of the doors had been

Avaux had never ceased to press the King to return to Dublin; but these expostulations had hitherto produced

no effect. The obstinacy of James, however, was an obstinacy which had nothing in common with manly

resolution, and which, though proof to argument, was easily shaken by caprice. He received at Omagh, early

on the sixteenth of April, letters which alarmed him. He learned that a strong body of Protestants was in arms

at Strabane, and that English ships of war had been seen near the mouth of Lough Foyle. In one minute three

messages were sent to summon Avaux to the ruinous chamber in which the royal bed had been prepared.

There James, half dressed, and with the air of a man bewildered by some great shock, announced his

resolution to hasten back instantly to Dublin. Avaux listened, wondered, and approved. Melfort seemed

prostrated by despair. The travellers retraced their steps, and, late in the evening, reached Charlemont. There

the King received despatches very different from those which had terrified him a few hours before. The

Protestants who had assembled near Strabane had been attacked by Hamilton. Under a truehearted leader they

would doubtless have stood their ground. But Lundy, who commanded them, had told them that all was lost,

had ordered them to shift for themselves, and had set them the example of flight.191 They had accordingly

retired in confusion to Londonderry. The King's correspondents pronounced it to be impossible that

Londonderry should hold out. His Majesty had only to appear before the gates; and they would instantly fly

open. James now changed his mind again, blamed himself for having been persuaded to turn his face

southward, and, though it was late in the evening, called for his horses. The horses were in a miserable plight;

but, weary and half starved as they were, they were saddled. Melfort, completely victorious, carried off his

master to the camp. Avaux, after remonstrating to no purpose, declared that he was resolved to return to

Dublin. It may be suspected that the extreme discomfort which he had undergone had something to do with

this resolution. For complaints of that discomfort make up a large part of his letters; and, in truth, a life

passed in the palaces of Italy, in the neat parlours and gardens of Holland, and in the luxurious pavilions

which adorned the suburbs of Paris, was a bad preparation for the ruined hovels of Ulster. He gave, however,

to his master a more weighty reason for refusing to proceed northward. The journey of James had been

undertaken in opposition to the unanimous sense of the Irish, and had excited great alarm among them. They

apprehended that he meant to quit them, and to make a descent on Scotland. They knew that, once landed in

Great Britain, he would have neither the will nor the power to do those things which they most desired.

Avaux, by refusing to proceed further, gave them an assurance that, whoever might betray them, France

While Avaux was on his way to Dublin, James hastened towards Londonderry. He found his army

concentrated a few miles south of the city. The French generals who had sailed with him from Brest were in

his train; and two of them, Rosen and Maumont, were placed over the head of Richard Hamilton.193 Rosen

was a native of Livonia, who had in early youth become a soldier of fortune, who had fought his way to

distinction, and who, though utterly destitute of the graces and accomplishments characteristic of the Court of

Versailles, was nevertheless high in favour there. His temper was savage: his manners were coarse: his

language was a strange jargon compounded of various dialects of French and German. Even those who

thought best of him, and who maintained that his rough exterior covered some good qualities, owned that his

looks were against him, and that it would be unpleasant to meet such a figure in the dusk at the corner of a

In the camp it was generally expected that Londonderry would fall without a blow. Rosen confidently

predicted that the mere sight of the Irish army would terrify the garrison into submission. But Richard

Hamilton, who knew the temper of the colonists better, had misgivings. The assailants were sure of one

important ally within the walls. Lundy, the Governor, professed the Protestant religion, and had joined in

proclaiming William and Mary; but he was in secret communication with the enemies of his Church and of

the Sovereigns to whom he had sworn lealty. Some have suspected that he was a concealed Jacobite, and that

he had affected to acquiesce in the Revolution only in order that he might be better able to assist in bringing

about a Restoration: but it is probable that his conduct is rather to be attributed to faintheartedness and

poverty of spirit than to zeal for any public cause. He seems to have thought resistance hopeless; and in truth,

to a military eye, the defences of Londonderry appeared contemptible. The fortifications consisted of a simple

wall overgrown with grass and weeds: there was no ditch even before the gates: the drawbridges had long

been neglected: the chains were rusty and could scarcely be used: the parapets and towers were built after a

fashion which might well move disciples of Vauban to laughter; and these feeble defences were on almost

every side commanded by heights. Indeed those who laid out the city had never meant that it should be able

to stand a regular siege, and had contented themselves with throwing up works sufficient to protect the

inhabitants against a tumultuary attack of the Celtic peasantry. Avaux assured Louvois that a single French

battalion would easily storm such defences. Even if the place should, notwithstanding all disadvantages, be

able to repel a large army directed by the science and experience of generals who had served under Conde

and Turenne, hunger must soon bring the contest to an end. The stock of provisions was small; and the

population had been swollen to seven or eight times the ordinary number by a multitude of colonists flying

Lundy, therefore, from the time when the Irish army entered Ulster, seems to have given up all thought of

serious resistance, He talked so despondingly that the citizens and his own soldiers murmured against him.

He seemed, they said, to be bent on discouraging them. Meanwhile the enemy drew daily nearer and nearer;

and it was known that James himself was coming to take the command of his forces.

Just at this moment a glimpse of hope appeared. On the fourteenth of April ships from England anchored in

the bay. They had on board two regiments which had been sent, under the command of a Colonel named

Cunningham, to reinforce the garrison. Cunningham and several of his officers went on shore and conferred

with Lundy. Lundy dissuaded them from landing their men. The place, he said, could not hold out. To throw

more troops into it would therefore be worse than useless: for the more numerous the garrison, the more

prisoners would fall into the hands of the enemy. The best thing that the two regiments could do would be to

sail back to England. He meant, he said, to withdraw himself privately: and the inhabitants must then try to

He went through the form of holding a council of war; but from this council he excluded all those officers of

the garrison whose sentiments he knew to be different from his own. Some, who had ordinarily been

summoned on such occasions, and who now came uninvited, were thrust out of the room. Whatever the

Governor said was echoed by his creatures. Cunningham and Cunningham's companions could scarcely

venture to oppose their opinion to that of a person whose local knowledge was necessarily far superior to

theirs, and whom they were by their instructions directed to obey. One brave soldier murmured. "Understand

this," he said, "to give up Londonderry is to give up Ireland." But his objections were contemptuously

overruled.196 The meeting broke up. Cunningham and his officers returned to the ships, and made

preparations for departing. Meanwhile Lundy privately sent a messenger to the head quarters of the enemy,

with assurances that the city should be peaceably surrendered on the first summons.

But as soon as what had passed in the council of war was whispered about the streets, the spirit of the soldiers

and citizens swelled up high and fierce against the dastardly and perfidious chief who had betrayed them.

Many of his own officers declared that they no longer thought themselves bound to obey him. Voices were

heard threatening, some that his brains should be blown out, some that he should be hanged on the walls. A

deputation was sent to Cunningham imploring him to assume the command. He excused himself on the

plausible ground that his orders were to take directions in all things from the Governor.197 Meanwhile it was

rumoured that the persons most in Lundy's confidence were stealing out of the town one by one. Long after

dusk on the evening of the seventeenth it was found that the gates were open and that the keys had

disappeared. The officers who made the discovery took on themselves to change the passwords and to double

After some anxious hours the day broke. The Irish, with James at their head, were now within four miles of

the city. A tumultuous council of the chief inhabitants was called. Some of them vehemently reproached the

Governor to his face with his treachery. He had sold them, they cried, to their deadliest enemy: he had

refused admission to the force which good King William had sent to defend them. While the altercation was

at the height, the sentinels who paced the ramparts announced that the vanguard of the hostile army was in

sight. Lundy had given orders that there should be no firing; but his authority was at an end. Two gallant

soldiers, Major Henry Baker and Captain Adam Murray, called the people to arms. They were assisted by the

eloquence of an aged clergyman, George Walker, rector of the parish of Donaghmore, who had, with many of

his neighbours, taken refuge in Londonderry. The whole of the crowded city was moved by one impulse.

Soldiers, gentlemen, yeomen, artisans, rushed to the walls and manned the guns. James, who, confident of

success, had approached within a hundred yards of the southern gate, was received with a shout of "No

surrender," and with a fire from the nearest bastion. An officer of his staff fell dead by his side. The King and

his attendants made all haste to get out of reach of the cannon balls. Lundy, who was now in imminent danger

of being torn limb from limb by those whom he had betrayed, hid himself in an inner chamber. There he lay

during the day, and at night, with the generous and politic connivance of Murray and Walker, made his

escape in the disguise of a porter.199 The part of the wall from which he let himself down is still pointed out;

and people still living talk of having tasted the fruit of a pear tree which assisted him in his descent. His name

is, to this day, held in execration by the Protestants of the North of Ireland; and his effigy was long, and

perhaps still is, annually hung and burned by them with marks of abhorrence similar to those which in

And now Londonderry was left destitute of all military and of all civil government. No man in the town had a

right to command any other: the defences were weak: the provisions were scanty: an incensed tyrant and a

great army were at the gates. But within was that which has often, in desperate extremities, retrieved the

fallen fortunes of nations. Betrayed, deserted, disorganized, unprovided with resources, begirt with enemies,

the noble city was still no easy conquest. Whatever an engineer might think of the strength of the ramparts,

all that was most intelligent, most courageous, most highspirited among the Englishry of Leinster and of

Northern Ulster was crowded behind them. The number of men capable of bearing arms within the walls was

seven thousand; and the whole world could not have furnished seven thousand men better qualified to meet a

terrible emergency with clear judgment, dauntless valour, and stubborn patience. They were all zealous

Protestants; and the Protestantism of the majority was tinged with Puritanism. They had much in common

with that sober, resolute, and Godfearing class out of which Cromwell had formed his unconquerable army.

But the peculiar situation in which they had been placed had developed in them some qualities which, in the

mother country, might possibly have remained latent. The English inhabitants of Ireland were an aristocratic

caste, which had been enabled, by superior civilisation, by close union, by sleepless vigilance, by cool

intrepidity, to keep in subjection a numerous and hostile population. Almost every one of them had been in

some measure trained both to military and to political functions. Almost every one was familiar with the use

of arms, and was accustomed to bear a part in the administration of justice. It was remarked by contemporary

writers that the colonists had something of the Castilian haughtiness of manner, though none of the Castilian

indolence, that they spoke English with remarkable purity and correctness, and that they were, both as

militiamen and as jurymen, superior to their kindred in the mother country.200 In all ages, men situated as

the Anglosaxons in Ireland were situated have had peculiar vices and peculiar virtues, the vices and virtues of

masters, as opposed to the vices and virtues of slaves. The member of a dominant race is, in his dealings with

the subject race, seldom indeed fraudulent, for fraud is the resource of the weak,but imperious, insolent,

and cruel. Towards his brethren, on the other hand, his conduct is generally just, kind, and even noble. His

selfrespect leads him to respect all who belong to his own order. His interest impels him to cultivate a good

understanding with those whose prompt, strenuous, and courageous assistance may at any moment be

necessary to preserve his property and life. It is a truth ever present to his mind that his own wellbeing

depends on the ascendency of the class to which he belongs. His very selfishness therefore is sublimed into

public spirit: and this public spirit is stimulated to fierce enthusiasm by sympathy, by the desire of applause,

and by the dread of infamy. For the only opinion which he values is the opinion of his fellows; and in their

opinion devotion to the common cause is the most sacred of duties. The character, thus formed, has two

aspects. Seen on one side, it must be regarded by every well constituted mind with disapprobation. Seen on

the other, it irresistibly extorts applause. The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our

disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what he well knows

to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration. To a superficial

observer it may seem strange that so much evil and so much good should be found together. But in truth the

good and the evil, which at first sight appear almost incompatible, are closely connected, and have a common

origin. It was because the Spartan had been taught to revere himself as one of a race of sovereigns, and to

look down on all that was not Spartan as of an inferior species, that he had no fellow feeling for the miserable

serfs who crouched before him, and that the thought of submitting to a foreign master, or of turning his back

before an enemy, never, even in the last extremity, crossed his mind. Something of the same character,

compounded of tyrant and hero, has been found in all nations which have domineered over more numerous

nations. But it has nowhere in modern Europe shown itself so conspicuously as in Ireland. With what

contempt, with what antipathy, the ruling minority in that country long regarded the subject majority may be

best learned from the hateful laws which, within the memory of men still living, disgraced the Irish statute

book. Those laws were at length annulled: but the spirit which had dictated them survived them, and even at

this day sometimes breaks out in excesses pernicious to the commonwealth and dishonourable to the

Protestant religion. Nevertheless it is impossible to deny that the English colonists have had, with too many

of the faults, all the noblest virtues of a sovereign caste. The faults have, as was natural, been most

offensively exhibited in times of prosperity and security: the virtues have been most resplendent in times of

distress and peril; and never were those virtues more signally displayed than by the defenders of

Londonderry, when their Governor had abandoned them, and when the camp of their mortal enemy was

No sooner had the first burst of the rage excited by the perfidy of Lundy spent itself than those whom he had

betrayed proceeded, with a gravity and prudence worthy of the most renowned senates, to provide for the

order and defence of the city. Two governors were elected, Baker and Walker. Baker took the chief military

command. Walker's especial business was to preserve internal tranquillity, and to dole out supplies from the

magazines.201 The inhabitants capable of bearing arms were distributed into eight regiments. Colonels,

captains, and subordinate officers were appointed. In a few hours every man knew his post, and was ready to

repair to it as soon as the beat of the drum was heard. That machinery, by which Oliver had, in the preceding

generation, kept up among his soldiers so stern and so pertinacious an enthusiasm, was again employed with

not less complete success. Preaching and praying occupied a large part of every day. Eighteen clergymen of

the Established Church and seven or eight nonconformist ministers were within the walls. They all exerted

themselves indefatigably to rouse and sustain the spirit of the people. Among themselves there was for the

time entire harmony. All disputes about church government, postures, ceremonies, were forgotten. The

Bishop, having found that his lectures on passive obedience were derided even by the Episcopalians, had

withdrawn himself, first to Raphoe, and then to England, and was preaching in a chapel in London.202 On

the other hand, a Scotch fanatic named Hewson, who had exhorted the Presbyterians not to ally themselves

with such as refused to subscribe the Covenant, had sunk under the well merited disgust and scorn of the

whole Protestant community.203 The aspect of the Cathedral was remarkable. Cannon were planted on the

summit of the broad tower which has since given place to a tower of different proportions. Ammunition was

stored in the vaults. In the choir the liturgy of the Anglican Church was read every morning. Every afternoon

James had waited twentyfour hours, expecting, as it should seem, the performance of Lundy's promises; and

in twentyfour hours the arrangements for the defence of Londonderry were complete. On the evening of the

nineteenth of April, a trumpeter came to the southern gate, and asked whether the engagements into which the

Governor had entered would be fulfilled. The answer was that the men who guarded these walls had nothing

to do with the Governor's engagements, and were determined to resist to the last.

On the following day a messenger of higher rank was sent, Claude Hamilton, Lord Strabane, one of the few

Roman Catholic peers of Ireland. Murray, who had been appointed to the command of one of the eight

regiments into which the garrison was distributed, advanced from the gate to meet the flag of truce; and a

short conference was held. Strabane had been authorised to make large promises. The citizens should have a

free pardon for all that was past if they would submit to their lawful Sovereign. Murray himself should have a

colonel's commission, and a thousand pounds in money. "The men of Londonderry," answered Murray, "have

done nothing that requires a pardon, and own no Sovereign but King William and Queen Mary. It will not be

safe for your Lordship to stay longer, or to return on the same errand. Let me have the honour of seeing you

James had been assured, and had fully expected, that the city would yield as soon as it was known that he was

before the walls. Finding himself mistaken, he broke loose from the control of Melfort, and determined to

return instantly to Dublin. Rosen accompanied the King. The direction of the siege was intrusted to

The operations now commenced in earnest. The besiegers began by battering the town. It was soon on fire in

several places. Roofs and upper stories of houses fell in, and crushed the inmates. During a short time the

garrison, many of whom had never before seen the effect of a cannonade, seemed to be discomposed by the

crash of chimneys, and by the heaps of ruin mingled with disfigured corpses. But familiarity with danger and

horror produced in a few hours the natural effect. The spirit of the people rose so high that their chiefs

thought it safe to act on the offensive. On the twentyfirst of April a sally was made under the command of

Murray. The Irish stood their ground resolutely; and a furious and bloody contest took place. Maumont, at the

head of a body of cavalry, flew to the place where the fight was raging. He was struck in the head by a

musket ball, and fell a corpse. The besiegers lost several other officers, and about two hundred men, before

the colonists could be driven in. Murray escaped with difficulty. His horse was killed under him; and he was

beset by enemies: but be was able to defend himself till some of his friends made a rush from the gate to his

In consequence of the death of Maumont, Hamilton was once more commander of the Irish army. His

exploits in that post did not raise his reputation. He was a fine gentleman and a brave soldier; but he had no

pretensions to the character of a great general, and had never, in his life, seen a siege.207 Pusignan had more

science and energy. But Pusignan survived Maumont little more than a fortnight. At four in the morning of

the sixth of May, the garrison made another sally, took several flags, and killed many of the besiegers.

Pusignan, fighting gallantly, was shot through the body. The wound was one which a skilful surgeon might

have cured: but there was no such surgeon in the Irish camp; and the communication with Dublin was slow

and irregular. The poor Frenchman died, complaining bitterly of the barbarous ignorance and negligence

which had shortened his days. A medical man, who had been sent down express from the capital, arrived after

the funeral. James, in consequence, as it should seem, of this disaster, established a daily post between Dublin

Castle and Hamilton's head quarters. Even by this conveyance letters did not travel very expeditiously: for the

couriers went on foot; and, from fear probably of the Enniskilleners, took a circuitous route from military

May passed away: June arrived; and still Londonderry held out. There had been many sallies and skirmishes

with various success: but, on the whole, the advantage had been with the garrison. Several officers of note

had been carried prisoners into the city; and two French banners, torn after hard fighting from the besiegers,

had been hung as trophies in the chancel of the Cathedral. It seemed that the siege must be turned into a

blockade. But before the hope of reducing the town by main force was relinquished, it was determined to

make a great effort. The point selected for assault was an outwork called Windmill Hill, which was not far

from the southern gate. Religious stimulants were employed to animate the courage of the forlorn hope.

Many volunteers bound themselves by oath to make their way into the works or to perish in the attempt.

Captain Butler, son of the Lord Mountgarret, undertook to lead the sworn men to the attack. On the walls the

colonists were drawn up in three ranks. The office of those who were behind was to load the muskets of those

who were in front. The Irish came on boldly and with a fearful uproar, but after long and hard fighting were

driven back. The women of Londonderry were seen amidst the thickest fire serving out water and

ammunition to their husbands and brothers. In one place, where the wall was only seven feet high, Butler and

some of his sworn men succeeded in reaching the top; but they were all killed or made prisoners. At length,

after four hundred of the Irish had fallen, their chiefs ordered a retreat to be sounded.209

Nothing was left but to try the effect of hunger. It was known that the stock of food in the city was but

slender. Indeed it was thought strange that the supplies should have held out so long. Every precaution was

now taken against the introduction of provisions. All the avenues leading to the city by land were closely

guarded. On the south were encamped, along the left bank of the Foyle, the horsemen who had followed Lord

Galmoy from the valley of the Barrow. Their chief was of all the Irish captains the most dreaded and the most

abhorred by the Protestants. For he had disciplined his men with rare skill and care; and many frightful stories

were told of his barbarity and perfidy. Long lines of tents, occupied by the infantry of Butler and O'Neil, of

Lord Slane and Lord Gormanstown, by Nugent's Westmeath men, by Eustace's Kildare men, and by

Cavanagh's Kerry men, extended northward till they again approached the water side.210 The river was

fringed with forts and batteries which no vessel could pass without great peril. After some time it was

determined to make the security still more complete by throwing a barricade across the stream, about a mile

and a half below the city. Several boats full of stones were sunk. A row of stakes was driven into the bottom

of the river. Large pieces of fir wood, strongly bound together, formed a boom which was more than a quarter

of a mile in length, and which was firmly fastened to both shores, by cables a foot thick.211 A huge stone, to

which the cable on the left bank was attached, was removed many years later, for the purpose of being

polished and shaped into a column. But the intention was abandoned, and the rugged mass still lies, not many

yards from its original site, amidst the shades which surround a pleasant country house named Boom Hall.

Hard by is the well from which the besiegers drank. A little further off is the burial ground where they laid

their slain, and where even in our own time the spade of the gardener has struck upon many sculls and

While these things were passing in the North, James was holding his court at Dublin. On his return thither

from Londonderry he received intelligence that the French fleet, commanded by the Count of Chateau

Renaud, had anchored in Bantry Bay, and had put on shore a large quantity of military stores and a supply of

money. Herbert, who had just been sent to those seas with an English squadron for the purpose of

intercepting the communications between Britanny and Ireland, learned where the enemy lay, and sailed into

the bay with the intention of giving battle. But the wind was unfavourable to him: his force was greatly

inferior to that which was opposed to him; and after some firing, which caused no serious loss to either side,

he thought it prudent to stand out to sea, while the French retired into the recesses of the harbour. He steered

for Scilly, where he expected to find reinforcements; and Chateau Renaud, content with the credit which he

had acquired, and afraid of losing it if he staid, hastened back to Brest, though earnestly intreated by James to

Both sides claimed the victory. The Commons at Westminster absurdly passed a vote of thanks to Herbert.

James, not less absurdly, ordered bonfires to be lighted, and a Te Deum to be sung. But these marks of joy by

no means satisfied Avaux, whose national vanity was too strong even for his characteristic prudence and

politeness. He complained that James was so unjust and ungrateful as to attribute the result of the late action

to the reluctance with which the English seamen fought against their rightful King and their old commander,

and that his Majesty did not seem to be well pleased by being told that they were flying over the ocean

pursued by the triumphant French. Dover, too, was a bad Frenchman. He seemed to take no pleasure in the

defeat of his countrymen, and had been heard to say that the affair in Bantry Bay did not deserve to be called

On the day after the Te Deum had been sung at Dublin for this indecisive skirmish, the Parliament convoked

by James assembled. The number of temporal peers of Ireland, when he arrived in that kingdom, was about a

hundred. Of these only fourteen obeyed his summons. Of the fourteen, ten were Roman Catholics. By the

reversing of old attainders, and by new creations, seventeen more Lords, all Roman Catholics, were

introduced into the Upper House. The Protestant Bishops of Meath, Ossory, Cork, and Limerick, whether

from a sincere conviction that they could not lawfully withhold their obedience even from a tyrant, or from a

vain hope that the heart even of a tyrant might be softened by their patience, made their appearance in the

The House of Commons consisted almost exclusively of Irishmen and Papists. With the writs the returning

officers had received from Tyrconnel letters naming the persons whom he wished to see elected. The largest

constituent bodies in the kingdom were at this time very small. For scarcely any but Roman Catholics dared

to show their faces; and the Roman Catholic freeholders were then very few, not more, it is said, in some

counties, than ten or twelve. Even in cities so considerable as Cork, Limerick, and Galway, the number of

persons who, under the new Charters, were entitled to vote did not exceed twentyfour. About two hundred

and fifty members took their seats. Of these only six were Protestants.213 The list of the names sufficiently

indicates the religious and political temper of the assembly. Alone among the Irish parliaments of that age,

this parliament was filled with Dermots and Geohagans, O'Neils and O'Donovans, Macmahons, Macnamaras,

and Macgillicuddies. The lead was taken by a few men whose abilities had been improved by the study of the

law, or by experience acquired in foreign countries. The Attorney General, Sir Richard Nagle, who

represented the county of Cork, was allowed, even by Protestants, to be an acute and learned jurist. Francis

Plowden, the Commissioner of Revenue, who sate for Bannow, and acted as chief minister of finance, was an

Englishman, and, as he had been a principal agent of the Order of Jesuits in money matters, must be supposed

to have been an excellent man of business.214 Colonel Henry Luttrell, member for the county of Carlow, had

served long in France, and had brought back to his native Ireland a sharpened intellect and polished manners,

a flattering tongue, some skill in war, and much more skill in intrigue. His elder brother, Colonel Simon

Luttrell, who was member for the county of Dublin, and military governor of the capital, had also resided in

France, and, though inferior to Henry in parts and activity, made a highly distinguished figure among the

adherents of James. The other member for the county of Dublin was Colonel Patrick Sarsfield. This gallant

officer was regarded by the natives as one of themselves: for his ancestors on the paternal side, though

originally English, were among those early colonists who were proverbially said to have become more Irish

than Irishmen. His mother was of noble Celtic blood; and he was firmly attached to the old religion. He had

inherited an estate of about two thousand a year, and was therefore one of the wealthiest Roman Catholics in

the kingdom. His knowledge of courts and camps was such as few of his countrymen possessed. He had long

borne a commission in the English Life Guards, had lived much about Whitehall, and had fought bravely

under Monmouth on the Continent, and against Monmouth at Sedgemoor. He had, Avaux wrote, more

personal influence than any man in Ireland, and was indeed a gentleman of eminent merit, brave, upright,

honourable, careful of his men in quarters, and certain to be always found at their head in the day of battle.

His intrepidity, his frankness, his boundless good nature, his stature, which far exceeded that of ordinary men,

and the strength which he exerted in personal conflict, gained for him the affectionate admiration of the

populace. It is remarkable that the Englishry generally respected him as a valiant, skilful, and generous

enemy, and that, even in the most ribald farces which were performed by mountebanks in Smithfield, he was

always excepted from the disgraceful imputations which it was then the fashion to throw on the Irish

But men like these were rare in the House of Commons which had met at Dublin. It is no reproach to the Irish

nation, a nation which has since furnished its full proportion of eloquent and accomplished senators, to say

that, of all the parliaments which have met in the British islands, Barebone's parliament not excepted, the

assembly convoked by James was the most deficient in all the qualities which a legislature should possess.

The stern domination of a hostile caste had blighted the faculties of the Irish gentleman. If he was so

fortunate as to have lands, he had generally passed his life on them, shooting, fishing, carousing, and making

love among his vassals. If his estate had been confiscated, he had wandered about from bawn to bawn and

from cabin to cabin, levying small contributions, and living at the expense of other men. He had never sate in

the House of Commons: he had never even taken an active part at an election: he had never been a

magistrate: scarcely ever had he been on a grand jury. He had therefore absolutely no experience of public

affairs. The English squire of that age, though assuredly not a very profound or enlightened politician, was a

statesman and a philosopher when compared with the Roman Catholic squire of Munster or Connaught.

The Parliaments of Ireland had then no fixed place of assembling. Indeed they met so seldom and broke up so

speedily that it would hardly have been worth while to build and furnish a palace for their special use. It was

not till the Hanoverian dynasty had been long on the throne, that a senate house which sustains a comparison

with the finest compositions of Inigo Jones arose in College Green. On the spot where the portico and dome

of the Four Courts now overlook the Liffey, stood, in the seventeenth century, an ancient building which had

once been a convent of Dominican friars, but had since the Reformation been appropriated to the use of the

legal profession, and bore the name of the King's Inns. There accommodation had been provided for the

parliament. On the seventh of May, James, dressed in royal robes and wearing a crown, took his seat on the

throne in the House of Lords, and ordered the Commons to be summoned to the bar.216

He then expressed his gratitude to the natives of Ireland for having adhered to his cause when the people of

his other kingdoms had deserted him. His resolution to abolish all religious disabilities in all his dominions he

declared to be unalterable. He invited the houses to take the Act of Settlement into consideration, and to

redress the injuries of which the old proprietors of the soil had reason to complain. He concluded by

When the royal speech had been pronounced, the Chancellor directed the Commons to repair to their chamber

and to elect a Speaker. They chose the Attorney General Nagle; and the choice was approved by the King.218

The Commons next passed resolutions expressing warm gratitude both to James and to Lewis. Indeed it was

proposed to send a deputation with an address to Avaux; but the Speaker pointed out the gross impropriety of

such a step; and, on this occasion, his interference was successful.219 It was seldom however that the House

was disposed to listen to reason. The debates were all rant and tumult. Judge Daly, a Roman Catholic, but an

honest and able man, could not refrain from lamenting the indecency and folly with which the members of his

Church carried on the work of legislation. Those gentlemen, he said, were not a Parliament: they were a mere

rabble: they resembled nothing so much as the mob of fishermen and market gardeners, who, at Naples,

yelled and threw up their caps in honour of Massaniello. It was painful to hear member after member talking

wild nonsense about his own losses, and clamouring for an estate, when the lives of all and the independence

of their common country were in peril. These words were spoken in private; but some talebearer repeated

them to the Commons. A violent storm broke forth. Daly was ordered to attend at the bar; and there was little

doubt that he would be severely dealt with. But, just when he was at the door, one of the members rushed in,

shouting, "Good news: Londonderry is taken." The whole House rose. All the hats were flung into the air.

Three loud huzzas were raised. Every heart was softened by the happy tidings. Nobody would hear of

punishment at such a moment. The order for Daly's attendance was discharged amidst cries of "No

submission; no submission; we pardon him." In a few hours it was known that Londonderry held out as

obstinately as ever. This transaction, in itself unimportant, deserves to be recorded, as showing how destitute

that House of Commons was of the qualities which ought to be found in the great council of a kingdom. And

this assembly, without experience, without gravity, and without temper, was now to legislate on questions

which would have tasked to the utmost the capacity of the greatest statesmen.220

One Act James induced them to pass which would have been most honourable to him and to them, if there

were not abundant proofs that it was meant to be a dead letter. It was an Act purporting to grant entire liberty

of conscience to all Christian sects. On this occasion a proclamation was put forth announcing in boastful

language to the English people that their rightful King had now signally refuted those slanderers who had

accused him of affecting zeal for religious liberty merely in order to serve a turn. If he were at heart inclined

to persecution, would he not have persecuted the Irish Protestants? He did not want power. He did not want

provocation. Yet at Dublin, where the members of his Church were the majority, as at Westminister, where

they were a minority, he had firmly adhered to the principles laid down in his much maligned Declaration of

Indulgence.221 Unfortunately for him, the same wind which carried his fair professions to England carried

thither also evidence that his professions were insincere. A single law, worthy of Turgot or of Franklin,

seemed ludicrously out of place in the midst of a crowd of laws which would have disgraced Gardiner or

A necessary preliminary to the vast work of spoliation and slaughter on which the legislators of Dublin were

bent, was an Act annulling the authority which the English Parliament, both as the supreme legislature and as

the supreme Court of Appeal, had hitherto exercised over Ireland.222 This Act was rapidly passed; and then

followed, in quick succession, confiscations and proscriptions on a gigantic scale. The personal estates of

absentees above the age of seventeen years were transferred to the King. When lay property was thus

invaded, it was not likely that the endowments which had been, in contravention of every sound principle,

lavished on the Church of the minority would be spared. To reduce those endowments, without prejudice to

existing interests, would have been a reform worthy of a good prince and of a good parliament. But no such

reform would satisfy the vindictive bigots who sate at the King's Inns. By one sweeping Act, the greater part

of the tithe was transferred from the Protestant to the Roman Catholic clergy; and the existing incumbents

were left, without one farthing of compensation, to die of hunger.223 A Bill repealing the Act of Settlement

and transferring many thousands of square miles from Saxon to Celtic landlords was brought in and carried

Of legislation such as this it is impossible to speak too severely: but for the legislators there are excuses

which it is the duty of the historian to notice. They acted unmercifully, unjustly, unwisely. But it would be

absurd to expect mercy, justice, or wisdom from a class of men first abased by many years of oppression, and

then maddened by the joy of a sudden deliverance, and armed with irresistible power. The representatives of

the Irish nation were, with few exceptions, rude and ignorant. They had lived in a state of constant irritation.

With aristocratical sentiments they had been in a servile position. With the highest pride of blood, they had

been exposed to daily affronts, such as might well have roused the choler of the humblest plebeian. In sight of

the fields and castles which they regarded as their own, they had been glad to be invited by a peasant to

partake of his whey and his potatoes. Those violent emotions of hatred and cupidity which the situation of the

native gentleman could scarcely fail to call forth appeared to him under the specious guise of patriotism and

piety. For his enemies were the enemies of his nation; and the same tyranny which had robbed him of his

patrimony had robbed his Church of vast wealth bestowed on her by the devotion of an earlier age. How was

power likely to be used by an uneducated and inexperienced man, agitated by strong desires and resentments

which he mistook for sacred duties? And, when two or three hundred such men were brought together in one

assembly, what was to be expected but that the passions which each had long nursed in silence would be at

Between James and his parliament there was little in common, except hatred of the Protestant religion. He

was an Englishman. Superstition had not utterly extinguished all national feeling in his mind; and he could

not but be displeased by the malevolence with which his Celtic supporters regarded the race from which he

sprang. The range of his intellectual vision was small. Yet it was impossible that, having reigned in England,

and looking constantly forward to the day when he should reign in England once more, he should not take a

wider view of politics than was taken by men who had no objects out of Ireland. The few Irish Protestants

who still adhered to him, and the British nobles, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, who had followed him

into exile, implored him to restrain the violence of the rapacious and vindictive senate which he had

convoked. They with peculiar earnestness implored him not to consent to the repeal of the Act of Settlement.

On what security, they asked, could any man invest his money or give a portion to his children, if he could

not rely on positive laws and on the uninterrupted possession of many years? The military adventurers among

whom Cromwell portioned out the soil might perhaps be regarded as wrongdoers. But how large a part of

their estates had passed, by fair purchase, into other hands! How much money had proprietors borrowed on

mortgage, on statute merchant, on statute staple! How many capitalists had, trusting to legislative acts and to

royal promises, come over from England, and bought land in Ulster and Leinster, without the least misgiving

as to the title! What a sum had those capitalists expended, during a quarter of a century, in building; draining,

inclosing, planting! The terms of the compromise which Charles the Second had sanctioned might not be in

all respects just. But was one injustice to be redressed by committing another injustice more monstrous still?

And what effect was likely to be produced in England by the cry of thousands of innocent English families

whom an English king had doomed to ruin? The complaints of such a body of sufferers might delay, might

prevent, the Restoration to which all loyal subjects were eagerly looking forward; and, even if his Majesty

should, in spite of those complaints, be happily restored, he would to the end of his life feel the pernicious

effects of the injustice which evil advisers were now urging him to commit. He would find that, in trying to

quiet one set of malecontents, he had created another. As surely as he yielded to the clamour raised at Dublin

for a repeal of the Act of Settlement, he would, from the day on which he returned to Westminster, be

assailed by as loud and pertinacious a clamour for a repeal of that repeal. He could not but be aware that no

English Parliament, however loyal, would permit such laws as were now passing through the Irish Parliament

to stand. Had he made up his mind to take the part of Ireland against the universal sense of England? If so, to

what could he look forward but another banishment and another deposition? Or would he, when he had

recovered the greater kingdom, revoke the boors by which, in his distress, he had purchased the help of the

smaller? It might seem an insult to him even to suggest that he could harbour the thought of such unprincely,

of such unmanly, perfidy. Yet what other course would be left to him? And was it not better for him to refuse

unreasonable concessions now than to retract those concessions hereafter in a manner which must bring on

him reproaches insupportable to a noble mind? His situation was doubtless embarrassing. Yet in this case, as

in other cases, it would be found that the path of justice was the path of wisdom.225

Though James had, in his speech at the opening of the session, declared against the Act of Settlement, he felt

that these arguments were unanswerable. He held several conferences with the leading members of the House

of Commons, and earnestly recommended moderation. But his exhortations irritated the passions which he

wished to allay. Many of the native gentry held high and violent language. It was impudent, they said, to talk

about the rights of purchasers. How could right spring out of wrong? People who chose to buy property

acquired by injustice must take the consequences of their folly and cupidity. It was clear that the Lower

House was altogether impracticable. James had, four years before, refused to make the smallest concession to

the most obsequious parliament that has ever sat in England; and it might have been expected that the

obstinacy, which he had never wanted when it was a vice, would not have failed him now when it would have

been a virtue. During a short time he seemed determined to act justly. He even talked of dissolving the

parliament. The chiefs of the old Celtic families, on the other hand, said publicly that, if he did not give them

back their inheritance, they would not fight for his. His very soldiers railed on him in the streets of Dublin. At

length he determined to go down himself to the House of Peers, not in his robes and crown, but in the garb in

which he had been used to attend debates at Westminster, and personally to solicit the Lords to put some

check on the violence of the Commons. But just as he was getting into his coach for this purpose he was

stopped by Avaux. Avaux was as zealous as any Irishman for the bills which the Commons were urging

forward. It was enough for him that those bills seemed likely to make the enmity between England and

Ireland irreconcileable. His remonstrances induced James to abstain from openly opposing the repeal of the

Act of Settlement. Still the unfortunate prince continued to cherish some faint hope that the law for which the

Commons were so zealous would be rejected, or at least modified, by the Peers. Lord Granard, one of the few

Protestant noblemen who sate in that parliament, exerted himself strenuously on the side of public faith and

sound policy. The King sent him a message of thanks. "We Protestants," said Granard to Powis who brought

the message, "are few in number. We can do little. His Majesty should try his influence with the Roman

Catholics." "His Majesty," answered Powis with an oath, "dares not say what he thinks." A few days later

James met Granard riding towards the parliament house. "Where are you going, my Lord?" said the King.

"To enter my protest, Sir," answered Granard, "against the repeal of the Act of Settlement." "You are right,"

said the King: "but I am fallen into the hands of people who will ram that and much more down my

James yielded to the will of the Commons; but the unfavourable impression which his short and feeble

resistance had made upon them was not to be removed by his submission. They regarded him with profound

distrust; they considered him as at heart an Englishman; and not a day passed without some indication of this

feeling. They were in no haste to grant him a supply. One party among them planned an address urging him

to dismiss Melfort as an enemy of their nation. Another party drew up a bill for deposing all the Protestant

Bishops, even the four who were then actually sitting in Parliament. It was not without difficulty that Avaux

and Tyrconnel, whose influence in the Lower House far exceeded the King's, could restrain the zeal of the

It is remarkable that, while the King was losing the confidence and good will of the Irish Commons by faintly

defending against them, in one quarter, the institution of property, he was himself, in another quarter,

attacking that institution with a violence, if possible, more reckless than theirs. He soon found that no money

came into his Exchequer. The cause was sufficiently obvious. Trade was at an end. Floating capital had been

withdrawn in great masses from the island. Of the fixed capital much had been destroyed, and the rest was

lying idle. Thousands of those Protestants who were the most industrious and intelligent part of the

population had emigrated to England. Thousands had taken refuge in the places which still held out for

William and Mary. Of the Roman Catholic peasantry who were in the vigour of life the majority had enlisted

in the army or had joined gangs of plunderers. The poverty of the treasury was the necessary effect of the

poverty of the country: public prosperity could be restored only by the restoration of private prosperity; and

private prosperity could be restored only by years of peace and security. James was absurd enough to imagine

that there was a more speedy and efficacious remedy. He could, he conceived, at once extricate himself from

his financial difficulties by the simple process of calling a farthing a shilling. The right of coining was

undoubtedly a flower of the prerogative; and, in his view, the right of coining included the right of debasing

the coin. Pots, pans, knockers of doors, pieces of ordnance which had long been past use, were carried to the

mint. In a short time lumps of base metal, nominally worth near a million sterling, intrinsically worth about a

sixtieth part of that sum, were in circulation. A royal edict declared these pieces to be legal tender in all cases

whatever. A mortgage for a thousand pounds was cleared off by a bag of counters made out of old kettles.

The creditors who complained to the Court of Chancery were told by Fitton to take their money and be gone.

But of all classes the tradesmen of Dublin, who were generally Protestants, were the greatest losers. At first,

of course, they raised their demands: but the magistrates of the city took on themselves to meet this heretical

machination by putting forth a tariff regulating prices. Any man who belonged to the caste now dominant

might walk into a shop, lay on the counter a bit of brass worth threepence, and carry off goods to the value of

half a guinea. Legal redress was out of the question. Indeed the sufferers thought themselves happy if, by the

sacrifice of their stock in trade, they could redeem their limbs and their lives. There was not a baker's shop in

the city round which twenty or thirty soldiers were not constantly prowling. Some persons who refused the

base money were arrested by troopers and carried before the Provost Marshal, who cursed them, swore at

them, locked them up in dark cells, and, by threatening to hang them at their own doors, soon overcame their

resistance. Of all the plagues of that time none made a deeper or a more lasting impression on the minds of

the Protestants of Dublin than the plague of the brass money.228 To the recollection of the confusion and

misery which had been produced by James's coin must be in part ascribed the strenuous opposition which,

thirtyfive years later, large classes, firmly attached to the House of Hanover, offered to the government of

There can be no question that James, in thus altering, by his own authority, the terms of all the contracts in

the kingdom, assumed a power which belonged only to the whole legislature. Yet the Commons did not

remonstrate. There was no power, however unconstitutional, which they were not willing to concede to him,

as long as he used it to crush and plunder the English population. On the other hand, they respected no

prerogative, however ancient, however legitimate, however salutary, if they apprehended that he might use it

to protect the race which they abhorred. They were not satisfied till they had extorted his reluctant consent to

a portentous law, a law without a parallel in the history of civilised countries, the great Act of Attainder.

A list was framed containing between two and three thousand names. At the top was half the peerage of

Ireland. Then came baronets, knights, clergymen, squires, merchants, yeomen, artisans, women, children. No

investigation was made. Any member who wished to rid himself of a creditor, a rival, a private enemy, gave

in the name to the clerk at the table, and it was generally inserted without discussion. The only debate of

which any account has come down to us related to the Earl of Strafford. He had friends in the House who

ventured to offer something in his favour. But a few words from Simon Luttrell settled the question. "I have,"

he said, "heard the King say some hard things of that lord." This was thought sufficient, and the name of

Days were fixed before which those whose names were on the list were required to surrender themselves to

such justice as was then administered to English Protestants in Dublin. If a proscribed person was in Ireland,

he must surrender himself by the tenth of August. If he had left Ireland since the fifth of November 1688, he

must surrender himself by the first of September. If he had left Ireland before the fifth of November 1688, he

must surrender himself by the first of October. If he failed to appear by the appointed day, he was to be

hanged, drawn, and quartered without a trial, and his property was to be confiscated. It might be physically

impossible for him to deliver himself up within the time fixed by the Act. He might be bedridden. He might

be in the West Indies. He might be in prison. Indeed there notoriously were such cases. Among the attainted

Lords was Mountjoy. He had been induced by the villany of Tyrconnel to trust himself at Saint Germains: he

had been thrown into the Bastile: he was still lying there; and the Irish parliament was not ashamed to enact

that, unless he could, within a few weeks, make his escape from his cell, and present himself at Dublin, he

As it was not even pretended that there had been any inquiry into the guilt of those who were thus proscribed,

as not a single one among them had been heard in his own defence, and as it was certain that it would be

physically impossible for many of them to surrender themselves in time, it was clear that nothing but a large

exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy could prevent the perpetration of iniquities so horrible that no

precedent could be found for them even in the lamentable history of the troubles of Ireland. The Commons

therefore determined that the royal prerogative of mercy should be limited. Several regulations were devised

for the purpose of making the passing of pardons difficult and costly: and finally it was enacted that every

pardon granted by his Majesty, after the end of November 1689, to any of the many hundreds of persons who

had been sentenced to death without a trial, should be absolutely void and of none effect. Sir Richard Nagle

came in state to the bar of the Lords and presented the bill with a speech worthy of the occasion. "Many of

the persons here attainted," said he, "have been proved traitors by such evidence as satisfies us. As to the rest

With such reckless barbarity was the list framed that fanatical royalists, who were, at that very time,

hazarding their property, their liberty, their lives, in the cause of James, were not secure from proscription.

The most learned man of whom the Jacobite party could boast was Henry Dodwell, Camdenian Professor in

the University of Oxford. In the cause of hereditary monarchy he shrank from no sacrifice and from no

danger. It was about him that William uttered those memorable words: "He has set his heart on being a

martyr; and I have set my mind on disappointing him." But James was more cruel to friends than William to

foes. Dodwell was a Protestant: he had some property in Connaught: these crimes were sufficient; and he was

set down in the long roll of those who were doomed to the gallows and the quartering block.232

That James would give his assent to a bill which took from him the power of pardoning, seemed to many

persons impossible. He had, four years before, quarrelled with the most loyal of parliaments rather than cede

a prerogative which did not belong to him. It might, therefore, well be expected that he would now have

struggled hard to retain a precious prerogative which had been enjoyed by his predecessors ever since the

origin of the monarchy, and which had never been questioned by the Whigs. The stern look and raised voice

with which he had reprimanded the Tory gentlemen, who, in the language of profound reverence and fervent

affection, implored him not to dispense with the laws, would now have been in place. He might also have

seen that the right course was the wise course. Had he, on this great occasion, had the spirit to declare that he

would not shed the blood of the innocent, and that, even as respected the guilty, he would not divest himself

of the power of tempering judgment with mercy, he would have regained more hearts in England than he

would have lost in Ireland. But it was ever his fate to resist where he should have yielded, and to yield where

he should have resisted. The most wicked of all laws received his sanction; and it is but a very small

That nothing might be wanting to the completeness of this great crime, extreme care was taken to prevent the

persons who were attainted from knowing that they were attainted, till the day of grace fixed in the Act was

passed. The roll of names was not published, but kept carefully locked up in Fitton's closet. Some Protestants,

who still adhered to the cause of James, but who were anxious to know whether any of their friends or

relations had been proscribed, tried hard to obtain a sight of the list; but solicitation, remonstrance, even

bribery, proved vain. Not a single copy got abroad till it was too late for any of the thousands who had been

Towards the close of July James prorogued the Houses. They had sate more than ten weeks; and in that space

of time they had proved most fully that, great as have been the evils which Protestant ascendency has

produced in Ireland, the evils produced by Popish ascendancy would have been greater still. That the

colonists, when they had won the victory, grossly abused it, that their legislation was, during many years,

unjust and tyrannical, is most true. But it is not less true that they never quite came up to the atrocious

Indeed, while James was loudly boasting that he had passed an Act granting entire liberty of conscience to all

sects, a persecution as cruel as that of Languedoc was raging through all the provinces which owned his

authority. It was said by those who wished to find an excuse for him that almost all the Protestants who still

remained in Munster, Connaught, and Leinster were his enemies, and that it was not as schismatics, but as

rebels in heart, who wanted only opportunity to become rebels in act, that he gave them up to be oppressed

and despoiled; and to this excuse some weight might have been allowed if he had strenuously exerted himself

to protect those few colonists, who, though firmly attached to the reformed religion, were still true to the

doctrines of nonresistance and of indefeasible hereditary right. But even these devoted royalists found that

their heresy was in his view a crime for which no services or sacrifices would atone. Three or four noblemen,

members of the Anglican Church, who had welcomed him to Ireland, and had sate in his Parliament,

represented to him that, if the rule which forbade any Protestant to possess any weapon were strictly

enforced, their country houses would be at the mercy of the Rapparees, and obtained from him permission to

keep arms sufficient for a few servants. But Avaux remonstrated. The indulgence, he said, was grossly

abused: these Protestant lords were not to be trusted: they were turning their houses into fortresses: his

Majesty would soon have reason to repent his goodness. These representations prevailed; and Roman

Still harder was the lot of those Protestant clergymen who continued to cling, with desperate fidelity, to the

cause of the Lord's Anointed. Of all the Anglican divines the one who had the largest share of James's good

graces seems to have been Cartwright. Whether Cartwright could long have continued to be a favourite

without being an apostate may be doubted. He died a few weeks after his arrival in Ireland; and

thenceforward his church had no one to plead her cause. Nevertheless a few of her prelates and priests

continued for a time to teach what they had taught in the days of the Exclusion Bill. But it was at the peril of

life or limb that they exercised their functions. Every wearer of a cassock was a mark for the insults and

outrages of soldiers and Rapparees. In the country his house was robbed, and he was fortunate if it was not

burned over his head. He was hunted through the streets of Dublin with cries of "There goes the devil of a

heretic." Sometimes he was knocked down: sometimes he was cudgelled.235 The rulers of the University of

Dublin, trained in the Anglican doctrine of passive obedience, had greeted James on his first arrival at the

Castle, and had been assured by him that he would protect them in the enjoyment of their property and their

privileges. They were now, without any trial, without any accusation, thrust out of their house. The

communion plate of the chapel, the books in the library, the very chairs and beds of the collegians were

seized. Part of the building was turned into a magazine, part into a barrack, part into a prison. Simon Luttrell,

who was Governor of the capital, was, with great difficulty and by powerful intercession, induced to let the

ejected fellows and scholars depart in safety. He at length permitted them to remain at large, with this

condition, that, on pain of death, no three of them should meet together.236 No Protestant divine suffered

more hardships than Doctor William King, Dean of Saint Patrick's. He had been long distinguished by the

fervour with which he had inculcated the duty of passively obeying even the worst rulers. At a later period,

when he had published a defence of the Revolution, and had accepted a mitre from the new government, he

was reminded that he had invoked the divine vengeance on the usurpers, and had declared himself willing to

die a hundred deaths rather than desert the cause of hereditary right. He had said that the true religion had

often been strengthened by persecution, but could never be strengthened by rebellion; that it would be a

glorious day for the Church of England when a whole cartload of her ministers should go to the gallows for

the doctrine of nonresistance; and that his highest ambition was to be one of such a company.237 It is not

improbable that, when he spoke thus, he felt as he spoke. But his principles, though they might perhaps have

held out against the severities and the promises of William, were not proof against the ingratitude of James.

Human nature at last asserted its rights. After King had been repeatedly imprisoned by the government to

which he was devotedly attached, after he had been insulted and threatened in his own choir by the soldiers,

after he had been interdicted from burying in his own churchyard, and from preaching in his own pulpit, after

he had narrowly escaped with life from a musketshot fired at him in the street, he began to think the Whig

theory of government less unreasonable and unchristian than it had once appeared to him, and persuaded

himself that the oppressed Church might lawfully accept deliverance, if God should be pleased, by whatever

In no long time it appeared that James would have done well to hearken to those counsellors who had told

him that the acts by which he was trying to make himself popular in one of his three kingdoms, would make

him odious in the others. It was in some sense fortunate for England that, after he had ceased to reign here, he

continued during more than a year to reign in Ireland. The Revolution had been followed by a reaction of

public feeling in his favour. That reaction, if it had been suffered to proceed uninterrupted, might perhaps not

have ceased till he was again King: but it was violently interrupted by himself. He would not suffer his

people to forget: he would not suffer them to hope: while they were trying to find excuses for his past errors,

and to persuade themselves that he would not repeat these errors, he forced upon them, in their own despite,

the conviction that he was incorrigible, that the sharpest discipline of adversity had taught him nothing, and

that, if they were weak enough to recall him, they would soon have to depose him again. It was in vain that

the Jacobites put forth pamphlets about the cruelty with which he had been treated by those who were nearest

to him in blood, about the imperious temper and uncourteous manners of William, about the favour shown to

the Dutch, about the heavy taxes, about the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, about the dangers which

threatened the Church from the enmity of Puritans and Latitudinarians. James refuted these pamphlets far

more effectually than all the ablest and most eloquent Whig writers united could have done. Every week

came the news that he had passed some new Act for robbing or murdering Protestants. Every colonist who

succeeded in stealing across the sea from Leinster to Holyhead or Bristol, brought fearful reports of the

tyranny under which his brethren groaned. What impression these reports made on the Protestants of our

island may be easily inferred from the fact that they moved the indignation of Ronquillo, a Spaniard and a

bigoted member of the Church of Rome. He informed his Court that, though the English laws against Popery

might seem severe, they were so much mitigated by the prudence and humanity of the Government, that they

caused no annoyance to quiet people; and he took upon himself to assure the Holy See that what a Roman

Catholic suffered in London was nothing when compared with what a Protestant suffered in Ireland.238

The fugitive Englishry found in England warm sympathy and munificent relief. Many were received into the

houses of friends and kinsmen. Many were indebted for the means of subsistence to the liberality of strangers.

Among those who bore a part in this work of mercy, none contributed more largely or less ostentatiously than

the Queen. The House of Commons placed at the King's disposal fifteen thousand pounds for the relief of

those refugees whose wants were most pressing, and requested him to give commissions in the army to those

who were qualified for military employment.239 An Act was also passed enabling beneficed clergymen who

had fled from Ireland to hold preferment in England.240 Yet the interest which the nation felt in these

unfortunate guests was languid when compared with the interest excited by that portion of the Saxon colony

which still maintained in Ulster a desperate conflict against overwhelming odds. On this subject scarcely one

dissentient voice was to be heard in our island. Whigs, Tories, nay even those Jacobites in whom Jacobitism

had not extinguished every patriotic sentiment, gloried in the glory of Enniskillen and Londonderry. The

House of Commons was all of one mind. "This is no time to be counting cost," said honest Birch, who well

remembered the way in which Oliver had made war on the Irish. "Are those brave fellows in Londonderry to

be deserted? If we lose them will not all the world cry shame upon us? A boom across the river! Why have

we not cut the boom in pieces? Are our brethren to perish almost in sight of England, within a few hours'

voyage of our shores?"241 Howe, the most vehement man of one party, declared that the hearts of the people

were set on Ireland. Seymour, the leader of the other party, declared that, though he had not taken part in

setting up the new government, he should cordially support it in all that might be necessary for the

preservation of Ireland.242 The Commons appointed a committee to enquire into the cause of the delays and

miscarriages which had been all but fatal to the Englishry of Ulster. The officers to whose treachery or

cowardice the public ascribed the calamities of Londonderry were put under arrest. Lundy was sent to the

Tower, Cunningham to the Gate House. The agitation of the public mind was in some degree calmed by the

announcement that, before the end of the summer, an army powerful enough to reestablish the English

ascendency in Ireland would be sent across Saint George's Channel, and that Schomberg would be the

General. In the meantime an expedition which was thought to be sufficient for the relief of Londonderry was

despatched from Liverpool under the command of Kirke. The dogged obstinacy with which this man had, in

spite of royal solicitations, adhered to his religion, and the part which he had taken in the Revolution, had

perhaps entitled him to an amnesty for past crimes. But it is difficult to understand why the Government

should have selected for a post of the highest importance an officer who was generally and justly hated, who

had never shown eminent talents for war, and who, both in Africa and in England, had notoriously tolerated

among his soldiers a licentiousness, not only shocking to humanity, but also incompatible with discipline.

On the sixteenth of May, Kirke's troops embarked: on the twenty second they sailed: but contrary winds

made the passage slow, and forced the armament to stop long at the Isle of Man. Meanwhile the Protestants

of Ulster were defending themselves with stubborn courage against a great superiority of force. The

Enniskilleners had never ceased to wage a vigorous partisan war against the native population. Early in May

they marched to encounter a large body of troops from Connaught, who had made an inroad into Donegal.

The Irish were speedily routed, and fled to Sligo with the loss of a hundred and twenty men killed and sixty

taken. Two small pieces of artillery and several horses fell into the hands of the conquerors. Elated by this

success, the Enniskilleners soon invaded the county of Cavan, drove before them fifteen hundred of James's

troops, took and destroyed the castle of Ballincarrig, reputed the strongest in that part of the kingdom, and

carried off the pikes and muskets of the garrison. The next incursion was into Meath. Three thousand oxen

and two thousand sheep were swept away and brought safe to the little island in Lough Erne. These daring

exploits spread terror even to the gates of Dublin. Colonel Hugh Sutherland was ordered to march against

Enniskillen with a regiment of dragoons and two regiments of foot. He carried with him arms for the native

peasantry; and many repaired to his standard. The Enniskilleners did not wait till he came into their

neighbourhood, but advanced to encounter him. He declined an action, and retreated, leaving his stores at

Belturbet under the care of a detachment of three hundred soldiers. The Protestants attacked Belturbet with

vigour, made their way into a lofty house which overlooked the town, and thence opened such a fire that in

two hours the garrison surrendered. Seven hundred muskets, a great quantity of powder, many horses, many

sacks of biscuits, many barrels of meal, were taken, and were sent to Enniskillen. The boats which brought

these precious spoils were joyfully welcomed. The fear of hunger was removed. While the aboriginal

population had, in many counties, altogether neglected the cultivation of the earth, in the expectation, it

should seem, that marauding would prove an inexhaustible resource, the colonists, true to the provident and

industrious character of their race, had, in the midst of war, not omitted carefully to till the soil in the

neighbourhood of their strongholds. The harvest was now not far remote; and, till the harvest, the food taken

Yet, in the midst of success and plenty, the Enniskilleners were tortured by a cruel anxiety for Londonderry.

They were bound to the defenders of that city, not only by religious and national sympathy, but by common

interest. For there could be no doubt that, if Londonderry fell, the whole Irish army would instantly march in

irresistible force upon Lough Erne. Yet what could be done? Some brave men were for making a desperate

attempt to relieve the besieged city; but the odds were too great. Detachments however were sent which

infested the rear of the blockading army, cut off supplies, and, on one occasion, carried away the horses of

three entire troops of cavalry.244 Still the line of posts which surrounded Londonderry by land remained

unbroken. The river was still strictly closed and guarded. Within the walls the distress had become extreme.

So early as the eighth of June horseflesh was almost the only meat which could be purchased; and of

horseflesh the supply was scanty. It was necessary to make up the deficiency with tallow; and even tallow

On the fifteenth of June a gleam of hope appeared. The sentinels on the top of the Cathedral saw sails nine

miles off in the bay of Lough Foyle. Thirty vessels of different sizes were counted. Signals were made from

the steeples and returned from the mast heads, but were imperfectly understood on both sides. At last a

messenger from the fleet eluded the Irish sentinels, dived under the boom, and informed the garrison that

Kirke had arrived from England with troops, arms, ammunition, and provisions, to relieve the city.245

In Londonderry expectation was at the height: but a few hours of feverish joy were followed by weeks of

misery. Kirke thought it unsafe to make any attempt, either by land or by water, on the lines of the besiegers,

and retired to the entrance of Lough Foyle, where, during several weeks, he lay inactive.

And now the pressure of famine became every day more severe. A strict search was made in all the recesses

of all the houses of the city; and some provisions, which had been concealed in cellars by people who had

since died or made their escape, were discovered and carried to the magazines. The stock of cannon balls was

almost exhausted; and their place was supplied by brickbats coated with lead. Pestilence began, as usual, to

make its appearance in the train of hunger. Fifteen officers died of fever in one day. The Governor Baker was

among those who sank under the disease. His place was supplied by Colonel John Mitchelburne.246

Meanwhile it was known at Dublin that Kirke and his squadron were on the coast of Ulster. The alarm was

great at the Castle. Even before this news arrived, Avaux had given it as his opinion that Richard Hamilton

was unequal to the difficulties of the situation. It had therefore been resolved that Rosen should take the chief

On the nineteenth of June he arrived at the head quarter of the besieging army. At first he attempted to

undermine the walls; but his plan was discovered; and he was compelled to abandon it after a sharp fight, in

which more than a hundred of his men were slain. Then his fury rose to a strange pitch. He, an old soldier, a

Marshal of France in expectancy, trained in the school of the greatest generals, accustomed, during many

years, to scientific war, to be baffled by a mob of country gentlemen, farmers, shopkeepers, who were

protected only by a wall which any good engineer would at once have pronounced untenable! He raved, he

blasphemed, in a language of his own, made up of all the dialects spoken from the Baltic to the Atlantic. He

would raze the city to the ground: he would spare no living thing; no, not the young girls; not the babies at

the breast. As to the leaders, death was too light a punishment for them: he would rack them: he would roast

them alive. In his rage he ordered a shell to be flung into the town with a letter containing a horrible menace.

He would, he said, gather into one body all the Protestants who had remained at their homes between

Charlemont and the sea, old men, women, children, many of them near in blood and affection to the

defenders of Londonderry. No protection, whatever might be the authority by which it had been given, should

be respected. The multitude thus brought together should be driven under the walls of Londonderry, and

should there be starved to death in the sight of their countrymen, their friends, their kinsmen. This was no idle

threat. Parties were instantly sent out in all directions to collect victims. At dawn, on the morning of the

second of July, hundreds of Protestants, who were charged with no crime, who were incapable of bearing

arms, and many of whom had protections granted by James, were dragged to the gates of the city. It was

imagined that the piteous sight would quell the spirit of the colonists. But the only effect was to rouse that

spirit to still greater energy. An order was immediately put forth that no man should utter the word Surrender

on pain of death; and no man uttered that word. Several prisoners of high rank were in the town. Hitherto

they had been well treated, and had received as good rations as were measured out to the garrison. They were

now, closely confined. A gallows was erected on one of the bastion; and a message was conveyed to Rosen,

requesting him to send a confessor instantly to prepare his friends for death. The prisoners in great dismay

wrote to the savage Livonian, but received no answer. They then addressed themselves to their countryman,

Richard Hamilton. They were willing, they said, to shed their blood for their King; but they thought it hard to

die the ignominious death of thieves in consequence of the barbarity of their own companions in arms.

Hamilton, though a man of lax principles, was not cruel. He had been disgusted by the inhumanity of Rosen,

but, being only second in command, could not venture to express publicly all that he thought. He however

remonstrated strongly. Some Irish officers felt on this occasion as it was natural that brave men should feel,

and declared, weeping with pity and indignation, that they should never cease to have in their ears the cries of

the poor women and children who had been driven at the point of the pike to die of famine between the camp

and the city. Rosen persisted during fortyeight hours. In that time many unhappy creatures perished: but

Londonderry held out as resolutely as ever; and he saw that his crime was likely to produce nothing but

hatred and obloquy. He at length gave way, and suffered the survivors to withdraw. The garrison then took

When the tidings of these events reached Dublin, James, though by no means prone to compassion, was

startled by an atrocity of which the civil wars of England had furnished no example, and was displeased by

learning that protections, given by his authority, and guaranteed by his honour, had been publicly declared to

be nullities. He complained to the French ambassador, and said, with a warmth which the occasion fully

justified, that Rosen was a barbarous Muscovite. Melfort could not refrain from adding that, if Rosen had

been an Englishman, he would have been hanged. Avaux was utterly unable to understand this effeminate

sensibility. In his opinion, nothing had been done that was at all reprehensible; and he had some difficulty in

commanding himself when he heard the King and the secretary blame, in strong language, an act of

wholesome severity.249 In truth the French ambassador and the French general were well paired. There was

a great difference doubtless, in appearance and manner, between the handsome, graceful, and refined

diplomatist, whose dexterity and suavity had been renowned at the most polite courts of Europe, and the

military adventurer, whose look and voice reminded all who came near him that he had been born in a half

savage country, that he had risen from the ranks, and that he had once been sentenced to death for marauding.

But the heart of the courtier was really even more callous than that of the soldier.

Rosen was recalled to Dublin; and Richard Hamilton was again left in the chief command. He tried gentler

means than those which had brought so much reproach on his predecessor. No trick, no lie, which was

thought likely to discourage the starving garrison was spared. One day a great shout was raised by the whole

Irish camp. The defenders of Londonderry were soon informed that the army of James was rejoicing on

account of the fall of Enniskillen. They were told that they had now no chance of being relieved, and were

exhorted to save their lives by capitulating. They consented to negotiate. But what they asked was, that they

should be permitted to depart armed and in military array, by land or by water at their choice. They demanded

hostages for the exact fulfilment of these conditions, and insisted that the hostages should be sent on board of

the fleet which lay in Lough Foyle. Such terms Hamilton durst not grant: the Governors would abate nothing:

By this time July was far advanced; and the state of the city was, hour by hour, becoming more frightful. The

number of the inhabitants had been thinned more by famine and disease than by the fire of the enemy. Yet

that fire was sharper and more constant than ever. One of the gates was beaten in: one of the bastions was laid

in ruins; but the breaches made by day were repaired by night with indefatigable activity. Every attack was

still repelled. But the fighting men of the garrison were so much exhausted that they could scarcely keep their

legs. Several of them, in the act of striking at the enemy, fell down from mere weakness. A very small

quantity of grain remained, and was doled out by mouthfuls. The stock of salted hides was considerable, and

by gnawing them the garrison appeased the rage of hunger. Dogs, fattened on the blood of the slain who lay

unburied round the town, were luxuries which few could afford to purchase. The price of a whelp's paw was

five shillings and sixpence. Nine horses were still alive, and but barely alive. They were so lean that little

meat was likely to be found upon them. It was, however, determined to slaughter them for food. The people

perished so fast that it was impossible for the survivors to perform the rites of sepulture. There was scarcely a

cellar in which some corpse was not decaying. Such was the extremity of distress, that the rats who came to

feast in those hideous dens were eagerly hunted and greedily devoured. A small fish, caught in the river, was

not to be purchased with money. The only price for which such a treasure could be obtained was some

handfuls of oatmeal. Leprosies, such as strange and unwholesome diet engenders, made existence a constant

torment. The whole city was poisoned by the stench exhaled from the bodies of the dead and of the half dead.

That there should be fits of discontent and insubordination among men enduring such misery was inevitable.

At one moment it was suspected that Walker had laid up somewhere a secret store of food, and was revelling

in private, while he exhorted others to suffer resolutely for the good cause. His house was strictly examined:

his innocence was fully proved: he regained his popularity; and the garrison, with death in near prospect,

thronged to the cathedral to hear him preach, drank in his earnest eloquence with delight, and went forth from

the house of God with haggard faces and tottering steps, but with spirit still unsubdued. There were, indeed,

some secret plottings. A very few obscure traitors opened communications with the enemy. But it was

necessary that all such dealings should be carefully concealed. None dared to utter publicly any words save

words of defiance and stubborn resolution. Even in that extremity the general cry was "No surrender." And

there were not wanting voices which, in low tones, added, "First the horses and hides; and then the prisoners;

and then each other." It was afterwards related, half in jest, yet not without a horrible mixture of earnest, that

a corpulent citizen, whose bulk presented a strange contrast to the skeletons which surrounded him, thought it

expedient to conceal himself from the numerous eyes which followed him with cannibal looks whenever he

It was no slight aggravation of the sufferings of the garrison that all this tune the English ships were seen far

off in Lough Foyle. Communication between the fleet and the city was almost impossible. One diver who had

attempted to pass the boom was drowned. Another was hanged. The language of signals was hardly

intelligible. On the thirteenth of July, however, a piece of paper sewed up in a cloth button came to Walker's

hands. It was a letter from Kirke, and contained assurances of speedy relief. But more than a fortnight of

intense misery had since elapsed; and the hearts of the most sanguine were sick with deferred hope. By no art

Just at this time Kirke received a despatch from England, which contained positive orders that Londonderry

should be relieved. He accordingly determined to make an attempt which, as far as appears, he might have

Among the merchant ships which had come to Lough Foyle under his convoy was one called the Mountjoy.

The master, Micaiah Browning, a native of Londonderry, had brought from England a large cargo of

provisions. He had, it is said, repeatedly remonstrated against the inaction of the armament. He now eagerly

volunteered to take the first risk of succouring his fellow citizens; and his offer was accepted. Andrew

Douglas, master of the Phoenix, who had on board a great quantity of meal from Scotland, was willing to

share the danger and the honour. The two merchantmen were to be escorted by the Dartmouth frigate of

thirtysix guns, commanded by Captain John Leake, afterwards an admiral of great fame.

It was the thirtieth of July. The sun had just set: the evening sermon in the cathedral was over; and the

heartbroken congregation had separated, when the sentinels on the tower saw the sails of three vessels

coming up the Foyle. Soon there was a stir in the Irish camp. The besiegers were on the alert for miles along

both shores. The ships were in extreme peril: for the river was low; and the only navigable channel Tan very

near to the left bank, where the head quarters of the enemy had been fixed, and where the batteries were most

numerous. Leake performed his duty with a skill and spirit worthy of his noble profession, exposed his frigate

to cover the merchantmen, and used his guns with great effect. At length the little squadron came to the place

of peril. Then the Mountjoy took the lead, and went right at the bottom. The huge barricade cracked and gave

way: but the shock was such that the Mountjoy rebounded, and stuck in the mud. A yell of triumph rose from

the banks: the Irish rushed to their boats, and were preparing to board; but the Dartmouth poured on them a

well directed broadside, which threw them into disorder. Just then the Phoenix dashed at the breach which the

Mountjoy had made, and was in a moment within the fence. Meantime the tide was rising fast. The Mountjoy

began to move, and soon passed safe through the broken stakes and floating spars. But her brave master was

no more. A shot from one of the batteries had struck him; and he died by the most enviable of all deaths, in

sight of the city which was his birthplace, which was his home, and which had just been saved by his courage

and selfdevotion from the most frightful form of destruction. The night had closed in before the conflict at

the boom began; but the flash of the guns was seen, and the noise heard, by the lean and ghastly multitude

which covered the walls of the city. When the Mountjoy grounded, and when the shout of triumph rose from

the Irish on both sides of the river, the hearts of the besieged died within them. One who endured the

unutterable anguish of that moment has told that they looked fearfully livid in each other's eyes. Even after

the barricade had been passed, there was a terrible half hour of suspense. It was ten o'clock before the ships

arrived at the quay. The whole population was there to welcome them. A screen made of casks filled with

earth was hastily thrown up to protect the landing place from the batteries on the other side of the river; and

then the work of unloading began. First were rolled on shore barrels containing six thousand bushels of meal.

Then came great cheeses, casks of beef, flitches of bacon, kegs of butter, sacks of Pease and biscuit, ankers of

brandy. Not many hours before, half a pound of tallow and three quarters of a pound of salted hide had been

weighed out with niggardly care to every fighting man. The ration which each now received was three

pounds of flour, two pounds of beef, and a pint of Pease. It is easy to imagine with what tears grace was said

over the suppers of that evening. There was little sleep on either side of the wall. The bonfires shone bright

along the whole circuit of the ramparts. The Irish guns continued to roar all night; and all night the bells of

the rescued city made answer to the Irish guns with a peal of joyous defiance. Through the whole of the

thirtyfirst of July the batteries of the enemy continued to play. But, soon after the sun had again gone down,

flames were seen arising from the camp; and, when the first of August dawned, a line of smoking ruins

marked the site lately occupied by the huts of the besiegers; and the citizens saw far off the long column of

pikes and standards retreating up the left bank of the Foyle towards Strabane.254

So ended this great siege, the most memorable in the annals of the British isles. It had lasted a hundred and

five days. The garrison had been reduced from about seven thousand effective men to about three thousand.

The loss of the besiegers cannot be precisely ascertained. Walker estimated it at eight thousand men. It is

certain from the despatches of Avaux that the regiments which returned from the blockade had been so much

thinned that many of them were not more than two hundred strong. Of thirtysix French gunners who had

superintended the cannonading, thirtyone had been killed or disabled.255 The means both of attack and of

defence had undoubtedly been such as would have moved the great warriors of the Continent to laughter; and

this is the very circumstance which gives so peculiar an interest to the history of the contest. It was a contest,

not between engineers, but between nations; and the victory remained with the nation which, though inferior

in number, was superior in civilisation, in capacity for selfgovernment, and in stubbornness of resolution.256

As soon as it was known that the Irish army had retired, a deputation from the city hastened to Lough Foyle,

and invited Kirk to take the command. He came accompanied by a long train of officers, and was received in

state by the two Governors, who delivered up to him the authority which, under the pressure of necessity,

they had assumed. He remained only a few days; but he had time to show enough of the incurable vices of his

character to disgust a population distinguished by austere morals and ardent public spirit. There was,

however, no outbreak. The city was in the highest good humour. Such quantities of provisions had been

landed from the fleet, that there was in every house a plenty never before known. A few days earlier a man

had been glad to obtain for twenty pence a mouthful of carrion scraped from the bones of a starved horse. A

pound of good beef was now sold for three halfpence. Meanwhile all hands were busied in removing corpses

which had been thinly covered with earth, in filling up the holes which the shells had ploughed in the ground,

and in repairing the battered roofs of the houses. The recollection of past dangers and privations, and the

consciousness of having deserved well of the English nation and of all Protestant Churches, swelled the

hearts of the townspeople with honest pride. That pride grew stronger when they received from William a

letter acknowledging, in the most affectionate language, the debt which he owed to the brave and trusty

citizens of his good city. The whole population crowded to the Diamond to hear the royal epistle read. At the

close all the guns on the ramparts sent forth a voice of joy: all the ships in the river made answer: barrels of

ale were broken up; and the health of their Majesties was drunk with shouts and volleys of musketry.

Five generations have since passed away; and still the wall of Londonderry is to the Protestants of Ulster

what the trophy of Marathon was to the Athenians. A lofty pillar, rising from a bastion which bore during

many weeks the heaviest fire of the enemy, is seen far up and far down the Foyle. On the summit is the statue

of Walker, such as when, in the last and most terrible emergency, his eloquence roused the fainting courage

of his brethren. In one hand he grasps a Bible. The other, pointing down the river, seems to direct the eyes of

his famished audience to the English topmasts in the distant bay. Such a monument was well deserved: yet it

was scarcely needed: for in truth the whole city is to this day a monument of the great deliverance. The wall

is carefully preserved; nor would any plea of health or convenience be held by the inhabitants sufficient to

justify the demolition of that sacred enclosure which, in the evil time, gave shelter to their race and their

religion.257 The summit of the ramparts forms a pleasant walk. The bastions have been turned into little

gardens. Here and there, among the shrubs and flowers, may be seen the old culverins which scattered bricks,

cased with lead, among the Irish ranks. One antique gun, the gift of the Fishmongers of London, was

distinguished, during the hundred and five memorable days, by the loudness of its report, and still bears the

name of Roaring Meg. The cathedral is filled with relics and trophies. In the vestibule is a huge shell, one of

many hundreds of shells which were thrown into the city. Over the altar are still seen the French flagstaves,

taken by the garrison in a desperate sally. The white ensigns of the House of Bourbon have long been dust:

but their place has been supplied by new banners, the work of the fairest hands of Ulster. The anniversary of

the day on which the gates were closed, and the anniversary of the day on which the siege was raised, have

been down to our own time celebrated by salutes, processions, banquets, and sermons: Lundy has been

executed in effigy; and the sword, said by tradition to be that of Maumont, has, on great occasions, been

carried in triumph. There is still a Walker Club and a Murray Club. The humble tombs of the Protestant

captains have been carefully sought out, repaired, and embellished. It is impossible not to respect the

sentiment which indicates itself by these tokens. It is a sentiment which belongs to the higher and purer part

of human nature, and which adds not a little to the strength of states. A people which takes no pride in the

noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve any thing worthy to be remembered with pride by

remote descendants. Yet it is impossible for the moralist or the statesman to look with unmixed complacency

on the solemnities with which Londonderry commemorates her deliverance, and on the honours which she

pays to those who saved her. Unhappily the animosities of her brave champions have descended with their

glory. The faults which are ordinarily found in dominant castes and dominant sects have not seldom shown

themselves without disguise at her festivities; and even with the expressions of pious gratitude which have

resounded from her pulpits have too often been mingled words of wrath and defiance.

The Irish army which had retreated to Strabane remained there but a very short time. The spirit of the troops

had been depressed by their recent failure, and was soon completely cowed by the news of a great disaster in

Three weeks before this time the Duke of Berwick had gained an advantage over a detachment of the

Enniskilleners, and had, by their own confession, killed or taken more than fifty of them. They were in hopes

of obtaining some assistance from Kirke, to whom they had sent a deputation; and they still persisted in

rejecting all terms offered by the enemy. It was therefore determined at Dublin that an attack should be made

upon them from several quarters at once. Macarthy, who had been rewarded for his services in Munster with

the title of Viscount Mountcashel, marched towards Lough Erne from the east with three regiments of foot,

two regiments of dragoons, and some troops of cavalry. A considerable force, which lay encamped near the

mouth of the river Drowes, was at the same time to advance from the west. The Duke of Berwick was to

come from the north, with such horse and dragoons as could be spared from the army which was besieging

Londonderry. The Enniskilleners were not fully apprised of the whole plan which had been laid for their

destruction; but they knew that Macarthy was on the road with a force exceeding any which they could bring

into the field. Their anxiety was in some degree relieved by the return of the deputation which they had sent

to Kirke. Kirke could spare no soldiers; but he had sent some arms, some ammunition, and some experienced

officers, of whom the chief were Colonel Wolseley and Lieutenant Colonel Berry. These officers had come

by sea round the coast of Donegal, and had run up the Line. On Sunday, the twentyninth of July, it was

known that their boat was approaching the island of Enniskillen. The whole population, male and female,

came to the shore to greet them. It was with difficulty, that they made their way to the Castle through the

crowds which hung on them, blessing God that dear old England had not quite forgotten the Englishmen who

Wolseley seems to have been in every respect well qualified for his post. He was a stanch Protestant, had

distinguished himself among the Yorkshiremen who rose up for the Prince of Orange and a free Parliament,

and had, if he is not belied, proved his zeal for liberty and pure religion, by causing the Mayor of

Scarborough, who had made a speech in favour of King James, to be brought into the market place and well

tossed there in a blanket.258 This vehement hatred of Popery was, in the estimation of the men of

Enniskillen, the first of all qualifications for command: and Wolseley had other and more important

qualifications. Though himself regularly bred to war, he seems to have had a peculiar aptitude for the

management of irregular troops. He had scarcely taken on himself the chief command when he received

notice that Mountcashel had laid siege to the Castle of Crum. Crum was the frontier garrison of the

Protestants of Fermanagh. The ruins of the old fortifications are now among the attractions of a beautiful

pleasureground, situated on a woody promontory which overlooks Lough Erne. Wolseley determined to raise

the siege. He sent Berry forward with such troops as could be instantly put in motion, and promised to follow

Berry, after marching some miles, encountered thirteen companies of Macarthy's dragoons commanded by

Anthony, the most brilliant and accomplished of all who bore the name of Hamilton, but much less successful

as a soldier than as a courtier, a lover, and a writer. Hamilton's dragoons ran at the first fire: he was severely

wounded; and his second in command was shot dead. Macarthy soon came up to support Hamilton; and at the

same time Wolseley came up to support Berry. The hostile armies were now in presence of each other.

Macarthy had above five thousand men and several pieces of artillery. The Enniskilleners were under three

thousand; and they had marched in such haste that they had brought only one day's provisions. It was

therefore absolutely necessary for them either to fight instantly or to retreat. Wolseley determined to consult

the men; and this determination, which, in ordinary circumstances, would have been most unworthy of a

general, was fully justified by the peculiar composition and temper of the little army, an army made up of

gentlemen and yeomen fighting, not for pay, but for their lands, their wives, their children, and their God.

The ranks were drawn up under arms; and the question was put, "Advance or Retreat?" The answer was an

universal shout of "Advance." Wolseley gave out the word, "No Popery." It was received with loud applause.

He instantly made his dispositions for an attack. As he approached, the enemy, to his great surprise, began to

retire. The Enniskilleners were eager to pursue with all speed: but their commander, suspecting a snare,

restrained their ardour, and positively forbade them to break their ranks. Thus one army retreated and the

other followed, in good order, through the little town of Newton Butler. About a mile from that town the Irish

faced about, and made a stand. Their position was well chosen. They were drawn up on a hill at the foot of

which lay a deep bog. A narrow paved causeway which ran across the bog was the only road by which the

cavalry of the Enniskilleners could advance; for on the right and left were pools, turf pits, and quagmires,

which afforded no footing to horses. Macarthy placed his cannon in such a manner as to sweep this

Wolseley ordered his infantry to the attack. They struggled through the bog, made their way to firm ground,

and rushed on the guns. There was then a short and desperate fight. The Irish cannoneers stood gallantly to

their pieces till they were cut down to a man. The Enniskillen horse, no longer in danger of being mowed

down by the fire of the artillery, came fast up the causeway. The Irish dragoons who had run away in the

morning were smitten with another panic, and, without striking a blow, galloped from the field. The horse

followed the example. Such was the terror of the fugitives that many of them spurred hard till their beasts fell

down, and then continued to fly on foot, throwing away carbines, swords, and even coats as incumbrances.

The infantry, seeing themselves deserted, flung down their pikes and muskets and ran for their lives. The

conquerors now gave loose to that ferocity which has seldom failed to disgrace the civil wars of Ireland. The

butchery was terrible. Near fifteen hundred of the vanquished were put to the sword. About five hundred

more, in ignorance of the country, took a road which led to Lough Erne. The lake was before them: the

enemy behind: they plunged into the waters and perished there. Macarthy, abandoned by his troops, rushed

into the midst of the pursuers and very nearly found the death which he sought. He was wounded in several

places: he was struck to the ground; and in another moment his brains would have been knocked out with the

butt end of a musket, when he was recognised and saved. The colonists lost only twenty men killed and fifty

wounded. They took four hundred prisoners, seven pieces of cannon, fourteen barrels of powder, all the

The battle of Newton Butler was won on the same afternoon on which the boom thrown over the Foyle was

broken. At Strabane the news met the Celtic army which was retreating from Londonderry. All was terror and

confusion: the tents were struck: the military stores were flung by waggon loads into the waters of the

Mourne; and the dismayed Irish, leaving many sick and wounded to the mercy of the victorious Protestants,

fled to Omagh, and thence to Charlemont. Sarsfield, who commanded at Sligo, found it necessary to abandon

that town, which was instantly occupied by a detachment of Kirke's troops.260 Dublin was in consternation.

James dropped words which indicated an intention of flying to the Continent. Evil tidings indeed came fast

upon him. Almost at the same time at which he learned that one of his armies had raised the siege of

Londonderry, and that another had been routed at Newton Butler, he received intelligence scarcely less

It is now necessary to trace the progress of those events to which Scotland owes her political and her religious

The Revolution more violent in Scotland than in England Elections for the Convention; Rabbling of the

Episcopal Clergy State of EdinburghQuestion of an Union between England and Scotland

raisedWish of the English Low Churchmen to preserve Episcopacy in ScotlandOpinions of William

about Church Government in ScotlandComparative Strength of Religious Parties in ScotlandLetter from

William to the Scotch Convention William's Instructions to his Agents in Scotland; the Dalrymples

MelvilleJames's Agents in Scotland: Dundee; BalcarrasMeeting of the ConventionHamilton elected

PresidentCommittee of Elections; Edinburgh Castle summonedDundee threatened by the

DundeeTumultuous Sitting of the ConventionA Committee appointed to frame a Plan of Government

Resolutions proposed by the CommitteeWilliam and Mary proclaimed; the Claim of Right; Abolition of

EpiscopacyTorture William and Mary accept the Crown of ScotlandDiscontent of the

CovenantersMinisterial Arrangements in ScotlandHamilton; CrawfordThe Dalrymples; Lockhart;

SaltounWar breaks out in the Highlands; State of the Highlands Peculiar Nature of Jacobitism in the

HighlandsJealousy of the Ascendency of the CampbellsThe Stewarts and MacnaghtensThe

Macleans; the Camerons: LochielThe Macdonalds; Feud between the Macdonalds and Mackintoshes;

InvernessInverness threatened by Macdonald of KeppochDundee appears in Keppoch's Camp

Insurrection of the Clans hostile to the CampbellsTarbet's Advice to the GovernmentIndecisive

Campaign in the Highlands Military Character of the HighlandersQuarrels in the Highland

ArmyDundee applies to James for Assistance; the War in the Highlands suspendedScruples of the

Covenanters about taking Arms for King WilliamThe Cameronian Regiment raisedEdinburgh Castle

surrendersSession of Parliament at EdinburghAscendancy of the ClubTroubles in AtholThe War

breaks out again in the HighlandsDeath of DundeeRetreat of MackayEffect of the Battle of

Killiecrankie; the Scottish Parliament adjournedThe Highland Army reinforcedSkirmish at Saint

Johnston'sDisorders in the Highland ArmyMackay's Advice disregarded by the Scotch MinistersThe

Cameronians stationed at DunkeldThe Highlanders attack the Cameronians and are repulsedDissolution

THE violence of revolutions is generally proportioned to the degree of the maladministration which has

produced them. It is therefore not strange that the government of Scotland, having been during many years far

more oppressive and corrupt than the government of England, should have fallen with a far heavier ruin. The

movement against the last king of the House of Stuart was in England conservative, in Scotland destructive.

The English complained, not of the law, but of the violation of the law. They rose up against the first

magistrate merely in order to assert the supremacy of the law. They were for the most part strongly attached

to the Church established by law. Even in applying that extraordinary remedy to which an extraordinary

emergency compelled them to have recourse, they deviated as little as possible from the ordinary methods

prescribed by the law. The Convention which met at Westminster, though summoned by irregular writs, was

constituted on the exact model of a regular Parliament. No man was invited to the Upper House whose right

to sit there was not clear. The knights and burgesses were chosen by those electors who would have been

entitled to choose the members of a House of Commons called under the great seal. The franchises of the

forty shilling freeholder, of the householder paying scot and lot, of the burgage tenant, of the liveryman of

London, of the Master of Arts of Oxford, were respected. The sense of the constituent bodies was taken with

as little violence on the part of mobs, with as little trickery on the part of returning officers, as at any general

election of that age. When at length the Estates met, their deliberations were carried on with perfect freedom

and in strict accordance with ancient forms. There was indeed, after the first flight of James, an alarming

anarchy in London and in some parts of the country. But that anarchy nowhere lasted longer than fortyeight

hours. From the day on which William reached Saint James's, not even the most unpopular agents of the

fallen government, not even the ministers of the Roman Catholic Church, had any thing to fear from the fury

In Scotland the course of events was very different. There the law itself was a grievance; and James had

perhaps incurred more unpopularity by enforcing it than by violating it. The Church established by law was

the most odious institution in the realm. The tribunals had pronounced some sentences so flagitious, the

Parliament had passed some acts so oppressive, that, unless those sentences and those Acts were treated as

nullities, it would be impossible to bring together a Convention commanding the public respect and

expressing the public opinion. It was hardly to be expected, for example, that the Whigs, in this day of their

power, would endure to see their hereditary leader, the son of a martyr, the grandson of a martyr, excluded

from the Parliament House in which nine of his ancestors had sate as Earls of Argyle, and excluded by a

judgment on which the whole kingdom cried shame. Still less was it to be expected that they would suffer the

election of members for counties and towns to be conducted according to the provisions of the existing law.

For under the existing law no elector could vote without swearing that he renounced the Covenant, and that

he acknowledged the Royal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical.261 Such an oath no rigid Presbyterian could

take. If such an oath had been exacted, the constituent bodies would have been merely small knots of

prelatists: the business of devising securities against oppression would have been left to the oppressors; and

the great party which had been most active in effecting the Revolution would, in an assembly sprung from the

William saw that he must not think of paying to the laws of Scotland that scrupulous respect which he had

wisely and righteously paid to the laws of England. It was absolutely necessary that he should determine by

his own authority how that Convention which was to meet at Edinburgh should be chosen, and that he should

assume the power of annulling some judgments and some statutes. He accordingly summoned to the

parliament house several Lords who had been deprived of their honours by sentences which the general voice

loudly condemned as unjust; and he took on himself to dispense with the Act which deprived Presbyterians of

The consequence was that the choice of almost all the shires and burghs fell on Whig candidates. The

defeated party complained loudly of foul play, of the rudeness of the populace, and of the partiality of the

presiding magistrates; and these complaints were in many cases well founded. It is not under such rulers as

Nor was it only at the elections that the popular feeling, so long and so severely compressed, exploded with

violence. The heads and the hands of the martyred Whigs were taken down from the gates of Edinburgh,

carried in procession by great multitudes to the cemeteries, and laid in the earth with solemn respect.264 It

would have been well if the public enthusiasm had manifested itself in no less praiseworthy form. Unhappily

throughout a large part of Scotland the clergy of the Established Church were, to use the phrase then

common, rabbled. The morning of Christmas day was fixed for the commencement of these outrages. For

nothing disgusted the rigid Covenanter more than the reverence paid by the prelatist to the ancient holidays of

the Church. That such reverence may be carried to an absurd extreme is true. But a philosopher may perhaps

be inclined to think the opposite extreme not less absurd, and may ask why religion should reject the aid of

associations which exist in every nation sufficiently civilised to have a calendar, and which are found by

experience to have a powerful and often a salutary effect. The Puritan, who was, in general, but too ready to

follow precedents and analogies drawn from the history and jurisprudence of the Jews, might have found in

the Old Testament quite as clear warrant for keeping festivals in honour of great events as for assassinating

bishops and refusing quarter to captives. He certainly did not learn from his master, Calvin, to hold such

festivals in abhorrence; for it was in consequence of the strenuous exertions of Calvin that Christmas was,

after an interval of some years, again observed by the citizens of Geneva.265 But there had arisen in Scotland

Calvinists who were to Calvin what Calvin was to Laud. To these austere fanatics a holiday was an object of

positive disgust and hatred. They long continued in their solemn manifestoes to reckon it among the sins

which would one day bring down some fearful judgment on the land that the Court of Session took a vacation

On Christmas day, therefore, the Covenanters held armed musters by concert in many parts of the western

shires. Each band marched to the nearest manse, and sacked the cellar and larder of the minister, which at that

season were probably better stocked than usual. The priest of Baal was reviled and insulted, sometimes

beaten, sometimes ducked. His furniture was thrown out of the windows; his wife and children turned out of

doors in the snow. He was then carried to the market place, and exposed during some time as a malefactor.

His gown was torn to shreds over his head: if he had a prayer book in his pocket it was burned; and he was

dismissed with a charge, never, as he valued his life, to officiate in the parish again. The work of reformation

having been thus completed, the reformers locked up the church and departed with the keys. In justice to

these men it must be owned that they had suffered such oppression as may excuse, though it cannot justify,

their violence; and that, though they were rude even to brutality, they do not appear to have been guilty of

The disorder spread fast. In Ayrshire, Clydesdale, Nithisdale, Annandale, every parish was visited by these

turbulent zealots. About two hundred curatesso the episcopal parish priests were calledwere expelled.

The graver Covenanters, while they applauded the fervour of their riotous brethren, were apprehensive that

proceedings so irregular might give scandal, and learned, with especial concern, that here and there an Achan

had disgraced the good cause by stooping to plunder the Canaanites whom he ought only to have smitten. A

general meeting of ministers and elders was called for the purpose of preventing such discreditable excesses.

In this meeting it was determined that, for the future, the ejection of the established clergy should be

performed in a more ceremonious manner. A form of notice was drawn up and served on every curate in the

Western Lowlands who had not yet been rabbled. This notice was simply a threatening letter, commanding

The Scottish Bishops, in great dismay, sent the Dean of Glasgow to plead the cause of their persecuted

Church at Westminster. The outrages committed by the Covenanters were in the highest degree offensive to

William, who had, in the south of the island, protected even Benedictines and Franciscans from insult and

spoliation. But, though he had, at the request of a large number of the noblemen and gentlemen of Scotland,

taken on himself provisionally the executive administration of that kingdom, the means of maintaining order

there were not at his command. He had not a single regiment north of the Tweed, or indeed within many

miles of that river. It was vain to hope that mere words would quiet a nation which had not, in any age, been

very amenable to control, and which was now agitated by hopes and resentments, such as great revolutions,

following great oppressions, naturally engender. A proclamation was however put forth, directing that all

people should lay down their arms, and that, till the Convention should have settled the government, the

clergy of the Established Church should be suffered to reside on their cures without molestation. But this

proclamation, not being supported by troops, was very little regarded. On the very day after it was published

at Glasgow, the venerable Cathedral of that city, almost the only fine church of the middle ages which stands

uninjured in Scotland, was attacked by a crowd of Presbyterians from the meeting houses, with whom were

mingled many of their fiercer brethren from the hills. It was a Sunday; but to rabble a congregation of

prelatists was held to be a work of necessity and mercy. The worshippers were dispersed, beaten, and pelted

with snowballs. It was indeed asserted that some wounds were inflicted with much more formidable

Edinburgh, the seat of government, was in a state of anarchy. The Castle, which commanded the whole city,

was still held for James by the Duke of Gordon. The common people were generally Whigs. The College of

justice, a great forensic society composed of judges, advocates, writers to the signet, and solicitors, was the

stronghold of Toryism: for a rigid test had during some years excluded Presbyterians from all the departments

of the legal profession. The lawyers, some hundreds in number, formed themselves into a battalion of

infantry, and for a time effectually kept down the multitude. They paid, however, so much respect to

William's authority as to disband themselves when his proclamation was published. But the example of

obedience which they had set was not imitated. Scarcely had they laid down their weapons, when

Covenanters from the west, who had done all that was to be done in the way of pelting and hustling the

curates of their own neighbourhood, came dropping into Edinburgh, by tens and twenties, for the purpose of

protecting, or, if need should be, of overawing the Convention. Glasgow alone sent four hundred of these

men. It could hardly be doubted that they were directed by some leader of great weight. They showed

themselves little in any public place: but it was known that every cellar was filled with them; and it might

well be apprehended that, at the first signal, they would pour forth from their caverns, and appear armed

It might have been expected that every patriotic and enlightened Scotchman would have earnestly desired to

see the agitation appeased, and some government established which might be able to protect property and to

enforce the law. An imperfect settlement which could be speedily made might well appear to such a man

preferable to a perfect settlement which must be the work of time. Just at this moment, however, a party,

strong both in numbers and in abilities, raised a new and most important question, which seemed not unlikely

to prolong the interregnum till the autumn. This party maintained that the Estates ought not immediately to

declare William and Mary King and Queen, but to propose to England a treaty of union, and to keep the

throne vacant till such a treaty should be concluded on terms advantageous to Scotland.271

It may seem strange that a large portion of a people, whose patriotism, exhibited, often in a heroic, and

sometimes in a comic form, has long been proverbial, should have been willing, nay impatient, to surrender

an independence which had been, through many ages, dearly prized and manfully defended. The truth is that

the stubborn spirit which the arms of the Plantagenets and Tudors had been unable to subdue had begun to

yield to a very different kind of force. Customhouses and tariffs were rapidly doing what the carnage of

Falkirk and Halidon, of Flodden and of Pinkie, had failed to do. Scotland had some experience of the effects

of an union. She had, near forty years before, been united to England on such terms as England, flushed with

conquest, chose to dictate. That union was inseparably associated in the minds of the vanquished people with

defeat and humiliation. And yet even that union, cruelly as it had wounded the pride of the Scots, had

promoted their prosperity. Cromwell, with wisdom and liberality rare in his age, had established the most

complete freedom of trade between the dominant and the subject country. While he governed, no prohibition,

no duty, impeded the transit of commodities from any part of the island to any other. His navigation laws

imposed no restraint on the trade of Scotland. A Scotch vessel was at liberty to carry a Scotch cargo to

Barbadoes, and to bring the sugars of Barbadoes into the port of London.272 The rule of the Protector

therefore had been propitious to the industry and to the physical wellbeing of the Scottish people. Hating him

and cursing him, they could not help thriving under him, and often, during the administration of their

legitimate princes, looked back with regret to the golden days of the usurper.273

The Restoration came, and changed every thing. The Scots regained their independence, and soon began to

find that independence had its discomfort as well as its dignity. The English parliament treated them as aliens

and as rivals. A new Navigation Act put them on almost the same footing with the Dutch. High duties, and in

some cases prohibitory duties, were imposed on the products of Scottish industry. It is not wonderful that a

nation eminently industrious, shrewd, and enterprising, a nation which, having been long kept back by a

sterile soil and a severe climate, was just beginning to prosper in spite of these disadvantages, and which

found its progress suddenly stopped, should think itself cruelly treated. Yet there was no help. Complaint was

vain. Retaliation was impossible. The Sovereign, even if he had the wish, had not the power, to bear himself

evenly between his large and his small kingdom, between the kingdom from which he drew an annual

revenue of a million and a half and the kingdom from which he drew an annual revenue of little more than

sixty thousand pounds. He dared neither to refuse his assent to any English law injurious to the trade of

Scotland, nor to give his assent to any Scotch law injurious to the trade of England.

The complaints of the Scotch, however, were so loud that Charles, in 1667, appointed Commissioners to

arrange the terms of a commercial treaty between the two British kingdoms. The conferences were soon

broken off; and all that passed while they continued proved that there was only one way in which Scotland

could obtain a share of the commercial prosperity which England at that time enjoyed.274 The Scotch must

become one people with the English. The Parliament which had hitherto sate at Edinburgh must be

incorporated with the Parliament which sate at Westminster. The sacrifice could not but be painfully felt by a

brave and haughty people, who had, during twelve generations, regarded the southern domination with deadly

aversion, and whose hearts still swelled at the thought of the death of Wallace and of the triumphs of Bruce.

There were doubtless many punctilious patriots who would have strenuously opposed an union even if they

could have foreseen that the effect of an union would be to make Glasgow a greater city than Amsterdam,

and to cover the dreary Lothians with harvests and woods, neat farmhouses and stately mansions. But there

was also a large class which was not disposed to throw away great and substantial advantages in order to

preserve mere names and ceremonies; and the influence of this class was such that, in the year 1670, the

Scotch Parliament made direct overtures to England.275 The King undertook the office of mediator; and

The question, having slept during eighteen years, was suddenly revived by the Revolution. Different classes,

impelled by different motives, concurred on this point. With merchants, eager to share in the advantages of

the West Indian Trade, were joined active and aspiring politicians who wished to exhibit their abilities in a

more conspicuous theatre than the Scottish Parliament House, and to collect riches from a more copious

source than the Scottish treasury. The cry for union was swelled by the voices of some artful Jacobites, who

merely wished to cause discord and delay, and who hoped to attain this end by mixing up with the difficult

question which it was the especial business of the Convention to settle another question more difficult still. It

is probable that some who disliked the ascetic habits and rigid discipline of the Presbyterians wished for an

union as the only mode of maintaining prelacy in the northern part of the island. In an united Parliament the

English members must greatly preponderate; and in England the bishops were held in high honour by the

great majority of the population. The Episcopal Church of Scotland, it was plain, rested on a narrow basis,

and would fall before the first attack. The Episcopal Church of Great Britain might have a foundation broad

Whether, in 1689, it would have been possible to effect a civil union without a religious union may well be

doubted. But there can be no doubt that a religious union would have been one of the greatest calamities that

could have befallen either kingdom. The union accomplished in 1707 has indeed been a great blessing both to

England and to Scotland. But it has been a blessing because, in constituting one State, it left two Churches.

The political interest of the contracting parties was the same: but the ecclesiastical dispute between them was

one which admitted of no compromise. They could therefore preserve harmony only by agreeing to differ.

Had there been an amalgamation of the hierarchies, there never would have been an amalgamation of the

nations. Successive Mitchells would have fired at successive Sharpes. Five generations of Claverhouses

would have butchered five generations of Camerons. Those marvellous improvements which have changed

the face of Scotland would never have been effected. Plains now rich with harvests would have remained

barren moors. Waterfalls which now turn the wheels of immense factories would have resounded in a

wilderness. New Lanark would still have been a sheepwalk, and Greenock a fishing hamlet. What little

strength Scotland could under such a system have possessed must, in an estimate of the resources of Great

Britain, have been, not added, but deducted. So encumbered, our country never could have held, either in

peace or in war, a place in the first rank of nations. We are unfortunately not without the means of judging of

the effect which may be produced on the moral and physical state of a people by establishing, in the exclusive

enjoyment of riches and dignity a Church loved and reverenced only by the few, and regarded by the many

with religious and national aversion. One such Church is quite burden enough for the energies of one empire.

But these things, which to us, who have been taught by a bitter experience, seem clear, were by no means

clear in 1689, even to very tolerant and enlightened politicians. In truth the English Low Churchmen were, if

possible, more anxious than the English High Churchmen to preserve Episcopacy in Scotland. It is a

remarkable fact that Burnet, who was always accused of wishing to establish the Calvinistic discipline in the

south of the island, incurred great unpopularity among his own countrymen by his efforts to uphold prelacy in

the north. He was doubtless in error: but his error is to be attributed to a cause which does him no discredit.

His favourite object, an object unattainable indeed, yet such as might well fascinate a large intellect and a

benevolent heart, had long been an honourable treaty between the Anglican Church and the Nonconformists.

He thought it most unfortunate that one opportunity of concluding such a treaty should have been lost at the

time of the Restoration. It seemed to him that another opportunity was afforded by the Revolution. He and his

friends were eagerly pushing forward Nottingham's Comprehension Bill, and were flattering themselves with

vain hopes of success. But they felt that there could hardly be a Comprehension in one of the two British

kingdoms, unless there were also a Comprehension in the other. Concession must be purchased by

concession. If the Presbyterian pertinaciously refused to listen to any terms of compromise where he was

strong, it would be almost impossible to obtain for him liberal terms of compromise where he was weak.

Bishops must therefore be allowed to keep their sees in Scotland, in order that divines not ordained by

Thus the cause of the Episcopalians in the north and the cause of the Presbyterians in the south were bound

up together in a manner which might well perplex even a skilful statesman. It was happy for our country that

the momentous question which excited so many strong passions, and which presented itself in so many

different points of view, was to be decided by such a man as William. He listened to Episcopalians, to

Latitudinarians, to Presbyterians, to the Dean of Glasgow who pleaded for the apostolical succession, to

Burnet who represented the danger of alienating the Anglican clergy, to Carstairs who hated prelacy with the

hatred of a man whose thumbs were deeply marked by the screws of prelatists. Surrounded by these eager

advocates, William remained calm and impartial. He was indeed eminently qualified by his situation as well

as by his personal qualities to be the umpire in that great contention. He was the King of a prelatical

kingdom. He was the Prime Minister of a presbyterian republic. His unwillingness to offend the Anglican

Church of which he was the head, and his unwillingness to offend the reformed Churches of the Continent

which regarded him as a champion divinely sent to protect them against the French tyranny, balanced each

other, and kept him from leaning unduly to either side. His conscience was perfectly neutral. For it was his

deliberate opinion that no form of ecclesiastical polity was of divine institution. He dissented equally from

the school of Laud and from the school of Cameron, from the men who held that there could not be a

Christian Church without Bishops, and from the men who held that there could not be a Christian Church

without synods. Which form of government should be adopted was in his judgment a question of mere

expediency. He would probably have preferred a temper between the two rival systems, a hierarchy in which

the chief spiritual functionaries should have been something more than moderators and something less than

prelates. But he was far too wise a man to think of settling such a matter according to his own personal tastes.

He determined therefore that, if there was on both sides a disposition to compromise, he would act as

mediator. But, if it should prove that the public mind of England and the public mind of Scotland had taken

the ply strongly in opposite directions, he would not attempt to force either nation into conformity with the

opinion of the other. He would suffer each to have its own church, and would content himself with restraining

both churches from persecuting nonconformists, and from encroaching on the functions of the civil

The language which he held to those Scottish Episcopalians who complained to him of their sufferings and

implored his protection was well weighed and well guarded, but clear and ingenuous. He wished, he said, to

preserve, if possible, the institution to which they were so much attached, and to grant at the same time entire

liberty of conscience to that party which could not be reconciled to any deviation from the Presbyterian

model. But the Bishops must take care that they did not, by their own rashness and obstinacy, put it out of his

power to be of any use to them. They must also distinctly understand that he was resolved not to force on

Scotland by the sword a form of ecclesiastical government which she detested. If, therefore; it should be

found that prelacy could be maintained only by arms, he should yield to the general sentiment, and should

merely do his best to obtain for the Episcopalian minority permission to worship God in freedom and

It is not likely that, even if the Scottish Bishops had, as William recommended, done all that meekness and

prudence could do to conciliate their countrymen, episcopacy could, under any modification, have been

maintained. It was indeed asserted by writers of that generation, and has been repeated by writers of our

generation, that the Presbyterians were not, before the Revolution, the majority of the people of Scotland.277

But in this assertion there is an obvious fallacy. The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely

by counting heads. An established church, a dominant church, a church which has the exclusive possession of

civil honours and emoluments, will always rank among its nominal members multitudes who have no religion

at all; multitudes who, though not destitute of religion, attend little to theological disputes, and have no

scruple about conforming to the mode of worship which happens to be established; and multitudes who have

scruples about conforming, but whose scruples have yielded to worldly motives. On the other hand, every

member of an oppressed church is a man who has a very decided preference for that church. A person who, in

the time of Diocletian, joined in celebrating the Christian mysteries might reasonably be supposed to be a

firm believer in Christ. But it would be a very great mistake to imagine that one single Pontiff or Augur in the

Roman Senate was a firm believer in Jupiter. In Mary's reign, every body who attended the secret meetings of

the Protestants was a real Protestant: but hundreds of thousands went to mass who, as appeared before she

had been dead a month, were not real Roman Catholics. If, under the Kings of the House of Stuart, when a

Presbyterian was excluded from political power and from the learned professions, was daily annoyed by

informers, by tyrannical magistrates, by licentious dragoons, and was in danger of being hanged if he heard a

sermon in the open air, the population of Scotland was not very unequally divided between Episcopalians and

Presbyterians, the rational inference is that more than nineteen twentieths of those Scotchmen whose

conscience was interested in the matter were Presbyterians, and that not one Scotchman in twenty was

decidedly and on conviction an Episcopalian. Against such odds the Bishops had but little chance; and

whatever chance they had they made haste to throw away; some of them because they sincerely believed that

their allegiance was still due to James; others probably because they apprehended that William would not

have the power, even if he had the will, to serve them, and that nothing but a counterrevolution in the State

As the new King of England could not be at Edinburgh during the sitting of the Scottish Convention, a letter

from him to the Estates was prepared with great skill. In this document he professed warm attachment to the

Protestant religion, but gave no opinion touching those questions about which Protestants were divided. He

had observed, he said, with great satisfaction that many of the Scottish nobility and gentry with whom he had

conferred in London were inclined to an union of the two British kingdoms. He was sensible how much such

an union would conduce to the happiness of both; and he would do all in his power towards the

It was necessary that he should allow a large discretion to his confidential agents at Edinburgh. The private

instructions with which he furnished those persons could not be minute, but were highly judicious. He

charged them to ascertain to the best of their power the real sense of the Convention, and to be guided by it.

They must remember that the first object was to settle the government. To that object every other object, even

the union, must be postponed. A treaty between two independent legislatures, distant from each other several

days' journey, must necessarily be a work of time; and the throne could not safely remain vacant while the

negotiations were pending. It was therefore important that His Majesty's agents should be on their guard

against the arts of persons who, under pretence of promoting the union, might really be contriving only to

prolong the interregnum. If the Convention should be bent on establishing the Presbyterian form of church

government, William desired that his friends would do all in their power to prevent the triumphant sect from

The person by whose advice William appears to have been at this time chiefly guided as to Scotch politics

was a Scotchman of great abilities and attainments, Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, the founder of a family

eminently distinguished at the bar, on the bench, in the senate, in diplomacy, in arms, and in letters, but

distinguished also by misfortunes and misdeeds which have furnished poets and novelists with materials for

the darkest and most heartrending tales. Already Sir James had been in mourning for more than one strange

and terrible death. One of his sons had died by poison. One of his daughters had poniarded her bridegroom on

the wedding night. One of his grandsons had in boyish sport been slain by another. Savage libellers asserted,

and some of the superstitious vulgar believed, that calamities so portentous were the consequences of some

connection between the unhappy race and the powers of darkness. Sir James had a wry neck; and he was

reproached with this misfortune as if it had been a crime, and was told that it marked him out as a man

doomed to the gallows. His wife, a woman of great ability, art, and spirit, was popularly nicknamed the Witch

of Endor. It was gravely said that she had cast fearful spells on those whom she hated, and that she had been

seen in the likeness of a cat seated on the cloth of state by the side of the Lord High Commissioner. The man,

however, over whose roof so many curses appeared to hang did not, as far as we can now judge, fall short of

that very low standard of morality which was generally attained by politicians of his age and nation. In force

of mind and extent of knowledge he was superior to them all. In his youth he had borne arms: he had then

been a professor of philosophy: he had then studied law, and had become, by general acknowledgment, the

greatest jurist that his country had produced. In the days of the Protectorate, he had been a judge. After the

Restoration, he had made his peace with the royal family, had sate in the Privy Council, and had presided

with unrivalled ability in the Court of Session. He had doubtless borne a share in many unjustifiable acts; but

there were limits which he never passed. He had a wonderful power of giving to any proposition which it

suited him to maintain a plausible aspect of legality and even of justice; and this power he frequently abused.

But he was not, like many of those among whom be lived, impudently and unscrupulously servile. Shame or

conscience generally restrained him from committing any bad action for which his rare ingenuity could not

frame a specious defence; and he was seldom in his place at the council board when any thing outrageously

unjust or cruel was to be done. His moderation at length gave offence to the Court. He was deprived of his

high office, and found himself in so disagreeable a situation that he retired to Holland. There he employed

himself in correcting the great work on jurisprudence which has preserved his memory fresh down to our own

time. In his banishment he tried to gain the favour of his fellow exiles, who naturally regarded him with

suspicion. He protested, and perhaps with truth, that his hands were pure from the blood of the persecuted

Covenanters. He made a high profession of religion, prayed much, and observed weekly days of fasting and

humiliation. He even consented, after much hesitation, to assist with his advice and his credit the unfortunate

enterprise of Argyle. When that enterprise had failed, a prosecution was instituted at Edinburgh against

Dalrymple; and his estates would doubtless have been confiscated had they not been saved by an artifice

which subsequently became common among the politicians of Scotland. His eldest son and heir apparent,

John, took the side of the government, supported the dispensing power, declared against the Test, and

accepted the place of Lord Advocate, when Sir George Mackenzie, after holding out through ten years of foul

drudgery, at length showed signs of flagging. The services of the younger Dalrymple were rewarded by a

remission of the forfeiture which the offences of the elder had incurred. Those services indeed were not to be

despised. For Sir John, though inferior to his father in depth and extent of legal learning, was no common

man. His knowledge was great and various: his parts were quick; and his eloquence was singularly ready and

graceful. To sanctity he made no pretensions. Indeed Episcopalians and Presbyterians agreed in regarding

him as little better than an atheist. During some months Sir John at Edinburgh affected to condemn the

disloyalty of his unhappy parent Sir James; and Sir James at Leyden told his Puritan friends how deeply he

The Revolution came, and brought a large increase of wealth and honours to the House of Stair. The son

promptly changed sides, and cooperated ably and zealously with the father. Sir James established himself in

London for the purpose of giving advice to William on Scotch affairs. Sir John's post was in the Parliament

House at Edinburgh. He was not likely to find any equal among the debaters there, and was prepared to exert

By the large party which was zealous for the Calvinistic church government John Dalrymple was regarded

with incurable distrust and dislike. It was therefore necessary that another agent should be employed to

manage that party. Such an agent was George Melville, Lord Melville, a nobleman connected by affinity with

the unfortunate Monmouth, and with that Leslie who had unsuccessfully commanded the Scotch army against

Cromwell at Dunbar. Melville had always been accounted a Whig and a Presbyterian. Those who speak of

him most favourably have not ventured to ascribe to him eminent intellectual endowments or exalted public

spirit. But he appears from his letters to have been by no means deficient in that homely prudence the want of

which has often been fatal to men of brighter genius and of purer virtue. That prudence had restrained him

from going very far in opposition to the tyranny of the Stuarts: but he had listened while his friends talked

about resistance, and therefore, when the Rye House plot was discovered, thought it expedient to retire to the

Continent. In his absence he was accused of treason, and was convicted on evidence which would not have

satisfied any impartial tribunal. He was condemned to death: his honours and lands were declared forfeit: his

arms were torn with contumely out of the Heralds' book; and his domains swelled the estate of the cruel and

rapacious Perth. The fugitive meanwhile, with characteristic wariness, lived quietly on the Continent, and

discountenanced the unhappy projects of his kinsman Monmouth, but cordially approved of the enterprise of

Illness had prevented Melville from sailing with the Dutch expedition: but he arrived in London a few hours

after the new Sovereigns had been proclaimed there. William instantly sent him down to Edinburgh, in the

hope, as it should seem, that the Presbyterians would be disposed to listen to moderate counsels proceeding

from a man who was attached to their cause, and who had suffered for it. Melville's second son, David, who

had inherited, through his mother, the title of Earl of Leven, and who had acquired some military experience

in the service of the Elector of Brandenburg, had the honour of being the bearer of a letter from the new King

James had intrusted the conduct of his affairs in Scotland to John Graham, Viscount Dundee, and Colin

Lindsay, Earl of Balcarras. Dundee had commanded a body of Scottish troops which had marched into

England to oppose the Dutch: but he had found, in the inglorious campaign which had been fatal to the

dynasty of Stuart, no opportunity of displaying the courage and military skill which those who most detest his

merciless nature allow him to have possessed. He lay with his forces not far from Watford, when he was

informed that James had fled from Whitehall, and that Feversham had ordered all the royal army to disband.

The Scottish regiments were thus left, without pay or provisions, in the midst of a foreign and indeed a

hostile nation. Dundee, it is said, wept with grief and rage. Soon, however, more cheering intelligence arrived

from various quarters. William wrote a few lines to say that, if the Scots would remain quiet, he would pledge

his honour for their safety; and, some hours later, it was known that James had returned to his capital. Dundee

repaired instantly to London.281 There he met his friend Balcarras, who had just arrived from Edinburgh.

Balcarras, a man distinguished by his handsome person and by his accomplishments, had, in his youth,

affected the character of a patriot, but had deserted the popular cause, had accepted a seat in the Privy

Council, had become a tool of Perth and Melfort, and bad been one of the Commissioners who were

appointed to execute the office of Treasurer when Queensberry was disgraced for refusing to betray the

Dundee and Balcarras went together to Whitehall, and had the honour of accompanying James in his last

walk, up and down the Mall. He told them that he intended to put his affairs in Scotland under their

management. "You, my Lord Balcarras, must undertake the civil business: and you, my Lord Dundee, shall

have a commission from me to command the troops." The two noblemen vowed that they would prove

themselves deserving of his confidence, and disclaimed all thought of making their peace with the Prince of

On the following day James left Whitehall for ever; and the Prince of Orange arrived at Saint James's. Both

Dundee and Balcarras swelled the crowd which thronged to greet the deliverer, and were not ungraciously

received. Both were well known to him. Dundee had served under him on the Continent284; and the first

wife of Balcarras had been a lady of the House of Orange, and had worn, on her wedding day, a superb pair

The Scottish Whigs, then assembled in great numbers at Westminster, earnestly pressed William to proscribe

by name four or five men who had, during the evil times, borne a conspicuous part in the proceedings of the

Privy Council at Edinburgh. Dundee and Balcarras were particularly mentioned. But the Prince had

determined that, as far as his power extended, all the past should be covered with a general amnesty, and

absolutely refused to make any declaration which could drive to despair even the most guilty of his uncle's

Balcarras went repeatedly to Saint James's, had several audiences of William, professed deep respect for his

Highness, and owned that King James had committed great errors, but would not promise to concur in a vote

of deposition. William gave no sign of displeasure, but said at parting: "Take care, my Lord, that you keep

Dundee seems to have been less ingenuous. He employed the mediation of Burnet, opened a negotiation with

Saint James's, declared himself willing to acquiesce in the new order of things, obtained from William a

promise of protection, and promised in return to live peaceably. Such credit was given to his professions that

he was suffered to travel down to Scotland under the escort of a troop of cavalry. Without such an escort the

man of blood, whose name was never mentioned but with a shudder at the hearth of any Presbyterian family,

would, at that conjuncture, have had but a perilous journey through Berwickshire and the Lothians.287

February was drawing to a close when Dundee and Balcarras reached Edinburgh. They had some hope that

they might be at the head of a majority in the Convention. They therefore exerted themselves vigorously to

consolidate and animate their party. They assured the rigid royalists, who had a scruple about sitting in an

assembly convoked by an usurper, that the rightful King particularly wished no friend of hereditary monarchy

to be absent. More than one waverer was kept steady by being assured in confident terms that a speedy

restoration was inevitable. Gordon had determined to surrender the castle, and had begun to remove his

furniture: but Dundee and Balcarras prevailed on him to hold out some time longer. They informed him that

they had received from Saint Germains full powers to adjourn the Convention to Stirling, and that, if things

At length the fourteenth of March, the day fixed for the meeting of the Estates, arrived, and the Parliament

House was crowded. Nine prelates were in their places. When Argyle presented himself, a single lord

protested against the admission of a person whom a legal sentence, passed in due form, and still unreversed,

had deprived of the honours of the peerage. But this objection was overruled by the general sense of the

assembly. When Melville appeared, no voice was raised against his admission. The Bishop of Edinburgh

officiated as chaplain, and made it one of his petitions that God would help and restore King James.289 It

soon appeared that the general feeling of the Convention was by no means in harmony with this prayer. The

first matter to be decided was the choice of a President. The Duke of Hamilton was supported by the Whigs,

the Marquess of Athol by the Jacobites. Neither candidate possessed, and neither deserved, the entire

confidence of his supporters. Hamilton had been a Privy Councillor of James, had borne a part in many

unjustifiable acts, and had offered but a very cautious and languid opposition to the most daring attacks on

the laws and religion of Scotland. Not till the Dutch guards were at Whitehall had he ventured to speak out.

Then he had joined the victorious party, and had assured the Whigs that he had pretended to be their enemy,

only in order that he might, without incurring suspicion, act as their friend. Athol was still less to be trusted.

His abilities were mean, his temper false, pusillanimous, and cruel. In the late reign he had gained a

dishonourable notoriety by the barbarous actions of which he had been guilty in Argyleshire. He had turned

with the turn of fortune, and had paid servile court to the Prince of Orange, but had been coldly received, and

had now, from mere mortification, come back to the party which he had deserted.290 Neither of the rival

noblemen had chosen to stake the dignities and lands of his house on the issue of the contention between the

rival Kings. The eldest son of Hamilton had declared for James, and the eldest son of Athol for William, so

But in Scotland the fashionable notions touching political morality were lax; and the aristocratical sentiment

was strong. The Whigs were therefore willing to forget that Hamilton had lately sate in the council of James.

The Jacobites were equally willing to forget that Athol had lately fawned on William. In political

inconsistency those two great lords were far indeed from standing by themselves; but in dignity and power

they had scarcely an equal in the assembly. Their descent was eminently illustrious: their influence was

immense: one of them could raise the Western Lowlands: the other could bring into the field an army of

northern mountaineers. Round these chiefs therefore the hostile factions gathered.

The votes were counted; and it appeared that Hamilton had a majority of forty. The consequence was that

about twenty of the defeated party instantly passed over to the victors.291 At Westminster such a defection

would have been thought strange; but it seems to have caused little surprise at Edinburgh. It is a remarkable

circumstance that the same country should have produced in the same age the most wonderful specimens of

both extremes of human nature. No class of men mentioned in history has ever adhered to a principle with

more inflexible pertinacity than was found among the Scotch Puritans. Fine and imprisonment, the sheers and

the branding iron, the boot, the thumbscrew, and the gallows could not extort from the stubborn Covenanter

one evasive word on which it was possible to put a sense inconsistent with his theological system. Even in

things indifferent he would hear of no compromise; and he was but too ready to consider all who

recommended prudence and charity as traitors to the cause of truth. On the other hand, the Scotchmen of that

generation who made a figure in the Parliament House and in the Council Chamber were the most dishonest

and unblushing timeservers that the world has ever seen. The English marvelled alike at both classes. There

were indeed many stouthearted nonconformists in the South; but scarcely any who in obstinacy, pugnacity,

and hardihood could bear a comparison with the men of the school of Cameron. There were many knavish

politicians in the South; but few so utterly destitute of morality, and still fewer so utterly destitute of shame,

as the men of the school of Lauderdale. Perhaps it is natural that the most callous and impudent vice should

be found in the near neighbourhood of unreasonable and impracticable virtue. Where enthusiasts are ready to

destroy or to be destroyed for trifles magnified into importance by a squeamish conscience, it is not strange

that the very name of conscience should become a byword of contempt to cool and shrewd men of business.

The majority, reinforced by the crowd of deserters from the minority, proceeded to name a Committee of

Elections. Fifteen persons were chosen, and it soon appeared that twelve of these were not disposed to

examine severely into the regularity of any proceeding of which the result had been to send up a Whig to the

Parliament House. The Duke of Hamilton is said to have been disgusted by the gross partiality of his own

followers, and to have exerted himself, with but little success, to restrain their violence.292

Before the Estates proceeded to deliberate on the business for which they had met, they thought it necessary

to provide for their own security. They could not be perfectly at ease while the roof under which they sate

was commanded by the batteries of the Castle. A deputation was therefore sent to inform Gordon that the

Convention required him to evacuate the fortress within twenty four hours, and that, if he complied, his past

conduct should not be remembered against him. He asked a night for consideration. During that night his

wavering mind was confirmed by the exhortations of Dundee and Balcarras. On the morrow he sent an

answer drawn in respectful but evasive terms. He was very far, he declared, from meditating harm to the City

of Edinburgh. Least of all could he harbour any thought of molesting an august assembly which he regarded

with profound reverence. He would willingly give bond for his good behaviour to the amount of twenty

thousand pounds sterling. But he was in communication with the government now established in England. He

was in hourly expectation of important despatches from that government; and, till they arrived, he should not

feel himself justified in resigning his command. These excuses were not admitted. Heralds and trumpeters

were sent to summon the Castle in form, and to denounce the penalties of high treason against those who

should continue to occupy that fortress in defiance of the authority of the Estates. Guards were at the same

time posted to intercept all communication between the garrison and the city.293

Two days had been spent in these preludes; and it was expected that on the third morning the great contest

would begin. Meanwhile the population of Edinburgh was in an excited state. It had been discovered that

Dundee had paid visits to the Castle; and it was believed that his exhortations had induced the garrison to

hold out. His old soldiers were known to be gathering round him; and it might well be apprehended that he

would make some desperate attempt. He, on the other hand, had been informed that the Western Covenanters

who filled the cellars of the city had vowed vengeance on him: and, in truth, when we consider that their

temper was singularly savage and implacable; that they had been taught to regard the slaying of a persecutor

as a duty; that no examples furnished by Holy Writ had been more frequently held up to their admiration than

Ehud stabbing Eglon, and Samuel hewing Agag limb from limb; that they had never heard any achievement

in the history of their own country more warmly praised by their favourite teachers than the butchery of

Cardinal Beatoun and of Archbishop Sharpe; we may well wonder that a man who had shed the blood of the

saints like water should have been able to walk the High Street in safety during a single day. The enemy

whom Dundee had most reason to fear was a youth of distinguished courage and abilities named William

Cleland. Cleland had, when little more than sixteen years old, borne arms in that insurrection which had been

put down at Bothwell Bridge. He had since disgusted some virulent fanatics by his humanity and moderation.

But with the great body of Presbyterians his name stood high. For with the strict morality and ardent zeal of a

Puritan he united some accomplishments of which few Puritans could boast. His manners were polished, and

his literary and scientific attainments respectable. He was a linguist, mathematician, and a poet. It is true that

his hymns, odes, ballads, and Hudibrastic satires are of very little intrinsic value; but, when it is considered

that he was a mere boy when most of them were written, it must be admitted that they show considerable

vigour of mind. He was now at Edinburgh: his influence among the West Country Whigs assembled there

was great: he hated Dundee with deadly hatred, and was believed to be meditating some act of violence.294

On the fifteenth of March Dundee received information that some of the Covenanters had bound themselves

together to slay him and Sir George Mackenzie, whose eloquence and learning, long prostituted to the service

of tyranny, had made him more odious to the Presbyterians than any other man of the gown. Dundee applied

to Hamilton for protection,: and Hamilton advised him to bring the matter under the consideration of the

Before that sitting, a person named Crane arrived from France, with a letter addressed by the fugitive King to

the Estates. The letter was sealed: the bearer, strange to say, was not furnished with a copy for the

information of the heads of the Jacobite party; nor did he bring any message, written or verbal, to either of

James's agents. Balcarras and Dundee were mortified by finding that so little confidence was reposed in them,

and were harassed by painful doubts touching the contents of the document on which so much depended.

They were willing, however, to hope for the best. King James could not, situated as he was, be so ill advised

as to act in direct opposition to the counsel and entreaties of his friends. His letter, when opened, must be

found to contain such gracious assurances as would animate the royalists and conciliate the moderate Whigs.

When the Convention reassembled on the morning of Saturday the sixteenth of March, it was proposed that

measures should be taken for the personal security of the members. It was alleged that the life of Dundee had

been threatened; that two men of sinister appearance had been watching the house where he lodged, and had

been heard to say that they would use the dog as he had used them. Mackenzie complained that he too was in

danger, and, with his usual copiousness and force of language, demanded the protection of the Estates. But

the matter was lightly treated by the majority: and the Convention passed on to other business.296

It was then announced that Crane was at the door of the Parliament House. He was admitted. The paper of

which he was in charge was laid on the table. Hamilton remarked that there was, in the hands of the Earl of

Leven, a communication from the Prince by whose authority the Estates had been convoked. That

communication seemed to be entitled to precedence. The Convention was of the same opinion; and the well

It was then moved that the letter of James should be opened. The Whigs objected that it might possibly

contain a mandate dissolving the Convention. They therefore proposed that, before the seal was broken, the

Estates should resolve to continue sitting, notwithstanding any such mandate. The Jacobites, who knew no

more than the Whigs what was in the letter, and were impatient to have it read, eagerly assented. A vote was

passed by which the members bound themselves to consider any order which should command them to

separate as a nullity, and to remain assembled till they should have accomplished the work of securing the

liberty and religion of Scotland. This vote was signed by almost all the lords and gentlemen who were

present. Seven out of nine bishops subscribed it. The names of Dundee and Balcarras, written by their own

hands, may still be seen on the original roll. Balcarras afterwards excused what, on his principles, was,

beyond all dispute, a flagrant act of treason, by saying that he and his friends had, from zeal for their master's

interest, concurred in a declaration of rebellion against their master's authority; that they had anticipated the

most salutary effects from the letter; and that, if they had not made some concession to the majority, the letter

In a few minutes the hopes of Balcarras were grievously disappointed. The letter from which so much had

been hoped and feared was read with all the honours which Scottish Parliaments were in the habit of paying

to royal communications: but every word carried despair to the hearts of the Jacobites. It was plain that

adversity had taught James neither wisdom nor mercy. All was obstinacy, cruelty, insolence. A pardon was

promised to those traitors who should return to their allegiance within a fortnight. Against all others

unsparing vengeance was denounced. Not only was no sorrow expressed for past offences: but the letter was

itself a new offence: for it was written and countersigned by the apostate Melfort, who was, by the statutes of

the realm, incapable of holding the office of Secretary, and who was not less abhorred by the Protestant

Tories than by the Whigs. The hall was in a tumult. The enemies of James were loud and vehement. His

friends, angry with him, and ashamed of him, saw that it was vain to think of continuing the struggle in the

Convention. Every vote which had been doubtful when his letter was unsealed was now irrecoverably lost.

It was Saturday afternoon. There was to be no other meeting till Monday morning. The Jacobite leaders held

a consultation, and came to the conclusion. that it was necessary to take a decided step. Dundee and Balcarras

must use the powers with which they had been intrusted. The minority must forthwith leave Edinburgh and

assemble at Stirling. Athol assented, and undertook to bring a great body of his clansmen from the Highlands

to protect the deliberations of the Royalist Convention. Every thing was arranged for the secession; but, in a

few hours, the tardiness of one man and the haste of another ruined the whole plan.

The Monday came. The Jacobite lords and gentlemen were actually taking horse for Stirling, when Athol

asked for a delay of twentyfour hours. He had no personal reason to be in haste. By staying he ran no risk of

being assassinated. By going he incurred the risks inseparable from civil war. The members of his party,

unwilling to separate from him, consented to the postponement which he requested, and repaired once more

to the Parliament House. Dundee alone refused to stay a moment longer. His life was in danger. The

Convention had refused to protect him. He would not remain to be a mark for the pistols and daggers of

murderers. Balcarras expostulated to no purpose. "By departing alone," he said, "you will give the alarm and

break up the whole scheme." But Dundee was obstinate. Brave as he undoubtedly was, he seems, like many

other brave men, to have been less proof against the danger of assassination than against any other form of

danger. He knew what the hatred of the Covenanters was: he knew how well he had earned their hatred; and

he was haunted by that consciousness of inexpiable guilt, and by that dread of a terrible retribution, which the

ancient polytheists personified under the awful name of the Furies. His old troopers, the Satans and

Beelzebubs who had shared his crimes, and who now shared his perils, were ready to be the companions of

Meanwhile the Convention had assembled. Mackenzie was on his legs, and was pathetically lamenting the

hard condition of the Estates, at once commanded by the guns of a fortress and menaced by a fanatical rabble,

when he was interrupted by some sentinels who came running from the posts near the Castle. They had seen

Dundee at the head of fifty horse on the Stirling road. That road ran close under the huge rock on which the

citadel is built. Gordon had appeared on the ramparts, and had made a sign that he had something to say.

Dundee had climbed high enough to hear and to be heard, and was then actually conferring with the Duke.

Up to that moment the hatred with which the Presbyterian members of the assembly regarded the merciless

persecutor of their brethren in the faith had been restrained by the decorous forms of parliamentary

deliberation. But now the explosion was terrible. Hamilton himself, who, by the acknowledgment of his

opponents, had hitherto performed the duties of President with gravity and impartiality, was the loudest and

fiercest man in the hall. "It is high time," he cried, "that we should look to ourselves. The enemies of our

religion and of our civil freedom are mustering all around us; and we may well suspect that they have

accomplices even here. Lock the doors. Lay the keys on the table. Let nobody go out but those lords and

gentlemen whom we shall appoint to call the citizens to arms. There are some good men from the West in

Edinburgh, men for whom I can answer." The assembly raised a general cry of assent. Several members of

the majority boasted that they too had brought with them trusty retainers who would turn out at a moment's

notice against Claverhouse and his dragoons. All that Hamilton proposed was instantly done. The Jacobites,

silent and unresisting, became prisoners. Leven went forth and ordered the drums to beat. The Covenanters of

Lanarkshire and Ayrshire promptly obeyed the signal. The force thus assembled had indeed no very military

appearance, but was amply sufficient to overawe the adherents of the House of Stuart. From Dundee nothing

was to be hoped or feared. He had already scrambled down the Castle hill, rejoined his troopers, and galloped

westward. Hamilton now ordered the doors to be opened. The suspected members were at liberty to depart.

Humbled and brokenspirited, yet glad that they had come off so well, they stole forth through the crowd of

stern fanatics which filled the High Street. All thought of secession was at an end.298

On the following day it was resolved that the kingdom should be put into a posture of defence. The preamble

of this resolution contained a severe reflection on the perfidy of the traitor who, within a few hours after he

had, by an engagement subscribed with his own hand, bound himself not to quit his post in the Convention,

had set the example of desertion, and given the signal of civil war. All Protestants, from sixteen to sixty, were

ordered to hold themselves in readiness to assemble in arms at the first summons; and, that none might

pretend ignorance, it was directed that the edict should be proclaimed at all the market crosses throughout the

The Estates then proceeded to send a letter of thanks to William. To this letter were attached the signatures of

many noblemen and gentlemen who were in the interest of the banished King. The Bishops however

It had long been the custom of the Parliaments of Scotland to entrust the preparation of Acts to a select

number of members who were designated as the Lords of the Articles. In conformity with this usage, the

business of framing a plan for the settling of the government was now confided to a Committee of

twentyfour. Of the twentyfour eight were peers, eight representatives of counties, and eight representatives

of towns. The majority of the Committee were Whigs; and not a single prelate had a seat.

The spirit of the Jacobites, broken by a succession of disasters, was, about this time, for a moment revived by

the arrival of the Duke of Queensberry from London. His rank was high and his influence was great: his

character, by comparison with the characters of those who surrounded him, was fair. When Popery was in the

ascendent, he had been true to the cause of the Protestant Church; and, since Whiggism had been in the

ascendent, he had been true to the cause of hereditary monarchy. Some thought that, if he had been earlier in

his place, he might have been able to render important service to the House of Stuart.300 Even now the

stimulants which he applied to his torpid and feeble party produced some faint symptoms of returning

animation. Means were found of communicating with Gordon; and he was earnestly solicited to fire on the

city. The Jacobites hoped that, as soon as the cannon balls had beaten down a few chimneys, the Estates

would adjourn to Glasgow. Time would thus be gained; and the royalists might be able to execute their old

project of meeting in a separate convention. Gordon however positively refused to take on himself so grave a

By this time the Estates had a guard on which they could rely more firmly than on the undisciplined and

turbulent Covenanters of the West. A squadron of English men of war from the Thames had arrived in the

Frith of Forth. On board were the three Scottish regiments which had accompanied William from Holland.

He had, with great judgment, selected them to protect the assembly which was to settle the government of

their country; and, that no cause of jealousy might be given to a people exquisitely sensitive on points of

national honour, he had purged the ranks of all Dutch soldiers, and had thus reduced the number of men to

about eleven hundred. This little force was commanded by Andrew Mackay, a Highlander of noble descent,

who had served long on the Continent, and who was distinguished by courage of the truest temper, and by a

piety such as is seldom found in soldiers of fortune. The Convention passed a resolution appointing Mackay

general of their forces. When the question was put on this resolution, the Archbishop of Glasgow, unwilling

doubtless to be a party to such an usurpation of powers which belonged to the King alone, begged that the

prelates might be excused from voting. Divines, he said, had nothing to do with military arrangements. "The

Fathers of the Church," answered a member very keenly, "have been lately favoured with a new light. I have

myself seen military orders signed by the Most Reverend person who has suddenly become so scrupulous.

There was indeed one difference: those orders were for dragooning Protestants, and the resolution before us is

The arrival of Mackay's troops, and the determination of Gordon to remain inactive, quelled the spirit of the

Jacobites. They had indeed one chance left. They might possibly, by joining with those Whigs who were bent

on an union with England, have postponed during a considerable time the settlement of the government. A

negotiation was actually opened with this view, but was speedily broken off. For it soon appeared that the

party which was for James was really hostile to the union, and that the party which was for the union was

really hostile to James. As these two parties had no object in common, the only effect of a coalition between

them must have been that one of them would have become the tool of the other. The question of the union

therefore was not raised.303 Some Jacobites retired to their country seats: others, though they remained at

Edinburgh, ceased to show themselves in the Parliament House: many passed over to the winning side; and,

when at length the resolutions prepared by the Twenty Four were submitted to the Convention, it appeared

that the party which on the first day of the session had rallied round Athol had dwindled away to nothing.

The resolutions had been framed, as far as possible, in conformity with the example recently set at

Westminster. In one important point, however, it was absolutely necessary that the copy should deviate from

the original. The Estates of England had brought two charges against James, his misgovernment and his

flight, and had, by using the soft word "Abdication," evaded, with some sacrifice of verbal precision, the

question whether subjects may lawfully depose a bad prince. That question the Estates of Scotland could not

evade. They could not pretend that James had deserted his post. For he had never, since he came to the

throne, resided in Scotland. During many years that kingdom had been ruled by sovereigns who dwelt in

another land. The whole machinery of the administration had been constructed on the supposition that the

King would be absent, and was therefore not necessarily deranged by that flight which had, in the south of the

island, dissolved all government, and suspended the ordinary course of justice. It was only by letter that the

King could, when he was at Whitehall, communicate with the Council and the Parliament at Edinburgh; and

by letter he could communicate with them when he was at Saint Germains or at Dublin. The Twenty Four

were therefore forced to propose to the Estates a resolution distinctly declaring that James the Seventh had by

his misconduct forfeited the crown. Many writers have inferred from the language of this resolution that

sound political principles had made a greater progress in Scotland than in England. But the whole history of

the two countries from the Restoration to the Union proves this inference to be erroneous. The Scottish

Estates used plain language, simply because it was impossible for them, situated as they were, to use evasive

The person who bore the chief part in framing the resolution, and in defending it, was Sir John Dalrymple,

who had recently held the high office of Lord Advocate, and had been an accomplice in some of the misdeeds

which he now arraigned with great force of reasoning and eloquence. He was strenuously supported by Sir

James Montgomery, member for Ayrshire, a man of considerable abilities, but of loose principles, turbulent

temper, insatiable cupidity, and implacable malevolence. The Archbishop of Glasgow and Sir George

Mackenzie spoke on the other side: but the only effect of their oratory was to deprive their party of the

advantage of being able to allege that the Estates were under duress, and that liberty of speech had been

When the question was put, Athol, Queensberry, and some of their friends withdrew. Only five members

voted against the resolution which pronounced that James had forfeited his right to the allegiance of his

subjects. When it was moved that the Crown of Scotland should be settled as the Crown of England had been

settled, Athol and Queensberry reappeared in the hall. They had doubted, they said, whether they could

justifiably declare the throne vacant. But, since it had been declared vacant, they felt no doubt that William

The Convention then went forth in procession to the High Street. Several great nobles, attended by the Lord

Provost of the capital and by the heralds, ascended the octagon tower from which rose the city cross

surmounted by the unicorn of Scotland.304 Hamilton read the vote of the Convention; and a King at Arms

proclaimed the new Sovereigns with sound of trumpet. On the same day the Estates issued an order that the

parochial clergy should, on pain of deprivation, publish from their pulpits the proclamation which had just

Still the interregnum was not at an end. Though the new Sovereigns had been proclaimed, they had not yet

been put into possession of the royal authority by a formal tender and a formal acceptance. At Edinburgh, as

at Westminster, it was thought necessary that the instrument which settled the government should clearly

define and solemnly assert those privileges of the people which the Stuarts had illegally infringed. A Claim of

Right was therefore drawn up by the Twenty Four, and adopted by the Convention. To this Claim, which

purported to be merely declaratory of the law as it stood, was added a supplementary paper containing a list

of grievances which could be remedied only by new laws. One most important article which we should

naturally expect to find at the head of such a list, the Convention, with great practical prudence, but in

defiance of notorious facts and of unanswerable arguments, placed in the Claim of Right. Nobody could deny

that prelacy was established by Act of Parliament. The power exercised by the Bishops might be pernicious,

unscriptural, antichristian but illegal it certainly was not; and to pronounce it illegal was to outrage common

sense. The Whig leaders however were much more desirous to get rid of episcopacy than to prove themselves

consummate publicists and logicians. If they made the abolition of episcopacy an article of the contract by

which William was to hold the crown, they attained their end, though doubtless in a manner open to much

criticism. If, on the other hand, they contented themselves with resolving that episcopacy was a noxious

institution which at some future time the legislature would do well to abolish, they might find that their

resolution, though unobjectionable in form, was barren of consequences. They knew that William by no

means sympathized with their dislike of Bishops, and that, even had he been much more zealous for the

Calvinistic model than he was, the relation in which he stood to the Anglican Church would make it difficult

and dangerous for him to declare himself hostile to a fundamental part of the constitution of that Church. If

he should become King of Scotland without being fettered by any pledge on this subject, it might well be

apprehended that he would hesitate about passing an Act which would be regarded with abhorrence by a large

body of his subjects in the south of the island. It was therefore most desirable that the question should be

settled while the throne was still vacant. In this opinion many politicians concurred, who had no dislike to

rochets and mitres, but who wished that William might have a quiet and prosperous reign. The Scottish

people,so these men reasoned,hated episcopacy. The English loved it. To leave William any voice in the

matter was to put him under the necessity of deeply wounding the strongest feelings of one of the nations

which he governed. It was therefore plainly for his own interest that the question, which he could not settle in

any manner without incurring a fearful amount of obloquy, should be settled for him by others who were

exposed to no such danger. He was not yet Sovereign of Scotland. While the interregnum lasted, the supreme

power belonged to the Estates; and for what the Estates might do the prelatists of his southern kingdom could

not hold him responsible. The elder Dalrymple wrote strongly from London to this effect, and there can be

little doubt that he expressed the sentiments of his master. William would have sincerely rejoiced if the Scots

could have been reconciled to a modified episcopacy. But, since that could not be, it was manifestly desirable

that they should themselves, while there was yet no King over them, pronounce the irrevocable doom of the

The Convention, therefore, with little debate as it should seem, inserted in the Claim of Right a clause

declaring that prelacy was an insupportable burden to the kingdom, that it had been long odious to the body

Nothing in the proceedings at Edinburgh astonishes an Englishman more than the manner in which the

Estates dealt with the practice of torture. In England torture had always been illegal. In the most servile times

the judges had unanimously pronounced it so. Those rulers who had occasionally resorted to it had, as far as

was possible, used it in secret, had never pretended that they had acted in conformity with either statute law

or common law, and had excused themselves by saying that the extraordinary peril to which the state was

exposed had forced them to take on themselves the responsibility of employing extraordinarily means of

defence. It had therefore never been thought necessary by any English Parliament to pass any Act or

resolution touching this matter. The torture was not mentioned in the Petition of Right, or in any of the

statutes framed by the Long Parliament. No member of the Convention of 1689 dreamed of proposing that

the instrument which called the Prince and Princess of Orange to the throne should contain a declaration

against the using of racks and thumbscrews for the purpose of forcing prisoners to accuse themselves. Such a

declaration would have been justly regarded as weakening rather than strengthening a rule which, as far back

as the days of the Plantagenets, had been proudly declared by the most illustrious sages of Westminster Hall

to be a distinguishing feature of the English jurisprudence.306 In the Scottish Claim of Right, the use of

torture, without evidence, or in ordinary cases, was declared to be contrary to law. The use of torture,

therefore, where there was strong evidence, and where the crime was extraordinary, was, by the plainest

implication, declared to be according to law; nor did the Estates mention the use of torture among the

grievances which required a legislative remedy. In truth, they could not condemn the use of torture without

condemning themselves. It had chanced that, while they were employed in settling the government, the

eloquent and learned Lord President Lockhart had been foully murdered in a public street through which he

was returning from church on a Sunday. The murderer was seized, and proved to be a wretch who, having

treated his wife barbarously and turned her out of doors, had been compelled by a decree of the Court of

Session to provide for her. A savage hatred of the judges by whom she had been protected had taken

possession of his mind, and had goaded him to a horrible crime and a horrible fate. It was natural that an

assassination attended by so many circumstances of aggravation should move the indignation of the members

of the Convention. Yet they should have considered the gravity of the conjuncture and the importance of their

own mission. They unfortunately, in the heat of passion, directed the magistrates of Edinburgh to strike the

prisoner in the boots, and named a Committee to superintend the operation. But for this unhappy event, it is

probable that the law of Scotland concerning torture would have been immediately assimilated to the law of

Having settled the Claim of Right, the Convention proceeded to revise the Coronation oath. When this had

been done, three members were appointed to carry the Instrument of Government to London. Argyle, though

not, in strictness of law, a Peer, was chosen to represent the Peers: Sir James Montgomery represented the

The Estates then adjourned for a few weeks, having first passed a vote which empowered Hamilton to take

such measures as might be necessary for the preservation of the public peace till the end of the interregnum.

The ceremony of the inauguration was distinguished from ordinary pageants by some highly interesting

circumstances. On the eleventh of May the three Commissioners came to the Council Chamber at Whitehall,

and thence, attended by almost all the Scotchmen of note who were then in London, proceeded to the

Banqueting House. There William and Mary appeared seated under a canopy. A splendid circle of English

nobles, and statesmen stood round the throne: but the sword of state as committed to a Scotch lord; and the

oath of office was administered after the Scotch fashion. Argyle recited the words slowly. The royal pair,

holding up their hands towards heaven, repeated after him till they came to the last clause. There William

paused. That clause contained a promise that he would root out all heretics and all enemies of the true

worship of God; and it was notorious that, in the opinion of many Scotchmen, not only all Roman Catholics,

but all Protestant Episcopalians, all Independents, Baptists and Quakers, all Lutherans, nay all British

Presbyterians who did not hold themselves bound by the Solemn League and Covenant, were enemies of the

true worship of God.308 The King had apprised the Commissioners that he could not take this part of the

oath without a distinct and public explanation; and they had been authorised by the Convention to give such

an explanation as would satisfy him. "I will not," he now said, "lay myself under any obligation to be a

persecutor." "Neither the words of this oath," said one of the Commissioners, "nor the laws of Scotland, lay

any such obligation on your Majesty." "In that sense, then, I swear," said William; "and I desire you all, my

lords and gentlemen, to witness that I do so." Even his detractors have generally admitted that on this great

As King of Scotland, he soon found himself embarrassed at every step by all the difficulties which had

embarrassed him as King of England, and by other difficulties which in England were happily unknown. In

the north of the island, no class was more dissatisfied with the Revolution than the class which owed most to

the Revolution. The manner in which the Convention had decided the question of ecclesiastical polity had not

been more offensive to the Bishops themselves than to those fiery Covenanters who had long, in defiance of

sword and carbine, boot and gibbet, worshipped their Maker after their own fashion in caverns and on

mountain tops. Was there ever, these zealots exclaimed, such a halting between two opinions, such a

compromise between the Lord and Baal? The Estates ought to have said that episcopacy was an abomination

in God's sight, and that, in obedience to his word, and from fear of his righteous judgment, they were

determined to deal with this great national sin and scandal after the fashion of those saintly rulers who of old

cut down the groves and demolished the altars of Chemosh and Astarte. Unhappily, Scotland was ruled, not

by pious Josiahs, but by careless Gallios. The antichristian hierarchy was to be abolished, not because it was

an insult to heaven, but because it was felt as a burden on earth; not because it was hateful to the great Head

of the Church, but because it was hateful to the people. Was public opinion, then, the test of right and wrong

in religion? Was not the order which Christ had established in his own house to be held equally sacred in all

countries and through all ages? And was there no reason for following that order in Scotland except a reason

which might be urged with equal force for maintaining Prelacy in England, Popery in Spain, and

Mahometanism in Turkey? Why, too, was nothing said of those Covenants which the nation had so generally

subscribed and so generally violated? Why was it not distinctly affirmed that the promises set down in those

rolls were still binding, and would to the end of time be binding, on the kingdom? Were these truths to be

suppressed from regard for the feelings and interests of a prince who was all things to all men, an ally of the

idolatrous Spaniard and of the Lutheran bane, a presbyterian at the Hague and a prelatist at Whiteball? He,

like Jelin in ancient times, had doubtless so far done well that he had been the scourge of the idolatrous

House of Ahab. But he, like Jelin, had not taken heed to walk in the divine law with his whole heart, but had

tolerated and practised impieties differing only in degree from those of which he had declared himself the

enemy. It would have better become godly senators to remonstrate with him on the sin which he was

committing by conforming to the Anglican ritual, and by maintaining the Anglican Church government, than

to flatter him by using a phraseology which seemed to indicate that they were as deeply tainted with

Erastianism as himself. Many of those who held this language refused to do any act which could be construed

into a recognition of the new Sovereigns, and would rather have been fired upon by files of musketeers or

tied to stakes within low water mark than have uttered a prayer that God would bless William and Mary.

Yet the King had less to fear from the pertinacious adherence of these men to their absurd principles, than

from the ambition and avarice of another set of men who had no principles at all. It was necessary that he

should immediately name ministers to conduct the government of Scotland: and, name whom he might, he

could not fail to disappoint and irritate a multitude of expectants. Scotland was one of the least wealthy

countries in Europe: yet no country in Europe contained a greater number of clever and selfish politicians.

The places in the gift of the Crown were not enough to satisfy one twentieth part of the placehunters, every

one of whom thought that his own services had been preeminent, and that, whoever might be passed by, he

ought to be remembered. William did his best to satisfy these innumerable and insatiable claimants by putting

many offices into commission. There were however a few great posts which it was impossible to divide.

Hamilton was declared Lord High Commissioner, in the hope that immense pecuniary allowances, a

residence in Holyrood Palace, and a pomp and dignity little less than regal, would content him. The Earl of

Crawford was appointed President of the Parliament; and it was supposed that this appointment would

conciliate the rigid Presbyterians, for Crawford was what they called a professor. His letters and speeches are,

to use his own phraseology, exceeding savoury. Alone, or almost alone, among the prominent politicians of

that time, he retained the style which had been fashionable in the preceding generation. He had a text of the

Old Testament ready for every occasion. He filled his despatches with allusions to Ishmael and Hagar,

Hannah and Eli, Elijah, Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel, and adorned his oratory with quotations from Ezra and

Haggai. It is a circumstance strikingly characteristic of the man, and of the school in which he had been

trained, that, in all the mass of his writing which has come down to us, there is not a single word indicating

that he had ever in his life heard of the New Testament. Even in our own time some persons of a peculiar

taste have been so much delighted by the rich unction of his eloquence, that they have confidently

pronounced him a saint. To those whose habit it is to judge of a man rather by his actions than by his words,

Crawford will appear to have been a selfish, cruel politician, who was not at all the dupe of his own cant, and

whose zeal against episcopal government was not a little whetted by his desire to obtain a grant of episcopal

domains. In excuse for his greediness, it ought to be said that he was the poorest noble of a poor nobility, and

that before the Revolution he was sometimes at a loss for a meal and a suit of clothes.310

The ablest of Scottish politicians and debaters, Sir John Dalrymple, was appointed Lord Advocate. His father,

Sir James, the greatest of Scottish jurists, was placed at the head of the Court of Session. Sir William

Lockhart, a man whose letters prove him to have possessed considerable ability, became Solicitor General.

Sir James Montgomery had flattered himself that he should be the chief minister. He had distinguished

himself highly in the Convention. He had been one of the Commissioners who had tendered the Crown and

administered the oath to the new Sovereigns. In parliamentary ability and eloquence he had no superior

among his countrymen, except the new Lord Advocate. The Secretaryship was, not indeed in dignity, but in

real power, the highest office in the Scottish government; and this office was the reward to which

Montgomery thought himself entitled. But the Episcopalians and the moderate Presbyterians dreaded him as

a man of extreme opinions and of bitter spirit. He had been a chief of the Covenanters: he had been

prosecuted at one time for holding conventicles, and at another time for harbouring rebels: he had been fined:

he had been imprisoned: he had been almost driven to take refuge from his enemies beyond the Atlantic in

the infant settlement of New Jersey. It was apprehended that, if he were now armed with the whole power of

the Crown, he would exact a terrible retribution for what he had suffered.311 William therefore preferred

Melville, who, though not a man of eminent talents, was regarded by the Presbyterians as a thoroughgoing

friend, and yet not regarded by the Episcopalians as an implacable enemy. Melville fixed his residence at the

English Court, and became the regular organ of communication between Kensington and the authorities at

William had, however, one Scottish adviser who deserved and possessed more influence than any of the

ostensible ministers. This was Carstairs, one of the most remarkable men of that age. He united great

scholastic attainments with great aptitude for civil business, and the firm faith and ardent zeal of a martyr

with the shrewdness and suppleness of a consummate politician. In courage and fidelity he resembled Burnet;

but he had, what Burnet wanted, judgment, selfcommand, and a singular power of keeping secrets. There was

no post to which he might not have aspired if he had been a layman, or a priest of the Church of England. But

a Presbyterian clergyman could not hope to attain any high dignity either in the north or in the south of the

island. Carstairs was forced to content himself with the substance of power, and to leave the semblance to

others. He was named Chaplain to their Majesties for Scotland, but wherever the King was, in England, in

Ireland, in the Netherlands, there was this most trusty and most prudent of courtiers. He obtained from the

royal bounty a modest competence; and he desired no more. But it was well known that he could be as useful

a friend and as formidable an enemy as any member of the cabinet; and he was designated at the public

offices and in the antechambers of the palace by the significant nickname of the Cardinal.312

To Montgomery was offered the place of Lord Justice Clerk. But that place, though high and honourable, he

thought below his merits and his capacity; and he returned from London to Scotland with a heart ulcerated by

hatred of his ungrateful master and of his successful rivals. At Edinburgh a knot of Whigs, as severely

disappointed as himself by the new arrangements, readily submitted to the guidance of so bold and able a

leader. Under his direction these men, among whom the Earl of Annandale and Lord Ross were the most

conspicuous, formed themselves into a society called the Club, appointed a clerk, and met daily at a tavern to

concert plans of opposition. Round this nucleus soon gathered a great body of greedy and angry

politicians.313 With these dishonest malecontents, whose object was merely to annoy the government and to

get places, were leagued other malecontents, who, in the course of a long resistance to tyranny, had become

so perverse and irritable that they were unable to live contentedly even under the mildest and most

constitutional government. Such a man was Sir Patrick Hume. He had returned from exile, as litigious, as

impracticable; as morbidly jealous of all superior authority, and as fond of haranguing, as he had been four

years before, and was as much bent on making a merely nominal sovereign of William as he had formerly

been bent on making a merely nominal general of Argyle.314 A man far superior morally and intellectually

to Hume, Fletcher of Saltoun, belonged to the same party. Though not a member of the Convention, he was a

most active member of the Club.315 He hated monarchy: he hated democracy: his favourite project was to

make Scotland an oligarchical republic. The King, if there must be a King, was to be a mere pageant. The

lowest class of the people were to be bondsmen. The whole power, legislative and executive, was to be in the

hands of the Parliament. In other words, the country was to be absolutely governed by a hereditary

aristocracy, the most needy, the most haughty, and the most quarrelsome in Europe. Under such a polity there

could have been neither freedom nor tranquillity. Trade, industry, science, would have languished; and

Scotland would have been a smaller Poland, with a puppet sovereign, a turbulent diet, and an enslaved

people. With unsuccessful candidates for office, and with honest but wrongheaded republicans, were mingled

politicians whose course was determined merely by fear. Many sycophants, who were conscious that they

had, in the evil time, done what deserved punishment, were desirous to make their peace with the powerful

and vindictive Club, and were glad to be permitted to atone for their servility to James by their opposition to

William."316 The great body of Jacobites meanwhile stood aloof, saw with delight the enemies of the House

of Stuart divided against one another, and indulged the hope that the confusion would end in the restoration

While Montgomery was labouring to form out of various materials a party which might, when the

Convention should reassemble, be powerful enough to dictate to the throne, an enemy still more formidable

than Montgomery had set up the standard of civil war in a region about which the politicians of Westminster,

and indeed most of the politicians of Edinburgh, knew no more than about Abyssinia or Japan.

It is not easy for a modern Englishman, who can pass in a day from his club in St. James's Street to his

shooting box among the Grampians, and who finds in his shooting box all the comforts and luxuries of his

club, to believe that, in the time of his greatgrandfathers, St. James's Street had as little connection with the

Grampians as with the Andes. Yet so it was. In the south of our island scarcely any thing was known about

the Celtic part of Scotland; and what was known excited no feeling but contempt and loathing. The crags and

the glens, the woods and the waters, were indeed the same that now swarm every autumn with admiring

gazers and stretchers. The Trosachs wound as now between gigantic walls of rock tapestried with broom and

wild roses: Foyers came headlong down through the birchwood with the same leap and the same roar with

which he still rushes to Loch Ness; and, in defiance of the sun of June, the snowy scalp of Ben Cruachan

rose, as it still rises, over the willowy islets of Loch Awe. Yet none of these sights had power, till a recent

period, to attract a single poet or painter from more opulent and more tranquil regions. Indeed, law and

police, trade and industry, have done far more than people of romantic dispositions will readily admit, to

develope in our minds a sense of the wilder beauties of nature. A traveller must be freed from all

apprehension of being murdered or starved before he can be charmed by the bold outlines and rich tints of the

hills. He is not likely to be thrown into ecstasies by the abruptness of a precipice from which he is in

imminent danger of falling two thousand feet perpendicular; by the boiling waves of a torrent which suddenly

whirls away his baggage and forces him to run for his life; by the gloomy grandeur of a pass where he finds a

corpse which marauders have just stripped and mangled; or by the screams of those eagles whose next meal

may probably be on his own eyes. About the year 1730, Captain Burt, one of the first Englishmen who caught

a glimpse of the spots which now allure tourists from every part of the civilised world, wrote an account of

his wanderings. He was evidently a man of a quick, an observant, and a cultivated mind, and would

doubtless, had he lived in our age, have looked with mingled awe and delight on the mountains of

Invernessshire. But, writing with the feeling which was universal in his own age, he pronounced those

mountains monstrous excrescences. Their deformity, he said, was such that the most sterile plains seemed

lovely by comparison. Fine weather, he complained, only made bad worse; for, the clearer the day, the more

disagreeably did those misshapen masses of gloomy brown and dirty purple affect the eye. What a contrast,

he exclaimed, between these horrible prospects and the beauties of Richmond Hill!318 Some persons may

think that Burt was a man of vulgar and prosaical mind: but they will scarcely venture to pass a similar

judgment on Oliver Goldsmith. Goldsmith was one of the very few Saxons who, more than a century ago,

ventured to explore the Highlands. He was disgusted by the hideous wilderness, and declared that he greatly

preferred the charming country round Leyden, the vast expanse of verdant meadow, and the villas with their

statues and grottoes, trim flower beds, and rectilinear avenues. Yet it is difficult to believe that the author of

the Traveller and of the Deserted Village was naturally inferior in taste and sensibility to the thousands of

clerks and milliners who are now thrown into raptures by the sight of Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond.319

His feelings may easily be explained. It was not till roads had been cut out of the rocks, till bridges had been

flung over the courses of the rivulets, till inns had succeeded to dens of robbers, till there was as little danger

of being slain or plundered in the wildest defile of Badenoch or Lochaber as in Cornhill, that strangers could

be enchanted by the blue dimples of the lakes and by the rainbows which overhung the waterfalls, and could

derive a solemn pleasure even from the clouds and tempests which lowered on the mountain tops.

The change in the feeling with which the Lowlanders regarded the highland scenery was closely connected

with a change not less remarkable in the feeling with which they regarded the Highland race. It is not strange

that the Wild Scotch, as they were sometimes called, should, in the seventeenth century, have been

considered by the Saxons as mere savages. But it is surely strange that, considered as savages, they should

not have been objects of interest and curiosity. The English were then abundantly inquisitive about the

manners of rude nations separated from our island by great continents and oceans. Numerous books were

printed describing the laws, the superstitions, the cabins, the repasts, the dresses, the marriages, the funerals

of Laplanders and Hottentots, Mohawks and Malays. The plays and poems of that age are full of allusions to

the usages of the black men of Africa and of the red men of America. The only barbarian about whom there

was no wish to have any information was the Highlander. Five or six years after the Revolution, an

indefatigable angler published an account of Scotland. He boasted that, in the course of his rambles from lake

to lake, and from brook to brook, he had left scarcely a nook of the kingdom unexplored. But, when we

examine his narrative, we find that he had never ventured beyond the extreme skirts of the Celtic region. He

tells us that even from the people who lived close to the passes he could learn little or nothing about the

Gaelic population. Few Englishmen, he says, had ever seen Inverary. All beyond Inverary was chaos.320 In

the reign of George the First, a work was published which professed to give a most exact account of

Scotland; and in this work, consisting of more than three hundred pages, two contemptuous paragraphs were

thought sufficient for the Highlands and the Highlanders.321 We may well doubt whether, in 1689, one in

twenty of the well read gentlemen who assembled at Will's coffeehouse knew that, within the four seas, and

at the distance of less than five hundred miles from London, were many miniature courts, in each of which a

petty prince, attended by guards, by armour bearers, by musicians, by a hereditary orator, by a hereditary poet

laureate, kept a rude state, dispensed a rude justice, waged wars, and concluded treaties. While the old Gaelic

institutions were in full vigour, no account of them was given by any observer, qualified to judge of them

fairly. Had such an observer studied the character of the Highlanders, he would doubtless have found in it

closely intermingled the good and the bad qualities of an uncivilised nation. He would have found that the

people had no love for their country or for their king; that they had no attachment to any commonwealth

larger than the clan, or to any magistrate superior to the chief. He would have found that life was governed by

a code of morality and honour widely different from that which is established in peaceful and prosperous

societies. He would have learned that a stab in the back, or a shot from behind a fragment of rock, were

approved modes of taking satisfaction for insults. He would have heard men relate boastfully how they or

their fathers had wreaked on hereditary enemies in a neighbouring valley such vengeance as would have

made old soldiers of the Thirty Years' War shudder. He would have found that robbery was held to be a

calling, not merely innocent, but honourable. He would have seen, wherever he turned, that dislike of steady

industry, and that disposition to throw on the weaker sex the heaviest part of manual labour, which are

characteristic of savages. He would have been struck by the spectacle of athletic men basking in the sun,

angling for salmon, or taking aim at grouse, while their aged mothers, their pregnant wives, their tender

daughters, were reaping the scanty harvest of oats. Nor did the women repine at their hard lot. In their view it

was quite fit that a man, especially if he assumed the aristocratic title of Duinhe Wassel and adorned his

bonnet with the eagle's feather, should take his ease, except when he was fighting, hunting, or marauding. To

mention the name of such a man in connection with commerce or with any mechanical art was an insult.

Agriculture was indeed less despised. Yet a highborn warrior was much more becomingly employed in

plundering the land of others than in tilling his own. The religion of the greater part of the Highlands was a

rude mixture of Popery and Paganism. The symbol of redemption was associated with heathen sacrifices and

incantations. Baptized men poured libations of ale to one Daemon, and set out drink offerings of milk for

another. Seers wrapped themselves up in bulls' hides, and awaited, in that vesture, the inspiration which was

to reveal the future. Even among those minstrels and genealogists whose hereditary vocation was to preserve

the memory of past events, an enquirer would have found very few who could read. In truth, he might easily

have journeyed from sea to sea without discovering a page of Gaelic printed or written. The price which he

would have had to pay for his knowledge of the country would have been heavy. He would have had to

endure hardships as great as if he had sojourned among the Esquimaux or the Samoyeds. Here and there,

indeed, at the castle of some great lord who had a seat in the Parliament and Privy Council, and who was

accustomed to pass a large part of his life in the cities of the South, might have been found wigs and

embroidered coats, plate and fine linen, lace and jewels, French dishes and French wines. But, in general, the

traveller would have been forced to content himself with very different quarters. In many dwellings the

furniture, the food, the clothing, nay the very hair and skin of his hosts, would have put his philosophy to the

proof. His lodging would sometimes have been in a but of which every nook would have swarmed with

vermin. He would have inhaled an atmosphere thick with peat smoke, and foul with a hundred noisome

exhalations. At supper grain fit only for horses would have been set before him, accompanied by a cake of

blood drawn from living cows. Some of the company with which he would have feasted would have been

covered with cutaneous eruptions, and others would have been smeared with tar like sheep. His couch would

have been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be; and from that couch he would have risen half

poisoned with stench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half mad with the itch.322

This is not an attractive picture. And yet an enlightened and dispassionate observer would have found in the

character and manners of this rude people something which might well excite admiration and a good hope.

Their courage was what great exploits achieved in all the four quarters of the globe have since proved it to be.

Their intense attachment to their own tribe and to their own patriarch, though politically a great evil, partook

of the nature of virtue. The sentiment was misdirected and ill regulated; but still it was heroic. There must be

some elevation of soul in a man who loves the society of which he is a member and the leader whom he

follows with a love stronger than the love of life. It was true that the Highlander had few scruples about

shedding the blood of an enemy: but it was not less true that he had high notions of the duty of observing

faith to allies and hospitality to guests. It was true that his predatory habits were most pernicious to the

commonwealth. Yet those erred greatly who imagined that he bore any resemblance to villains who, in rich

and well governed communities, live by stealing. When he drove before him the herds of Lowland farmers up

the pass which led to his native glen, he no more considered himself as a thief than the Raleighs and Drakes

considered themselves as thieves when they divided the cargoes of Spanish galleons. He was a warrior

seizing lawful prize of war, of war never once intermitted during the thirtyfive generations which had

passed away since the Teutonic invaders had driven the children of the soil to the mountains. That, if he was

caught robbing on such principles, he should, for the protection of peaceful industry, be punished with the

utmost rigour of the law was perfectly just. But it was not just to class him morally with the pickpockets who

infested Drury Lane Theatre, or the highwaymen who stopped coaches on Blackheath. His inordinate pride of

birth and his contempt for labour and trade were indeed great weaknesses, and had done far more than the

inclemency of the air and the sterility of the soil to keep his country poor and rude. Yet even here there was

some compensation. It must in fairness be acknowledged that the patrician virtues were not less widely

diffused among the population of the Highlands than the patrician vices. As there was no other part of the

island where men, sordidly clothed, lodged, and fed, indulged themselves to such a degree in the idle

sauntering habits of an aristocracy, so there was no other part of the island where such men had in such a

degree the better qualities of an aristocracy, grace and dignity of manner, selfrespect, and that noble

sensibility which makes dishonour more terrible than death. A gentleman of this sort, whose clothes were

begrimed with the accumulated filth of years, and whose hovel smelt worse than an English hogstye, would

often do the honours of that hovel with a lofty courtesy worthy of the splendid circle of Versailles. Though he

had as little booklearning as the most stupid ploughboys of England, it would have been a great error to put

him in the same intellectual rank with such ploughboys. It is indeed only by reading that men can become

profoundly acquainted with any science. But the arts of poetry and rhetoric may be carried near to absolute

perfection, and may exercise a mighty influence on the public mind, in an age in which books are wholly or

almost wholly unknown. The first great painter of life and manners has described, with a vivacity which

makes it impossible to doubt that he was copying from nature, the effect produced by eloquence and song on

audiences ignorant of the alphabet. It is probable that, in the Highland councils, men who would not have

been qualified for the duty of parish clerks sometimes argued questions of peace and war, of tribute and

homage, with ability worthy of Halifax and Caermarthen, and that, at the Highland banquets, minstrels who

did not know their letters sometimes poured forth rhapsodies in which a discerning critic might have found

passages which would have reminded him of the tenderness of Otway or of the vigour of Dryden.

There was therefore even then evidence sufficient to justify the belief that no natural inferiority had kept the

Celt far behind the Saxon. It might safely have been predicted that, if ever an efficient police should make it

impossible for the Highlander to avenge his wrongs by violence and to supply his wants by rapine, if ever his

faculties should be developed by the civilising influence of the Protestant religion and of the English

language, if ever he should transfer to his country and to her lawful magistrates the affection and respect with

which he had been taught to regard his own petty community and his own petty prince, the kingdom would

obtain an immense accession of strength for all the purposes both of peace and of war.

Such would doubtless have been the decision of a well informed and impartial judge. But no such judge was

then to be found. The Saxons who dwelt far from the Gaelic provinces could not be well informed. The

Saxons who dwelt near those provinces could not be impartial. National enmities have always been fiercest

among borderers; and the enmity between the Highland borderer and the Lowland borderer along the whole

frontier was the growth of ages, and was kept fresh by constant injuries. One day many square miles of

pasture land were swept bare by armed plunderers from the hills. Another day a score of plaids dangled in a

row on the gallows of Crieff or Stirling. Fairs were indeed held on the debatable land for the necessary

interchange of commodities. But to those fairs both parties came prepared for battle; and the day often ended

in bloodshed. Thus the Highlander was an object of hatred to his Saxon neighbours; and from his Saxon

neighbours those Saxons who dwelt far from him learned the very little that they cared to know about his

habits. When the English condescended to think of him at all,and it was seldom that they did so,they

considered him as a filthy abject savage, a slave, a Papist, a cutthroat, and a thief.323

This contemptuous loathing lasted till the year 1745, and was then for a moment succeeded by intense fear

and rage. England, thoroughly alarmed, put forth her whole strength. The Highlands were subjugated rapidly,

completely, and for ever. During a short time the English nation, still heated by the recent conflict, breathed

nothing but vengeance. The slaughter on the field of battle and on the scaffold was not sufficient to slake the

public thirst for blood. The sight of the tartan inflamed the populace of London with hatred, which showed

itself by unmanly outrages to defenceless captives. A political and social revolution took place through the

whole Celtic region. The power of the chiefs was destroyed: the people were disarmed: the use of the old

national garb was interdicted: the old predatory habits were effectually broken; and scarcely had this change

been accomplished when a strange reflux of public feeling began. Pity succeeded to aversion. The nation

execrated the cruelties which had been committed on the Highlanders, and forgot that for those cruelties it

was itself answerable. Those very Londoners, who, while the memory of the march to Derby was still fresh,

had thronged to hoot and pelt the rebel prisoners, now fastened on the prince who had put down the rebellion

the nickname of Butcher. Those barbarous institutions and usages, which, while they were in full force, no

Saxon had thought worthy of serious examination, or had mentioned except with contempt, had no sooner

ceased to exist than they became objects of curiosity, of interest, even of admiration. Scarcely had the chiefs

been turned into mere landlords, when it became the fashion to draw invidious comparisons between the

rapacity of the landlord and the indulgence of the chief. Men seemed to have forgotten that the ancient Gaelic

polity had been found to be incompatible with the authority of law, had obstructed the progress of

civilisation, had more than once brought on the empire the curse of civil war. As they had formerly seen only

the odious side of that polity, they could now see only the pleasing side. The old tie, they said, had been

parental: the new tie was purely commercial. What could be more lamentable than that the head of a tribe

should eject, for a paltry arrear of rent, tenants who were his own flesh and blood, tenants whose forefathers

had often with their bodies covered his forefathers on the field of battle? As long as there were Gaelic

marauders, they had been regarded by the Saxon population as hateful vermin who ought to be exterminated

without mercy. As soon as the extermination had been accomplished, as soon as cattle were as safe in the

Perthshire passes as in Smithfield market, the freebooter was exalted into a hero of romance. As long as the

Gaelic dress was worn, the Saxons had pronounced it hideous, ridiculous, nay, grossly indecent. Soon after it

had been prohibited, they discovered that it was the most graceful drapery in Europe. The Gaelic monuments,

the Gaelic usages, the Gaelic superstitions, the Gaelic verses, disdainfully neglected during many ages, began

to attract the attention of the learned from the moment at which the peculiarities of the Gaelic race began to

disappear. So strong was this impulse that, where the Highlands were concerned, men of sense gave ready

credence to stories without evidence, and men of taste gave rapturous applause to compositions without

merit. Epic poems, which any skilful and dispassionate critic would at a glance have perceived to be almost

entirely modern, and which, if they had been published as modern, would have instantly found their proper

place in company with Blackmore's Alfred and Wilkie's Epigoniad, were pronounced to be fifteen hundred

years old, and were gravely classed with the Iliad. Writers of a very different order from the impostor who

fabricated these forgeries saw how striking an effect might be produced by skilful pictures of the old

Highland life. Whatever was repulsive was softened down: whatever was graceful and noble was brought

prominently forward. Some of these works were executed with such admirable art that, like the historical

plays of Shakspeare, they superseded history. The visions of the poet were realities to his readers. The places

which he described became holy ground, and were visited by thousands of pilgrims. Soon the vulgar

imagination was so completely occupied by plaids, targets, and claymores, that, by most Englishmen,

Scotchman and Highlander were regarded as synonymous words. Few people seemed to be aware that, at no

remote period, a Macdonald or a Macgregor in his tartan was to a citizen of Edinburgh or Glasgow what an

Indian hunter in his war paint is to an inhabitant of Philadelphia or Boston. Artists and actors represented

Bruce and Douglas in striped petticoats. They might as well have represented Washington brandishing a

tomahawk, and girt with a string of scalps. At length this fashion reached a point beyond which it was not

easy to proceed. The last British King who held a court in Holyrood thought that he could not give a more

striking proof of his respect for the usages which had prevailed in Scotland before the Union, than by

disguising himself in what, before the Union, was considered by nine Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a

Thus it has chanced that the old Gaelic institutions and manners have never been exhibited in the simple light

of truth. Up to the middle of the last century, they were seen through one false medium: they have since been

seen through another. Once they loomed dimly through an obscuring and distorting haze of prejudice; and no

sooner had that fog dispersed than they appeared bright with all the richest tints of poetry. The time when a

perfectly fair picture could have been painted has now passed away. The original has long disappeared: no

authentic effigy exists; and all that is possible is to produce an imperfect likeness by the help of two portraits,

Among the erroneous notions which have been commonly received concerning the history and character of

the Highlanders is one which it is especially necessary to correct. During the century which commenced with

the campaign of Montrose, and terminated with the campaign of the young Pretender, every great military

exploit which was achieved on British ground in the cause of the House of Stuart was achieved by the valour

of Gaelic tribes. The English have therefore very naturally ascribed to those tribes the feelings of English

cavaliers, profound reverence for the royal office, and enthusiastic attachment to the royal family. A close

inquiry however will show that the strength of these feelings among the Celtic clans has been greatly

In studying the history of our civil contentions, we must never forget that the same names, badges, and

warcries had very different meanings in different parts of the British isles. We have already seen how little

there was in common between the Jacobitism of Ireland and the Jacobitism of England. The Jacobitism of the

Scotch Highlander was, at least in the seventeenth century, a third variety, quite distinct from the other two.

The Gaelic population was far indeed from holding the doctrines of passive obedience and nonresistance. In

fact disobedience and resistance made up the ordinary life of that population. Some of those very clans which

it has been the fashion to describe as so enthusiastically loyal that they were prepared to stand by James to the

death, even when he was in the wrong, had never, while he was on the throne, paid the smallest respect to his

authority, even when he was clearly in the right. Their practice, their calling, had been to disobey and to defy

him. Some of them had actually been proscribed by sound of horn for the crime of withstanding his lawful

commands, and would have torn to pieces without scruple any of his officers who had dared to venture

beyond the passes for the purpose of executing his warrant. The English Whigs were accused by their

opponents of holding doctrines dangerously lax touching the obedience due to the chief magistrate. Yet no

respectable English Whig ever defended rebellion, except as a rare and extreme remedy for rare and extreme

evils. But among those Celtic chiefs whose loyalty has been the theme of so much warm eulogy were some

whose whole existence from boyhood upwards had been one long rebellion. Such men, it is evident, were not

likely to see the Revolution in the light in which it appeared to an Oxonian nonjuror. On the other hand they

were not, like the aboriginal Irish, urged to take arms by impatience of Saxon domination. To such

domination the Scottish Celt had never been subjected. He occupied his own wild and sterile region, and

followed his own national usages. In his dealings with the Saxons, he was rather the oppressor than the

oppressed. He exacted black mail from them: he drove away their flocks and herds; and they seldom dared to

pursue him to his native wilderness. They had never portioned out among themselves his dreary region of

moor and shingle. He had never seen the tower of his hereditary chieftains occupied by an usurper who could

not speak Gaelic, and who looked on all who spoke it as brutes and slaves; nor had his national and religious

feelings ever been outraged by the power and splendour of a church which he regarded as at once foreign and

The real explanation of the readiness with which a large part of the population of the Highlands, twice in the

seventeenth century, drew the sword for the Stuarts is to be found in the internal quarrels which divided the

commonwealth of clans. For there was a commonwealth of clans, the image, on a reduced scale, of the great

commonwealth of European nations. In the smaller of these two commonwealths, as in the larger, there were

wars, treaties, alliances, disputes about territory and precedence, a system of public law, a balance of power.

There was one inexhaustible source of discontents and disputes. The feudal system had, some centuries

before, been introduced into the hill country, but had neither destroyed the patriarchal system nor

amalgamated completely with it. In general he who was lord in the Norman polity was also chief in the Celtic

polity; and, when this was the case, there was no conflict. But, when the two characters were separated, all

the willing and loyal obedience was reserved for the chief. The lord had only what he could get and hold by

force. If he was able, by the help of his own tribe, to keep in subjection tenants who were not of his own tribe,

there was a tyranny of clan over clan, the most galling, perhaps, of all forms of tyranny. At different times

different races had risen to an authority which had produced general fear and envy. The Macdonalds had once

possessed, in the Hebrides and throughout the mountain country of Argyleshire and Invernessshire, an

ascendancy similar to that which the House of Austria had once possessed in Christendom. But the

ascendancy of the Macdonalds had, like the ascendancy of the House of Austria, passed away; and the

Campbells, the children of Diarmid, had become in the Highlands what the Bourbons had become in Europe.

The parallel might be carried far. Imputations similar to those which it was the fashion to throw on the French

government were thrown on the Campbells. A peculiar dexterity, a peculiar plausibility of address, a peculiar

contempt for all the obligations of good faith, were ascribed, with or without reason, to the dreaded race.

"Fair and false like a Campbell" became a proverb. It was said that Mac Callum More after Mac Callum

More had, with unwearied, unscrupulous, and unrelenting ambition, annexed mountain after mountain and

island after island to the original domains of his House. Some tribes had been expelled from their territory,

some compelled to pay tribute, some incorporated with the conquerors. At length the number of fighting men

who bore the name of Campbell was sufficient to meet in the field of battle the combined forces of all the

other western clans.324 It was during those civil troubles which commenced in 1638 that the power of this

aspiring family reached the zenith. The Marquess of Argyle was the head of a party as well as the head of a

tribe. Possessed of two different kinds of authority, he used each of them in such a way as to extend and

fortify the other. The knowledge that he could bring into the field the claymores of five thousand half heathen

mountaineers added to his influence among the austere Presbyterians who filled the Privy Council and the

General Assembly at Edinburgh. His influence at Edinburgh added to the terror which he inspired among the

mountains. Of all the Highland princes whose history is well known to us he was the greatest and most

dreaded. It was while his neighbours were watching the increase of his power with hatred which fear could

scarcely keep down that Montrose called them to arms. The call was promptly obeyed. A powerful coalition

of clans waged war, nominally for King Charles, but really against Mac Callum More. It is not easy for any

person who has studied the history of that contest to doubt that, if Argyle had supported the cause of

monarchy, his neighbours would have declared against it. Grave writers tell of the victory gained at

Inverlochy by the royalists over the rebels. But the peasants who dwell near the spot speak more accurately.

The feelings which had produced the coalition against the Marquess of Argyle retained their force long after

his death. His son, Earl Archibald, though a man of many eminent virtues, inherited, with the ascendancy of

his ancestors, the unpopularity which such ascendancy could scarcely fail to produce. In 1675, several

warlike tribes formed a confederacy against him, but were compelled to submit to the superior force which

was at his command. There was therefore great joy from sea to sea when, in 1681, he was arraigned on a

futile charge, condemned to death, driven into exile, and deprived of his dignities. There was great alarm

when, in 1685, he returned from banishment, and sent forth the fiery cross to summon his kinsmen to his

standard; and there was again great joy when his enterprise had failed, when his army had melted away, when

his head had been fixed on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and when those chiefs who had regarded him as an

oppressor had obtained from the Crown, on easy terms, remissions of old debts and grants of new titles.

While England and Scotland generally were execrating the tyranny of James, he was honoured as a deliverer

in Appin and Lochaber, in Glenroy and Glenmore.325 The hatred excited by the power and ambition of the

House of Argyle was not satisfied even when the head of that House had perished, when his children were

fugitives, when strangers garrisoned the Castle of Inverary, and when the whole shore of Loch Fyne was laid

waste by fire and sword. It was said that the terrible precedent which had been set in the case of the

Macgregors ought to be followed, and that it ought to be made a crime to bear the odious name of Campbell.

On a sudden all was changed. The Revolution came. The heir of Argyle returned in triumph. He was, as his

predecessors had been, the head, not only of a tribe, but of a party. The sentence which had deprived him of

his estate and of his honours was treated by the majority of the Convention as a nullity. The doors of the

Parliament House were thrown open to him: he was selected from the whole body of Scottish nobles to

administer the oath of office to the new Sovereigns; and he was authorised to raise an army on his domains

for the service of the Crown. He would now, doubtless, be as powerful as the most powerful of his ancestors.

Backed by the strength of the Government, he would demand all the long and heavy arrears of rent and

tribute which were due to him from his neighbours, and would exact revenge for all the injuries and insults

which his family had suffered. There was terror and agitation in the castles of twenty petty kings. The

uneasiness was great among the Stewarts of Appin, whose territory was close pressed by the sea on one side,

and by the race of Diarmid on the other. The Macnaghtens were still more alarmed. Once they had been the

masters of those beautiful valleys through which the Ara and the Shira flow into Loch Fyne. But the

Campbells had prevailed. The Macnaghtens had been reduced to subjection, and had, generation after

generation, looked up with awe and detestation to the neighbouring Castle of Inverary. They had recently

been promised a complete emancipation. A grant, by virtue of which their chief would have held his estate

immediately from the Crown, had been prepared, and was about to pass the seals, when the Revolution

The Macleans remembered that, only fourteen years before, their lands had been invaded and the seat of their

chief taken and garrisoned by the Campbells.327 Even before William and Mary had been proclaimed at

Edinburgh, a Maclean, deputed doubtless by the head of his tribe, had crossed the sea to Dublin, and had

assured James that, if two or three battalions from Ireland were landed in Argyleshire, they would be

A similar spirit animated the Camerons. Their ruler, Sir Ewan Cameron, of Lochiel, surnamed the Black, was

in personal qualities unrivalled among the Celtic princes. He was a gracious master, a trusty ally, a terrible

enemy. His countenance and bearing were singularly noble. Some persons who had been at Versailles, and

among them the shrewd and observant Simon Lord Lovat, said that there was, in person and manner, a most

striking resemblance between Lewis the Fourteenth and Lochiel; and whoever compares the portraits of the

two will perceive that there really was some likeness. In stature the difference was great. Lewis, in spite of

highheeled shoes and a towering wig, hardly reached the middle size. Lochiel was tall and strongly built. In

agility and skill at his weapons he had few equals among the inhabitants of the hills. He had repeatedly been

victorious in single combat. He was a hunter of great fame. He made vigorous war on the wolves which,

down to his time, preyed on the red deer of the Grampians; and by his hand perished the last of the ferocious

breed which is known to have wandered at large in our island. Nor was Lochiel less distinguished by

intellectual than by bodily vigour. He might indeed have seemed ignorant to educated and travelled

Englishmen, who had studied the classics under Busby at Westminster and under Aldrich at Oxford, who had

learned something about the sciences among Fellows of the Royal Society, and something about the fine arts

in the galleries of Florence and Rome. But though Lochiel had very little knowledge of books, he was

eminently wise in council, eloquent in debate, ready in devising expedients, and skilful in managing the

minds of men. His understanding preserved him from those follies into which pride and anger frequently

hurried his brother chieftains. Many, therefore, who regarded his brother chieftains as mere barbarians,

mentioned him with respect. Even at the Dutch Embassy in St. James's Square he was spoken of as a man of

such capacity and courage that it would not be easy to find his equal. As a patron of literature he ranks with

the magnificent Dorset. If Dorset out of his own purse allowed Dryden a pension equal to the profits of the

Laureateship, Lochiel is said to have bestowed on a celebrated bard, who had been plundered by marauders,

and who implored alms in a pathetic Gaelic ode, three cows and the almost incredible sum of fifteen pounds

sterling. In truth, the character of this great chief was depicted two thousand five hundred years before his

birth, and depicted,such is the power of genius,in colours which will be fresh as many years after his

He held a large territory peopled by a race which reverenced no lord, no king but himself. For that territory,

however, he owed homage to the House of Argyle. He was bound to assist his feudal superiors in war, and

was deeply in debt to them for rent. This vassalage he had doubtless been early taught to consider as

degrading and unjust. In his minority he had been the ward in chivalry of the politic Marquess, and had been

educated at the Castle of Inverary. But at eighteen the boy broke loose from the authority of his guardian, and

fought bravely both for Charles the First and for Charles the Second. He was therefore considered by the

English as a Cavalier, was well received at Whitehall after the Restoration, and was knighted by the hand of

James. The compliment, however, which was paid to him, on one of his appearances at the English Court,

would not have seemed very flattering to a Saxon. "Take care of your pockets, my lords," cried his Majesty;

"here comes the king of the thieves." The loyalty of Lochiel is almost proverbial: but it was very unlike what

was called loyalty in England. In the Records of the Scottish Parliament he was, in the days of Charles the

Second, described as a lawless and rebellious man, who held lands masterfully and in high contempt of the

royal authority.330 On one occasion the Sheriff of Invernessshire was directed by King James to hold a court

in Lochaber. Lochiel, jealous of this interference with his own patriarchal despotism, came to the tribunal at

the head of four hundred armed Camerons. He affected great reverence for the royal commission, but he

dropped three or four words which were perfectly understood by the pages and armourbearers, who watched

every turn of his eye. "Is none of my lads so clever as to send this judge packing? I have seen them get up a

quarrel when there was less need of one." In a moment a brawl began in the crowd, none could say how or

where. Hundreds of dirks were out: cries of "Help" and "Murder" were raised on all sides: many wounds

were inflicted: two men were killed: the sitting broke up in tumult; and the terrified Sheriff was forced to put

himself under the protection of the chief, who, with a plausible bow of respect and concern, escorted him safe

home. It is amusing to think that the man who performed this feat is constantly extolled as the most faithful

and dutiful of subjects by writers who blame Somers and Burnet as contemners of the legitimate authority of

Sovereigns. Lochiel would undoubtedly have laughed the doctrine of nonresistance to scorn. But scarcely any

chief in Invernessshire had gained more than he by the downfall of the House of Argyle, or had more reason

than he to dread the restoration of that House. Scarcely any chief in Invernessshire, therefore, was more

But of all those Highlanders who looked on the recent turn of fortune with painful apprehension the fiercest

and the most powerful were the Macdonalds. More than one of the magnates who bore that widespread name

laid claim to the honour of being the rightful successor of those Lords of the Isles, who, as late as the fifteenth

century, disputed the preeminence of the Kings of Scotland. This genealogical controversy, which has lasted

down to our own time, caused much bickering among the competitors. But they all agreed in regretting the

past splendour of their dynasty, and in detesting the upstart race of Campbell. The old feud had never

slumbered. It was still constantly repeated, in verse and prose, that the finest part of the domain belonging to

the ancient heads of the Gaelic nation, Islay, where they had lived with the pomp of royalty, Iona, where they

had been interred with the pomp of religion, the paps of Jura, the rich peninsula of Kintyre, had been

transferred from the legitimate possessors to the insatiable Mac Callum More. Since the downfall of the

House of Argyle, the Macdonalds, if they had not regained their ancient superiority, might at least boast that

they had now no superior. Relieved from the fear of their mighty enemy in the West, they had turned their

arms against weaker enemies in the East, against the clan of Mackintosh and against the town of Inverness.

The clan of Mackintosh, a branch of an ancient and renowned tribe which took its name and badge from the

wild cat of the forests, had a dispute with the Macdonalds, which originated, if tradition may be believed, in

those dark times when the Danish pirates wasted the coasts of Scotland. Inverness was a Saxon colony among

the Celts, a hive of traders and artisans in the midst of a population of loungers and plunderers, a solitary

outpost of civilisation in a region of barbarians. Though the buildings covered but a small part of the space

over which they now extend; though the arrival of a brig in the port was a rare event; though the Exchange

was the middle of a miry street, in which stood a market cross much resembling a broken milestone; though

the sittings of the municipal council were held in a filthy den with a roughcast wall; though the best houses

were such as would now be called hovels; though the best roofs were of thatch; though the best ceilings were

of bare rafters; though the best windows were, in bad weather, closed with shutters for want of glass; though

the humbler dwellings were mere heaps of turf, in which barrels with the bottoms knocked out served the

purpose of chimneys; yet to the mountaineer of the Grampians this city was as Babylon or as Tyre. Nowhere

else had he seen four or five hundred houses, two churches, twelve maltkilns, crowded close together.

Nowhere else had he been dazzled by the splendour of rows of booths, where knives, horn spoons, tin kettles,

and gaudy ribands were exposed to sale. Nowhere else had he been on board of one of those huge ships

which brought sugar and wine over the sea from countries far beyond the limits of his geography.331 It is not

strange that the haughty and warlike Macdonalds, despising peaceful industry, yet envying the fruits of that

industry, should have fastened a succession of quarrels on the people of Inverness. In the reign of Charles the

Second, it had been apprehended that the town would be stormed and plundered by those rude neighbours.

The terms of peace which they offered showed how little they regarded the authority of the prince and of the

law. Their demand was that a heavy tribute should be paid to them, that the municipal magistrates should

bind themselves by an oath to deliver tip to the vengeance of the clan every burgher who should shed the

blood of a Macdonald, and that every burgher who should anywhere meet a person wearing the Macdonald

tartan should ground arms in token of submission. Never did Lewis the Fourteenth, not even when he was

encamped between Utrecht and Amsterdam, treat the States General with such despotic insolence.332 By the

intervention of the Privy Council of Scotland a compromise was effected: but the old animosity was

Common enmities and common apprehensions produced a good understanding between the town and the clan

of Mackintosh. The foe most hated and dreaded by both was Colin Macdonald of Keppoch, an excellent

specimen of the genuine Highland Jacobite. Keppoch's whole life had been passed in insulting and resisting

the authority of the Crown. He had been repeatedly charged on his allegiance to desist from his lawless

practices, but had treated every admonition with contempt. The government, however, was not willing to

resort to extremities against him; and he long continued to rule undisturbed the stormy peaks of Coryarrick,

and the gigantic terraces which still mark the limits of what was once the Lake of Glenroy. He was famed for

his knowledge of all the ravines and caverns of that dreary region; and such was the skill with which he could

track a herd of cattle to the most secret hidingplace that he was known by the nickname of Coll of the

Cows.333 At length his outrageous violations of all law compelled the Privy Council to take decided steps.

He was proclaimed a rebel: letters of fire and sword were issued against him under the seal of James; and, a

few weeks before the Revolution, a body of royal troops, supported by the whole strength of the

Mackintoshes, marched into Keppoch's territories. He gave battle to the invaders, and was victorious. The

King's forces were put to flight; the King's captain was slain; and this by a hero whose loyalty to the King

many writers have very complacently contrasted with the factious turbulence of the Whigs.334

If Keppoch had ever stood in any awe of the government, he was completely relieved from that feeling by the

general anarchy which followed the Revolution. He wasted the lands of the Mackintoshes, advanced to

Inverness, and threatened the town with destruction. The danger was extreme. The houses were surrounded

only by a wall which time and weather had so loosened that it shook in every storm. Yet the inhabitants

showed a bold front; and their courage was stimulated by their preachers. Sunday the twentyeighth of April

was a day of alarm and confusion. The savages went round and round the small colony of Saxons like a troop

of famished wolves round a sheepfold. Keppoch threatened and blustered. He would come in with all his

men. He would sack the place. The burghers meanwhile mustered in arms round the market cross to listen to

the oratory of their ministers. The day closed without an assault; the Monday and the Tuesday passed away in

Dundee, after his flight from Edinburgh, had retired to his country seat in that valley through which the

Glamis descends to the ancient castle of Macbeth. Here he remained quiet during some time. He protested

that he had no intention of opposing the new government. He declared himself ready to return to Edinburgh,

if only he could be assured that he should be protected against lawless violence; and he offered to give his

word of honour, or, if that were not sufficient, to give bail, that he would keep the peace. Some of his old

soldiers had accompanied him, and formed a garrison sufficient to protect his house against the Presbyterians

of the neighbourhood. Here he might possibly have remained unharmed and harmless, had not an event for

which he was not answerable made his enemies implacable, and made him desperate.335

An emissary of James had crossed from Ireland to Scotland with letters addressed to Dundee and Balcarras.

Suspicion was excited. The messenger was arrested, interrogated, and searched; and the letters were found.

Some of them proved to be from Melfort, and were worthy of him. Every line indicated those qualities which

had made him the abhorrence of his country and the favourite of his master. He announced with delight the

near approach of the day of vengeance and rapine, of the day when the estates of the seditious would be

divided among the loyal, and when many who had been great and prosperous would be exiles and beggars.

The King, Melfort said, was determined to be severe. Experience had at length convinced his Majesty that

mercy would be weakness. Even the Jacobites were disgusted by learning that a Restoration would be

immediately followed by a confiscation and a proscription. Some of them did not hesitate to say that Melfort

was a villain, that he hated Dundee and Balcarras, that he wished to ruin them, and that, for that end, he had

written these odious despatches, and had employed a messenger who had very dexterously managed to be

caught. It is however quite certain that Melfort, after the publication of these papers, continued to stand as

high as ever in the favour of James. It can therefore hardly be doubted that, in those passages which shocked

even the zealous supporters of hereditary right, the Secretary merely expressed with fidelity the feelings and

intentions of his master.336 Hamilton, by virtue of the powers which the Estates had, before their

adjournment, confided to him, ordered Balcarras and Dundee to be arrested. Balcarras was taken and

confined, first in his own house, and then in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. But to seize Dundee was not so easy

an enterprise. As soon as he heard that warrants were out against him, he crossed the Dee with his followers,

and remained a short time in the wild domains of the House of Gordon. There he held some communications

with the Macdonalds and Camerons about a rising. But he seems at this time to have known little and cared

little about the Highlanders. For their national character he probably felt the dislike of a Saxon, for their

military character the contempt of a professional soldier. He soon returned to the Lowlands, and stayed there

till he learned that a considerable body of troops had been sent to apprehend him.337 He then betook himself

to the hill country as his last refuge, pushed northward through Strathdon and Strathbogie, crossed the Spey,

and, on the morning of the first of May, arrived with a small band of horsemen at the camp of Keppoch

The new situation in which Dundee was now placed, the new view of society which was presented to him,

naturally suggested new projects to his inventive and enterprising spirit. The hundreds of athletic Celts whom

he saw in their national order of battle were evidently not allies to be despised. If he could form a great

coalition of clans, if he could muster under one banner ten or twelve thousand of those hardy warriors, if he

could induce them to submit to the restraints of discipline, what a career might be before him!

A commission from King James, even when King James was securely seated on the throne, had never been

regarded with much respect by Coll of the Cows. That chief, however, hated the Campbells with all the

hatred of a Macdonald, and promptly gave in his adhesion to the cause of the House of Stuart. Dundee

undertook to settle the dispute between Keppoch and Inverness. The town agreed to pay two thousand

dollars, a sum which, small as it might be in the estimation of the goldsmiths of Lombard Street, probably

exceeded any treasure that had ever been carried into the wilds of Coryarrick. Half the sum was raised, not

without difficulty, by the inhabitants; and Dundee is said to have passed his word for the remainder.338

He next tried to reconcile the Macdonalds with the Mackintoshes, and flattered himself that the two warlike

tribes, lately arrayed against each other, might be willing to fight side by side under his command. But he

soon found that it was no light matter to take up a Highland feud. About the rights of the contending Kings

neither clan knew any thing or cared any thing. The conduct of both is to be ascribed to local passions and

interests. What Argyle was to Keppoch, Keppoch was to the Mackintoshes. The Mackintoshes therefore

remained neutral; and their example was followed by the Macphersons, another branch of the race of the wild

cat. This was not Dundee's only disappointment. The Mackenzies, the Frasers, the Grants, the Munros, the

Mackays, the Macleods, dwelt at a great distance from the territory of Mac Callum More. They had no

dispute with him; they owed no debt to him: and they had no reason to dread the increase of his power. They

therefore did not sympathize with his alarmed and exasperated neighbours, and could not be induced to join

the confederacy against him.339 Those chiefs, on the other hand, who lived nearer to Inverary, and to whom

the name of Campbell had long been terrible and hateful, greeted Dundee eagerly, and promised to meet him

at the head of their followers on the eighteenth of May. During the fortnight which preceded that day, he

traversed Badenoch and Athol, and exhorted the inhabitants of those districts to rise in arms. He dashed into

the Lowlands with his horsemen, surprised Perth, and carried off some Whig gentlemen prisoners to the

mountains. Meanwhile the fiery crosses had been wandering from hamlet to hamlet over all the heaths and

mountains thirty miles round Ben Nevis; and when he reached the trysting place in Lochaber he found that

the gathering had begun. The head quarters were fixed close to Lochiel's house, a large pile built entirely of

fir wood, and considered in the Highlands as a superb palace. Lochiel, surrounded by more than six hundred

broadswords, was there to receive his guests. Macnaghten of Macnaghten and Stewart of Appin were at the

muster with their little clans. Macdonald of Keppoch led the warriors who had, a few months before, under

his command, put to flight the musketeers of King James. Macdonald of Clanronald was of tender years: but

he was brought to the camp by his uncle, who acted at Regent during the minority. The youth was attended

by a picked body guard composed of his own cousins, all comely in appearance, and good men of their

hands. Macdonald of Glengarry, conspicuous by his dark brow and his lofty stature, came from that great

valley where a chain of lakes, then unknown to fame, and scarcely set down in maps, is now the daily

highway of steam vessels passing and reprising between the Atlantic and the German Ocean. None of the

rulers of the mountains had a higher sense of his personal dignity, or was more frequently engaged in disputes

with other chiefs. He generally affected in his manners and in his housekeeping a rudeness beyond that of his

rude neighbours, and professed to regard the very few luxuries which had then found their way from the

civilised parts of the world into the Highlands as signs of the effeminacy and degeneracy of the Gaelic race.

But on this occasion he chose to imitate the splendour of Saxon warriors, and rode on horseback before his

four hundred plaided clansmen in a steel cuirass and a coat embroidered with gold lace. Another Macdonald,

destined to a lamentable and horrible end, led a band of hardy freebooters from the dreary pass of Glencoe.

Somewhat later came the great Hebridean potentates. Macdonald of Sleat, the most opulent and powerful of

all the grandees who laid claim to the lofty title of Lord of the Isles, arrived at the head of seven hundred

fighting men from Sky. A fleet of long boats brought five hundred Macleans from Mull under the command

of their chief, Sir John of Duart. A far more formidable array had in old times followed his forefathers to

battle. But the power, though not the spirit, of the clan had been broken by the arts and arms of the

Campbells. Another band of Macleans arrived under a valiant leader, who took his title from Lochbuy, which

It does not appear that a single chief who had not some special cause to dread and detest the House of Argyle

obeyed Dundee's summons. There is indeed strong reason to believe that the chiefs who came would have

remained quietly at home if the government had understood the politics of the Highlands. Those politics were

thoroughly understood by one able and experienced statesman, sprung from the great Highland family of

Mackenzie, the Viscount Tarbet. He at this conjuncture pointed out to Melville by letter, and to Mackay in

conversation, both the cause and the remedy of the distempers which seemed likely to bring on Scotland the

calamities of civil war. There was, Tarbet said, no general disposition to insurrection among the Gael. Little

was to be apprehended even from those popish clans which were under no apprehension of being subjected to

the yoke of the Campbells. It was notorious that the ablest and most active of the discontented chiefs troubled

themselves not at all about the questions which were in dispute between the Whigs and the Tories. Lochiel in

particular, whose eminent personal qualities made him the most important man among the mountaineers,

cared no more for James than for William. If the Camerons, the Macdonalds, and the Macleans could be

convinced that, under the new government, their estates and their dignities would be safe, if Mac Callum

More would make some concessions, if their Majesties would take on themselves the payment of some

arrears of rent, Dundee might call the clans to arms; but he would call to little purpose. Five thousand pounds,

Tarbet thought, would be sufficient to quiet all the Celtic magnates; and in truth, though that sum might seem

ludicrously small to the politicians of Westminster, though it was not larger than the annual gains of the

Groom of the Stole or of the Paymaster of the Forces, it might well be thought immense by a barbarous

potentate who, while he ruled hundreds of square miles, and could bring hundreds of warriors into the field,

Though Tarbet was considered by the Scottish ministers of the new Sovereigns as a very doubtful friend, his

advice was not altogether neglected. It was resolved that overtures such as he recommended should be made

to the malecontents. Much depended on the choice of an agent; and unfortunately the choice showed how

little the prejudices of the wild tribes of the hills were understood at Edinburgh. A Campbell was selected for

the office of gaining over to the cause of King William men whose only quarrel to King William was that he

countenanced the Campbells. Offers made through such a channel were naturally regarded as at once snares

and insults. After this it was to no purpose that Tarbet wrote to Lochiel and Mackay to Glengarry. Lochiel

returned no answer to Tarbet; and Glengarry returned to Mackay a coldly civil answer, in which the general

Mackay, meanwhile, wasted some weeks in marching, in countermarching, and in indecisive skirmishing. He

afterwards honestly admitted that the knowledge which he had acquired, during thirty years of military

service on the Continent, was, in the new situation in which he was placed, useless to him. It was difficult in

such a country to track the enemy. It was impossible to drive him to bay. Food for an invading army was not

to be found in the wilderness of heath and shingle; nor could supplies for many days be transported far over

quaking bogs and up precipitous ascents. The general found that he had tired his men and their horses almost

to death, and yet had effected nothing. Highland auxiliaries might have been of the greatest use to him: but he

had few such auxiliaries. The chief of the Grants, indeed, who had been persecuted by the late government,

and had been accused of conspiring with the unfortunate Earl of Argyle, was zealous on the side of the

Revolution. Two hundred Mackays, animated probably by family feeling, came from the northern extremity

of our island, where at midsummer there is no night, to fight under a commander of their own name: but in

general the clans which took no part in the insurrection awaited the event with cold indifference, and pleased

themselves with the hope that they should easily make their peace with the conquerors, and be permitted to

An experience of little more than a month satisfied Mackay that there was only one way in which the

Highlands could be subdued. It was idle to run after the mountaineers up and down their mountains. A chain

of fortresses must be built in the most important situations, and must be well garrisoned. The place with

which the general proposed to begin was Inverlochy, where the huge remains of an ancient castle stood and

still stand. This post was close to an arm of the sea, and was in the heart of the country occupied by the

discontented clans. A strong force stationed there, and supported, if necessary, by ships of war, would

While Mackay was representing in his letters to the council at Edinburgh the necessity of adopting this plan,

Dundee was contending with difficulties which all his energy and dexterity could not completely overcome.

The Highlanders, while they continued to be a nation living under a peculiar polity, were in one sense better

and in another sense worse fitted for military purposes than any other nation in Europe. The individual Celt

was morally and physically well qualified for war, and especially for war in so wild and rugged a country as

his own. He was intrepid, strong, fleet, patient of cold, of hunger, and of fatigue. Up steep crags, and over

treacherous morasses, he moved as easily as the French household troops paced along the great road from

Versailles to Marli. He was accustomed to the use of weapons and to the sight of blood: he was a fencer; he

was a marksman; and, before he had ever stood in the ranks, he was already more than half a soldier.

As the individual Celt was easily turned into a soldier, so a tribe of Celts was easily turned into a battalion of

soldiers. All that was necessary was that the military organization should be conformed to the patriarchal

organization. The Chief must be Colonel: his uncle or his brother must be Major: the tacksmen, who formed

what may be called the peerage of the little community, must be the Captains: the company of each Captain

must consist of those peasants who lived on his land, and whose names, faces, connections, and characters,

were perfectly known to him: the subaltern officers must be selected among the Duinhe Wassels, proud of the

eagle's feather: the henchman was an excellent orderly: the hereditary piper and his sons formed the band:

and the clan became at once a regiment. In such a regiment was found from the first moment that exact order

and prompt obedience in which the strength of regular armies consists. Every man, from highest to lowest,

was in his proper place, and knew that place perfectly. It was not necessary to impress by threats or by

punishment on the newly enlisted troops the duty of regarding as their head him whom they had regarded as

their head ever since they could remember any thing. Every private had, from infancy, respected his corporal

much and his Captain more, and had almost adored his Colonel. There was therefore no danger of mutiny.

There was as little danger of desertion. Indeed the very feelings which most powerfully impel other soldiers

to desert kept the Highlander to his standard. If he left it, whither was he to go? All his kinsmen, all his

friends, were arrayed round it. To separate himself from it was to separate himself for ever from his family,

and to incur all the misery of that very homesickness which, in regular armies, drives so many recruits to

abscond at the risk of stripes and of death. When these things are fairly considered, it will not be thought

strange that the Highland clans should have occasionally achieved great martial exploits.

But those very institutions which made a tribe of highlanders, all bearing the same name, and all subject to

the same ruler, so formidable in battle, disqualified the nation for war on a large scale. Nothing was easier

than to turn clans into efficient regiments; but nothing was more difficult than to combine these regiments in

such a manner as to form an efficient army. From the shepherds and herdsmen who fought in the ranks up to

the chiefs, all was harmony and order. Every man looked up to his immediate superior, and all looked up to

the common head. But with the chief this chain of subordination ended. He knew only how to govern, and

had never learned to obey. Even to royal proclamations, even to Acts of Parliament, he was accustomed to

yield obedience only when they were in perfect accordance with his own inclinations. It was not to be

expected that he would pay to any delegated authority a respect which he was in the habit of refusing to the

supreme authority. He thought himself entitled to judge of the propriety of every order which he received. Of

his brother chiefs, some were his enemies and some his rivals. It was hardly possible to keep him from

affronting them, or to convince him that they were not affronting him. All his followers sympathized with all

his animosities, considered his honour as their own, and were ready at his whistle to array themselves round

him in arms against the commander in chief. There was therefore very little chance that by any contrivance

any five clans could be induced to cooperate heartily with one another during a long campaign. The best

chance, however, was when they were led by a Saxon. It is remarkable that none of the great actions

performed by the Highlanders during our civil wars was performed under the command of a Highlander.

Some writers have mentioned it as a proof of the extraordinary genius of Montrose and Dundee that those

captains, though not themselves of Gaelic race or speech, should have been able to form and direct

confederacies of Gaelic tribes. But in truth it was precisely because Montrose and Dundee were not

Highlanders, that they were able to lead armies composed of Highland clans. Had Montrose been chief of the

Camerons, the Macdonalds would never have submitted to his authority. Had Dundee been chief of

Clanronald, he would never have been obeyed by Glengarry. Haughty and punctilious men, who scarcely

acknowledged the king to be their superior, would not have endured the superiority of a neighbour, an equal,

a competitor. They could far more easily bear the preeminence of a distinguished stranger, yet even to such a

stranger they would allow only a very limited and a very precarious authority. To bring a chief before a court

martial, to shoot him, to cashier him, to degrade him, to reprimand him publicly, was impossible. Macdonald

of Keppoch or Maclean of Duart would have struck dead any officer who had demanded his sword, and told

him to consider himself as under arrest; and hundreds of claymores would instantly have been drawn to

protect the murderer. All that was left to the commander under whom these potentates condescended to serve

was to argue with them, to supplicate them, to flatter them, to bribe them; and it was only during a short time

that any human skill could preserve harmony by these means. For every chief thought himself entitled to

peculiar observance; and it was therefore impossible to pay marked court to any one without disobliging the

rest. The general found himself merely the president of a congress of petty kings. He was perpetually called

upon to hear and to compose disputes about pedigrees, about precedence, about the division of spoil. His

decision, be it what it might, must offend somebody. At any moment he might hear that his right wing had

fired on his centre in pursuance of some quarrel two hundred years old, or that a whole battalion had marched

back to its native glen, because another battalion had been put in the post of honour. A Highland bard might

easily have found in the history of the year 1689 subjects very similar to those with which the war of Troy

furnished the great poets of antiquity. One day Achilles is sullen, keeps his tent, and announces his intention

to depart with all his men. The next day Ajax is storming about the camp, and threatening to cut the throat of

Hence it was that, though the Highlanders achieved some great exploits in the civil wars of the seventeenth

century, those exploits left no trace which could be discerned after the lapse of a few weeks. Victories of

strange and almost portentous splendour produced all the consequences of defeat. Veteran soldiers and

statesmen were bewildered by those sudden turns of fortune. It was incredible that undisciplined men should

have performed such feats of arms. It was incredible that such feats of arms, having been performed, should

be immediately followed by the triumph of the conquered and the submission of the conquerors. Montrose,

having passed rapidly from victory to victory, was, in the full career of success, suddenly abandoned by his

followers. Local jealousies and local interests had brought his army together. Local jealousies and local

interests dissolved it. The Gordons left him because they fancied that he neglected them for the Macdonalds.

The Macdonalds left him because they wanted to plunder the Campbells. The force which had once seemed

sufficient to decide the fate of a kingdom melted away in a few days; and the victories of Tippermuir and

Kilsyth were followed by the disaster of Philiphaugh. Dundee did not live long enough to experience a

similar reverse of fortune; but there is every reason to believe that, had his life been prolonged one fortnight,

Dundee made one attempt, soon after the gathering of the clans in Lochaber, to induce them to submit to the

discipline of a regular army. He called a council of war to consider this question. His opinion was supported

by all the officers who had joined him from the low country. Distinguished among them were James Seton,

Earl of Dunfermline, and James Galloway, Lord Dunkeld. The Celtic chiefs took the other side. Lochiel, the

ablest among them, was their spokesman, and argued the point with much ingenuity and natural eloquence.

"Our system,"such was the substance of his reasoning, "may not be the best: but we were bred to it from

childhood: we understand it perfectly: it is suited to our peculiar institutions, feelings, and manners. Making

war after our own fashion, we have the expertness and coolness of veterans. Making war in any other way,

we shall be raw and awkward recruits. To turn us into soldiers like those of Cromwell and Turenne would be

the business of years: and we have not even weeks to spare. We have time enough to unlearn our own

discipline, but not time enough to learn yours." Dundee, with high compliments to Lochiel, declared himself

convinced, and perhaps was convinced: for the reasonings of the wise old chief were by no means without

Yet some Celtic usages of war were such as Dundee could not tolerate. Cruel as he was, his cruelty always

had a method and a purpose. He still hoped that he might be able to win some chiefs who remained neutral;

and he carefully avoided every act which could goad them into open hostility. This was undoubtedly a policy

likely to promote the interest of James; but the interest of James was nothing to the wild marauders who used

his name and rallied round his banner merely for the purpose of making profitable forays and wreaking old

grudges. Keppoch especially, who hated the Mackintoshes much more than he loved the Stuarts, not only

plundered the territory of his enemies, but burned whatever he could not carry away. Dundee was moved to

great wrath by the sight of the blazing dwellings. "I would rather," he said, "carry a musket in a respectable

regiment than be captain of such a gang of thieves." Punishment was of course out of the question. Indeed it

may be considered as a remarkable proof of the general's influence that Coll of the Cows deigned to

apologize for conduct for which in a well governed army he would have been shot.345

As the Grants were in arms for King William, their property was considered as fair prize. Their territory was

invaded by a party of Camerons: a skirmish took place: some blood was shed; and many cattle were carried

off to Dundee's camp, where provisions were greatly needed. This raid produced a quarrel, the history of

which illustrates in the most striking manner the character of a Highland army. Among those who were slain

in resisting the Camerons was a Macdonald of the Glengarry branch, who had long resided among the Grants,

had become in feelings and opinions a Grant, and had absented himself from the muster of his tribe. Though

he had been guilty of a high offence against the Gaelic code of honour and morality, his kinsmen remembered

the sacred tie which he had forgotten. Good or bad, he was bone of their bone: he was flesh of their flesh; and

he should have been reserved for their justice. The name which he bore, the blood of the Lords of the Isles,

should have been his protection. Glengarry in a rage went to Dundee and demanded vengeance on Lochiel

and the whole race of Cameron. Dundee replied that the unfortunate gentleman who had fallen was a traitor

to the clan as well as to the King. Was it ever heard of in war that the person of an enemy, a combatant in

arms, was to be held inviolable on account of his name and descent? And, even if wrong had been done, how

was it to be redressed? Half the army must slaughter the other half before a finger could be laid on Lochiel.

Glengarry went away raging like a madman. Since his complaints were disregarded by those who ought to

right him, he would right himself: he would draw out his men, and fall sword in hand on the murderers of his

cousin. During some time he would listen to no expostulation. When he was reminded that Lochiel's

followers were in number nearly double of the Glengarry men, "No matter," he cried, "one Macdonald is

worth two Camerons." Had Lochiel been equally irritable and boastful, it is probable that the Highland

insurrection would have given little more trouble to the government, and that the rebels would have perished

obscurely in the wilderness by one another's claymores. But nature had bestowed on him in large measure the

qualities of a statesman, though fortune had hidden those qualities in an obscure corner of the world. He saw

that this was not a time for brawling: his own character for courage had long been established; and his temper

was under strict government. The fury of Glengarry, not being inflamed by any fresh provocation, rapidly

abated. Indeed there were some who suspected that he had never been quite so pugnacious as he had affected

to be, and that his bluster was meant only to keep up his own dignity in the eyes of his retainers. However

this might be, the quarrel was composed; and the two chiefs met, with the outward show of civility, at the

What Dundee saw of his Celtic allies must have made him desirous to have in his army some troops on

whose obedience he could depend, and who would not, at a signal from their colonel, turn their arms against

their general and their king. He accordingly, during the months of May and June, sent to Dublin a succession

of letters earnestly imploring assistance. If six thousand, four thousand, three thousand, regular soldiers were

now sent to Lochaber, he trusted that his Majesty would soon hold a court in Holyrood. That such a force

might be spared hardly admitted of a doubt. The authority of James was at that time acknowledged in every

part of Ireland, except on the shores of Lough Erne and behind the ramparts of Londonderry. He had in that

kingdom an army of forty thousand men. An eighth part of such an army would scarcely be missed there, and

might, united with the clans which were in insurrection, effect great things in Scotland.

Dundee received such answers to his applications as encouraged him to hope that a large and well appointed

force would soon be sent from Ulster to join him. He did not wish to try the chance of battle before these

succours arrived.347 Mackay, on the other hand, was weary of marching to and fro in a desert. His men were

exhausted and out of heart. He thought it desirable that they should withdraw from the hill country; and

In June therefore the civil war was, as if by concert between the generals, completely suspended. Dundee

remained in Lochaber, impatiently awaiting the arrival of troops and supplies from Ireland. It was impossible

for him to keep his Highlanders together in a state of inactivity. A vast extent of moor and mountain was

required to furnish food for so many mouths. The clans therefore went back to their own glens, having

Meanwhile Mackay's soldiers, exhausted by severe exertions and privations, were taking their ease in

quarters scattered over the low country from Aberdeen to Stirling. Mackay himself was at Edinburgh, and

was urging the ministers there to furnish him with the means of constructing a chain of fortifications among

the Grampians. The ministers had, it should seem, miscalculated their military resources. It had been

expected that the Campbells would take the field in such force as would balance the whole strength of the

clans which marched under Dundee. It had also been expected that the Covenanters of the West would hasten

to swell the ranks of the army of King William. Both expectations were disappointed. Argyle had found his

principality devastated, and his tribe disarmed and disorganized. A considerable time must elapse before his

standard would be surrounded by an array such as his forefathers had led to battle. The Covenanters of the

West were in general unwilling to enlist. They were assuredly not wanting in courage; and they hated Dundee

with deadly hatred. In their part of the country the memory of his cruelty was still fresh. Every village had its

own tale of blood. The greyheaded father was missed in one dwelling, the hopeful stripling in another. It was

remembered but too well how the dragoons had stalked into the peasant's cottage, cursing and damning him,

themselves, and each other at every second word, pushing from the ingle nook his grandmother of eighty, and

thrusting their hands into the bosom of his daughter of sixteen; how the abjuration had been tendered to him;

how he had folded his arms and said "God's will be done"; how the Colonel had called for a file with loaded

muskets; and how in three minutes the goodman of the house had been wallowing in a pool of blood at his

own door. The seat of the martyr was still vacant at the fireside; and every child could point out his grave still

green amidst the heath. When the people of this region called their oppressor a servant of the devil, they were

not speaking figuratively. They believed that between the bad man and the bad angel there was a close

alliance on definite terms; that Dundee had bound himself to do the work of hell on earth, and that, for high

purposes, hell was permitted to protect its slave till the measure of his guilt should be full. But, intensely as

these men abhorred Dundee, most of them had a scruple about drawing the sword for William. A great

meeting was held in the parish church of Douglas; and the question was propounded, whether, at a time when

war was in the land, and when an Irish invasion was expected, it were not a duty to take arms. The debate was

sharp and tumultuous. The orators on one side adjured their brethren not to incur the curse denounced against

the inhabitants of Meroz, who came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty. The orators on the other

side thundered against sinful associations. There were malignants in William's Army: Mackay's own

orthodoxy was problematical: to take military service with such comrades, and under such a general, would

be a sinful association. At length, after much wrangling, and amidst great confusion, a vote was taken; and

the majority pronounced that to take military service would be a sinful association. There was however a

large minority; and, from among the members of this minority, the Earl of Angus was able to raise a body of

infantry, which is still, after the lapse of more than a hundred and sixty years, known by the name of the

Cameronian Regiment. The first Lieutenant Colonel was Cleland, that implacable avenger of blood who had

driven Dundee from the Convention. There was no small difficulty in filling the ranks: for many West

country Whigs, who did not think it absolutely sinful to enlist, stood out for terms subversive of all military

discipline. Some would not serve under any colonel, major, captain, serjeant, or corporal, who was not ready

to sign the Covenant. Others insisted that, if it should be found absolutely necessary to appoint any officer

who had taken the tests imposed in the late reign, he should at least qualify himself for command by publicly

confessing his sin at the head of the regiment. Most of the enthusiasts who had proposed these conditions

were induced by dexterous management to abate much of their demands. Yet the new regiment had a very

peculiar character. The soldiers were all rigid Puritans. One of their first acts was to petition the Parliament

that all drunkenness, licentiousness, and profaneness might be severely punished. Their own conduct must

have been exemplary: for the worst crime which the most extravagant bigotry could impute to them was that

of huzzaing on the King's birthday. It was originally intended that with the military organization of the corps

should he interwoven the organization of a Presbyterian congregation. Each company was to furnish an elder;

and the elders were, with the chaplain, to form an ecclesiastical court for the suppression of immorality and

heresy. Elders, however, were not appointed: but a noted hill preacher, Alexander Shields, was called to the

office of chaplain. It is not easy to conceive that fanaticism can be heated to a higher temperature than that

which is indicated by the writings of Shields. According to him, it should seem to be the first duty of a

Christian ruler to persecute to the death every heterodox subject, and the first duty of every Christian subject

to poniard a heterodox ruler. Yet there was then in Scotland an enthusiasm compared with which the

enthusiasm even of this man was lukewarm. The extreme Covenanters protested against his defection as

vehemently as he had protested against the Black Indulgence and the oath of supremacy, and pronounced

every man who entered Angus's regiment guilty of a wicked confederacy with malignants.348

Meanwhile Edinburgh Castle had fallen, after holding out more than two months. Both the defence and the

attack had been languidly conducted. The Duke of Gordon, unwilling to incur the mortal hatred of those at

whose mercy his lands and life might soon be, did not choose to batter the city. The assailants, on the other

hand, carried on their operations with so little energy and so little vigilance that a constant communication

was kept up between the Jacobites within the citadel and the Jacobites without. Strange stories were told of

the polite and facetious messages which passed between the besieged and the besiegers. On one occasion

Gordon sent to inform the magistrates that he was going to fire a salute on account of some news which he

had received from Ireland, but that the good town need not be alarmed, for that his guns would not be loaded

with ball. On another occasion, his drums beat a parley: the white flag was hung out: a conference took place;

and he gravely informed the enemy that all his cards had been thumbed to pieces, and begged them to let him

have a few more packs. His friends established a telegraph by means of which they conversed with him

across the lines of sentinels. From a window in the top story of one of the loftiest of those gigantic houses, a

few of which still darken the High Street, a white cloth was hung out when all was well, and a black cloth

when things went ill. If it was necessary to give more detailed information, a board was held up inscribed

with capital letters so large that they could, by the help of a telescope, be read on the ramparts of the castle.

Agents laden with letters and fresh provisions managed, in various disguises and by various shifts, to cross

the sheet of water which then lay on the north of the fortress and to clamber up the precipitous ascent. The

peal of a musket from a particular half moon was the signal which announced to the friends of the House of

Stuart that another of their emissaries had got safe up the rock. But at length the supplies were exhausted; and

it was necessary to capitulate. Favourable terms were readily granted: the garrison marched out; and the keys

But the government had far more acrimonious and more pertinacious enemies in the Parliament House than

in the Castle. When the Estates reassembled after their adjournment, the crown and sceptre of Scotland were

displayed with the wonted pomp in the hall as types of the absent sovereign. Hamilton rode in state from

Holyrood up the High Street as Lord High Commissioner; and Crawford took his seat as President. Two

Acts, one turning the Convention into a Parliament, the other recognising William and Mary as King and

Queen, were rapidly passed and touched with the sceptre; and then the conflict of factions began.350

It speedily appeared that the opposition which Montgomery had organized was irresistibly strong. Though

made up of many conflicting elements, Republicans, Whigs, Tories, zealous Presbyterians, bigoted Prelatists,

it acted for a time as one man, and drew to itself a multitude of those mean and timid politicians who

naturally gravitate towards the stronger party. The friends of the government were few and disunited.

Hamilton brought but half a heart to the discharge of his duties. He had always been unstable; and he was

now discontented. He held indeed the highest place to which a subject could aspire. But he imagined that he

had only the show of power while others enjoyed the substance, and was not sorry to see those of whom he

was jealous thwarted and annoyed. He did not absolutely betray the prince whom he represented: but he

sometimes tampered with the chiefs of the Club, and sometimes did sly in turns to those who were joined

His instructions directed him to give the royal assent to laws for the mitigating or removing of numerous

grievances, and particularly to a law restricting the power and reforming the constitution of the Committee of

Articles, and to a law establishing the Presbyterian Church Government.351 But it mattered not what his

instructions were. The chiefs of the Club were bent on finding a cause of quarrel. The propositions of the

Government touching the Lords of the Articles were contemptuously rejected. Hamilton wrote to London for

fresh directions; and soon a second plan, which left little more than the name of the once despotic Committee,

was sent back. But the second plan, though such as would have contented judicious and temperate reformers,

shared the fate of the first. Meanwhile the chiefs of the Club laid on the table a law which interdicted the

King from ever employing in any public office any person who had ever borne any part in any proceeding

inconsistent with the Claim of Right, or who had ever obstructed or retarded any good design of the Estates.

This law, uniting, within a very short compass, almost all the faults which a law can have, was well known to

be aimed at the new Lord President of the Court of Session, and at his son the new Lord Advocate. Their

prosperity and power made them objects of envy to every disappointed candidate for office. That they were

new men, the first of their race who had risen to distinction, and that nevertheless they had, by the mere force

of ability, become as important in the state as the Duke of Hamilton or the Earl of Argyle, was a thought

which galled the hearts of many needy and haughty patricians. To the Whigs of Scotland the Dalrymples

were what Halifax and Caermarthen were to the Whigs of England. Neither the exile of Sir James, nor the

zeal with which Sir John had promoted the Revolution, was received as an atonement for old delinquency.

They had both served the bloody and idolatrous House. They had both oppressed the people of God. Their

late repentance might perhaps give them a fair claim to pardon, but surely gave them no right to honours and

The friends of the government in vain attempted to divert the attention of the Parliament from the business of

persecuting the Dalrymple family to the important and pressing question of Church Government. They said

that the old system had been abolished; that no other system had been substituted; that it was impossible to

say what was the established religion of the kingdom; and that the first duty of the legislature was to put an

end to an anarchy which was daily producing disasters and crimes. The leaders of the Club were not to be so

drawn away from their object. It was moved and resolved that the consideration of ecclesiastical affairs

should be postponed till secular affairs had been settled. The unjust and absurd Act of Incapacitation was

carried by seventyfour voices to twentyfour. Another vote still more obviously aimed at the House of Stair

speedily followed. The Parliament laid claim to a Veto on the nomination of the judges, and assumed the

power of stopping the signet, in other words, of suspending the whole administration of justice, till this claim

should be allowed. It was plain from what passed in debate that, though the chiefs of the Club had begun with

the Court of Session, they did not mean to end there. The arguments used by Sir Patrick Hume and others led

directly to the conclusion that the King ought not to have the appointment of any great public functionary. Sir

Patrick indeed avowed, both in speech and in writing, his opinion that the whole patronage of the realm ought

to be transferred from the Crown to the Estates. When the place of Treasurer, of Chancellor, of Secretary,

was vacant, the Parliament ought to submit two or three names to his Majesty; and one of those names his

All this time the Estates obstinately refused to grant any supply till their Acts should have been touched with

the sceptre. The Lord High Commissioner was at length so much provoked by their perverseness that, after

long temporising, he refused to touch even Acts which were in themselves unobjectionable, and to which his

instructions empowered him to consent. This state of things would have ended in some great convulsion, if

the King of Scotland had not been also King of a much greater and more opulent kingdom. Charles the First

had never found any parliament at Westminster more unmanageable than William, during this session, found

the parliament at Edinburgh. But it was not in the power of the parliament at Edinburgh to put on William

such a pressure as the parliament at Westminster had put on Charles. A refusal of supplies at Westminster

was a serious thing, and left the Sovereign no choice except to yield, or to raise money by unconstitutional

means, But a refusal of supplies at Edinburgh reduced him to no such dilemma. The largest sum that he could

hope to receive from Scotland in a year was less than what he received from England every fortnight. He had

therefore only to entrench himself within the limits of his undoubted prerogative, and there to remain on the

While these things were passing in the Parliament House, the civil war in the Highlands, having been during

a few weeks suspended, broke forth again more violently than before. Since the splendour of the House of

Argyle had been eclipsed, no Gaelic chief could vie in power with the Marquess of Athol. The district from

which he took his title, and of which he might almost be called the sovereign, was in extent larger than an

ordinary county, and was more fertile, more diligently cultivated, and more thickly peopled than the greater

part of the Highlands. The men who followed his banner were supposed to be not less numerous than all the

Macdonalds and Macleans united, and were, in strength and courage, inferior to no tribe in the mountains.

But the clan had been made insignificant by the insignificance of the chief. The Marquess was the falsest, the

most fickle, the most pusillanimous, of mankind. Already, in the short space of six months, be had been

several times a Jacobite, and several times a Williamite. Both Jacobites and Williamites regarded him with

contempt and distrust, which respect for his immense power prevented them from fully expressing. After

repeatedly vowing fidelity to both parties, and repeatedly betraying both, he began to think that he should

best provide for his safety by abdicating the functions both of a peer and of a chieftain, by absenting himself

both from the Parliament House at Edinburgh and from his castle in the mountains, and by quitting the

country to which he was bound by every tie of duty and honour at the very crisis of her fate. While all

Scotland was waiting with impatience and anxiety to see in which army his numerous retainers would be

arrayed, he stole away to England, settled himself at Bath, and pretended to drink the waters.354 His

principality, left without a head, was divided against itself. The general leaning of the Athol men was towards

King James. For they had been employed by him, only four years before, as the ministers of his vengeance

against the House of Argyle. They had garrisoned Inverary: they had ravaged Lorn: they had demolished

houses, cut down fruit trees, burned fishing boats, broken millstones, hanged Campbells, and were therefore

not likely to be pleased by the prospect of Mac Callum Mores restoration. One word from the Marquess

would have sent two thousand claymores to the Jacobite side. But that word he would not speak; and the

consequence was, that the conduct of his followers was as irresolute and inconsistent as his own.

While they were waiting for some indication of his wishes, they were called to arms at once by two leaders,

either of whom might, with some show of reason, claim to be considered as the representative of the absent

chief. Lord Murray, the Marquess's eldest son, who was married to a daughter of the Duke of Hamilton,

declared for King William. Stewart of Ballenach, the Marquess's confidential agent, declared for King James.

The people knew not which summons to obey. He whose authority would have been held in profound

reverence, had plighted faith to both sides, and had then run away for fear of being under the necessity of

joining either; nor was it very easy to say whether the place which he had left vacant belonged to his steward

The most important military post in Athol was Blair Castle. The house which now bears that name is not

distinguished by any striking peculiarity from other country seats of the aristocracy. The old building was a

lofty tower of rude architecture which commanded a vale watered by the Garry. The walls would have

offered very little resistance to a battering train, but were quite strong enough to keep the herdsmen of the

Grampians in awe. About five miles south of this stronghold, the valley of the Garry contracts itself into the

celebrated glen of Killiecrankie. At present a highway as smooth as any road in Middlesex ascends gently

from the low country to the summit of the defile. White villas peep from the birch forest; and, on a fine

summer day, there is scarcely a turn of the pass at which may not be seen some angler casting his fly on the

foam of the river, some artist sketching a pinnacle of rock, or some party of pleasure banqueting on the turf in

the fretwork of shade and sunshine. But, in the days of William the Third, Killiecrankie was mentioned with

horror by the peaceful and industrious inhabitants of the Perthshire lowlands. It was deemed the most perilous

of all those dark ravines through which the marauders of the hills were wont to sally forth. The sound, so

musical to modern ears, of the river brawling round the mossy rocks and among the smooth pebbles, the dark

masses of crag and verdure worthy of the pencil of Wilson, the fantastic peaks bathed, at sunrise and sunset,

with light rich as that which glows on the canvass of Claude, suggested to our ancestors thoughts of

murderous ambuscades and of bodies stripped, gashed, and abandoned to the birds of prey. The only path was

narrow and rugged: a horse could with difficulty be led up: two men could hardly walk abreast; and, in some

places, the way ran so close by the precipice that the traveller had great need of a steady eye and foot. Many

years later, the first Duke of Athol constructed a road up which it was just possible to drag his coach. But

even that road was so steep and so strait that a handful of resolute men might have defended it against an

army;355 nor did any Saxon consider a visit to Killiecrankie as a pleasure, till experience had taught the

English Government that the weapons by which the Highlanders could be most effectually subdued were the

The country which lay just above this pass was now the theatre of a war such as the Highlands had not often

witnessed. Men wearing the same tartan, and attached to the same lord, were arrayed against each other. The

name of the absent chief was used, with some show of reason, on both sides. Ballenach, at the head of a body

of vassals who considered him as the representative of the Marquess, occupied Blair Castle. Murray, with

twelve hundred followers, appeared before the walls and demanded to be admitted into the mansion of his

family, the mansion which would one day be his own. The garrison refused to open the gates. Messages were

sent off by the besiegers to Edinburgh, and by the besieged to Lochaber.356 In both places the tidings

produced great agitation. Mackay and Dundee agreed in thinking that the crisis required prompt and

strenuous exertion. On the fate of Blair Castle probably depended the fate of all Athol. On the fate of Athol

might depend the fate of Scotland. Mackay hastened northward, and ordered his troops to assemble in the low

country of Perthshire. Some of them were quartered at such a distance that they did not arrive in time. He

soon, however, had with him the three Scotch regiments which had served in Holland, and which bore the

names of their Colonels, Mackay himself, Balfour, and Ramsay. There was also a gallant regiment of infantry

from England, then called Hastings's, but now known as the thirteenth of the line. With these old troops were

joined two regiments newly levied in the Lowlands. One of them was commanded by Lord Kenmore; the

other, which had been raised on the Border, and which is still styled the King's own Borderers, by Lord

Leven. Two troops of horse, Lord Annandale's and Lord Belhaven's, probably made up the army to the

number of above three thousand men. Belhaven rode at the head of his troop: but Annandale, the most

factious of all Montgomery's followers, preferred the Club and the Parliament House to the field.357

Dundee, meanwhile, had summoned all the clans which acknowledged his commission to assemble for an

expedition into Athol. His exertions were strenuously seconded by Lochiel. The fiery crosses were sent again

in all haste through Appin and Ardnamurchan, up Glenmore, and along Loch Leven. But the call was so

unexpected, and the time allowed was so short, that the muster was not a very full one. The whole number of

broadswords seems to have been under three thousand. With this force, such as it was, Dundee set forth. On

his march he was joined by succours which had just arrived from Ulster. They consisted of little more than

three hundred Irish foot, ill armed, ill clothed, and ill disciplined. Their commander was an officer named

Cannon, who had seen service in the Netherlands, and who might perhaps have acquitted himself well in a

subordinate post and in a regular army, but who was altogether unequal to the part now assigned to him.358

He had already loitered among the Hebrides so long that some ships which had been sent with him, and

which were laden with stores, had been taken by English cruisers. He and his soldiers had with difficulty

escaped the same fate. Incompetent as he was, he bore a commission which gave him military rank in

The disappointment was severe. In truth James would have done better to withhold all assistance from the

Highlanders than to mock them by sending them, instead of the well appointed army which they had asked

and expected, a rabble contemptible in numbers and appearance. It was now evident that whatever was done

While Mackay from one side, and Dundee from the other, were advancing towards Blair Castle, important

events had taken place there. Murray's adherents soon began to waver in their fidelity to him. They had an old

antipathy to Whigs; for they considered the name of Whig as synonymous with the name of Campbell. They

saw arrayed against them a large number of their kinsmen, commanded by a gentleman who was supposed to

possess the confidence of the Marquess. The besieging army therefore melted rapidly away. Many returned

home on the plea that, as their neighbourhood was about to be the seat of war, they must place their families

and cattle in security. Others more ingenuously declared that they would not fight in such a quarrel. One large

body went to a brook, filled their bonnets with water, drank a health to King James, and then dispersed.360

Their zeal for King James, however, did not induce them to join the standard of his general. They lurked

among the rocks and thickets which overhang the Garry, in the hope that there would soon be a battle, and

that, whatever might be the event, there would be fugitives and corpses to plunder.

Murray was in a strait. His force had dwindled to three or four hundred men: even in those men he could put

little trust; and the Macdonalds and Camerons were advancing fast. He therefore raised the siege of Blair

Castle, and retired with a few followers into the defile of Killiecrankie. There he was soon joined by a

detachment of two hundred fusileers whom Mackay had sent forward to secure the pass. The main body of

Early in the morning of Saturday the twentyseventh of July, Dundee arrived at Blair Castle. There he

learned that Mackay's troops were already in the ravine of Killiecrankie. It was necessary to come to a

prompt decision. A council of war was held. The Saxon officers were generally against hazarding a battle.

The Celtic chiefs were o� a different opinion. Glengarry and Lochiel were now both of a mind. "Fight, my

Lord" said Lochiel with his usual energy; "fight immediately: fight, if you have only one to three. Our men

are in heart. Their only fear is that the enemy should escape. Give them their way; and be assured that they

will either perish or gain a complete victory. But if you restrain them, if you force them to remain on the

defensive, I answer for nothing. If we do not fight, we had better break up and retire to our mountains."362

Dundee's countenance brightened. "You hear, gentlemen," he said to his Lowland officers; "you hear the

opinion of one who understands Highland war better than any of us." No voice was raised on the other side. It

was determined to fight; and the confederated clans in high spirits set forward to encounter the enemy.

The enemy meanwhile had made his way up the pass. The ascent had been long and toilsome: for even the

foot had to climb by twos and threes; and the baggage horses, twelve hundred in number, could mount only

one at a time. No wheeled carriage had ever been tugged up that arduous path. The head of the column had

emerged and was on the table land, while the rearguard was still in the plain below. At length the passage was

effected; and the troops found themselves in a valley of no great extent. Their right was flanked by a rising

ground, their left by the Garry. Wearied with the morning's work, they threw themselves on the grass to take

Early in the afternoon, they were roused by an alarm that the Highlanders were approaching. Regiment after

regiment started up and got into order. In a little while the summit of an ascent which was about a musket

shot before them was covered with bonnets and plaids. Dundee rode forward for the purpose of surveying the

force with which he was to contend, and then drew up his own men with as much skill as their peculiar

character permitted him to exert. It was desirable to keep the clans distinct. Each tribe, large or small, formed

a column separated from the next column by a wide interval. One of these battalions might contain seven

hundred men, while another consisted of only a hundred and twenty. Lochiel had represented that it was

impossible to mix men of different tribes without destroying all that constituted the peculiar strength of a

On the right, close to the Garry, were the Macleans. Next to them were Cannon and his Irish foot. Then came

the Macdonalds of Clanronald, commanded by the guardian of their young prince. On the left were other

bands of Macdonalds. At the head of one large battalion towered the stately form of Glengarry, who bore in

his hand the royal standard of King James the Seventh.364 Still further to the left were the cavalry, a small

squadron consisting of some Jacobite gentlemen who had fled from the Lowlands to the mountains and of

about forty of Dundee's old troopers. The horses had been ill fed and ill tended among the Grampians, and

looked miserably lean and feeble. Beyond them was Lochiel with his Camerons. On the extreme left, the men

In the Highlands, as in all countries where war has not become a science, men thought it the most important

duty of a commander to set an example of personal courage and of bodily exertion. Lochiel was especially

renowned for his physical prowess. His clansmen looked big with pride when they related how he had

himself broken hostile ranks and hewn down tall warriors. He probably owed quite as much of his influence

to these achievements as to the high qualities which, if fortune had placed him in the English Parliament or at

the French court, would have made him one of the foremost men of his age. He had the sense however to

perceive how erroneous was the notion which his countrymen had formed. He knew that to give and to take

blows was not the business of a general. He knew with how much difficulty Dundee had been able to keep

together, during a few days, an army composed of several clans; and he knew that what Dundee had effected

with difficulty Cannon would not be able to effect at all. The life on which so much depended must not be

sacrificed to a barbarous prejudice. Lochiel therefore adjured Dundee not to run into any unnecessary danger.

"Your Lordship's business," he said, "is to overlook every thing, and to issue your commands. Our business is

to execute those commands bravely and promptly." Dundee answered with calm magnanimity that there was

much weight in what his friend Sir Ewan had urged, but that no general could effect any thing great without

possessing the confidence of his men. "I must establish my character for courage. Your people expect to see

their leaders in the thickest of the battle; and to day they shall see me there. I promise you, on my honour, that

Meanwhile a fire of musketry was kept up on both sides, but more skilfully and more steadily by the regular

soldiers than by the mountaineers. The space between the armies was one cloud of smoke. Not a few

Highlanders dropped; and the clans grew impatient. The sun however was low in the west before Dundee

gave the order to prepare for action. His men raised a great shout. The enemy, probably exhausted by the toil

of the day, returned a feeble and wavering cheer. "We shall do it now," said Lochiel: "that is not the cry of

men who are going to win." He had walked through all his ranks, had addressed a few words to every

It was past seven o'clock. Dundee gave the word. The Highlanders dropped their plaids. The few who were so

luxurious as to wear rude socks of untanned hide spurned them away. It was long remembered in Lochaber

that Lochiel took off what probably was the only pair of shoes in his clan, and charged barefoot at the head of

his men. The whole line advanced firing. The enemy returned the fire and did much execution. When only a

small space was left between the armies, the Highlanders suddenly flung away their firelocks, drew their

broadswords, and rushed forward with a fearful yell. The Lowlanders prepared to receive the shock; but this

was then a long and awkward process; and the soldiers were still fumbling with the muzzles of their guns and

the handles of their bayonets when the whole flood of Macleans, Macdonalds, and Camerons came down. In

two minutes the battle was lost and won. The ranks of Balfour's regiment broke. He was cloven down while

struggling in the press. Ramsay's men turned their backs and dropped their arms. Mackay's own foot were

swept away by the furious onset of the Camerons. His brother and nephew exerted themselves in vain to rally

the men. The former was laid dead on the ground by a stroke from a claymore. The latter, with eight wounds

on his body, made his way through the tumult and carnage to his uncle's side. Even in that extremity Mackay

retained all his selfpossession. He had still one hope. A charge of horse might recover the day; for of horse

the bravest Highlanders were supposed to stand in awe. But he called on the horse in vain.

Belhaven indeed behaved like a gallant gentleman: but his troopers, appalled by the rout of the infantry,

galloped off in disorder: Annandale's men followed: all was over; and the mingled torrent of redcoats and

Mackay, accompanied by one trusty servant, spurred bravely through the thickest of the claymores and

targets, and reached a point from which he had a view of the field. His whole army had disappeared, with the

exception of some Borderers whom Leven had kept together, and of Hastings's regiment, which had poured a

murderous fire into the Celtic ranks, and which still kept unbroken order. All the men that could be collected

were only a few hundreds. The general made haste to lead them across the Carry, and, having put that river

He could hardly understand how the conquerors could be so unwise as to allow him even that moment for

deliberation. They might with ease have killed or taken all who were with him before the night closed in. But

the energy of the Celtic warriors had spent itself in one furious rush and one short struggle. The pass was

choked by the twelve hundred beasts of burden which carried the provisions and baggage of the vanquished

army. Such a booty was irresistibly tempting to men who were impelled to war quite as much by the desire of

rapine as by the desire of glory. It is probable that few even of the chiefs were disposed to leave so rich a

price for the sake of King James. Dundee himself might at that moment have been unable to persuade his

followers to quit the heaps of spoil, and to complete the great work of the day; and Dundee was no more.

At the beginning of the action he had taken his place in front of his little band of cavalry. He bade them

follow him, and rode forward. But it seemed to be decreed that, on that day, the Lowland Scotch should in

both armies appear to disadvantage. The horse hesitated. Dundee turned round, and stood up in his stirrups,

and, waving his hat, invited them to come on. As he lifted his arm, his cuirass rose, and exposed the lower

part of his left side. A musket ball struck him; his horse sprang forward and plunged into a cloud of smoke

and dust, which hid from both armies the fall of the victorious general. A person named Johnstone was near

him and caught him as he sank down from the saddle. "How goes the day?" said Dundee. "Well for King

James;" answered Johnstone: "but I am sorry for Your Lordship." "If it is well for him," answered the dying

man, "it matters the less for me." He never spoke again; but when, half an hour later, Lord Dunfermline and

some other friends came to the spot, they thought that they could still discern some faint remains of life. The

Mackay, who was ignorant of Dundee's fate, and well acquainted with Dundee's skill and activity, expected

to be instantly and hotly pursued, and had very little expectation of being able to save even the scanty

remains of the vanquished army. He could not retreat by the pass: for the Highlanders were already there. He

therefore resolved to push across the mountains towards the valley of the Tay. He soon overtook two or three

hundred of his runaways who had taken the same road. Most of them belonged to Ramsay's regiment, and

must have seen service. But they were unarmed: they were utterly bewildered by the recent disaster; and the

general could find among them no remains either of martial discipline or of martial spirit. His situation was

one which must have severely tried the firmest nerves. Night had set in: he was in a desert: he had no guide: a

victorious enemy was, in all human probability, on his track; and he had to provide for the safety of a crowd

of men who had lost both head and heart. He had just suffered a defeat of all defeats the most painful and

humiliating. His domestic feelings had been not less severely wounded than his professional feelings. One

dear kinsman had just been struck dead before his eyes. Another, bleeding from many wounds, moved feebly

at his side. But the unfortunate general's courage was sustained by a firm faith in God, and a high sense of

duty to the state. In the midst of misery and disgrace, he still held his head nobly erect, and found fortitude,

not only for himself; but for all around him. His first care was to be sure of his road. A solitary light which

twinkled through the darkness guided him to a small hovel. The inmates spoke no tongue but the Gaelic, and

were at first scared by the appearance of uniforms and arms. But Mackay's gentle manner removed their

apprehension: their language had been familiar to him in childhood; and he retained enough of it to

communicate with them. By their directions, and by the help of a pocket map, in which the routes through

that wild country were roughly laid down, he was able to find his way. He marched all night. When day broke

his task was more difficult than ever. Light increased the terror of his companions. Hastings's men and

Leven's men indeed still behaved themselves like soldiers. But the fugitives from Ramsay's were a mere

rabble. They had flung away their muskets. The broadswords from which they had fled were ever in their

eyes. Every fresh object caused a fresh panic. A company of herdsmen in plaids driving cattle was magnified

by imagination into a host of Celtic warriors. Some of the runaways left the main body and fled to the hills,

where their cowardice met with a proper punishment. They were killed for their coats and shoes; and their

naked carcasses were left for a prey to the eagles of Ben Lawers. The desertion would have been much

greater, had not Mackay and his officers, pistol in hand, threatened to blow out the brains of any man whom

At length the weary fugitives came in sight of Weems Castle. The proprietor of the mansion was a friend to

the new government, and extended to them such hospitality as was in his power. His stores of oatmeal were

brought out, kine were slaughtered; and a rude and hasty meal was set before the numerous guests. Thus

refreshed, they again set forth, and marched all day over bog, moor, and mountain. Thinly inhabited as the

country was, they could plainly see that the report of their disaster had already spread far, and that the

population was every where in a state of great excitement. Late at night they reached Castle Drummond,

which was held for King William by a small garrison; and, on the following day, they proceeded with less

The tidings of their defeat had outrun them. All Scotland was in a ferment. The disaster had indeed been

great: but it was exaggerated by the wild hopes of one party and by the wild fears of the other. It was at first

believed that the whole army of King William had perished; that Mackay himself had fallen; that Dundee, at

the head of a great host of barbarians, flushed with victory and impatient for spoil, had already descended

from the hills; that he was master of the whole country beyond the Forth; that Fife was up to join him; that in

three days he would be at Stirling; that in a week he would be at Holyrood. Messengers were sent to urge a

regiment which lay in Northumberland to hasten across the border. Others carried to London earnest

entreaties that His Majesty would instantly send every soldier that could be spared, nay, that he would come

himself to save his northern kingdom. The factions of the Parliament House, awestruck by the common

danger, forgot to wrangle. Courtiers and malecontents with one voice implored the Lord High Commissioner

to close the session, and to dismiss them from a place where their deliberations might soon be interrupted by

the mountaineers. It was seriously considered whether it might not be expedient to abandon Edinburgh, to

send the numerous state prisoners who were in the Castle and the Tolbooth on board of a man of war which

The news of Dundee's victory was every where speedily followed by the news of his death; and it is a strong

proof of the extent and vigour of his faculties, that his death seems every where to have been regarded as a

complete set off against his victory. Hamilton, before he adjourned the Estates, informed them that he had

good tidings for them; that Dundee was certainly dead; and that therefore the rebels had on the whole

sustained a defeat. In several letters written at that conjuncture by able and experienced politicians a similar

opinion is expressed. The messenger who rode with the news of the battle to the English Court was fast

followed by another who carried a despatch for the King, and, not finding His Majesty at Saint James's,

galloped to Hampton Court. Nobody in the capital ventured to break the seal; but fortunately, after the letter

had been closed, some friendly hand had hastily written on the outside a few words of comfort: "Dundee is

killed. Mackay has got to Stirling:" and these words quieted the minds of the Londoners.369

From the pass of Killiecrankie the Highlanders had retired, proud of their victory, and laden with spoil, to the

Castle of Blair. They boasted that the field of battle was covered with heaps of the Saxon soldiers, and that

the appearance of the corpses bore ample testimony to the power of a good Gaelic broadsword in a good

Gaelic right hand. Heads were found cloven down to the throat, and sculls struck clean off just above the

ears. The conquerors however had bought their victory dear. While they were advancing, they had been much

galled by the musketry of the enemy; and, even after the decisive charge, Hastings's Englishmen and some of

Leven's borderers had continued to keep up a steady fire. A hundred and twenty Camerons had been slain: the

loss of the Macdonalds had been still greater; and several gentlemen of birth and note had fallen.370

Dundee was buried in the church of Blair Athol: but no monument was erected over his grave; and the church

itself has long disappeared. A rude stone on the field of battle marks, if local tradition can be trusted, the

place where he fell.371 During the last three months of his life he had approved himself a great warrior and

politician; and his name is therefore mentioned with respect by that large class of persons who think that

It is curious that the two most remarkable battles that perhaps were ever gained by irregular over regular

troops should have been fought in the same week; the battle of Killiecrankie, and the battle of Newton Butler.

In both battles the success of the irregular troops was singularly rapid and complete. In both battles the panic

of the regular troops, in spite of the conspicuous example of courage set by their generals, was singularly

disgraceful. It ought also to be noted that, of these extraordinary victories, one was gained by Celts over

Saxons, and the other by Saxons over Celts. The victory of Killiecrankie indeed, though neither more

splendid nor more important than the victory of Newton Butler, is far more widely renowned; and the reason

is evident. The Anglosaxon and the Celt have been reconciled in Scotland, and have never been reconciled in

Ireland. In Scotland all the great actions of both races are thrown into a common stock, and are considered as

making up the glory which belongs to the whole country. So completely has the old antipathy been

extinguished that nothing is more usual than to hear a Lowlander talk with complacency and even with pride

of the most humiliating defeat that his ancestors ever underwent. It would be difficult to name any eminent

man in whom national feeling and clannish feeling were stronger than in Sir Walter Scott. Yet when Sir

Walter Scott mentioned Killiecrankie he seemed utterly to forget that he was a Saxon, that he was of the same

blood and of the same speech with Ramsay's foot and Annandale's horse. His heart swelled with triumph

when he related how his own kindred had fled like hares before a smaller number of warriors of a different

In Ireland the feud remains unhealed. The name of Newton Butler, insultingly repeated by a minority, is

hateful to the great majority of the population. If a monument were set up on the field of battle, it would

probably be defaced: if a festival were held in Cork or Waterford on the anniversary of the battle, it would

probably be interrupted by violence. The most illustrious Irish poet of our time would have thought it treason

to his country to sing the praises of the conquerors. One of the most learned and diligent Irish archeologists of

our time has laboured, not indeed very successfully, to prove that the event of the day was decided by a mere

accident from which the Englishry could derive no glory. We cannot wonder that the victory of the

Highlanders should be more celebrated than the victory of the Enniskilleners, when we consider that the

victory of the Highlanders is matter of boast to all Scotland, and that the victory of the Enniskilleners is

As far as the great interests of the State were concerned, it mattered not at all whether the battle of

Killiecrankie were lost or won. It is very improbable that even Dundee, if he had survived the most glorious

day of his life, could have surmounted those difficulties which sprang from the peculiar nature of his army,

and which would have increased tenfold as soon as the war was transferred to the Lowlands. It is certain that

his successor was altogether unequal to the task. During a day or two, indeed, the new general might flatter

himself that all would go well. His army was rapidly swollen to near double the number of claymores that

Dundee had commanded. The Stewarts of Appin, who, though full of zeal, had not been able to come up in

time for the battle, were among the first who arrived. Several clans, which had hitherto waited to see which

side was the stronger, were now eager to descend on the Lowlands under the standard of King James the

Seventh. The Grants indeed continued to bear true allegiance to William and Mary; and the Mackintoshes

were kept neutral by unconquerable aversion to Keppoch. But Macphersons, Farquharsons, and Frasers came

in crowds to the camp at Blair. The hesitation of the Athol men was at an end. Many of them had lurked,

during the fight, among the crags and birch trees of Killiecrankie, and, as soon as the event of the day was

decided, had emerged from those hiding places to strip and butcher the fugitives who tried to escape by the

pass. The Robertsons, a Gaelic race, though bearing a Saxon name, gave in at this conjuncture their adhesion

to the cause of the exiled king. Their chief Alexander, who took his appellation from his lordship of Struan,

was a very young man and a student at the University of Saint Andrew's. He had there acquired a smattering

of letters, and had been initiated much more deeply into Tory politics. He now joined the Highland army, and

continued, through a long life to be constant to the Jacobite cause. His part, however, in public affairs was so

insignificant that his name would not now be remembered, if he had not left a volume of poems, always very

stupid and often very profligate. Had this book been manufactured in Grub Street, it would scarcely have

been honoured with a quarter of a line in the Dunciad. But it attracted some notice on account of the situation

of the writer. For, a hundred and twenty years ago, an eclogue or a lampoon written by a Highland chief was

But, though the numerical strength of Cannon's forces was increasing, their efficiency was diminishing.

Every new tribe which joined the camp brought with it some new cause of dissension. In the hour of peril, the

most arrogant and mutinous spirits will often submit to the guidance of superior genius. Yet, even in the hour

of peril, and even to the genius of Dundee, the Celtic chiefs had gelded but a precarious and imperfect

obedience. To restrain them, when intoxicated with success and confident of their strength, would probably

have been too hard a task even for him, as it had been, in the preceding generation, too hard a task for

Montrose. The new general did nothing but hesitate and blunder. One of his first acts was to send a large

body of men, chiefly Robertsons, down into the low country for the purpose of collecting provisions. He

seems to have supposed that this detachment would without difficulty occupy Perth. But Mackay had already

restored order among the remains of his army: he had assembled round him some troops which had not

shared in the disgrace of the late defeat; and he was again ready for action. Cruel as his sufferings had been,

he had wisely and magnanimously resolved not to punish what was past. To distinguish between degrees of

guilt was not easy. To decimate the guilty would have been to commit a frightful massacre. His habitual piety

too led him to consider the unexampled panic which had seized his soldiers as a proof rather of the divine

displeasure than of their cowardice. He acknowledged with heroic humility that the singular firmness which

he had himself displayed in the midst of the confusion and havoc was not his own, and that he might well, but

for the support of a higher power, have behaved as pusillanimously as any of the wretched runaways who had

thrown away their weapons and implored quarter in vain from the barbarous marauders of Athol. His

dependence on heaven did not, however, prevent him from applying himself vigorously to the work of

providing, as far as human prudence could provide, against the recurrence of such a calamity as that which he

had just experienced. The immediate cause of his defeat was the difficulty of fixing bayonets. The firelock of

the Highlander was quite distinct from the weapon which he used in close fight. He discharged his shot,

threw away his gun, and fell on with his sword. This was the work of a moment. It took the regular musketeer

two or three minutes to alter his missile weapon into a weapon with which he could encounter an enemy hand

to hand; and during these two or three minutes the event of the battle of Killiecrankie had been decided.

Mackay therefore ordered all his bayonets to be so formed that they might be screwed upon the barrel without

stopping it up, and that his men might be able to receive a charge the very instant after firing.373

As soon as he learned that a detachment of the Gaelic army was advancing towards Perth, he hastened to

meet them at the head of a body of dragoons who had not been in the battle, and whose spirit was therefore

unbroken. On Wednesday the thirtyfirst of July, only four days after his defeat, he fell in with the

Robertsons near Saint Johnston's, attacked them, routed them, killed a hundred and twenty of them, and took

thirty prisoners, with the loss of only a single soldier.374 This skirmish produced an effect quite out of

proportion to the number of the combatants or of the slain. The reputation of the Celtic arms went down

almost as fast as it had risen. During two or three days it had been every where imagined that those arms were

invincible. There was now a reaction. It was perceived that what had happened at Killiecrankie was an

exception to ordinary rules, and that the Highlanders were not, except in very peculiar circumstances, a match

Meanwhile the disorders of Cannon's camp went on increasing. He called a council of war to consider what

course it would be advisable to take. But as soon as the council had met, a preliminary question was raised.

Who were entitled to be consulted? The army was almost exclusively a Highland army. The recent victory

had been won exclusively by Highland warriors. Great chiefs, who had brought six or seven hundred fighting

men into the field, did not think it fair that they should be outvoted by gentlemen from Ireland and from the

low country, who bore indeed King James's commission, and were called Colonels and Captains, but who

were Colonels without regiments and Captains without companies. Lochiel spoke strongly in behalf of the

class to which he belonged: but Cannon decided that the votes of the Saxon officers should be reckoned.375

It was next considered what was to be the plan of the campaign. Lochiel was for advancing, for marching

towards Mackay wherever Mackay might be, and for giving battle again. It can hardly be supposed that

success had so turned the head of the wise chief of the Camerons as to make him insensible of the danger of

the course which he recommended. But he probably conceived that nothing but a choice between dangers was

left to him. His notion was that vigorous action was necessary to the very being of a Highland army, and that

the coalition of clans would last only while they were impatiently pushing forward from battlefield to

battlefield. He was again overruled. All his hopes of success were now at an end. His pride was severely

wounded. He had submitted to the ascendancy of a great captain: but he cared as little as any Whig for a royal

commission. He had been willing to be the right hand of Dundee: but he would not be ordered about by

Cannon. He quitted the camp, and retired to Lochaber. He indeed directed his clan to remain. But the clan,

deprived of the leader whom it adored, and aware that he had withdrawn himself in ill humour, was no longer

the same terrible column which had a few days before kept so well the vow to perish or to conquer.

Macdonald of Sleat, whose forces exceeded in number those of any other of the confederate chiefs, followed

Mackay's arrangements were by this time complete; and he had little doubt that, if the rebels came down to

attack him, the regular army would retrieve the honour which had been lost at Killiecrankie. His chief

difficulties arose from the unwise interference of the ministers of the Crown at Edinburgh with matters which

ought to have been left to his direction. The truth seems to be that they, after the ordinary fashion of men

who, having no military experience, sit in judgment on military operations, considered success as the only

test of the ability of a commander. Whoever wins a battle is, in the estimation of such persons, a great

general: whoever is beaten is a lead general; and no general had ever been more completely beaten than

Mackay. William, on the other hand, continued to place entire confidence in his unfortunate lieutenant. To

the disparaging remarks of critics who had never seen a skirmish, Portland replied, by his master's orders, that

Mackay was perfectly trustworthy, that he was brave, that he understood war better than any other officer in

Scotland, and that it was much to be regretted that any prejudice should exist against so good a man and so

The unjust contempt with which the Scotch Privy Councillors regarded Mackay led them into a great error

which might well have caused a great disaster. The Cameronian regiment was sent to garrison Dunkeld. Of

this arrangement Mackay altogether disapproved. He knew that at Dunkeld these troops would be near the

enemy; that they would be far from all assistance; that they would be in an open town; that they would be

surrounded by a hostile population; that they were very imperfectly disciplined, though doubtless brave and

zealous; that they were regarded by the whole Jacobite party throughout Scotland with peculiar malevolence;

and that in all probability some great effort would be made to disgrace and destroy them.378

The General's opinion was disregarded; and the Cameronians occupied the post assigned to them. It soon

appeared that his forebodings were just. The inhabitants of the country round Dunkeld furnished Cannon with

intelligence, and urged him to make a bold push. The peasantry of Athol, impatient for spoil, came in great

numbers to swell his army. The regiment hourly expected to be attacked, and became discontented and

turbulent. The men, intrepid, indeed, both from constitution and from enthusiasm, but not yet broken to habits

of military submission, expostulated with Cleland, who commanded them. They had, they imagined, been

recklessly, if not perfidiously, sent to certain destruction. They were protected by no ramparts: they had a

very scanty stock of ammunition: they were hemmed in by enemies. An officer might mount and gallop

beyond reach of danger in an hour; but the private soldier must stay and be butchered. "Neither I," said

Cleland, "nor any of my officers will, in any extremity, abandon you. Bring out my horse, all our horses; they

shall be shot dead." These words produced a complete change of feeling. The men answered that the horses

should not be shot, that they wanted no pledge from their brave Colonel except his word, and that they would

run the last hazard with him. They kept their promise well. The Puritan blood was now thoroughly up; and

That night the regiment passed under arms. On the morning of the following day, the twentyfirst of August,

all the hills round Dunkeld were alive with bonnets and plaids. Cannon's army was much larger than that

which Dundee had commanded. More than a thousand horses laden with baggage accompanied his march.

Both the horses and baggage were probably part of the booty of Killiecrankie. The whole number of

Highlanders was estimated by those who saw them at from four to five thousand men. They came furiously

on. The outposts of the Cameronians were speedily driven in. The assailants came pouring on every side into

the streets. The church, however, held out obstinately. But the greater part of the regiment made its stand

behind a wall which surrounded a house belonging to the Marquess of Athol. This wall, which had two or

three days before been hastily repaired with timber and loose stones, the soldiers defended desperately with

musket, pike, and halbert. Their bullets were soon spent; but some of the men were employed in cutting lead

from the roof of the Marquess's house and shaping it into slugs. Meanwhile all the neighbouring houses were

crowded from top to bottom with Highlanders, who kept up a galling fire from the windows. Cleland, while

In another minute Henderson fell pierced with three mortal wounds. His place was supplied by Captain

Munro, and the contest went on with undiminished fury. A party of the Cameronians sallied forth, set fire to

the houses from which the fatal shots had come, and turned the keys in the doors. In one single dwelling

sixteen of the enemy were burnt alive. Those who were in the fight described it as a terrible initiation for

recruits. Half the town was blazing; and with the incessant roar of the guns were mingled the piercing shrieks

of wretches perishing in the flames. The struggle lasted four hours. By that time the Cameronians were

reduced nearly to their last flask of powder; but their spirit never flagged. "The enemy will soon carry the

wall. Be it so. We will retreat into the house: we will defend it to the last; and, if they force their way into it,

we will burn it over their heads and our own." But, while they were revolving these desperate projects, they

observed that the fury of the assault slackened. Soon the highlanders began to fall back: disorder visibly

spread among them; and whole bands began to march off to the hills. It was in vain that their general ordered

them to return to the attack. Perseverance was not one of their military virtues. The Cameronians meanwhile,

with shouts of defiance, invited Amalek and Moab to come back and to try another chance with the chosen

people. But these exhortations had as little effect as those of Cannon. In a short time the whole Gaelic army

was in full retreat towards Blair. Then the drums struck up: the victorious Puritans threw their caps into the

air, raised, with one voice, a psalm of triumph and thanksgiving, and waved their colours, colours which were

on that day unfurled for the first time in the face of an enemy, but which have since been proudly borne in

every quarter of the world, and which are now embellished with the Sphinx and the Dragon, emblems of

The Cameronians had good reason to be joyful and thankful; for they had finished the rear. In the rebel camp

all was discord and dejection. The Highlanders blamed Cannon: Cannon blamed the Highlanders; and the

host which had been the terror of Scotland melted fast away. The confederate chiefs signed an association by

which they declared themselves faithful subjects of King James, and bound themselves to meet again at a

future time. Having gone through this form,for it was no more,they departed, each to his home. Cannon

and his Irishmen retired to the Isle of Mull. The Lowlanders who had followed Dundee to the mountains

shifted for themselves as they best could. On the twentyfourth of August, exactly four weeks after the

Gaelic army had won the battle of Killiecrankie, that army ceased to exist. It ceased to exist, as the army of

Montrose had, more than forty years earlier, ceased to exist, not in consequence of any great blow from

without, but by a natural dissolution, the effect of internal malformation. All the fruits of victory were

gathered by the vanquished. The Castle of Blair, which had been the immediate object of the contest, opened

its gates to Mackay; and a chain of military posts, extending northward as far as Inverness, protected the

During the autumn the government was much more annoyed by the Whigs of the low country, than by the

Jacobites of the hills. The Club, which had, in the late session of Parliament, attempted to turn the kingdom

into an oligarchical republic, and which had induced the Estates to refuse supplies and to stop the

administration of justice, continued to sit during the recess, and harassed the ministers of the Crown by

systematic agitation. The organization of this body, contemptible as it may appear to the generation which

has seen the Roman Catholic Association and the League against the Corn Laws, was then thought

marvellous and formidable. The leaders of the confederacy boasted that they would force the King to do them

right. They got up petitions and addresses, tried to inflame the populace by means of the press and the pulpit,

employed emissaries among the soldiers, and talked of bringing up a large body of Covenanters from the

west to overawe the Privy Council. In spite of every artifice, however, the ferment of the public mind

gradually subsided. The Government, after some hesitation, ventured to open the Courts of justice which the

Estates had closed. The Lords of Session appointed by the King took their seats; and Sir James Dalrymple

presided. The Club attempted to induce the advocates to absent themselves from the bar, and entertained

some hope that the mob would pull the judges from the bench. But it speedily became clear that there was

much more likely to be a scarcity of fees than of lawyers to take them: the common people of Edinburgh

were well pleased to see again a tribunal associated in their imagination with the dignity and prosperity of

their city; and by many signs it appeared that the false and greedy faction which had commanded a majority

Disputes in the English ParliamentThe Attainder of Russell reversedOther Attainders reversed; Case of

Samuel JohnsonCase of DevonshireCase of OatesBill of RightsDisputes about a Bill of

IndemnityLast Days of JeffreysThe Whigs dissatisfied with the KingIntemperance of HoweAttack

on Caermarthen Attack on HalifaxPreparations for a Campaign in Ireland SchombergRecess of

the ParliamentState of Ireland; Advice of AvauxDismission of Melfort; Schomberg lands in Ulster

Carrickfergus takenSchomberg advances into Leinster; the English and Irish Armies encamp near each

otherSchomberg declines a BattleFrauds of the English CommissariatConspiracy among the French

Troops in the English ServicePestilence in the English ArmyThe English and Irish Armies go into

Winter QuartersVarious Opinions about Schomberg's ConductMaritime AffairsMaladministration of

TorringtonContinental Affairs Skirmish at WalcourtImputations thrown on MarlboroughPope

Innocent XI. succeeded by Alexander VIII.The High Church Clergy divided on the Subject of the

OathsArguments for taking the OathsArguments against taking the OathsA great Majority of the

HickesCollierDodwellKettlewell; FitzwilliamGeneral Character of the Nonjuring ClergyThe

Plan of Comprehension; TillotsonAn Ecclesiastical Commission issued.Proceedings of the

CommissionThe Convocation of the Province of Canterbury summoned; Temper of the ClergyThe

Clergy ill affected towards the KingThe Clergy exasperated against the Dissenters by the Proceedings of

the Scotch PresbyteriansConstitution of the ConvocationElection of Members of Convocation;

Ecclesiastical Preferments bestowed,Compton discontentedThe Convocation meetsThe High

Churchmen a Majority of the Lower House of ConvocationDifference between the two Houses of

Convocation The Lower House of Convocation proves unmanageable.The Convocation prorogued

TWENTYfour hours before the war in Scotland was brought to a close by the discomfiture of the Celtic

army at Dunkeld, the Parliament broke up at Westminster. The Houses had sate ever since January without a

recess. The Commons, who were cooped up in a narrow space, had suffered severely from heat and

discomfort; and the health of many members had given way. The fruit however had not been proportioned to

the toil. The last three months of the session had been almost entirely wasted in disputes, which have left no

trace in the Statute Book. The progress of salutary laws had been impeded, sometimes by bickerings between

the Whigs and the Tories, and sometimes by bickerings between the Lords and the Commons.

The Revolution had scarcely been accomplished when it appeared that the supporters of the Exclusion Bill

had not forgotten what they had suffered during the ascendancy of their enemies, and were bent on obtaining

both reparation and revenge. Even before the throne was filled, the Lords appointed a committee to examine

into the truth of the frightful stories which had been circulated concerning the death of Essex. The committee,

which consisted of zealous Whigs, continued its inquiries till all reasonable men were convinced that he had

fallen by his own hand, and till his wife, his brother, and his most intimate friends were desirous that the

investigation should be carried no further.381 Atonement was made, without any opposition on the part of the

Tories, to the memory and the families of some other victims, who were themselves beyond the reach of

human power. Soon after the Convention had been turned into a Parliament, a bill for reversing the attainder

of Lord Russell was presented to the peers, was speedily passed by them, was sent down to the Lower House,

and was welcomed there with no common signs of emotion. Many of the members had sate in that very

chamber with Russell. He had long exercised there an influence resembling the influence which, within the

memory of this generation, belonged to the upright and benevolent Althorpe; an influence derived, not from

superior skill in debate or in declamation, but from spotless integrity, from plain good sense, and from that

frankness, that simplicity, that good nature, which are singularly graceful and winning in a man raised by

birth and fortune high above his fellows. By the Whigs Russell had been honoured as a chief; and his political

adversaries had admitted that, when he was not misled by associates less respectable and more artful than

himself, he was as honest and kindhearted a gentleman as any in England. The manly firmness and Christian

meekness with which he had met death, the desolation of his noble house, the misery of the bereaved father,

the blighted prospects of the orphan children382, above all, the union of womanly tenderness and angelic

patience in her who had been dearest to the brave sufferer, who had sate, with the pen in her hand, by his side

at the bar, who had cheered the gloom of his cell, and who, on his last day, had shared with him the

memorials of the great sacrifice, had softened the hearts of many who were little in the habit of pitying an

opponent. That Russell had many good qualities, that he had meant well, that he had been hardly used, was

now admitted even by courtly lawyers who had assisted in shedding his blood, and by courtly divines who

had done their worst to blacken his reputation. When, therefore, the parchment which annulled his sentence

was laid on the table of that assembly in which, eight years before, his face and his voice had been so well

known, the excitement was great. One old Whig member tried to speak, but was overcome by his feelings. "I

cannot," he said, "name my Lord Russell without disorder. It is enough to name him. I am not able to say

more." Many eyes were directed towards that part of the house where Finch sate. The highly honourable

manner in which he had quitted a lucrative office, as soon as he had found that he could not keep it without

supporting the dispensing power, and the conspicuous part which he had borne in the defence of the Bishops,

had done much to atone for his faults. Yet, on this day, it could not be forgotten that he had strenuously

exerted himself, as counsel for the Crown, to obtain that judgment which was now to be solemnly revoked.

He rose, and attempted to defend his conduct: but neither his legal acuteness, nor that fluent and sonorous

elocution which was in his family a hereditary gift, and of which none of his family had a larger share than

himself, availed him on this occasion. The House was in no humour to hear him, and repeatedly interrupted

him by cries of "Order." He had been treated, he was told, with great indulgence. No accusation had been

brought against him. Why then should he, under pretence of vindicating himself, attempt to throw

dishonourable imputations on an illustrious name, and to apologise for a judicial murder? He was forced to sit

dorm, after declaring that he meant only to clear himself from the charge of having exceeded the limits of his

professional duty; that he disclaimed all intention of attacking the memory of Lord Russell; and that he

should sincerely rejoice at the reversing of the attainder. Before the House rose the bill was read a second

time, and would have been instantly read a third time and passed, had not some additions and omissions been

proposed, which would, it was thought, make the reparation more complete. The amendments were prepared

with great expedition: the Lords agreed to them; and the King gladly gave his assent.383

This bill was soon followed by three other bills which annulled three wicked and infamous judgments, the

judgment against Sidney, the judgment against Cornish, and the judgment against Alice Lisle.384

Some living Whigs obtained without difficulty redress for injuries which they had suffered in the late reign.

The sentence of Samuel Johnson was taken into consideration by the House of Commons. It was resolved

that the scourging which he had undergone was cruel, and that his degradation was of no legal effect. The

latter proposition admitted of no dispute: for he had been degraded by the prelates who had been appointed to

govern the diocese of London during Compton's suspension. Compton had been suspended by a decree of the

High Commission, and the decrees of the High Commission were universally acknowledged to be nullities.

Johnson had therefore been stripped of his robe by persons who had no jurisdiction over him. The Commons

requested the king to compensate the sufferer by some ecclesiastical preferment.385 William, however, found

that he could not, without great inconvenience, grant this request. For Johnson, though brave, honest and

religious, had always been rash, mutinous and quarrelsome; and, since he had endured for his opinions a

martyrdom more terrible than death, the infirmities of his temper and understanding had increased to such a

degree that he was as disagreeable to Low Churchmen as to High Churchmen. Like too many other men, who

are not to be turned from the path of right by pleasure, by lucre or by danger, he mistook the impulses of his

pride and resentment for the monitions of conscience, and deceived himself into a belief that, in treating

friends and foes with indiscriminate insolence and asperity, he was merely showing his Christian faithfulness

and courage. Burnet, by exhorting him to patience and forgiveness of injuries, made him a mortal enemy.

"Tell His Lordship," said the inflexible priest, "to mind his own business, and to let me look after mine."386

It soon began to be whispered that Johnson was mad. He accused Burnet of being the author of the report,

and avenged himself by writing libels so violent that they strongly confirmed the imputation which they were

meant to refute. The King, therefore, thought it better to give out of his own revenue a liberal compensation

for the wrongs which the Commons had brought to his notice than to place an eccentric and irritable man in a

situation of dignity and public trust. Johnson was gratified with a present of a thousand pounds, and a pension

of three hundred a year for two lives. His son was also provided for in the public service.387

While the Commons were considering the case of Johnson, the Lords were scrutinising with severity the

proceedings which had, in the late reign, been instituted against one of their own order, the Earl of

Devonshire. The judges who had passed sentence on him were strictly interrogated; and a resolution was

passed declaring that in his case the privileges of the peerage had been infringed, and that the Court of King's

Bench, in punishing a hasty blow by a fine of thirty thousand pounds, had violated common justice and the

In the cases which have been mentioned, all parties seem to have agreed in thinking that some public

reparation was due. But the fiercest passions both of Whigs and Tories were soon roused by the noisy claims

of a wretch whose sufferings, great as they might seem, had been trifling when compared with his crimes.

Gates had come back, like a ghost from the place of punishment, to haunt the spots which had been polluted

by his guilt. The three years and a half which followed his scourging he had passed in one of the cells of

Newgate, except when on certain days, the anniversaries of his perjuries, he had been brought forth and set on

the pillory. He was still, however, regarded by many fanatics as a martyr; and it was said that they were able

so far to corrupt his keepers that, in spite of positive orders from the government, his sufferings were

mitigated by many indulgences. While offenders, who, compared with him, were innocent, grew lean on the

prison allowance, his cheer was mended by turkeys and chines, capons and sucking pigs, venison pasties and

hampers of claret, the offerings of zealous Protestants.389 When James had fled from Whitehall, and when

London was in confusion, it was moved, in the council of Lords which had provisionally assumed the

direction of affairs, that Gates should be set at liberty. The motion was rejected390: but the gaolers, not

knowing whom to obey in that time of anarchy, and desiring to conciliate a man who had once been, and

might perhaps again be, a terrible enemy, allowed their prisoner to go freely about the town.391 His uneven

legs and his hideous face, made more hideous by the shearing which his ears had undergone, were now again

seen every day in Westminster Hall and the Court of Requests.392 He fastened himself on his old patrons,

and, in that drawl which he affected as a mark of gentility, gave them the history of his wrongs and of his

hopes. It was impossible, he said, that now, when the good cause was triumphant, the discoverer of the plot

could be overlooked. "Charles gave me nine hundred pounds a year. Sure William will give me more."393

In a few weeks he brought his sentence before the House of Lords by a writ of error. This is a species of

appeal which raises no question of fact. The Lords, while sitting judicially on the writ of error, were not

competent to examine whether the verdict which pronounced Gates guilty was or was not according to the

evidence. All that they had to consider was whether, the verdict being supposed to be according to the

evidence, the judgment was legal. But it would have been difficult even for a tribunal composed of veteran

magistrates, and was almost impossible for an assembly of noblemen who were all strongly biassed on one

side or on the other, and among whom there was at that time not a single person whose mind had been

disciplined by the study of jurisprudence, to look steadily at the mere point of law, abstracted from the special

circumstances of the case. In the view of one party, a party which even among the Whig peers was probably a

minority, the appellant was a man who had rendered inestimable services to the cause of liberty and religion,

and who had been requited by long confinement, by degrading exposure, and by torture not to be thought of

without a shudder. The majority of the House more justly regarded him as the falsest, the most malignant and

the most impudent being that had ever disgraced the human form. The sight of that brazen forehead, the

accents of that lying tongue, deprived them of all mastery over themselves. Many of them doubtless

remembered with shame and remorse that they had been his dupes, and that, on the very last occasion on

which he had stood before them, he had by perjury induced them to shed the blood of one of their own

illustrious order. It was not to be expected that a crowd of gentlemen under the influence of feelings like

these would act with the cold impartiality of a court of justice. Before they came to any decision on the legal

question which Titus had brought before them, they picked a succession of quarrels with him. He had

published a paper magnifying his merits and his sufferings. The Lords found out some pretence for calling

this publication a breach of privilege, and sent him to the Marshalsea. He petitioned to be released; but an

objection was raised to his petition. He had described himself as a Doctor of Divinity; and their lordships

refused to acknowledge him as such. He was brought to their bar, and asked where he had graduated. He

answered, "At the university of Salamanca." This was no new instance of his mendacity and effrontery. His

Salamanca degree had been, during many years, a favourite theme of all the Tory satirists from Dryden

downwards; and even on the Continent the Salamanca Doctor was a nickname in ordinary use.394 The Lords,

in their hatred of Oates, so far forgot their own dignity as to treat this ridiculous matter seriously. They

ordered him to efface from his petition the words, "Doctor of Divinity." He replied that he could not in

These preliminary proceedings indicated not obscurely what the fate of the writ of error would be. The

counsel for Oates had been heard. No counsel appeared against him. The judges were required to give their

opinions. Nine of them were in attendance; and among the nine were the Chiefs of the three Courts of

Common Law. The unanimous answer of these grave, learned and upright magistrates was that the Court of

King's Bench was not competent to degrade a priest from his sacred office, or to pass a sentence of perpetual

imprisonment; and that therefore the judgment against Oates was contrary to law, and ought to be reversed.

The Lords should undoubtedly have considered themselves as bound by this opinion. That they knew Oates

to be the worst of men was nothing to the purpose. To them, sitting as a court of justice, he ought to have

been merely a John of Styles or a John of Nokes. But their indignation was violently excited. Their habits

were not those which fit men for the discharge of judicial duties. The debate turned almost entirely on matters

to which no allusion ought to have been made. Not a single peer ventured to affirm that the judgment was

legal: but much was said about the odious character of the appellant, about the impudent accusation which he

had brought against Catherine of Braganza, and about the evil consequences which might follow if so bad a

man were capable of being a witness. "There is only one way," said the Lord President, "in which I can

consent to reverse the fellow's sentence. He has been whipped from Aldgate to Tyburn. He ought to be

whipped from Tyburn back to Aldgate." The question was put. Twentythree peers voted for reversing the

This decision produced a great sensation, and not without reason. A question was now raised which might

justly excite the anxiety of every man in the kingdom. That question was whether the highest tribunal, the

tribunal on which, in the last resort, depended the most precious interests of every English subject, was at

liberty to decide judicial questions on other than judicial grounds, and to withhold from a suitor what was

admitted to be his legal right, on account of the depravity of his moral character. That the supreme Court of

Appeal ought not to be suffered to exercise arbitrary power, under the forms of ordinary justice, was strongly

felt by the ablest men in the House of Commons, and by none more strongly than by Somers. With him, and

with those who reasoned like him, were, on this occasion, allied many weak and hotheaded zealots who still

regarded Oates as a public benefactor, and who imagined that to question the existence of the Popish plot was

to question the truth of the Protestant religion. On the very morning after the decision of the Peers had been

pronounced, keen reflections were thrown, in the House of Commons, on the justice of their lordships. Three

days later, the subject was brought forward by a Whig Privy Councillor, Sir Robert Howard, member for

Castle Rising. He was one of the Berkshire branch of his noble family, a branch which enjoyed, in that age,

the unenviable distinction of being wonderfully fertile of bad rhymers. The poetry of the Berkshire Howards

was the jest of three generations of satirists. The mirth began with the first representation of the Rehearsal,

and continued down to the last edition of the Dunciad.397 But Sir Robert, in spite of his bad verses, and of

some foibles and vanities which had caused him to be brought on the stage under the name of Sir Positive

Atall, had in parliament the weight which a stanch party man, of ample fortune, of illustrious name, of ready

utterance, and of resolute spirit, can scarcely fail to possess.398 When he rose to call the attention of the

Commons to the case of Oates, some Tories, animated by the same passions which had prevailed in the other

House, received him with loud hisses. In spite of this most unparliamentary insult, he persevered; and it soon

appeared that the majority was with him. Some orators extolled the patriotism and courage of Oates: others

dwelt much on a prevailing rumour, that the solicitors who were employed against him on behalf of the

Crown had distributed large sums of money among the jurymen. These were topics on which there was much

difference of opinion. But that the sentence was illegal was a proposition which admitted of no dispute. The

most eminent lawyers in the House of Commons declared that, on this point, they entirely concurred in the

opinion given by the judges in the House of Lords. Those who had hissed when the subject was introduced,

were so effectually cowed that they did not venture to demand a division; and a bill annulling the sentence

The Lords were in an embarrassing situation. To retract was not pleasant. To engage in a contest with the

Lower House, on a question on which that House was clearly in the right, and was backed at once by the

opinions of the sages of the law, and by the passions of the populace, might be dangerous. It was thought

expedient to take a middle course. An address was presented to the King, requesting him to pardon Oates.400

But this concession only made bad worse. Titus had, like every other human being, a right to justice: but he

was not a proper object of mercy. If the judgment against him was illegal, it ought to have been reversed. If it

was legal, there was no ground for remitting any part of it. The Commons, very properly, persisted, passed

their bill, and sent it up to the Peers. Of this bill the only objectionable part was the preamble, which asserted,

not only that the judgment was illegal, a proposition which appeared on the face of the record to be true, but

also that the verdict was corrupt, a proposition which, whether true or false, was not proved by any evidence

The Lords were in a great strait. They knew that they were in the wrong. Yet they were determined not to

proclaim, in their legislative capacity, that they had, in their judicial capacity, been guilty of injustice. They

again tried a middle course. The preamble was softened down: a clause was added which provided that Oates

should still remain incapable of being a witness; and the bill thus altered was returned to the Commons.

The Commons were not satisfied. They rejected the amendments, and demanded a free conference. Two

eminent Tories, Rochester and Nottingham, took their seats in the Painted Chamber as managers for the

Lords. With them was joined Burnet, whose well known hatred of Popery was likely to give weight to what

he might say on such an occasion. Somers was the chief orator on the other side; and to his pen we owe a

The Lords frankly owned that the judgment of the Court of King's Bench could not be defended. They knew

it to be illegal, and had known it to be so even when they affirmed it. But they had acted for the best. They

accused Oates of bringing an impudently false accusation against Queen Catherine: they mentioned other

instances of his villany; and they asked whether such a man ought still to be capable of giving testimony in a

court of justice. The only excuse which, in their opinion, could be made for him was, that he was insane; and

in truth, the incredible insolence and absurdity of his behaviour when he was last before them seemed to

warrant the belief that his brain had been turned, and that he was not to be trusted with the lives of other men.

The Lords could not therefore degrade themselves by expressly rescinding what they had done; nor could

they consent to pronounce the verdict corrupt on no better evidence than common report.

The reply was complete and triumphant. "Oates is now the smallest part of the question. He has, Your

Lordships say, falsely accused the Queen Dowager and other innocent persons. Be it so. This bill gives him

no indemnity. We are quite willing that, if he is guilty, he shall be punished. But for him, and for all

Englishmen, we demand that punishment shall be regulated by law, and not by the arbitrary discretion of any

tribunal. We demand that, when a writ of error is before Your Lordships, you shall give judgment on it

according to the known customs and statutes of the realm. We deny that you have any right, on such

occasions, to take into consideration the moral character of a plaintiff or the political effect of a decision. It is

acknowledged by yourselves that you have, merely because you thought ill of this man, affirmed a judgment

which you knew to be illegal. Against this assumption of arbitrary power the Commons protest; and they

hope that you will now redeem what you must feel to be an error. Your Lordships intimate a suspicion that

Oates is mad. That a man is mad may be a very good reason for not punishing him at all. But how it can be a

reason for inflicting on him a punishment which would be illegal even if he were sane, the Commons do not

comprehend. Your Lordships think that you should not be justified in calling a verdict corrupt which has not

been legally proved to be so. Suffer us to remind you that you have two distinct functions to perform. You are

judges; and you are legislators. When you judge, your duty is strictly to follow the law. When you legislate,

you may properly take facts from common fame. You invert this rule. You are lax in the wrong place, and

scrupulous in the wrong place. As judges, you break through the law for the sake of a supposed convenience.

As legislators, you will not admit any fact without such technical proof as it is rarely possible for legislators

This reasoning was not and could not be answered. The Commons were evidently flushed with their victory

in the argument, and proud of the appearance which Somers had made in the Painted Chamber. They

particularly charged him to see that the report which he had made of the conference was accurately entered in

the journals. The Lords very wisely abstained from inserting in their records an account of a debate in which

they had been so signally discomfited. But, though conscious of their fault and ashamed of it, they could not

be brought to do public penance by owning, in the preamble of the Act, that they had been guilty of injustice.

The minority was, however, strong. The resolution to adhere was carried by only twelve votes, of which ten

Twentyone Peers protested. The bill dropped. Two Masters in Chancery were sent to announce to the

Commons the final resolution of the Peers. The Commons thought this proceeding unjustifiable in substance

and uncourteous in form. They determined to remonstrate; and Somers drew up an excellent manifesto, in

which the vile name of Oates was scarcely mentioned, and in which the Upper House was with great

earnestness and gravity exhorted to treat judicial questions judicially, and not, under pretence of

administering law, to make law.403 The wretched man, who had now a second time thrown the political

world into confusion, received a pardon, and was set at liberty. His friends in the Lower House moved an

address to the Throne, requesting that a pension sufficient for his support might be granted to him.404 He

was consequently allowed about three hundred a year, a sum which he thought unworthy of his acceptance,

From the dispute about Oates sprang another dispute, which might have produced very serious consequences.

The instrument which had declared William and Mary King and Queen was a revolutionary instrument. It had

been drawn up by an assembly unknown to the ordinary law, and had never received the royal sanction. It

was evidently desirable that this great contract between the governors and the governed, this titledeed by

which the King held his throne and the people their liberties, should be put into a strictly regular form. The

Declaration of Rights was therefore turned into a Bill of Rights; and the Bill of Rights speedily passed the

The Declaration had settled the crown, first on William and Mary jointly, then on the survivor of the two,

then on Mary's posterity, then on Anne and her posterity, and, lastly, on the posterity of William by any other

wife than Mary. The Bill had been drawn in exact conformity with the Declaration. Who was to succeed if

Mary, Anne, and William should all die without posterity, was left in uncertainty. Yet the event for which no

provision was made was far from improbable. Indeed it really came to pass. William had never had a child.

Anne had repeatedly been a mother, but had no child living. It would not be very strange if, in a few months,

disease, war, or treason should remove all those who stood in the entail. In what state would the country then

be left? To whom would allegiance be due? The bill indeed contained a clause which excluded Papists from

the throne. But would such a clause supply the place of a clause designating the successor by name? What if

the next heir should be a prince of the House of Savoy not three months old? It would be absurd to call such

an infant a Papist. Was he then to be proclaimed King? Or was the crown to be in abeyance till he came to an

age at which he might be capable of choosing a religion? Might not the most honest and the most intelligent

men be in doubt whether they ought to regard him as their Sovereign? And to whom could they look for a

solution of this doubt? Parliament there would be none: for the Parliament would expire with the prince who

had convoked it. There would be mere anarchy, anarchy which might end in the destruction of the monarchy,

or in the destruction of public liberty. For these weighty reasons, Barnet, at William's suggestion, proposed it

the House of Lords that the crown should, failing heirs of His Majesty's body, be entailed on an undoubted

Protestant, Sophia, Duchess of Brunswick Lunenburg, granddaughter of James the First, and daughter of

The Lords unanimously assented to this amendment: but the Commons unanimously rejected it. The cause of

the rejection no contemporary writer has satisfactorily explained. One Whig historian talks of the

machinations of the republicans, another of the machinations of the Jacobites. But it is quite certain that four

fifths of the representatives of the people were neither Jacobites nor republicans. Yet not a single voice was

raised in the Lower House in favour of the clause which in the Upper House had been carried by

acclamation.405 The most probable explanation seems to be that the gross injustice which had been

committed in the case of Oates had irritated the Commons to such a degree that they were glad of an

opportunity to quarrel with the Peers. A conference was held. Neither assembly would give way. While the

dispute was hottest, an event took place which, it might have been thought, would have restored harmony.

Anne gave birth to a son. The child was baptized at Hampton Court with great pomp, and with many signs of

public joy. William was one of the sponsors. The other was the accomplished Dorset, whose roof had given

shelter to the Princess in her distress. The King bestowed his own name on his godson, and announced to the

splendid circle assembled around the font that the little William was henceforth to be called Duke of

Gloucester.406 The birth of this child had greatly diminished the risk against which the Lords had thought it

necessary to guard. They might therefore have retracted with a good grace. But their pride had been wounded

by the severity with which their decision on Oates's writ of error had been censured in the Painted Chamber.

They had been plainly told across the table that they were unjust judges; and the imputation was not the less

irritating because they were conscious that it was deserved. They refused to make any concession; and the

But the most exciting question of this long and stormy session was, what punishment should be inflicted on

those men who had, during the interval between the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament and the Revolution,

been the advisers or the tools of Charles and James. It was happy for England that, at this crisis, a prince who

belonged to neither of her factions, who loved neither, who hated neither, and who, for the accomplishment

The two parties were now in a position closely resembling that in which they had been twentyeight years

before. The party indeed which had then been undermost was now uppermost: but the analogy between the

situations is one of the most perfect that can be found in history. Both the Restoration and the Revolution was

accomplished by coalitions. At the Restoration, those politicians who were peculiarly zealous for liberty

assisted to reestablish monarchy: at the Revolution those politicians who were peculiarly zealous for

monarchy assisted to vindicate liberty. The Cavalier would, at the former conjuncture, have been able to

effect nothing without the help of Puritans who had fought for the Covenant; nor would the Whig, at the latter

conjuncture, have offered a successful resistance to arbitrary power, had he not been backed by men who had

a very short time before condemned resistance to arbitrary power as a deadly sin. Conspicuous among those

by whom, in 1660, the royal family was brought back, were Hopis, who had in the days of the tyranny of

Charles the First held down the Speaker in the chair by main force, while Black Rod knocked for admission

in vain; Ingoldsby, whose name was subscribed to the memorable death warrant; and Prynne, whose ears

Laud had cut off, and who, in return, had borne the chief part in cutting off Laud's head. Among the seven

who, in 1688, signed the invitation to William, were Compton, who had long enforced the duty of obeying

Nero; Danby, who had been impeached for endeavouring to establish military despotism; and Lumley, whose

bloodhounds had tracked Monmouth to that sad last hiding place among the fern. Both in 1660 and in 1688,

while the fate of the nation still hung in the balance, forgiveness was exchanged between the hostile factions.

On both occasions the reconciliation, which had seemed to be cordial in the hour of danger, proved false and

hollow in the hour of triumph. As soon as Charles the Second was at Whitehall, the Cavalier forgot the good

service recently done by the Presbyterians, and remembered only their old offences. As soon as William was

King, too many of the Whigs began to demand vengeance for all that they had, in the days of the Rye House

Plot, suffered at the hands of the Tories. On both occasions the Sovereign found it difficult to save the

vanquished party from the fury of his triumphant supporters; and on both occasions those whom he had

disappointed of their revenge murmured bitterly against the government which had been so weak and

So early as the twentyfifth of March, William called the attention of the Commons to the expediency of

quieting the public mind by an amnesty. He expressed his hope that a bill of general pardon and oblivion

would be as speedily as possible presented for his sanction, and that no exceptions would be made, except

such as were absolutely necessary for the vindication of public justice and for the safety of the state. The

Commons unanimously agreed to thank him for this instance of his paternal kindness: but they suffered many

weeks to pass without taking any step towards the accomplishment of his wish. When at length the subject

was resumed, it was resumed in such a manner as plainly showed that the majority had no real intention of

putting an end to the suspense which embittered the lives of all those Tories who were conscious that, in their

zeal for prerogative, they had some times overstepped the exact line traced by law. Twelve categories were

framed, some of which were so extensive as to include tens of thousands of delinquents; and the House

resolved that, under every one of these categories, some exceptions should be made. Then came the

examination into the cases of individuals. Numerous culprits and witnesses were summoned to the bar. The

debates were long and sharp; and it soon became evident that the work was interminable. The summer glided

away: the autumn was approaching: the session could not last much longer; and of the twelve distinct

inquisitions, which the Commons had resolved to institute, only three had been brought to a close. It was

Among the many offenders whose names were mentioned in the course of these inquiries, was one who stood

alone and unapproached in guilt and infamy, and whom Whigs and Tories were equally willing to leave to the

extreme rigour of the law. On that terrible day which was succeeded by the Irish Night, the roar of a great city

disappointed of its revenge had followed Jeffreys to the drawbridge of the Tower. His imprisonment was not

strictly legal: but he at first accepted with thanks and blessings the protection which those dark walls, made

famous by so many crimes and sorrows, afforded him against the fury of the multitude.409 Soon, however,

he became sensible that his life was still in imminent peril. For a time he flattered himself with the hope that a

writ of Habeas Corpus would liberate him from his confinement, and that he should be able to steal away to

some foreign country, and to hide himself with part of his ill gotten wealth from the detestation of mankind:

but, till the government was settled, there was no Court competent to grant a writ of Habeas Corpus; and, as

soon as the government had been settled, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended.410 Whether the legal guilt

of murder could be brought home to Jeffreys may be doubted. But he was morally guilty of so many murders

that, if there had been no other way of reaching his life, a retrospective Act of Attainder would have been

clamorously demanded by the whole nation. A disposition to triumph over the fallen has never been one of

the besetting sins of Englishmen: but the hatred of which Jeffreys was the object was without a parallel in our

history, and partook but too largely of the savageness of his own nature. The people, where he was

concerned, were as cruel as himself, and exulted in his misery as he had been accustomed to exult in the

misery of convicts listening to the sentence of death, and of families clad in mourning. The rabble

congregated before his deserted mansion in Duke Street, and read on the door, with shouts of laughter, the

bills which announced the sale of his property. Even delicate women, who had tears for highwaymen and

housebreakers, breathed nothing but vengeance against him. The lampoons on him which were hawked about

the town were distinguished by an atrocity rare even in those days. Hanging would be too mild a death for

him: a grave under the gibbet too respectable a resting place: he ought to be whipped to death at the cart's tail:

he ought to be tortured like an Indian: he ought to be devoured alive. The street poets portioned out all his

joints with cannibal ferocity, and computed how many pounds of steaks might be cut from his well fattened

carcass. Nay, the rage of his enemies was such that, in language seldom heard in England, they proclaimed

their wish that he might go to the place of wailing and gnashing of teeth, to the worm that never dies, to the

fire that is never quenched. They exhorted him to hang himself in his garters, and to cut his throat with his

razor. They put up horrible prayers that he might not be able to repent, that he might die the same

hardhearted, wicked Jeffreys that he had lived.411 His spirit, as mean in adversity as insolent and inhuman in

prosperity, sank down under the load of public abhorrence. His constitution, originally bad, and much

impaired by intemperance, was completely broken by distress and anxiety. He was tormented by a cruel

internal disease, which the most skilful surgeons of that age were seldom able to relieve. One solace was left

to him, brandy. Even when he had causes to try and councils to attend, he had seldom gone to bed sober.

Now, when he had nothing to occupy his mind save terrible recollections and terrible forebodings, he

abandoned himself without reserve to his favourite vice. Many believed him to be bent on shortening his life

by excess. He thought it better, they said, to go off in a drunken fit than to be hacked by Ketch, or torn limb

Once he was roused from a state of abject despondency by an agreeable sensation, speedily followed by a

mortifying disappointment. A parcel had been left for him at the Tower. It appeared to be a barrel of

Colchester oysters, his favourite dainties. He was greatly moved: for there are moments when those who least

deserve affection are pleased to think that they inspire it. "Thank God," he exclaimed, "I have still some

friends left." He opened the barrel; and from among a heap of shells out tumbled a stout halter.412

It does not appear that one of the flatterers or buffoons whom he had enriched out of the plunder of his

victims came to comfort him in the day of trouble. But he was not left in utter solitude. John Tutchin, whom

he had sentenced to be flogged every fortnight for seven years, made his way into the Tower, and presented

himself before the fallen oppressor. Poor Jeffreys, humbled to the dust, behaved with abject civility, and

called for wine. "I am glad, sir," he said, "to see you." "And I am glad," answered the resentful Whig, "to see

Your Lordship in this place." "I served my master," said Jeffreys: "I was bound in conscience to do so."

"Where was your conscience," said Tutchin, "when you passed that sentence on me at Dorchester?" "It was

set down in my instructions," answered Jeffreys, fawningly, "that I was to show no mercy to men like you,

men of parts and courage. When I went back to court I was reprimanded for my lenity."413 Even Tutchin,

acrimonious as was his nature, and great as were his wrongs, seems to have been a little mollified by the

pitiable spectacle which he had at first contemplated with vindictive pleasure. He always denied the truth of

A more benevolent man, John Sharp, the excellent Dean of Norwich, forced himself to visit the prisoner. It

was a painful task: but Sharp had been treated by Jeffreys, in old times, as kindly as it was in the nature of

Jeffreys to treat any body, and had once or twice been able, by patiently waiting till the storm of curses and

invectives had spent itself, and by dexterously seizing the moment of good humour, to obtain for unhappy

families some mitigation of their sufferings. The prisoner was surprised and pleased. "What," he said, "dare

you own me now? "It was in vain, however, that the amiable divine tried to give salutary pain to that seared

conscience. Jeffreys, instead of acknowledging his guilt, exclaimed vehemently against the injustice of

mankind. "People call me a murderer for doing what at the time was applauded by some who are now high in

public favour. They call me a drunkard because I take punch to relieve me in my agony." He would not admit

that, as President of the High Commission, he had done any thing that deserved reproach. His colleagues, he

said, were the real criminals; and now they threw all the blame on him. He spoke with peculiar asperity of

Sprat, who had undoubtedly been the most humane and moderate member of the board.

It soon became clear that the wicked judge was fast sinking under the weight of bodily and mental suffering.

Doctor John Scott, prebendary of Saint Paul's, a clergyman of great sanctity, and author of the Christian Life,

a treatise once widely renowned, was summoned, probably on the recommendation of his intimate friend

Sharp, to the bedside of the dying man. It was in vain, however, that Scott spoke, as Sharp had already

spoken, of the hideous butcheries of Dorchester and Taunton. To the last Jeffreys continued to repeat that

those who thought him cruel did not know what his orders were, that he deserved praise instead of blame, and

Disease, assisted by strong drink and by misery, did its work fast. The patient's stomach rejected all

nourishment. He dwindled in a few weeks from a portly and even corpulent man to a skeleton. On the

eighteenth of April he died, in the fortyfirst year of his age. He had been Chief Justice of the King's Bench

at thirtyfive, and Lord Chancellor at thirtyseven. In the whole history of the English bar there is no other

instance of so rapid an elevation, or of so terrible a fall. The emaciated corpse was laid, with all privacy, next

The fall of this man, once so great and so much dreaded, the horror with which he was regarded by all the

respectable members of his own party, the manner in which the least respectable members of that party

renounced fellowship with him in his distress, and threw on him the whole blame of crimes which they had

encouraged him to commit, ought to have been a lesson to those intemperate friends of liberty who were

clamouring for a new proscription. But it was a lesson which too many of them disregarded. The King had, at

the very commencement of his reign, displeased them by appointing a few Tories and Trimmers to high

offices; and the discontent excited by these appointments had been inflamed by his attempt to obtain a

general amnesty for the vanquished. He was in truth not a man to be popular with the vindictive zealots of

any faction. For among his peculiarities was a certain ungracious humanity which rarely conciliated his foes,

which often provoked his adherents, but in which he doggedly persisted, without troubling himself either

about the thanklessness of those whom he had saved from destruction, or about the rage of those whom he

had disappointed of their revenge. Some of the Whigs now spoke of him as bitterly as they had ever spoken

of either of his uncles. He was a Stuart after all, and was not a Stuart for nothing. Like the rest of the race, he

loved arbitrary power. In Holland, he had succeeded in making himself, under the forms of a republican

polity, scarcely less absolute than the old hereditary Counts had been. In consequence of a strange

combination of circumstances, his interest had, during a short time, coincided with the interest of the English

people: but though he had been a deliverer by accident, he was a despot by nature. He had no sympathy with

the just resentments of the Whigs. He had objects in view which the Whigs would not willingly suffer any

Sovereign to attain. He knew that the Tories were the only tools for his purpose. He had therefore, from the

moment at which he took his seat on the throne, favoured them unduly. He was now trying to procure an

indemnity for those very delinquents whom he had, a few months before, described in his Declaration as

deserving of exemplary punishment. In November he had told the world that the crimes in which these men

had borne a part had made it the duty of subjects to violate their oath of allegiance, of soldiers to desert their

standards, of children to make war on their parents. With what consistency then could he recommend that

such crimes should be covered by a general oblivion? And was there not too much reason to fear that he

wished to save the agents of tyranny from the fate which they merited, in the hope that, at some future time,

Of the members of the House of Commons who were animated by these feelings, the fiercest and most

audacious was Howe. He went so far on one occasion as to move that an inquiry should be instituted into the

proceedings of the Parliament of 1685, and that some note of infamy should be put on all who, in that

Parliament, had voted with the Court. This absurd and mischievous motion was discountenanced by all the

most respectable Whigs, and strongly opposed by Birch and Maynard.417 Howe was forced to give way: but

he was a man whom no check could abash; and he was encouraged by the applause of many hotheaded

members of his party, who were far from foreseeing that he would, after having been the most rancorous and

unprincipled of Whigs, become, at no distant time, the most rancorous and unprincipled of Tories.

This quickwitted, restless and malignant politician, though himself occupying a lucrative place in the royal

household, declaimed, day after day, against the manner in which the great offices of state were filled; and his

declamations were echoed, in tones somewhat less sharp and vehement, by other orators. No man, they said,

who had been a minister of Charles or of James ought to be a minister of William. The first attack was

directed against the Lord President Caermarthen. Howe moved that an address should be presented to the

King, requesting that all persons who had ever been impeached by the Commons might be dismissed from

His Majesty's counsels and presence. The debate on this motion was repeatedly adjourned. While the event

was doubtful, William sent Dykvelt to expostulate with Howe. Howe was obdurate. He was what is vulgarly

called a disinterested man; that is to say, he valued money less than the pleasure of venting his spleen and of

making a sensation. "I am doing the King a service," he said: "I am rescuing him from false friends: and, as to

my place, that shall never be a gag to prevent me from speaking my mind." The motion was made, but

completely failed. In truth the proposition, that mere accusation, never prosecuted to conviction, ought to be

considered as a decisive proof of guilt, was shocking to natural justice. The faults of Caermarthen had

doubtless been great; but they had been exaggerated by party spirit, had been expiated by severe suffering,

and had been redeemed by recent and eminent services. At the time when he raised the great county of York

in arms against Popery and tyranny, he had been assured by some of the most eminent Whigs that all old

quarrels were forgotten. Howe indeed maintained that the civilities which had passed in the moment of peril

signified nothing. "When a viper is on my hand," he said, "I am very tender of him; but, as soon as I have him

on the ground, I set my foot on him and crush him." The Lord President, however, was so strongly supported

that, after a discussion which lasted three days, his enemies did not venture to take the sense of the House on

the motion against him. In the course of the debate a grave constitutional question was incidentally raised.

This question was whether a pardon could be pleaded in bar of a parliamentary impeachment. The Commons

The next attack was made on Halifax. He was in a much more invidious position than Caermarthen, who had,

under pretence of ill health, withdrawn himself almost entirely from business. Halifax was generally regarded

as the chief adviser of the Crown, and was in an especial manner held responsible for all the faults which had

been committed with respect to Ireland. The evils which had brought that kingdom to ruin might, it was said,

have been averted by timely precaution, or remedied by vigorous exertion. But the government had foreseen

nothing: it had done little; and that little had been done neither at the right time nor in the right way.

Negotiation had been employed instead of troops, when a few troops might have sufficed. A few troops had

been sent when many were needed. The troops that had been sent had been ill equipped and ill commanded.

Such, the vehement Whigs exclaimed, were the natural fruits of that great error which King William had

committed on the first day of his reign. He had placed in Tories and Trimmers a confidence which they did

not deserve. He had, in a peculiar manner, entrusted the direction of Irish affairs to the Trimmer of Trimmers,

to a man whose ability nobody disputed, but who was not firmly attached to the new government, who,

indeed, was incapable of being firmly attached to any government, who had always halted between two

opinions, and who, till the moment of the flight of James, had not given up the hope that the discontents of

the nation might be quieted without a change of dynasty. Howe, on twenty occasions, designated Halifax as

the cause of all the calamities of the country. Monmouth held similar language in the House of Lords.

Though First Lord of the Treasury, he paid no attention to financial business, for which he was altogether

unfit, and of which he had very soon become weary. His whole heart was in the work of persecuting the

Tories. He plainly told the King that nobody who was not a Whig ought to be employed in the public service.

William's answer was cool and determined. "I have done as much for your friends as I can do without danger

to the state; and I will do no more,"419 The only effect of this reprimand was to make Monmouth more

factious than ever. Against Halifax especially he intrigued and harangued with indefatigable animosity. The

other Whig Lords of the Treasury, Delamere and Capel, were scarcely less eager to drive the Lord Privy Seal

from office; and personal jealousy and antipathy impelled the Lord President to conspire with his own

What foundation there may have been for the imputations thrown at this time on Halifax cannot now be fully

ascertained. His enemies, though they interrogated numerous witnesses, and though they obtained William's

reluctant permission to inspect the minutes of the Privy Council, could find no evidence which would support

a definite charge.420 But it was undeniable that the Lord Privy Seal had acted as minister for Ireland, and that

Ireland was all but lost. It is unnecessary, and indeed absurd, to suppose, as many Whigs supposed, that his

administration was unsuccessful because he did not wish it to be successful. The truth seems to be that the

difficulties of the situation were great, and that he, with all his ingenuity and eloquence, was ill qualified to

cope with those difficulties. The whole machinery of government was out of joint; and he was not the man to

set it right. What was wanted was not what he had in large measure, wit, taste, amplitude of comprehension,

subtlety in drawing distinctions; but what he had not, prompt decision, indefatigable energy, and stubborn

resolution. His mind was at best of too soft a temper for such work as he had now to do, and had been

recently made softer by severe affliction. He had lost two sons in less than twelve months. A letter is still

extant, in which he at this time complained to his honoured friend Lady Russell of the desolation of his hearth

and of the cruel ingratitude of the Whigs. We possess, also, the answer, in which she gently exhorted him to

seek for consolation where she had found it under trials not less severe than his.421

The first attack on him was made in the Upper House. Some Whig Lords, among whom the wayward and

petulant First Lord of the Treasury was conspicuous, proposed that the King should be requested to appoint a

new Speaker. The friends of Halifax moved and carried the previous question.422 About three weeks later his

persecutors moved, in a Committee of the whole House of Commons, a resolution which imputed to him no

particular crime either of omission or of commission, but simply declared it to be advisable that he should be

dismissed from the service of the Crown. The debate was warm. Moderate politicians of both parties were

unwilling to put a stigma on a man, not indeed faultless, but distinguished both by his abilities and by his

amiable qualities. His accusers saw that they could not carry their point, and tried to escape from a decision

which was certain to be adverse to them, by proposing that the Chairman should report progress. But their

tactics were disconcerted by the judicious and spirited conduct of Lord Eland, now the Marquess's only son.

"My father has not deserved," said the young nobleman, "to be thus trifled with. If you think him culpable,

say so. He will at once submit to your verdict. Dismission from Court has no terrors for him. He is raised, by

the goodness of God, above the necessity of looking to office for the means of supporting his rank." The

Had the division been postponed a few hours, the majority would probably have been much greater. The

Commons voted under the impression that Londonderry had fallen, and that all Ireland was lost. Scarcely had

the House risen when a courier arrived with news that the boom on the Foyle had been broken. He was

speedily followed by a second, who announced the raising of the siege, and by a third who brought the tidings

of the battle of Newton Butler. Hope and exultation succeeded to discontent and dismay.424 Ulster was safe;

and it was confidently expected that Schomberg would speedily reconquer Leinster, Connaught, and Munster.

He was now ready to set out. The port of Chester was the place from which he was to take his departure. The

army which he was to command had assembled there; and the Dee was crowded with men of war and

transports. Unfortunately almost all those English soldiers who had seen war had been sent to Flanders. The

bulk of the force destined for Ireland consisted of men just taken from the plough and the threshing floor.

There was, however, an excellent brigade of Dutch troops under the command of an experienced officer, the

Count of Solmes. Four regiments, one of cavalry and three of infantry, had been formed out of the French

refugees, many of whom had borne arms with credit. No person did more to promote the raising of these

regiments than the Marquess of Ruvigny. He had been during many years an eminently faithful and useful

servant of the French government. So highly was his merit appreciated at Versailles that he had been solicited

to accept indulgences which scarcely any other heretic could by any solicitation obtain. Had he chosen to

remain in his native country, he and his household would have been permitted to worship God privately

according to their own forms. But Ruvigny rejected all offers, cast in his lot with his brethren, and, at

upwards of eighty years of age, quitted Versailles, where he might still have been a favourite, for a modest

dwelling at Greenwich. That dwelling was, during the last months of his life, the resort of all that was most

distinguished among his fellow exiles. His abilities, his experience and his munificent kindness, made him

the undisputed chief of the refugees. He was at the same time half an Englishman: for his sister had been

Countess of Southampton, and he was uncle of Lady Russell. He was long past the time of action. But his

two sons, both men of eminent courage, devoted their swords to the service of William. The younger son,

who bore the name of Caillemote, was appointed colonel of one of the Huguenot regiments of foot. The two

other regiments of foot were commanded by La Melloniere and Cambon, officers of high reputation. The

regiment of horse was raised by Schomberg himself, and bore his name. Ruvigny lived just long enough to

The general to whom the direction of the expedition against Ireland was confided had wonderfully succeeded

in obtaining the affection and esteem of the English nation. He had been made a Duke, a Knight of the Garter,

and Master of the Ordnance: he was now placed at the head of an army: and yet his elevation excited none of

that jealousy which showed itself as often as any mark of royal favour was bestowed on Bentinck, on

Zulestein, or on Auverquerque. Schomberg's military skill was universally acknowledged. He was regarded

by all Protestants as a confessor who had endured every thing short of martyrdom for the truth. For his

religion he had resigned a splendid income, had laid down the truncheon of a Marshal of France, and had, at

near eighty years of age, begun the world again as a needy soldier of fortune. As he had no connection with

the United Provinces, and had never belonged to the little Court of the Hague, the preference given to him

over English captains was justly ascribed, not to national or personal partiality, but to his virtues and his

abilities. His deportment differed widely from that of the other foreigners who had just been created English

peers. They, with many respectable qualities, were, in tastes, manners, and predilections, Dutchmen, and

could not catch the tone of the society to which they had been transferred. He was a citizen of the world, had

travelled over all Europe, had commanded armies on the Meuse, on the Ebro, and on the Tagus, had shone in

the splendid circle of Versailles, and had been in high favour at the court of Berlin. He had often been taken

by French noblemen for a French nobleman. He had passed some time in England, spoke English remarkably

well, accommodated himself easily to English manners, and was often seen walking in the park with English

companions. In youth his habits had been temperate; and his temperance had its proper reward, a singularly

green and vigorous old age. At fourscore he retained a strong relish for innocent pleasures: he conversed with

great courtesy and sprightliness: nothing could be in better taste than his equipages and his table; and every

cornet of cavalry envied the grace and dignity with which the veteran appeared in Hyde Park on his charger at

the head of his regiment.426 The House of Commons had, with general approbation, compensated his losses

and rewarded his services by a grant of a hundred thousand pounds. Before he set out for Ireland, he

requested permission to express his gratitude for this magnificent present. A chair was set for him within the

bar. He took his seat there with the mace at his right hand, rose, and in a few graceful words returned his

thanks and took his leave. The Speaker replied that the Commons could never forget the obligation under

which they already lay to His Grace, that they saw him with pleasure at the head of an English army, that they

felt entire confidence in his zeal and ability, and that, at whatever distance he might be, he would always be

in a peculiar manner an object of their care. The precedent set on this interesting occasion was followed with

the utmost minuteness, a hundred and twentyfive years later, on an occasion more interesting still. Exactly

on the same spot on which, in July 1689, Schomberg had acknowledged the liberality of the nation, a chair

was set, in July 1814, for a still more illustrious warrior, who came to return thanks for a still more splendid

mark of public gratitude. Few things illustrate more strikingly the peculiar character of the English

government and people than the circumstance that the House of Commons, a popular assembly, should, even

in a moment of joyous enthusiasm, have adhered to ancient forms with the punctilious accuracy of a College

of Heralds; that the sitting and rising, the covering and the uncovering, should have been regulated by exactly

the same etiquette in the nineteenth century as in the seventeenth; and that the same mace which had been

held at the right hand of Schomberg should have been held in the same position at the right hand of

On the twentieth of August the Parliament, having been constantly engaged in business during seven months,

broke up, by the royal command, for a short recess. The same Gazette which announced that the Houses had

During the three weeks which preceded his landing, the dismay and confusion at Dublin Castle had been

extreme. Disaster had followed disaster so fast that the mind of James, never very firm, had been completely

prostrated. He had learned first that Londonderry had been relieved; then that one of his armies had been

beaten by the Enniskilleners; then that another of his armies was retreating, or rather flying, from Ulster,

reduced in numbers and broken in spirit; then that Sligo, the key of Connaught, had been abandoned to the

Englishry. He had found it impossible to subdue the colonists, even when they were left almost unaided. He

might therefore well doubt whether it would be possible for him to contend against them when they were

backed by an English army, under the command of the greatest general living. The unhappy prince seemed,

during some days, to be sunk in despondency. On Avaux the danger produced a very different effect. Now,

he thought, was the time to turn the war between the English and the Irish into a war of extirpation, and to

make it impossible that the two nations could ever be united under one government. With this view, he coolly

submitted to the King a proposition of almost incredible atrocity. There must be a Saint Bartholomew. A

pretext would easily be found. No doubt, when Schomberg was known to be in Ireland, there would be some

excitement in those southern towns of which the population was chiefly English. Any disturbance, wherever

it might take place, would furnish an excuse for a general massacre of the Protestants of Leinster, Munster,

and Connaught.429 As the King did not at first express any horror at this suggestion,430 the Envoy, a few

days later, renewed the subject, and pressed His Majesty to give the necessary orders. Then James, with a

warmth which did him honour, declared that nothing should induce him to commit such a crime. "These

people are my subjects; and I cannot be so cruel as to cut their throats while they live peaceably under my

government." "There is nothing cruel," answered the callous diplomatist, "in what I recommend. Your

Majesty ought to consider that mercy to Protestants is cruelty to Catholics." James, however, was not to be

moved; and Avaux retired in very bad humour. His belief was that the King's professions of humanity were

hypocritical, and that, if the orders for the butchery were not given, they were not given only because His

Majesty was confident that the Catholics all over the country would fall on the Protestants without waiting

for orders.431 But Avaux was entirely mistaken. That he should have supposed James to be as profoundly

immoral as himself is not strange. But it is strange that so able a man should have forgotten that James and

himself had quite different objects in view. The object of the Ambassador's politics was to make the

separation between England and Ireland eternal. The object of the King's politics was to unite England and

Ireland under his own sceptre; and he could not but be aware that, if there should be a general massacre of the

Protestants of three provinces, and he should be suspected of having authorised it or of having connived at it,

Just at this time the prospects of James, which had seemed hopelessly dark, began to brighten. The danger

which had unnerved him had roused the Irish people. They had, six months before, risen up as one man

against the Saxons. The army which Tyrconnel had formed was, in proportion to the population from which it

was taken, the largest that Europe had ever seen. But that army had sustained a long succession of defeats and

disgraces, unredeemed by a single brilliant achievement. It was the fashion, both in England and on the

Continent, to ascribe those defeats and disgraces to the pusillanimity of the Irish race.433 That this was a

great error is sufficiently proved by the history of every war which has been carried on in any part of

Christendom during five generations. The raw material out of which a good army may be formed existed in

great abundance among the Irish. Avaux informed his government that they were a remarkably handsome,

tall, and well made race; that they were personally brave; that they were sincerely attached to the cause for

which they were in arms; that they were violently exasperated against the colonists. After extolling their

strength and spirit, he proceeded to explain why it was that, with all their strength and spirit, they were

constantly beaten. It was vain, he said, to imagine that bodily prowess, animal courage, or patriotic

enthusiasm would, in the day of battle, supply the place of discipline. The infantry were ill armed and ill

trained. They were suffered to pillage wherever they went. They had contracted all the habits of banditti.

There was among them scarcely one officer capable of showing them their duty. Their colonels were

generally men of good family, but men who had never seen service. The captains were butchers, tailors,

shoemakers. Hardly one of them troubled himself about the comforts, the accoutrements, or the drilling of

those over whom he was placed. The dragoons were little better than the infantry. But the horse were, with

some exceptions, excellent. Almost all the Irish gentlemen who had any military experience held

commissions in the cavalry; and, by the exertions of these officers, some regiments had been raised and

disciplined which Avaux pronounced equal to any that he had ever seen. It was therefore evident that the

inefficiency of the foot and of the dragoons was to he ascribed to the vices, not of the Irish character, but of

The events which took place in the autumn of 1689 sufficiently proved that the ill fated race, which enemies

and allies generally agreed in regarding with unjust contempt, had, together with the faults inseparable from

poverty, ignorance, and superstition, some fine qualities which have not always been found in more

prosperous and more enlightened communities. The evil tidings which terrified and bewildered James stirred

the whole population of the southern provinces like the peal of a trumpet sounding to battle. That Ulster was

lost, that the English were coming, that the death grapple between the two hostile nations was at hand, was

proclaimed from all the altars of three and twenty counties. One last chance was left; and, if that chance

failed, nothing remained but the despotic, the merciless, rule of the Saxon colony and of the heretical church.

The Roman Catholic priest who had just taken possession of the glebe house and the chancel, the Roman

Catholic squire who had just been carried back on the shoulders of the shouting tenantry into the hall of his

fathers, would be driven forth to live on such alms as peasants, themselves oppressed and miserable, could

spare. A new confiscation would complete the work of the Act of Settlement; and the followers of William

would seize whatever the followers of Cromwell had spared. These apprehensions produced such an outbreak

of patriotic and religious enthusiasm as deferred for a time the inevitable day of subjugation. Avaux was

amazed by the energy which, in circumstances so trying, the Irish displayed. It was indeed the wild and

unsteady energy of a half barbarous people: it was transient: it was often misdirected: but, though transient

and misdirected, it did wonders. The French Ambassador was forced to own that those officers of whose

incompetency and inactivity he had so often complained had suddenly shaken off their lethargy. Recruits

came in by thousands. The ranks which had been thinned under the walls of Londonderry were soon again

full to overflowing. Great efforts were made to arm and clothe the troops; and, in the short space of a

The Irish required of the King, in return for their strenuous exertions in his cause, one concession which was

by no means agreeable to him. The unpopularity of Melfort had become such, that his person was scarcely

safe. He had no friend to speak a word in his favour. The French hated him. In every letter which arrived at

Dublin from England or from Scotland, he was described as the evil genius of the House of Stuart. It was

necessary for his own sake to dismiss him. An honourable pretext was found. He was ordered to repair to

Versailles, to represent there the state of affairs in Ireland, and to implore the French government to send over

without delay six or seven thousand veteran infantry. He laid down the seals; and they were, to the great

delight of the Irish, put into the hands of an Irishman, Sir Richard Nagle, who had made himself conspicuous

as Attorney General and Speaker of the House of Commons. Melfort took his departure under cover of the

night: for the rage of the populace against him was such that he could not without danger show himself in the

streets of Dublin by day. On the following morning James left his capital in the opposite direction to

Schomberg had landed in Antrim. The force which he had brought with him did not exceed ten thousand

men. But he expected to be joined by the armed colonists and by the regiments which were under Kirke's

command. The coffeehouse politicians of London fully expected that such a general with such an army would

speedily reconquer the island. Unhappily it soon appeared that the means which had been furnished to him

were altogether inadequate to the work which he had to perform: of the greater part of these means he was

speedily deprived by a succession of unforeseen calamities; and the whole campaign was merely a long

struggle maintained by his prudence and resolution against the utmost spite of fortune.

He marched first to Carrickfergus. That town was held for James by two regiments of infantry. Schomberg

battered the walls; and the Irish, after holding out a week, capitulated. He promised that they should depart

unharmed; but he found it no easy matter to keep his word. The people of the town and neighbourhood were

generally Protestants of Scottish extraction. They had suffered much during the short ascendency of the

native race; and what they had suffered they were now eager to retaliate. They assembled in great multitudes,

exclaiming that the capitulation was nothing to them, and that they would be revenged. They soon proceeded

from words to blows. The Irish, disarmed, stripped, and hustled, clung for protection to the English officers

and soldiers. Schomberg with difficulty prevented a massacre by spurring, pistol in hand, through the throng

From Carrickfergus Schomberg proceeded to Lisburn, and thence, through towns left without an inhabitant,

and over plains on which not a cow, nor a sheep, nor a stack of corn was to be seen, to Loughbrickland. Here

he was joined by three regiments of Enniskilleners, whose dress, horses, and arms locked strange to eyes

accustomed to the pomp of reviews, but who in natural courage were inferior to no troops in the world, and

who had, during months of constant watching and skirmishing, acquired many of the essential qualities of

Schomberg continued to advance towards Dublin through a desert. The few Irish troops which remained in

the south of Ulster retreated before him, destroying as they retreated. Newry, once a well built and thriving

Protestant borough, he found a heap of smoking ashes. Carlingford too had perished. The spot where the

town had once stood was marked only by the massy remains of the old Norman castle. Those who ventured

to wander from the camp reported that the country, as far as they could explore it, was a wilderness. There

were cabins, but no inmates: there was rich pasture, but neither flock nor herd: there were cornfields; but the

While Schomberg was advancing through a vast solitude, the Irish forces were rapidly assembling from every

quarter. On the tenth of September the royal standard of James was unfurled on the tower of Drogheda; and

beneath it were soon collected twenty thousand fighting men, the infantry generally bad, the cavalry generally

good, but both infantry and cavalry full of zeal for their country and their religion.440 The troops were

attended as usual by a great multitude of camp followers, armed with scythes, half pikes, and skeans. By this

time Schomberg had reached Dundalk. The distance between the two armies was not more than a long day's

march. It was therefore generally expected that the fate of the island would speedily be decided by a pitched

In both camps, all who did not understand war were eager to fight; and, in both camps; the few who head a

high reputation for military science were against fighting. Neither Rosen nor Schomberg wished to put every

thing on a cast. Each of them knew intimately the defects of his own army, and neither of them was fully

aware of the defects of the other's army. Rosen was certain that the Irish infantry were "worse equipped,

worse officered, and worse drilled, than any infantry that he had ever seen from the Gulf of Bothnia to the

Atlantic; and he supposed that the English troops were well trained, and were, as they doubtless ought to have

been, amply provided with every thing necessary to their efficiency. Numbers, he rightly judged, would avail

little against a great superiority of arms and discipline. He therefore advised James to fall back, and even to

abandon Dublin to the enemy, rather than hazard a battle the loss of which would be the loss of all. Athlone

was the best place in the kingdom for a determined stand. The passage of the Shannon might be defended till

the succours which Melfort had been charged to solicit came from France; and those succours would change

the whole character of the war. But the Irish, with Tyrconnel at their head, were unanimous against retreating.

The blood of the whole nation was up. James was pleased with the enthusiasm of his subjects, and positively

declared that he would not disgrace himself by leaving his capital to the invaders without a blow.441

In a few days it became clear that Schomberg had determined not to fight. His reasons were weighty. He had

some good Dutch and French troops. The Enniskilleners who had joined him had served a military

apprenticeship, though not in a very regular manner. But the bulk of his army consisted of English peasants

who had just left their cottages. His musketeers had still to learn how to load their pieces: his dragoons had

still to learn how to manage their horses; and these inexperienced recruits were for the most part commanded

by officers as inexperienced as themselves. His troops were therefore not generally superior in discipline to

the Irish, and were in number far inferior. Nay, he found that his men were almost as ill armed, as ill lodged,

as ill clad, as the Celts to whom they were opposed. The wealth of the English nation and the liberal votes of

the English parliament had entitled him to expect that he should be abundantly supplied with all the

munitions of war. But he was cruelly disappointed. The administration had, ever since the death of Oliver,

been constantly becoming more and more imbecile, more and more corrupt; and now the Revolution reaped

what the Restoration had sown. A crowd of negligent or ravenous functionaries, formed under Charles and

James, plundered, starved, and poisoned the armies and fleets of William. Of these men the most important

was Henry Shales, who, in the late reign, had been Commissary General to the camp at Hounslow. It is

difficult to blame the new government for continuing to employ him: for, in his own department, his

experience far surpassed that of any other Englishman. Unfortunately, in the same school in which he had

acquired his experience, he had learned the whole art of peculation. The beef and brandy which he furnished

were so bad that the soldiers turned from them with loathing: the tents were rotten: the clothing was scanty:

the muskets broke in the handling. Great numbers of shoes were set down to the account of the government:

but, two months after the Treasury had paid the bill, the shoes had not arrived in Ireland. The means of

transporting baggage and artillery were almost entirely wanting. An ample number of horses had been

purchased in England with the public money, and had been sent to the banks of the Dee. But Shales had let

them out for harvest work to the farmers of Cheshire, had pocketed the hire, and had left the troops in Ulster

to get on as they best might.442 Schomberg thought that, if he should, with an ill trained and ill appointed

army, risk a battle against a superior force, he might not improbably be defeated; and he knew that a defeat

might be followed by the loss of one kingdom, perhaps by the loss of three kingdoms. He therefore made up

his mind to stand on the defensive till his men had been disciplined, and till reinforcements and supplies

He entrenched himself near Dundalk in such a manner that he could not be forced to fight against his will.

James, emboldened by the caution of his adversary, and disregarding the advice of Rosen, advanced to Ardee,

appeared at the head of the whole Irish army before the English lines, drew up horse, foot and artillery, in

order of battle, and displayed his banner. The English were impatient to fall on. But their general had made

up his mind, and was not to be moved by the bravadoes of the enemy or by the murmurs of his own soldiers.

During some weeks he remained secure within his defences, while the Irish lay a few miles off. He set

himself assiduously to drill those new levies which formed the greater part of his army. He ordered the

musketeers to be constantly exercised in firing, sometimes at marks and sometimes by platoons; and, from

the way in which they at first acquitted themselves, it plainly appeared that he had judged wisely in not

leading them out to battle. It was found that not one in four of the English soldiers could manage his piece at

all; and whoever succeeded in discharging it, no matter in what direction, thought that he had performed a

While the Duke was thus employed, the Irish eyed his camp without daring to attack it. But within that camp

soon appeared two evils more terrible than the foe, treason and pestilence. Among the best troops under his

command were the French exiles. And now a grave doubt arose touching their fidelity. The real Huguenot

refugee indeed might safely be trusted. The dislike with which the most zealous English Protestant regarded

the House of Bourbon and the Church of Rome was a lukewarm feeling when compared with that

inextinguishable hatred which glowed in the bosom of the persecuted, dragooned, expatriated Calvinist of

Languedoc. The Irish had already remarked that the French heretic neither gave nor took quarter.443 Now,

however, it was found that with those emigrants who had sacrificed every thing for the reformed religion

were intermingled emigrants of a very different sort, deserters who had run away from their standards in the

Low Countries, and had coloured their crime by pretending that they were Protestants, and that their

conscience would not suffer them to fight for the persecutor of their Church. Some of these men, hoping that

by a second treason they might obtain both pardon and reward, opened a correspondence with Avaux. The

letters were intercepted; and a formidable plot was brought to light. It appeared that, if Schomberg had been

weak enough to yield to the importunity of those who wished him to give battle, several French companies

would, in the heat of the action, have fired on the English, and gone over to the enemy. Such a defection

might well have produced a general panic in a better army than that which was encamped under Dundalk. It

was necessary to be severe. Six of the conspirators were hanged. Two hundred of their accomplices were sent

in irons to England. Even after this winnowing, the refugees were long regarded by the rest of the army with

unjust but not unnatural suspicion. During some days indeed there was great reason to fear that the enemy

would be entertained with a bloody fight between the English soldiers and their French allies.444

A few hours before the execution of the chief conspirators, a general muster of the army was held; and it was

observed that the ranks of the English battalions looked thin. From the first day of the campaign, there had

been much sickness among the recruits: but it was not till the time of the equinox that the mortality became

alarming. The autumnal rains of Ireland are usually heavy; and this year they were heavier than usual. The

whole country was deluged; and the Duke's camp became a marsh. The Enniskillen men were seasoned to the

climate. The Dutch were accustomed to live in a country which, as a wit of that age said, draws fifty feet of

water. They kept their huts dry and clean; and they had experienced and careful officers who did not suffer

them to omit any precaution. But the peasants of Yorkshire and Derbyshire had neither constitutions prepared

to resist the pernicious influence, nor skill to protect themselves against it. The bad provisions furnished by

the Commissariat aggravated the maladies generated by the air. Remedies were almost entirely wanting. The

surgeons were few. The medicine chests contained little more than lint and plaisters for wounds. The English

sickened and died by hundreds. Even those who were not smitten by the pestilence were unnerved and

dejected, and, instead of putting forth the energy which is the heritage of our race, awaited their fate with the

helpless apathy of Asiatics. It was in vain that Schomberg tried to teach them to improve their habitations,

and to cover the wet earth on which they lay with a thick carpet of fern. Exertion had become more dreadful

to them than death. It was not to be expected that men who would not help themselves should help each

other. Nobody asked and nobody showed compassion. Familiarity with ghastly spectacles produced a

hardheartedness and a desperate impiety, of which an example will not easily be found even in the history of

infectious diseases. The moans of the sick were drowned by the blasphemy and ribaldry of their comrades.

Sometimes, seated on the body of a wretch who had died in the morning, might be seen a wretch destined to

die before night, cursing, singing loose songs, and swallowing usquebaugh to the health of the devil. When

the corpses were taken away to be buried the survivors grumbled. A dead man, they said, was a good screen

and a good stool. Why, when there was so abundant a supply of such useful articles of furniture, were people

Many of the sick were sent by the English vessels which lay off the coast to Belfast, where a great hospital

had been prepared. But scarce half of them lived to the end of the voyage. More than one ship lay long in the

bay of Carrickfergus heaped with carcasses, and exhaling the stench of death, without a living man on

The Irish army suffered much less. The kerne of Munster or Connaught was dune as well off in the camp as if

he had been in his own mud cabin inhaling the vapours of his own quagmire. He naturally exulted in the

distress of the Saxon heretics, and flattered himself that they would be destroyed without a blow. He heard

with delight the guns pealing all day over the graves of the English officers, till at length the funerals became

too numerous to be celebrated with military pomp, and the mournful sounds were succeeded by a silence

The superiority of force was now so decidedly on the side of James that he could safely venture to detach five

regiments from his army, and to send them into Connaught. Sarsfield commanded them. He did not, indeed,

stand so high as he deserved in the royal estimation. The King, with an air of intellectual superiority which

must have made Avaux and Rosen bite their lips, pronounced him a brave fellow, but very scantily supplied

with brains. It was not without great difficulty that the Ambassador prevailed on His Majesty to raise the best

officer in the Irish army to the rank of Brigadier. Sarsfield now fully vindicated the favourable opinion which

his French patrons had formed of him. He dislodged the English from Sligo; and he effectually secured

No attack, however, was made on the English entrenchments before Dundalk. In the midst of difficulties and

disasters hourly multiplying, the great qualities of Schomberg appeared hourly more and more conspicuous.

Not in the full tide of success, not on the field of Montes Claros, not under the walls of Maestricht, had he so

well deserved the admiration of mankind. His resolution never gave way. His prudence never slept. His

temper, in spite of manifold vexations and provocations, was always cheerful and serene. The effective men

under his command, even if all were reckoned as effective who were not stretched on the earth by fever, did

not now exceed five thousand. These were hardly equal to their ordinary duty; and yet it was necessary to

harass them with double duty. Nevertheless so masterly were the old man's dispositions that with this small

force he faced during several weeks twenty thousand troops who were accompanied by a multitude of armed

banditti. At length early in November the Irish dispersed, and went to winter quarters. The Duke then broke

up his camp and retired into Ulster. Just as the remains of his army were about to move, a rumour spread that

the enemy was approaching in great force. Had this rumour been true, the danger would have been extreme.

But the English regiments, though they had been reduced to a third part of their complement, and though the

men who were in best health were hardly able to shoulder arms, showed a strange joy and alacrity at the

prospect of battle, and swore that the Papists should pay for all the misery of the last month. "We English,"

Schomberg said, identifying himself good humouredly with the people of the country which had adopted

him, "we English have stomach enough for fighting. It is a pity that we are not as fond of some other parts of

The alarm proved false: the Duke's army departed unmolested: but the highway along which he retired

presented a piteous and hideous spectacle. A long train of waggons laden with the sick jolted over the rugged

pavement. At every jolt some wretched man gave up the ghost. The corpse was flung out and left unburied to

the foxes and crows. The whole number of those who died, in the camp at Dundalk, in the hospital at Belfast,

on the road, and on the sea, amounted to above six thousand. The survivors were quartered for the winter in

the towns and villages of Ulster. The general fixed his head quarters at Lisburn.448

His conduct was variously judged. Wise and candid men said that he had surpassed himself, and that there

was no other captain in Europe who, with raw troops, with ignorant officers, with scanty stores, having to

contend at once against a hostile army of greatly superior force, against a villanous commissariat, against a

nest of traitors in his own camp, and against a disease more murderous than the sword, would have brought

the campaign to a close without the loss of a flag or a gun. On the other hand, many of those newly

commissioned majors and captains, whose helplessness had increased all his perplexities, and who had not

one qualification for their posts except personal courage, grumbled at the skill and patience which had saved

them from destruction. Their complaints were echoed on the other side of Saint George's Channel. Some of

the murmuring, though unjust, was excusable. The parents, who had sent a gallant lad, in his first uniform, to

fight his way to glory, might be pardoned if, when they learned that he had died on a wisp of straw without

medical attendance, and had been buried in a swamp without any Christian or military ceremony, their

affliction made them hasty and unreasonable. But with the cry of bereaved families was mingled another cry

much less respectable. All the hearers and tellers of news abused the general who furnished them with so

little news to hear and to tell. For men of that sort are so greedy after excitement that they far more readily

forgive a commander who loses a battle than a commander who declines one. The politicians, who delivered

their oracles from the thickest cloud of tobacco smoke at Garroway's, confidently asked, without knowing

any thing, either of war in general, or of Irish war in particular, why Schomberg did not fight. They could not

venture to say that he did not understand his calling. No doubt he had been an excellent officer: but he was

very old. He seemed to bear his years well: but his faculties were not what they had been: his memory was

failing; and it was well known that he sometimes forgot in the afternoon what he had done in the morning. It

may be doubted whether there ever existed a human being whose mind was quite as firmly toned at eighty as

at forty. But that Schomberg's intellectual powers had been little impaired by years is sufficiently proved by

his despatches, which are still extant, and which are models of official writing, terse, perspicuous, full of

important facts and weighty reasons, compressed into the smallest possible number of words. In those

despatches he sometimes alluded, not angrily, but with calm disdain, to the censures thrown upon his conduct

by shallow babblers, who, never having seen any military operation more important than the relieving of the

guard at Whitehall, imagined that the easiest thing in the world was to gain great victories in any situation

and against any odds, and by sturdy patriots who were convinced that one English tarter or thresher, who had

not yet learned how to load a gun or port a pike, was a match for any five musketeers of King Lewis's

Unsatisfactory as had been the results of the campaign in Ireland, the results of the maritime operations of the

year were more unsatisfactory still. It had been confidently expected that, on the sea, England, allied with

Holland, would have been far more than a match for the power of Lewis: but everything went wrong. Herbert

had, after the unimportant skirmish of Bantry Bay, returned with his squadron to Portsmouth. There he found

that he had not lost the good opinion either of the public or of the government. The House of Commons

thanked him for his services; and he received signal marks of the favour of the Crown. He had not been at the

coronation, and had therefore missed his share of the rewards which, at the time of that solemnity, had been

distributed among the chief agents in the Revolution. The omission was now repaired; and he was created

Earl of Torrington. The King went down to Portsmouth, dined on board of the Admiral's flag ship, expressed

the fullest confidence in the valour and loyalty of the navy, knighted two gallant captains, Cloudesley Shovel

We cannot justly blame William for having a high opinion of Torrington. For Torrington was generally

regarded as one of the bravest and most skilful officers in the navy. He had been promoted to the rank of Rear

Admiral of England by James, who, if he understood any thing, understood maritime affairs. That place and

other lucrative places Torrington had relinquished when he found that he could retain them only by

submitting to be a tool of the Jesuitical cabal. No man had taken a more active, a more hazardous, or a more

useful part in effecting the Revolution. It seemed, therefore, that no man had fairer pretensions to be put at

the head of the naval administration. Yet no man could be more unfit for such a post. His morals had always

been loose, so loose indeed that the firmness with which in the late reign he had adhered to his religion had

excited much surprise. His glorious disgrace indeed seemed to have produced a salutary effect on his

character. In poverty and exile he rose from a voluptuary into a hero. But, as soon as prosperity returned, the

hero sank again into a voluptuary; and the lapse was deep and hopeless. The nerves of his mind, which had

been during a short time braced to a firm tone, were now so much relaxed by vice that he was utterly

incapable of selfdenial or of strenuous exertion. The vulgar courage of a foremast man he still retained. But

both as Admiral and as First Lord of the Admiralty he was utterly inefficient. Month after month the fleet

which should have been the terror of the seas lay in harbour while he was diverting himself in London. The

sailors, punning upon his new title, gave him the name of Lord Tarryintown. When he came on shipboard

he was accompanied by a bevy of courtesans. There was scarcely an hour of the day or of the night when he

was not under the influence of claret. Being insatiable of pleasure, he necessarily became insatiable of wealth.

Yet he loved flattery almost as much as either wealth or pleasure. He had long been in the habit of exacting

the most abject homage from those who were under his command. His flagship was a little Versailles. He

expected his captains to attend him to his cabin when he went to bed, and to assemble every morning at his

levee. He even suffered them to dress him. One of them combed his flowing wig; another stood ready with

the embroidered coat. Under such a chief there could be no discipline. His tars passed their time in rioting

among the rabble of Portsmouth. Those officers who won his favour by servility and adulation easily

obtained leave of absence, and spent weeks in London, revelling in taverns, scouring the streets, or making

love to the masked ladies in the pit of the theatre. The victuallers soon found out with whom they had to deal,

and sent down to the fleet casks of meat which dogs would not touch, and barrels of beer which smelt worse

than bilge water. Meanwhile the British Channel seemed to be abandoned to French rovers. Our

merchantmen were boarded in sight of the ramparts of Plymouth. The sugar fleet from the West Indies lost

seven ships. The whole value of the prizes taken by the cruisers of the enemy in the immediate

neighbourhood of our island, while Torrington was engaged with his bottle and his harem, was estimated at

six hundred thousand pounds. So difficult was it to obtain the convoy of a man of war, except by giving

immense bribes, that our traders were forced to hire the services of Dutch privateers, and found these foreign

mercenaries much more useful and much less greedy than the officers of our own royal navy.451

The only department with which no fault could be found was the department of Foreign Affairs. There

William was his own minister; and, where he was his own minister, there were no delays, no blunders, no

jobs, no treasons. The difficulties with which he had to contend were indeed great. Even at the Hague he had

to encounter an opposition which all his wisdom and firmness could, with the strenuous support of Heinsius,

scarcely overcome. The English were not aware that, while they were murmuring at their Sovereign's

partiality for the land of his birth, a strong party in Holland was murmuring at his partiality for the land of his

adoption. The Dutch ambassadors at Westminster complained that the terms of alliance which he proposed

were derogatory to the dignity and prejudicial to the interests of the republic; that wherever the honour of the

English flag was concerned, he was punctilious and obstinate; that he peremptorily insisted on an article

which interdicted all trade with France, and which could not but be grievously felt on the Exchange of

Amsterdam; that, when they expressed a hope that the Navigation Act would be repealed, he burst out a

laughing, and told them that the thing was not to be thought of. He carried all his points; and a solemn

contract was made by which England and the Batavian federation bound themselves to stand firmly by each

other against France, and not to make peace except by mutual consent. But one of the Dutch plenipotentiaries

declared that he was afraid of being one day held up to obloquy as a traitor for conceding so much; and the

signature of another plainly appeared to have been traced by a hand shaking with emotion.452

Meanwhile under William's skilful management a treaty of alliance had been concluded between the States

General and the Emperor. To that treaty Spain and England gave in their adhesion; and thus the four great

powers which had long been bound together by a friendly understanding were bound together by a formal

But before that formal contract had been signed and sealed, all the contracting parties were in arms. Early in

the year 1689 war was raging all over the Continent from the Humus to the Pyrenees. France, attacked at

once on every side, made on every side a vigorous defence; and her Turkish allies kept a great German force

fully employed in Servia and Bulgaria. On the whole, the results of the military operations of the summer

were not unfavourable to the confederates. Beyond the Danube, the Christians, under Prince Lewis of Baden,

gained a succession of victories over the Mussulmans. In the passes of Roussillon, the French troops

contended without any decisive advantage against the martial peasantry of Catalonia. One German army, led

by the Elector of Bavaria, occupied the Archbishopric of Cologne. Another was commanded by Charles,

Duke of Lorraine, a sovereign who, driven from his own dominions by the arms of France, had turned soldier

of fortune, and had, as such, obtained both distinction and revenge. He marched against the devastators of the

Palatinate, forced them to retire behind the Rhine, and, after a long siege, took the important and strongly

Between the Sambre and the Meuse the French, commanded by Marshal Humieres, were opposed to the

Dutch, commanded by the Prince of Waldeck, an officer who had long served the States General with fidelity

and ability, though not always with good fortune, and who stood high in the estimation of William. Under

Waldeck's orders was Marlborough, to whom William had confided an English brigade consisting of the best

regiments of the old army of James. Second to Marlborough in command, and second also in professional

skill, was Thomas Talmash, a brave soldier, destined to a fate never to be mentioned without shame and

indignation. Between the army of Waldeck and the army of Humieres no general action took place: but in a

succession of combats the advantage was on the side of the confederates. Of these combats the most

important took place at Walcourt on the fifth of August. The French attacked an outpost defended by the

English brigade, were vigorously repulsed, and were forced to retreat in confusion, abandoning a few field

pieces to the conquerors and leaving more than six hundred corpses on the ground. Marlborough, on this as

on every similar occasion, acquitted himself like a valiant and skilful captain. The Coldstream Guards

commanded by Talmash, and the regiment which is now called the sixteenth of the line, commanded by

Colonel Robert Hodges, distinguished themselves highly. The Royal regiment too, which had a few months

before set up the standard of rebellion at Ipswich, proved on this day that William, in freely pardoning that

great fault, had acted not less wisely than generously. The testimony which Waldeck in his despatch bore to

the gallant conduct of the islanders was read with delight by their countrymen. The fight indeed was no more

than a skirmish: but it was a sharp and bloody skirmish. There had within living memory been no equally

serious encounter between the English and French; and our ancestors were naturally elated by finding that

many years of inaction and vassalage did not appear to have enervated the courage of the nation.454

The Jacobites however discovered in the events of the campaign abundant matter for invective. Marlborough

was, not without reason, the object of their bitterest hatred. In his behaviour on a field of battle malice itself

could find little to censure: but there were other parts of his conduct which presented a fair mark for obloquy.

Avarice is rarely the vice of a young man: it is rarely the vice of a great man: but Marlborough was one of the

few who have, in the bloom of youth, loved lucre more than wine or women, and who have, at the height of

greatness, loved lucre more than power or fame. All the precious gifts which nature had lavished on him he

valued chiefly for what they would fetch. At twenty he made money of his beauty and his vigour. At sixty he

made money of his genius and his glory. The applauses which were justly due to his conduct at Walcourt

could not altogether drown the voices of those who muttered that, wherever a broad piece was to be saved or

got, this hero was a mere Euclio, a mere Harpagon; that, though he drew a large allowance under pretence of

keeping a public table, he never asked an officer to dinner; that his muster rolls were fraudulently made up;

that he pocketed pay in the names of men who had long been dead, of men who had been killed in his own

sight four years before at Sedgemoor; that there were twenty such names in one troop; that there were

thirtysix in another. Nothing but the union of dauntless courage and commanding powers of mind with a

bland temper and winning manners could have enabled him to gain and keep, in spite of faults eminently

About the time at which the contending armies in every part of Europe were going into winter quarters, a new

Pontiff ascended the chair of Saint Peter. Innocent the Eleventh was no more. His fate had been strange

indeed. His conscientious and fervent attachment to the Church of which he was the head had induced him, at

one of the most critical conjunctures in her history, to ally herself with her mortal enemies. The news of his

decease was received with concern and alarm by Protestant princes and commonwealths, and with joy and

hope at Versailles and Dublin. An extraordinary ambassador of high rank was instantly despatched by Lewis

to Rome. The French garrison which had been placed in Avignon was withdrawn. When the votes of the

Conclave had been united in favour of Peter Ottobuoni, an ancient Cardinal who assumed the appellation of

Alexander the Eighth, the representative of France assisted at the installation, bore up the cope of the new

Pontiff, and put into the hands of His Holiness a letter in which the most Christian King declared that he

renounced the odious privilege of protecting robbers and assassins. Alexander pressed the letter to his lips,

embraced the bearer, and talked with rapture of the near prospect of reconciliation. Lewis began to entertain a

hope that the influence of the Vatican might be exerted to dissolve the alliance between the House of Austria

and the heretical usurper of the English throne. James was even more sanguine. He was foolish enough to

expect that the new Pope would give him money, and ordered Melfort, who had now acquitted himself of his

mission at Versailles, to hasten to Rome, and beg His Holiness to contribute something towards the good

work of upholding pure religion in the British islands. But it soon appeared that Alexander, though he might

hold language different from that of his predecessor, was determined to follow in essentials his predecessor's

policy. The original cause of the quarrel between the Holy See and Lewis was not removed. The King

continued to appoint prelates: the Pope continued to refuse their institution: and the consequence was that a

fourth part of the dioceses of France had bishops who were incapable of performing any episcopal

The Anglican Church was, at this time, not less distracted than the Gallican Church. The first of August had

been fixed by Act of Parliament as the day before the close of which all beneficed clergymen and all persons

holding academical offices must, on pain of suspension, swear allegiance to William and Mary. During the

earlier part of the summer, the Jacobites hoped that the number of nonjurors would be so considerable as

seriously to alarm and embarrass the Government. But this hope was disappointed. Few indeed of the clergy

were Whigs. Few were Tories of that moderate school which acknowledged, reluctantly and with reserve,

that extreme abuses might sometimes justify a nation in resorting to extreme remedies. The great majority of

the profession still held the doctrine of passive obedience: but that majority was now divided into two

sections. A question, which, before the Revolution, had been mere matter of speculation, and had therefore,

though sometimes incidentally raised, been, by most persons, very superficially considered, had now become

practically most important. The doctrine of passive obedience being taken for granted, to whom was that

obedience due? While the hereditary right and the possession were conjoined, there was no room for doubt:

but the hereditary right and the possession were now separated. One prince, raised by the Revolution, was

reigning at Westminster, passing laws, appointing magistrates and prelates, sending forth armies and fleets.

His judges decided causes. His Sheriffs arrested debtors and executed criminals. Justice, order, property,

would cease to exist, and society would be resolved into chaos, but for his Great Seal. Another prince,

deposed by the Revolution, was living abroad. He could exercise none of the powers and perform none of the

duties of a ruler, and could, as it seemed, be restored only by means as violent as those by which he had been

To a large part of the clergy it appeared that the plain letter of Scripture required them to submit to the

Sovereign who was in possession, without troubling themselves about his title. The powers which the

Apostle, in the text most familiar to the Anglican divines of that age, pronounces to be ordained of God, are

not the powers that can be traced back to a legitimate origin, but the powers that be. When Jesus was asked

whether the chosen people might lawfully give tribute to Caesar, he replied by asking the questioners, not

whether Caesar could make out a pedigree derived from the old royal house of Judah, but whether the coin

which they scrupled to pay into Caesar's treasury came from Caesar's mint, in other words, whether Caesar

It is generally held, with much appearance of reason, that the most trustworthy comment on the text of the

Gospels and Epistles is to be found in the practice of the primitive Christians, when that practice can be

satisfactorily ascertained; and it so happened that the times during which the Church is universally

acknowledged to have been in the highest state of purity were times of frequent and violent political change.

One at least of the Apostles appears to have lived to see four Emperors pulled down in little more than a year.

Of the martyrs of the third century a great proportion must have been able to remember ten or twelve

revolutions. Those martyrs must have had occasion often to consider what was their duty towards a prince

just raised to power by a successful insurrection. That they were, one and all, deterred by the fear of

punishment from doing what they thought right, is an imputation which no candid infidel would throw on

them. Yet, if there be any proposition which can with perfect confidence be affirmed touching the early

Christians, it is this, that they never once refused obedience to any actual ruler on account of the illegitimacy

of his title. At one time, indeed, the supreme power was claimed by twenty or thirty competitors. Every

province from Britain to Egypt had its own Augustus. All these pretenders could not be rightful Emperors.

Yet it does not appear that, in any place, the faithful had any scruple about submitting to the person who, in

that place, exercised the imperial functions. While the Christian of Rome obeyed Aurelian, the Christian of

Lyons obeyed Tetricus, and the Christian of Palmyra obeyed Zenobia. "Day and night," such were the words

which the great Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, addressed to the representative of Valerian and

Gallienus,"day and night do we Christians pray to the one true God for the safety of our Emperors." Yet

those Emperors had a few months before pulled down their predecessor Aemilianus, who had pulled down

his predecessor Gallus, who had climbed to power on the ruins of the house of his predecessor Decius, who

had slain his predecessor Philip, who had slain his predecessor Gordian. Was it possible to believe that a

saint, who had, in the short space of thirteen or fourteen years, borne true allegiance to this series of rebels

and regicides, would have made a schism in the Christian body rather than acknowledge King William and

Queen Mary? A hundred times those Anglican divines who had taken the oaths challenged their more

scrupulous brethren to cite a single instance in which the primitive Church had refused obedience to a

successful usurper; and a hundred times the challenge was evaded. The nonjurors had little to say on this

head, except that precedents were of no force when opposed to principles, a proposition which came with but

a bad grace from a school which had always professed an almost superstitious reverence for the authority of

To precedents drawn from later and more corrupt times little respect was due. But, even in the history of later

and more corrupt times, the nonjurors could not easily find any precedent that would serve their purpose. In

our own country many Kings, who had not the hereditary right, had filled the throne but it had never been

thought inconsistent with the duty of a Christian to be a true liegeman to such Kings. The usurpation of

Henry the Fourth, the more odious usurpation of Richard the Third, had produced no schism in the Church.

As soon as the usurper was firm in his seat, Bishops had done homage to him for their domains:

Convocations had presented addresses to him, and granted him supplies; nor had any casuist ever pronounced

With the practice of the whole Christian world the authoritative teaching of the Church of England appeared

to be in strict harmony. The Homily on Wilful Rebellion, a discourse which inculcates, in unmeasured terms,

the duty of obeying rulers, speaks of none but actual rulers. Nay, the people are distinctly told in that Homily

that they are bound to obey, not only their legitimate prince, but any usurper whom God shall in anger set

over them for their sins. And surely it would be the height of absurdity to say that we must accept

submissively such usurpers as God sends in anger, but must pertinaciously withhold our obedience from

usurpers whom He sends in mercy. Grant that it was a crime to invite the Prince of Orange over, a crime to

join him, a crime to make him King; yet what was the whole history of the Jewish nation and of the Christian

Church but a record of cases in which Providence had brought good out of evil? And what theologian would

assert that, in such cases, we ought, from abhorrence of the evil, to reject the good?

On these grounds a large body of divines, still asserting the doctrine that to resist the Sovereign must always

be sinful, conceived that William was now the Sovereign whom it would be sinful to resist.

To these arguments the nonjurors replied that Saint Paul must have meant by the powers that be the rightful

powers that be; and that to put any other interpretation on his words would be to outrage common sense, to

dishonour religion, to give scandal to weak believers, to give an occasion of triumph to scoffers. The feelings

of all mankind must be shocked by the proposition that, as soon as a King, however clear his title, however

wise and good his administration, is expelled by traitors, all his servants are bound to abandon him, and to

range themselves on the side of his enemies. In all ages and nations, fidelity to a good cause in adversity had

been regarded as a virtue. In all ages and nations, the politician whose practice was always to be on the side

which was uppermost had been despised. This new Toryism was worse than Whiggism. To break through the

ties of allegiance because the Sovereign was a tyrant was doubtless a very great sin: but it was a sin for which

specious names and pretexts might be found, and into which a brave and generous man, not instructed in

divine truth and guarded by divine grace, might easily fall. But to break through the ties of allegiance, merely

because the Sovereign was unfortunate, was not only wicked, but dirty. Could any unbeliever offer a greater

insult to the Scriptures than by asserting that the Scriptures had enjoined on Christians as a sacred duty what

the light of nature had taught heathens to regard as the last excess of baseness? In the Scriptures was to be

found the history of a King of Israel, driven from his palace by an unnatural son, and compelled to fly beyond

Jordan. David, like James, had the right: Absalom, like William, had the possession. Would any student of

the sacred writings dare to affirm that the conduct of Shimei on that occasion was proposed as a pattern to be

imitated, and that Barzillai, who loyally adhered to his fugitive master, was resisting the ordinance of God,

and receiving to himself damnation? Would any true son of the Church of England seriously affirm that a

man who was a strenuous royalist till after the battle of Naseby, who then went over to the Parliament, who,

as soon as the Parliament had been purged, became an obsequious servant of the Rump, and who, as soon as

the Rump had been ejected, professed himself a faithful subject of the Protector, was more deserving of the

respect of Christian men than the stout old Cavalier who bore true fealty to Charles the First in prison and to

Charles the Second in exile, and who was ready to put lands, liberty, life, in peril, rather than acknowledge,

by word or act, the authority of any of the upstart governments which, during that evil time, obtained

possession of a power not legitimately theirs? And what distinction was there between that case and the case

which had now arisen? That Cromwell had actually enjoyed as much power as William, nay much more

power than William, was quite certain. That the power of William, as well as the power of Cromwell, had an

illegitimate origin, no divine who held the doctrine of nonresistance would dispute. How then was it possible

for such a divine to deny that obedience had been due to Cromwell, and yet to affirm that it was due to

William? To suppose that there could be such inconsistency without dishonesty would be not charity but

weakness. Those who were determined to comply with the Act of Parliament would do better to speak out,

and to say, what every body knew, that they complied simply to save their benefices. The motive was no

doubt strong. That a clergyman who was a husband and a father should look forward with dread to the first of

August and the first of February was natural. But he would do well to remember that, however terrible might

be the day of suspension and the day of deprivation, there would assuredly come two other days more terrible

The swearing clergy, as they were called, were not a little perplexed by this reasoning. Nothing embarrassed

them more than the analogy which the nonjurors were never weary of pointing out between the usurpation of

Cromwell and the usurpation of William. For there was in that age no High Churchman who would not have

thought himself reduced to an absurdity if he had been reduced to the necessity of saying that the Church had

commanded her sons to obey Cromwell. And yet it was impossible to prove that William was more fully in

possession of supreme power than Cromwell had been. The swearers therefore avoided coming to close

quarters with the nonjurors on this point as carefully as the nonjurors avoided coming to close quarters with

The truth is that the theory of government which had long been taught by the clergy was so absurd that it

could lead to nothing but absurdity. Whether the priest who adhered to that theory swore or refused to swear,

he was alike unable to give a rational explanation of his conduct. If he swore, he could vindicate his swearing

only by laying down propositions against which every honest heart instinctively revolts, only by proclaiming

that Christ had commanded the Church to desert the righteous cause as soon as that cause ceased to prosper,

and to strengthen the hands of successful villany against afflicted virtue. And yet, strong as were the

objections to this doctrine, the objections to the doctrine of the nonjuror were, if possible, stronger still.

According to him, a Christian nation ought always to be in a state of slavery or in a state of anarchy.

Something is to be said for the man who sacrifices liberty to preserve order. Something is to be said for the

man who sacrifices order to preserve liberty. For liberty and order are two of the greatest blessings which a

society can enjoy: and, when unfortunately they appear to be incompatible, much indulgence is due to those

who take either side. But the nonjuror sacrificed, not liberty to order, not order to liberty, but both liberty and

order to a superstition as stupid and degrading as the Egyptian worship of cats and onions. While a particular

person, differing from other persons by the mere accident of birth, was on the throne, though he might be a

Nero, there was to be no insubordination. When any other person was on the throne, though he might be an

Alfred, there was to be no obedience. It mattered not how frantic and wicked might be the administration of

the dynasty which had the hereditary title, or how wise and virtuous might be the administration of a

government sprung from a revolution. Nor could any time of limitation be pleaded against the claim of the

expelled family. The lapse of years, the lapse of ages, made no change. To the end of the world, Christians

were to regulate their political conduct simply according to the genealogy of their ruler. The year 1800, the

year 1900, might find princes who derived their title from the votes of the Convention reigning in peace and

prosperity. No matter: they would still be usurpers; and, if, in the twentieth or twentyfirst century, any

person who could make out a better right by blood to the crown should call on a late posterity to acknowledge

A Whig might well enjoy the thought that the controversies which had arisen among his adversaries had

established the soundness of his own political creed. The disputants who had long agreed in accusing him of

an impious error had now effectually vindicated him, and refuted one another. The High Churchman who

took the oaths had shown by irrefragable arguments from the Gospels and the Epistles, from the uniform

practice of the primitive Church, and from the explicit declarations of the Anglican Church, that Christians

were not in all cases bound to pay obedience to the prince who had the hereditary title. The High Churchman

who would not take the oaths had shown as satisfactorily that Christians were not in all cases bound to pay

obedience to the prince who was actually reigning. It followed that, to entitle a government to the allegiance

of subjects, something was necessary different from mere legitimacy, and different also from mere

possession. What that something was the Whigs had no difficulty in pronouncing. In their view, the end for

which all governments had been instituted was the happiness of society. While the magistrate was, on the

whole, notwithstanding some faults, a minister for good, Reason taught mankind to obey him; and Religion,

giving her solemn sanction to the teaching of Reason, commanded mankind to revere him as divinely

commissioned. But if he proved to be a minister for evil, on what grounds was he to be considered as divinely

commissioned? The Tories who swore had proved that he ought not to be so considered on account of the

origin of his power: the Tories who would not swear had proved as clearly that he ought not to be so

Some violent and acrimonious Whigs triumphed ostentatiously and with merciless insolence over the

perplexed and divided priesthood. The nonjuror they generally affected to regard with contemptuous pity as a

dull and perverse, but sincere, bigot, whose absurd practice was in harmony with his absurd theory, and who

might plead, in excuse for the infatuation which impelled him to ruin his country, that the same infatuation

had impelled him to ruin himself. They reserved their sharpest taunts for those divines who, having, in the

days of the Exclusion Bill and the Rye House Plot, been distinguished by zeal for the divine and indefeasible

right of the hereditary Sovereign, were now ready to swear fealty to an usurper. Was this then the real sense

of all those sublime phrases which had resounded during twentynine years from innumerable pulpits? Had

the thousands of clergymen, who had so loudly boasted of the unchangeable loyalty of their order, really

meant only that their loyalty would remain unchangeable till the next change of fortune? It was idle, it was

impudent in them to pretend that their present conduct was consistent with their former language. If any

Reverend Doctor had at length been convinced that he had been in the wrong, he surely ought, by an open

recantation, to make all the amends now possible to the persecuted, the calumniated, the murdered defenders

of liberty. If he was still convinced that his old opinions were sound, he ought manfully to cast in his lot with

the nonjurors. Respect, it was said, is due to him who ingenuously confesses an error; respect is due to him

who courageously suffers for an error; but it is difficult to respect a minister of religion who, while asserting

that he still adheres to the principles of the Tories, saves his benefice by taking an oath which can be honestly

These reproaches, though perhaps not altogether unjust, were unseasonable. The wiser and more moderate

Whigs, sensible that the throne of William could not stand firm if it had not a wider basis than their own

party, abstained at this conjuncture from sneers and invectives, and exerted themselves to remove the scruples

and to soothe the irritated feelings of the clergy. The collective power of the rectors and vicars of England

was immense: and it was much better that they should swear for the most flimsy reason that could be devised

It soon became clear that the arguments for swearing, backed as they were by some of the strongest motives

which can influence the human mind, had prevailed. Above twentynine thirtieths of the profession

submitted to the law. Most of the divines of the capital, who then formed a separate class, and who were as

much distinguished from the rural clergy by liberality of sentiment as by eloquence and learning, gave in

their adhesion to the government early, and with every sign of cordial attachment. Eighty of them repaired

together, in full term, to Westminster Hall, and were there sworn. The ceremony occupied so long a time that

little else was done that day in the Courts of Chancery and King's Bench.460 But in general the compliance

was tardy, sad and sullen. Many, no doubt, deliberately sacrificed principle to interest. Conscience told them

that they were committing a sin. But they had not fortitude to resign the parsonage, the garden, the glebe, and

to go forth without knowing where to find a meal or a roof for themselves and their little ones. Many swore

with doubts and misgivings.461 Some declared, at the moment of taking the oath, that they did not mean to

promise that they would not submit to James, if he should ever be in a condition to demand their

allegiance.462 Some clergymen in the north were, on the first of August, going in a company to swear, when

they were met on the road by the news of the battle which had been fought, four days before, in the pass of

Killiecrankie. They immediately turned back, and did not again leave their homes on the same errand till it

was clear that Dundee's victory had made no change in the state of public affairs.463 Even of those whose

understandings were fully convinced that obedience was due to the existing government, very few kissed the

book with the heartiness with which they had formerly plighted their faith to Charles and James. Still the

thing was done. Ten thousand clergymen had solemnly called heaven to attest their promise that they would

be true liegemen to William; and this promise, though it by no means warranted him in expecting that they

would strenuously support him, had at least deprived them of a great part of their power to injure him. They

could not, without entirely forfeiting that public respect on which their influence depended, attack, except in

an indirect and timidly cautious manner, the throne of one whom they had, in the presence of God, vowed to

obey as their King. Some of them, it is true, affected to read the prayers for the new Sovereigns in a peculiar

tone which could not be misunderstood.464 Others were guilty of still grosser indecency. Thus, one wretch,

just after praying for William and Mary in the most solemn office of religion, took off a glass to their

damnation. Another, after performing divine service on a fast day appointed by their authority, dined on a

pigeon pie, and while he cut it up, uttered a wish that it was the usurper's heart. But such audacious

wickedness was doubtless rare and was rather injurious to the Church than to the government.465

Those clergymen and members of the Universities who incurred the penalties of the law were about four

hundred in number. Foremost in rank stood the Primate and six of his suffragans, Turner of Ely, Lloyd of

Norwich, Frampton of Gloucester, Lake of Chichester, White of Peterborough, and Ken of Bath and Wells.

Thomas of Worcester would have made a seventh: but he died three weeks before the day of suspension. On

his deathbed he adjured his clergy to be true to the cause of hereditary right, and declared that those divines

who tried to make out that the oaths might be taken without any departure from the loyal doctrines of the

Church of England seemed to him to reason more jesuitically than the Jesuits themselves.466

Ken, who, both in intellectual and in moral qualities, ranked highest among the nonjuring prelates, hesitated

long. There were few clergymen who could have submitted to the new government with a better grace. For,

in the times when nonresistance and passive obedience were the favourite themes of his brethren, he had

scarcely ever alluded to politics in the pulpit. He owned that the arguments in favour of swearing were very

strong. He went indeed so far as to say that his scruples would be completely removed if he could be

convinced that James had entered into engagements for ceding Ireland to the French King. It is evident

therefore that the difference between Ken and the Whigs was not a difference of principle. He thought, with

them, that misgovernment, carried to a certain point, justified a transfer of allegiance, and doubted only

whether the misgovernment of James had been carried quite to that point. Nay, the good Bishop actually

began to prepare a pastoral letter explaining his reasons for taking the oaths. But, before it was finished, he

received information which convinced him that Ireland had not been made over to France: doubts came thick

upon him: he threw his unfinished letter into the fire, and implored his less scrupulous friends not to urge him

further. He was sure, he said, that they had acted uprightly: he was glad that they could do with a clear

conscience what he shrank from doing: he felt the force of their reasoning: he was all but persuaded; and he

was afraid to listen longer lest he should be quite persuaded: for, if he should comply, and his misgivings

should afterwards return, he should be the most miserable of men. Not for wealth, not for a palace, not for a

peerage, would he run the smallest risk of ever feeling the torments of remorse. It is a curious fact that, of the

seven nonjuring prelates, the only one whose name carries with it much weight was on the point of swearing,

and was prevented from doing so, as he himself acknowledged, not by the force of reason, but by a morbid

Among the priests who refused the oaths were some men eminent in the learned world, as grammarians,

chronologists, canonists, and antiquaries, and a very few who were distinguished by wit and eloquence: but

scarcely one can be named who was qualified to discuss any large question of morals or politics, scarcely one

whose writings do not indicate either extreme feebleness or extreme flightiness of mind. Those who distrust

the judgment of a Whig on this point will probably allow some weight to the opinion which was expressed,

many years after the Revolution, by a philosopher of whom the Tories are justly proud. Johnson, after passing

in review the celebrated divines who had thought it sinful to swear allegiance to William the Third and

George the First, pronounced that, in the whole body of nonjurors, there was one, and one only, who could

The nonjuror in whose favour Johnson made this exception was Charles Leslie. Leslie had, before the

Revolution, been Chancellor of the diocese of Connor in Ireland. He had been forward in opposition to

Tyrconnel; had, as a justice of the peace for Monaghan, refused to acknowledge a papist as Sheriff of that

county; and had been so courageous as to send some officers of the Irish army to prison for marauding. But

the doctrine of nonresistance, such as it had been taught by Anglican divines in the days of the Rye House

Plot, was immovably fixed in his mind. When the state of Ulster became such that a Protestant who remained

there could hardly avoid being either a rebel or a martyr, Leslie fled to London. His abilities and his

connections were such that he might easily have obtained high preferment in the Church of England. But he

took his place in the front rank of the Jacobite body, and remained there stedfastly, through all the dangers

and vicissitudes of three and thirty troubled years. Though constantly engaged in theological controversy with

Deists, Jews, Socinians, Presbyterians, Papists, and Quakers, he found time to be one of the most voluminous

political writers of his age. Of all the nonjuring clergy he was the best qualified to discuss constitutional

questions. For, before he had taken orders, he had resided long in the Temple, and had been studying English

history and law, while most of the other chiefs of the schism had been poring over the Acts of Chalcedon, or

seeking for wisdom in the Targurn of Onkelos.469 In 1689, however, Leslie was almost unknown in

England. Among the divines who incurred suspension on the first of August in that year, the highest in

popular estimation was without dispute Doctor William Sherlock. Perhaps no simple presbyter of the Church

of England has ever possessed a greater authority over his brethren than belonged to Sherlock at the time of

the Revolution. He was not of the first rank among his contemporaries as a scholar, as a preacher, as a writer

on theology, or as a writer on politics: but in all the four characters he had distinguished himself. The

perspicuity and liveliness of his style have been praised by Prior and Addison. The facility and assiduity with

which he wrote are sufficiently proved by the bulk and the dates of his works. There were indeed among the

clergy men of brighter genius and men of wider attainments: but during a long period there was none who

more completely represented the order, none who, on all subjects, spoke more precisely the sense of the

Anglican priesthood, without any taint of Latitudinarianism, of Puritanism, or of Popery. He had, in the days

of the Exclusion Bill, when the power of the dissenters was very great in Parliament and in the country,

written strongly against the sin of nonconformity. When the Rye House Plot was detected, he had zealously

defended by tongue and pen the doctrine of nonresistance. His services to the cause of episcopacy and

monarchy were so highly valued that he was made master of the Temple. A pension was also bestowed on

him by Charles: but that pension James soon took away; for Sherlock, though he held himself bound to pay

passive obedience to the civil power, held himself equally bound to combat religious errors, and was the

keenest and most laborious of that host of controversialists who, in the day of peril, manfully defended the

Protestant faith. In little more than two years he published sixteen treatises, some of them large books, against

the high pretensions of Rome. Not content with the easy victories which he gained over such feeble

antagonists as those who were quartered at Clerkenwell and the Savoy, he had the courage to measure his

strength with no less a champion than Bossuet, and came out of the conflict without discredit. Nevertheless

Sherlock still continued to maintain that no oppression could justify Christians in resisting the kingly

authority. When the Convention was about to meet, he strongly recommended, in a tract which was

considered as the manifesto of a large part of the clergy, that James should be invited to return on such

conditions as might secure the laws and religion of the nation.470 The vote which placed William and Mary

on the throne filled Sherlock with sorrow and anger. He is said to have exclaimed that if the Convention was

determined on a revolution, the clergy would find forty thousand good Churchmen to effect a restoration.471

Against the new oaths he gave his opinion plainly and warmly. He declared himself at a loss to understand

how any honest man could doubt that, by the powers that be, Saint Paul meant legitimate powers and no

others. No name was in 1689 cited by the Jacobites so proudly and fondly as that of Sherlock. Before the end

A few other nonjurors ought to be particularly noticed. High among them in rank was George Hickes, Dean

of Worcester. Of all the Englishmen of his time he was the most versed in the old Teutonic languages; and his

knowledge of the early Christian literature was extensive. As to his capacity for political discussions, it may

be sufficient to say that his favourite argument for passive obedience was drawn from the story of the Theban

legion. He was the younger brother of that unfortunate John Hickes who had been found hidden in the

malthouse of Alice Lisle. James had, in spite of all solicitation, put both John Hickes and Alice Lisle to death.

Persons who did not know the strength of the Dean's principles thought that he might possibly feel some

resentment on this account: for he was of no gentle or forgiving temper, and could retain during many years a

bitter remembrance of small injuries. But he was strong in his religious and political faith: he reflected that

the sufferers were dissenters; and he submitted to the will of the Lord's Anointed not only with patience but

with complacency. He became indeed a more loving subject than ever from the time when his brother was

hanged and his brother's benefactress beheaded. While almost all other clergymen, appalled by the

Declaration of Indulgence and by the proceedings of the High Commission, were beginning to think that they

had pushed the doctrine of nonresistance a little too far, he was writing a vindication of his darling legend,

and trying to convince the troops at Hounslow that, if James should be pleased to massacre them all, as

Maximian had massacred the Theban legion, for refusing to commit idolatry, it would be their duty to pile

their arms, and meekly to receive the crown of martyrdom. To do Hickes justice, his whole conduct after the

Revolution proved that his servility had sprung neither from fear nor from cupidity, but from mere

Jeremy Collier, who was turned out of the preachership of the Rolls, was a man of a much higher order. He is

well entitled to grateful and respectful mention: for to his eloquence and courage is to be chiefly ascribed the

purification of our lighter literature from that foul taint which had been contracted during the Antipuritan

reaction. He was, in the full force of the words, a good man. He was also a man of eminent abilities, a great

master of sarcasm, a great master of rhetoric.473 His reading, too, though undigested, was of immense extent.

But his mind was narrow: his reasoning, even when he was so fortunate as to have a good cause to defend,

was singularly futile and inconclusive; and his brain was almost turned by pride, not personal, but

professional. In his view, a priest was the highest of human beings, except a bishop. Reverence and

submission were due from the best and greatest of the laity to the least respectable of the clergy. However

ridiculous a man in holy orders might make himself, it was impiety to laugh at him. So nervously sensitive

indeed was Collier on this point that he thought it profane to throw any reflection even on the ministers of

false religions. He laid it down as a rule that Muftis and Augurs ought always to be mentioned with respect.

He blamed Dryden for sneering at the Hierophants of Apis. He praised Racine for giving dignity to the

character of a priest of Baal. He praised Corneille for not bringing that learned and reverend divine Tiresias

on the stage in the tragedy of Oedipus. The omission, Collier owned, spoiled the dramatic effect of the piece:

but the holy function was much too solemn to be played with. Nay, incredible as it may seem, he thought it

improper in the laity to sneer at Presbyterian preachers. Indeed his Jacobitism was little more than one of the

forms in which his zeal for the dignity of his profession manifested itself. He abhorred the Revolution less as

a rising up of subjects against their King than as a rising up of the laity against the sacerdotal caste. The

doctrines which had been proclaimed from the pulpit during thirty years had been treated with contempt by

the Convention. A new government had been set up in opposition to the wishes of the spiritual peers in the

House of Lords and of the priesthood throughout the country. A secular assembly had taken upon itself to

pass a law requiring archbishops and bishops, rectors and vicars, to abjure; on pain of deprivation, what they

had been teaching all their lives. Whatever meaner spirits might do, Collier was determined not to be led in

triumph by the victorious enemies of his order. To the last he would confront, with the authoritative port of

an ambassador of heaven, the anger of the powers and principalities of the earth.

In parts Collier was the first man among the nonjurors. In erudition the first place must be assigned to Henry

Dodwell, who, for the unpardonable crime of having a small estate in Mayo, had been attainted by the Popish

Parliament at Dublin. He was Camdenian Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford, and had

already acquired considerable celebrity by chronological and geographical researches: but, though he never

could be persuaded to take orders, theology was his favourite study. He was doubtless a pious and sincere

man. He had perused innumerable volumes in various languages, and had indeed acquired more learning than

his slender faculties were able to bear. The small intellectual spark which he possessed was put out by the

fuel. Some of his books seem to have been written in a madhouse, and, though filled with proofs of his

immense reading, degrade him to the level of James Naylor and Ludowick Muggleton. He began a

dissertation intended to prove that the law of nations was a divine revelation made to the family which was

preserved in the ark. He published a treatise in which he maintained that a marriage between a member of the

Church of England and a dissenter was a nullity, and that the couple were, in the sight of heaven, guilty of

adultery. He defended the use of instrumental music in public worship on the ground that the notes of the

organ had a power to counteract the influence of devils on the spinal marrow of human beings. In his treatise

on this subject, he remarked that there was high authority for the opinion that the spinal marrow, when

decomposed, became a serpent. Whether this opinion were or were not correct, he thought it unnecessary to

decide. Perhaps, he said, the eminent men in whose works it was found had meant only to express

figuratively the great truth, that the Old Serpent operates on us chiefly through the spinal marrow.474

Dodwell's speculations on the state of human beings after death are, if possible, more extraordinary still. He

tells us that our souls are naturally mortal. Annihilation is the fate of the greater part of mankind, of heathens,

of Mahometans, of unchristened babes. The gift of immortality is conveyed in the sacrament of baptism: but

to the efficacy of the sacrament it is absolutely necessary that the water be poured and the words pronounced

by a priest who has been ordained by a bishop. In the natural course of things, therefore, all Presbyterians,

Independents, Baptists, and Quakers would, like the inferior animals, cease to exist. But Dodwell was far too

good a churchman to let off dissenters so easily. He informs them that, as they have had an opportunity of

hearing the gospel preached, and might, but for their own perverseness, have received episcopalian baptism,

God will, by an extraordinary act of power, bestow immortality on them in order that they may be tormented

No man abhorred the growing latitudinarianism of those times more than Dodwell. Yet no man had more

reason to rejoice in it. For, in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, a speculator who had dared to affirm

that the human soul is by its nature mortal, and does, in the great majority of cases, actually die with the

body, would have been burned alive in Smithfield. Even in days which Dodwell could well remember, such

heretics as himself would have been thought fortunate if they escaped with life, their backs flayed, their ears

clipped, their noses slit, their tongues bored through with red hot iron, and their eyes knocked out with

brickbats. With the nonjurors, however, the author of this theory was still the great Mr. Dodwell; and some,

who thought it culpable lenity to tolerate a Presbyterian meeting, thought it at the same time gross illiberality

to blame a learned and pious Jacobite for denying a doctrine so utterly unimportant in a religious point of

Two other nonjurors deserve special mention, less on account of their abilities and learning, than on account

of their rare integrity, and of their not less rare candour. These were John Kettlewell, Rector of Coleshill, and

John Fitzwilliam, Canon of Windsor. It is remarkable that both these men had seen much of Lord Russell,

and that both, though differing from him in political opinions, and strongly disapproving the part which he

had taken in the Whig plot, had thought highly of his character, and had been sincere mourners for his death.

He had sent to Kettlewell an affectionate message from the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Lady Russell, to

her latest day, loved, trusted, and revered Fitzwilliam, who, when she was a girl, had been the friend of her

father, the virtuous Southampton. The two clergymen agreed in refusing to swear: but they, from that

moment, took different paths. Kettlewell was one of the most active members of his party: he declined no

drudgery in the common cause, provided only that it were such drudgery as did not misbecome an honest

man; and he defended his opinions in several tracts, which give a much higher notion of his sincerity than of

his judgment or acuteness.477 Fitzwilliam thought that he had done enough in quitting his pleasant dwelling

and garden under the shadow of Saint George's Chapel, and in betaking himself with his books to a small

lodging in an attic. He could not with a safe conscience acknowledge William and Mary: but he did not

conceive that he was bound to be always stirring up sedition against them; and he passed the last years of his

life, under the powerful protection of the House of Bedford, in innocent and studious repose.478

Among the less distinguished divines who forfeited their benefices, were doubtless many good men: but it is

certain that the moral character of the nonjurors, as a class, did not stand high. It seems hard to impute laxity

of principle to persons who undoubtedly made a great sacrifice to principle. And yet experience abundantly

proves that many who are capable of making a great sacrifice, when their blood is heated by conflict, and

when the public eye is fixed upon them, are not capable of persevering long in the daily practice of obscure

virtues. It is by no means improbable that zealots may have given their lives for a religion which had never

effectually restrained their vindictive or their licentious passions. We learn indeed from fathers of the highest

authority that, even in the purest ages of the Church, some confessors, who had manfully refused to save

themselves from torments and death by throwing frankincense on the altar of Jupiter, afterwards brought

scandal on the Christian name by gross fraud and debauchery.479 For the nonjuring divines great allowance

must in fairness be made. They were doubtless in a most trying situation. In general, a schism, which divides

a religious community, divides the laity as well as the clergy. The seceding pastors therefore carry with them

a large part of their flocks, and are consequently assured of a maintenance. But the schism of 1689 scarcely

extended beyond the clergy. The law required the rector to take the oaths, or to quit his living: but no oath, no

acknowledgment of the title of the new King and Queen, was required from the parishioner as a qualification

for attending divine service, or for receiving the Eucharist. Not one in fifty, therefore, of those laymen who

disapproved of the Revolution thought himself bound to quit his pew in the old church, where the old liturgy

was still read, and where the old vestments were still worn, and to follow the ejected priest to a conventicle, a

conventicle, too, which was not protected by the Toleration Act. Thus the new sect was a sect of preachers

without hearers; and such preachers could not make a livelihood by preaching. In London, indeed, and in

some other large towns, those vehement Jacobites, whom nothing would satisfy but to hear King James and

the Prince of Wales prayed for by name, were sufficiently numerous to make up a few small congregations,

which met secretly, and under constant fear of the constables, in rooms so mean that the meeting houses of

the Puritan dissenters might by comparison be called palaces. Even Collier, who had all the qualities which

attract large audiences, was reduced to be the minister of a little knot of malecontents, whose oratory was on

a second floor in the city. But the nonjuring clergymen who were able to obtain even a pittance by officiating

at such places were very few. Of the rest some had independent means: some lived by literature: one or two

practised physic. Thomas Wagstaffe, for example, who had been Chancellor of Lichfield, had many patients,

and made himself conspicuous by always visiting them in full canonicals.480 But these were exceptions.

Industrious poverty is a state by no means unfavourable to virtue: but it is dangerous to be at once poor and

idle; and most of the clergymen who had refused to swear found themselves thrown on the world with

nothing to eat and with nothing to do. They naturally became beggars and loungers. Considering themselves

as martyrs suffering in a public cause, they were not ashamed to ask any good churchman for a guinea. Most

of them passed their lives in running about from one Tory coffeehouse to another, abusing the Dutch, hearing

and spreading reports that within a month His Majesty would certainly be on English ground, and wondering

who would have Salisbury when Burnet was hanged. During the session of Parliament the lobbies and the

Court of Requests were crowded with deprived parsons, asking who was up, and what the numbers were on

the last division. Many of the ejected divines became domesticated, as chaplains, tutors and spiritual

directors, in the houses of opulent Jacobites. In a situation of this kind, a man of pure and exalted character,

such a man as Ken was among the nonjurors, and Watts among the nonconformists, may preserve his dignity,

and may much more than repay by his example and his instructions the benefits which he receives. But to a

person whose virtue is not high toned this way of life is full of peril. If he is of a quiet disposition, he is in

danger of sinking into a servile, sensual, drowsy parasite. If he is of an active and aspiring nature, it may be

feared that he will become expert in those bad arts by which, more easily than by faithful service, retainers

make themselves agreeable or formidable. To discover the weak side of every character, to flatter every

passion and prejudice, to sow discord and jealousy where love and confidence ought to exist, to watch the

moment of indiscreet openness for the purpose of extracting secrets important to the prosperity and honour of

families, such are the practices by which keen and restless spirits have too often avenged themselves for the

humiliation of dependence. The public voice loudly accused many nonjurors of requiting the hospitality of

their benefactors with villany as black as that of the hypocrite depicted in the masterpiece of Moliere. Indeed,

when Cibber undertook to adapt that noble comedy to the English stage, he made his Tartuffe a nonjuror: and

Johnson, who cannot be supposed to have been prejudiced against the nonjurors, frankly owned that Cibber

There can be no doubt that the schism caused by the oaths would have been far more formidable, if, at this

crisis, any extensive change had been made in the government or in the ceremonial of the Established

Church. It is a highly instructive fact that those enlightened and tolerant divines who most ardently desired

such a change afterwards saw reason to be thankful that their favourite project had failed.

Whigs and Tories had in the late Session combined to get rid of Nottingham's Comprehension Bill by voting

an address which requested the King to refer the whole subject to the Convocation. Burnet foresaw the effect

of this vote. The whole scheme, he said, was utterly ruined.482 Many of his friends, however, thought

differently; and among these was Tillotson. Of all the members of the Low Church party Tillotson stood

highest in general estimation. As a preacher, he was thought by his contemporaries to have surpassed all

rivals living or dead. Posterity has reversed this judgment. Yet Tillotson still keeps his place as a legitimate

English classic. His highest flights were indeed far below those of Taylor, of Barrow, and of South; but his

oratory was more correct and equable than theirs. No quaint conceits, no pedantic quotations from Talmudists

and scholiasts, no mean images, buffoon stories, scurrilous invectives, ever marred the effect of his grave and

temperate discourses. His reasoning was just sufficiently profound and sufficiently refined to be followed by

a popular audience with that slight degree of intellectual exertion which is a pleasure. His style is not

brilliant; but it is pure, transparently clear, and equally free from the levity and from the stiffness which

disfigure the sermons of some eminent divines of the seventeenth century. He is always serious: yet there is

about his manner a certain graceful ease which marks him as a man who knows the world, who has lived in

populous cities and in splendid courts, and who has conversed, not only with books, but with lawyers and

merchants, wits and beauties, statesmen and princes. The greatest charm of his compositions, however, is

deriven from the benignity and candour which appear in every line, and which shone forth not less

As a theologian, Tillotson was certainly not less latitudinarian than Burnet. Yet many of those clergymen to

whom Burnet was an object of implacable aversion spoke of Tillotson with tenderness and respect. It is

therefore not strange that the two friends should have formed different estimates of the temper of the

priesthood, and should have expected different results from the meeting of the Convocation. Tillotson was

not displeased with the vote of the Commons. He conceived that changes made in religious institutions by

mere secular authority might disgust many churchmen, who would yet be perfectly willing to vote, in an

ecclesiastical synod, for changes more extensive still; and his opinion had great weight with the King.483 It

was resolved that the Convocation should meet at the beginning of the next session of Parliament, and that in

the meantime a commission should issue empowering some eminent divines to examine the Liturgy, the

canons, and the whole system of jurisprudence administered by the Courts Christian, and to report on the

Most of the Bishops who had taken the oaths were in this commission; and with them were joined twenty

priests of great note. Of the twenty Tillotson was the most important: for he was known to speak the sense

both of the King and of the Queen. Among those Commissioners who looked up to Tillotson as their chief

were Stillingfleet, Dean of Saint Paul's, Sharp, Dean of Norwich, Patrick, Dean of Peterborough, Tenison,

Rector of Saint Martin's, and Fowler, to whose judicious firmness was chiefly to be ascribed the

With such men as those who have been named were mingled some divines who belonged to the High Church

party. Conspicuous among these were two of the rulers of Oxford, Aldrich and Jane. Aldrich had recently

been appointed Dean of Christchurch, in the room of the Papist Massey, whom James had, in direct violation

of the laws, placed at the head of that great college. The new Dean was a polite, though not a profound,

scholar, and a jovial, hospitable gentleman. He was the author of some theological tracts which have long

been forgotten, and of a compendium of logic which is still used: but the best works which he has bequeathed

to posterity are his catches. Jane, the King's Professor of Divinity, was a graver but a less estimable man. He

had borne the chief part in framing that decree by which his University ordered the works of Milton and

Buchanan to be publicly burned in the Schools. A few years later, irritated and alarmed by the persecution of

the Bishops and by the confiscation of the revenues of Magdalene College, he had renounced the doctrine of

nonresistance, had repaired to the headquarters of the Prince of Orange, and had assured His Highness that

Oxford would willingly coin her plate for the support of the war against her oppressor. During a short time

Jane was generally considered as a Whig, and was sharply lampooned by some of his old allies. He was so

unfortunate as to have a name which was an excellent mark for the learned punsters of his university. Several

epigrams were written on the doublefaced Janus, who, having got a professorship by looking one way, now

hoped to get a bishopric by looking another. That he hoped to get a bishopric was perfectly true. He

demanded the see of Exeter as a reward due to his services. He was refused. The refusal convinced him that

the Church had as much to apprehend from Latitudinarianism as from Popery; and he speedily became a Tory

Early in October the Commissioners assembled in the Jerusalem Chamber. At their first meeting they

determined to propose that, in the public services of the Church, lessons taken from the canonical books of

Scripture should be substituted for the lessons taken from the Apocrypha.486 At the second meeting a strange

question was raised by the very last person who ought to have raised it. Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, had,

without any scruple, sate, during two years, in the unconstitutional tribunal which had, in the late reign,

oppressed and pillaged the Church of which he was a ruler. But he had now become scrupulous, and

expressed a doubt whether the commission were legal. To a plain understanding his objections seem to be

mere quibbles. The commission gave power neither to make laws nor to administer laws, but simply to

inquire and to report. Even without a royal commission Tillotson, Patrick, and Stillingfleet might, with

perfect propriety, have met to discuss the state and prospects of the Church, and to consider whether it would

or would not be desirable to make some concession to the dissenters. And how could it be a crime for

subjects to do at the request of their Sovereign that which it would have been innocent and laudable for them

to do without any such request? Sprat however was seconded by Jane. There was a sharp altercation; and

Lloyd, Bishop of Saint Asaph, who, with many good qualities, had an irritable temper, was provoked into

saying something about spies. Sprat withdrew and came no more. His example was soon followed by Jane

and Aldrich.487 The commissioners proceeded to take into consideration the question of the posture at the

Eucharist. It was determined to recommend that a communicant, who, after conference with his minister,

should declare that he could not conscientiously receive the bread and wine kneeling, might receive them

sitting. Mew, Bishop of Winchester, an honest man, but illiterate, weak even in his best days, and now fast

sinking into dotage, protested against this concession, and withdrew from the assembly. The other members

continued to apply themselves vigorously to their task: and no more secessions took place, though there were

great differences of opinion, and though the debates were sometimes warm. The highest churchmen who still

remained were Doctor William Beveridge, Archdeacon of Colchester, who many years later became Bishop

of Saint Asaph, and Doctor John Scott, the same who had prayed by the deathbed of Jeffreys. The most active

The baptismal service was repeatedly discussed. As to matter of form the Commissioners were disposed to be

indulgent. They were generally willing to admit infants into the Church without sponsors and without the

sign of the cross. But the majority, after much debate, steadily refused to soften down or explain away those

words which, to all minds not sophisticated, appear to assert the regenerating virtue of the sacrament.488

As to the surplice, the Commissioners determined to recommend that a large discretion should be left to the

Bishops. Expedients were devised by which a person who had received Presbyterian ordination might,

without admitting, either expressly or by implication, the invalidity of that ordination, become a minister of

The ecclesiastical calendar was carefully revised. The great festivals were retained. But it was not thought

desirable that Saint Valentine, Saint Chad, Saint Swithin, Saint Edward King of the West Saxons, Saint

Dunstan, and Saint Alphage, should share the honours of Saint John and Saint Paul; or that the Church should

appear to class the ridiculous fable of the discovery of the cross with facts so awfully important as the

The Athanasian Creed caused much perplexity. Most of the Commissioners were equally unwilling to give up

the doctrinal clauses and to retain the damnatory clauses. Burnet, Fowler, and Tillotson were desirous to

strike this famous symbol out of the liturgy altogether. Burnet brought forward one argument, which to

himself probably did not appear to have much weight, but which was admirably calculated to perplex his

opponents, Beveridge and Scott. The Council of Ephesus had always been reverenced by Anglican divines as

a synod which had truly represented the whole body of the faithful, and which had been divinely guided in

the way of truth. The voice of that Council was the voice of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, not yet

corrupted by superstition, or rent asunder by schism. During more than twelve centuries the world had not

seen an ecclesiastical assembly which had an equal claim to the respect of believers. The Council of Ephesus

had, in the plainest terms, and under the most terrible penalties, forbidden Christians to frame or to impose on

their brethren any creed other than the creed settled by the Nicene Fathers. It should seem therefore that, if

the Council of Ephesus was really under the direction of the Holy Spirit, whoever uses the Athanasian Creed

must, in the very act of uttering an anathema against his neighbours, bring down an anathema on his own

head.491 In spite of the authority of the Ephesian Fathers, the majority of the Commissioners determined to

leave the Athanasian Creed in the Prayer Book; but they proposed to add a rubric drawn up by Stillingfleet,

which declared that the damnatory clauses were to be understood to apply only to such as obstinately denied

the substance of the Christian Faith. Orthodox believers were therefore permitted to hope that the heretic who

had honestly and humbly sought for truth would not be everlastingly punished for having failed to find it.492

Tenison was intrusted with the business of examining the Liturgy and of collecting all those expressions to

which objections had been made, either by theological or by literary critics. It was determined to remove

some obvious blemishes. And it would have been wise in the Commissioners to stop here. Unfortunately they

determined to rewrite a great part of the Prayer Book. It was a bold undertaking; for in general the style of

that volume is such as cannot be improved. The English Liturgy indeed gains by being compared even with

those fine ancient Liturgies from which it is to a great extent taken. The essential qualities of devotional

eloquence, conciseness, majestic simplicity, pathetic earnestness of supplication, sobered by a profound

reverence, are common between the translations and the originals. But in the subordinate graces of diction the

originals must be allowed to be far inferior to the translations. And the reason is obvious. The technical

phraseology of Christianity did not become a part of the Latin language till that language had passed the age

of maturity and was sinking into barbarism. But the technical phraseology of Christianity was found in the

Anglosaxon and in the Norman French, long before the union of those two dialects had, produced a third

dialect superior to either. The Latin of the Roman Catholic services, therefore, is Latin in the last stage of

decay. The English of our services is English in all the vigour and suppleness of early youth. To the great

Latin writers, to Terence and Lucretius, to Cicero and Caesar, to Tacitus and Quintilian, the noblest

compositions of Ambrose and Gregory would have seemed to be, not merely bad writing, but senseless

gibberish.493 The diction of our Book of Common Prayer, on the other hand, has directly or indirectly

contributed to form the diction of almost every great English writer, and has extorted the admiration of the

most accomplished infidels and of the most accomplished nonconformists, of such men as David Hume and

The style of the Liturgy, however, did not satisfy the Doctors of the Jerusalem Chamber. They voted the

Collects too short and too dry: and Patrick was intrusted with the duty of expanding and ornamenting them.

In one respect, at least, the choice seems to have been unexceptionable; for, if we judge by the way in which

Patrick paraphrased the most sublime Hebrew poetry, we shall probably be of opinion that, whether he was or

was not qualified to make the collects better, no man that ever lived was more competent to make them

It mattered little, however, whether the recommendations of the Commission were good or bad. They were all

doomed before they were known. The writs summoning the Convocation of the province of Canterbury had

been issued; and the clergy were every where in a state of violent excitement. They had just taken the oaths,

and were smarting from the earnest reproofs of nonjurors, from the insolent taunts of Whigs, and often

undoubtedly from the stings of remorse. The announcement that a Convocation was to sit for the purpose of

deliberating on a plan of comprehension roused all the strongest passions of the priest who had just complied

with the law, and was ill satisfied or half satisfied with himself for complying. He had an opportunity of

contributing to defeat a favourite scheme of that government which had exacted from him, under severe

penalties, a submission not easily to be reconciled to his conscience or his pride. He had an opportunity of

signalising his zeal for that Church whose characteristic doctrines he had been accused of deserting for lucre.

She was now, he conceived, threatened by a danger as great as that of the preceding year. The Latitudinarians

of 1689 were not less eager to humble and to ruin her than the Jesuits of 1688. The Toleration Act had done

for the Dissenters quite as much as was compatible with her dignity and security; and nothing more ought to

be conceded, not the hem of one of her vestments, not an epithet from the beginning to the end of her Liturgy.

All the reproaches which had been thrown on the ecclesiastical commission of James were transferred to the

ecclesiastical commission of William. The two commissions indeed had nothing but the name in common.

Put the name was associated with illegality and oppression, with the violation of dwellings and the

confiscation of freeholds, and was therefore assiduously sounded with no small effect by the tongues of the

The King too, it was said, was not sound. He conformed indeed to the established worship; but his was a

local and occasional conformity. For some ceremonies to which High Churchmen were attached he had a

distaste which he was at no pains to conceal. One of his first acts had been to give orders that in his private

chapel the service should be said instead of being sung; and this arrangement, though warranted by the rubric,

caused much murmuring.495 It was known that he was so profane as to sneer at a practice which had been

sanctioned by high ecclesiastical authority, the practice of touching for the scrofula. This ceremony had come

down almost unaltered from the darkest of the dark ages to the time of Newton and Locke. The Stuarts

frequently dispensed the healing influences in the Banqueting House. The days on which this miracle was to

be wrought were fixed at sittings of the Privy Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy in all the

parish churches of the realm.496 When the appointed time came, several divines in full canonicals stood

round the canopy of state. The surgeon of the royal household introduced the sick. A passage from the

sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Saint Mark was read. When the words, "They shall lay their hands on the

sick, and they shall recover," had been pronounced, there was a pause, and one of the sick was brought up to

the King. His Majesty stroked the ulcers and swellings, and hung round the patient's neck a white riband to

which was fastened a gold coin. The other sufferers were then led up in succession; and, as each was touched,

the chaplain repeated the incantation, "they shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Then

came the epistle, prayers, antiphonies and a benediction. The service may still be found in the prayer books of

the reign of Anne. Indeed it was not till some time after the accession of George the First that the University

of Oxford ceased to reprint the Office of Healing together with the Liturgy. Theologians of eminent learning,

ability, and virtue gave the sanction of their authority to this mummery;497 and, what is stranger still,

medical men of high note believed, or affected to believe, in the balsamic virtues of the royal hand. We must

suppose that every surgeon who attended Charles the Second was a man of high repute for skill; and more

than one of the surgeons who attended Charles the Second has left us a solemn profession of faith in the

King's miraculous power. One of them is not ashamed to tell us that the gift was communicated by the

unction administered at the coronation; that the cures were so numerous and sometimes so rapid that they

could not be attributed to any natural cause; that the failures were to be ascribed to want of faith on the part of

the patients; that Charles once handled a scrofulous Quaker and made him a healthy man and a sound

Churchman in a moment; that, if those who had been healed lost or sold the piece of gold which had been

hung round their necks, the ulcers broke forth again, and could be removed only by a second touch and a

second talisman. We cannot wonder that, when men of science gravely repeated such nonsense, the vulgar

should believe it. Still less can we wonder that wretches tortured by a disease over which natural remedies

had no power should eagerly drink in tales of preternatural cures: for nothing is so credulous as misery. The

crowds which repaired to the palace on the days of healing were immense. Charles the Second, in the course

of his reign, touched near a hundred thousand persons. The number seems to have increased or diminished as

the king's popularity rose or fell. During that Tory reaction which followed the dissolution of the Oxford

Parliament, the press to get near him was terrific. In 1682, he performed the rite eight thousand five hundred

times. In 1684, the throng was such that six or seven of the sick were trampled to death. James, in one of his

progresses, touched eight hundred persons in the choir of the Cathedral of Chester. The expense of the

ceremony was little less than ten thousand pounds a year, and would have been much greater but for the

vigilance of the royal surgeons, whose business it was to examine the applicants, and to distinguish those

William had too much sense to be duped, and too much honesty to bear a part in what he knew to be an

imposture. "It is a silly superstition," he exclaimed, when he heard that, at the close of Lent, his palace was

besieged by a crowd of the sick: "Give the poor creatures some money, and send them away."499 On one

single occasion he was importuned into laying his hand on a patient. "God give you better health," he said,

"and more sense." The parents of scrofulous children cried out against his cruelty: bigots lifted up their hands

and eyes in horror at his impiety: Jacobites sarcastically praised him for not presuming to arrogate to himself

a power which belonged only to legitimate sovereigns; and even some Whigs thought that he acted unwisely

in treating with such marked contempt a superstition which had a strong hold on the vulgar mind: but

William was not to be moved, and was accordingly set down by many High Churchmen as either an infidel or

The chief cause, however, which at this time made even the most moderate plan of comprehension hateful to

the priesthood still remains to be mentioned. What Burnet had foreseen and foretold had come to pass. There

was throughout the clerical profession a strong disposition to retaliate on the Presbyterians of England the

wrongs of the Episcopalians of Scotland. It could not be denied that even the highest churchmen had, in the

summer of 1688, generally declared themselves willing to give up many things for the sake of union. But it

was said, and not without plausibility, that what was passing on the other side of the Border proved union on

any reasonable terms to be impossible. With what face, it was asked, can those who will make no concession

to us where we are weak, blame us for refusing to make any concession to them where we are strong? We

cannot judge correctly of the principles and feelings of a sect from the professions which it makes in a time of

feebleness and suffering. If we would know what the Puritan spirit really is, we must observe the Puritan

when he is dominant. He was dominant here in the last generation; and his little finger was thicker than the

loins of the prelates. He drove hundreds of quiet students from their cloisters, and thousands of respectable

divines from their parsonages, for the crime of refusing to sign his Covenant. No tenderness was shown to

learning, to genius or to sanctity. Such men as Hall and Sanderson, Chillingworth and Hammond, were not

only plundered, but flung into prisons, and exposed to all the rudeness of brutal gaolers. It was made a crime

to read fine psalms and prayers bequeathed to the faithful by Ambrose and Chrysostom. At length the nation

became weary of the reign of the saints. The fallen dynasty and the fallen hierarchy were restored. The

Puritan was in his turn subjected to disabilities and penalties; and he immediately found out that it was

barbarous to punish men for entertaining conscientious scruples about a garb, about a ceremony, about the

functions of ecclesiastical officers. His piteous complaints and his arguments in favour of toleration had at

length imposed on many well meaning persons. Even zealous churchmen had begun to entertain a hope that

the severe discipline which he had undergone had made him candid, moderate, charitable. Had this been

really so, it would doubtless have been our duty to treat his scruples with extreme tenderness. But, while we

were considering what we could do to meet his wishes in England, he had obtained ascendency in Scotland;

and, in an instant, he was all himself again, bigoted, insolent, and cruel. Manses had been sacked; churches

shut up; prayer books burned; sacred garments torn; congregations dispersed by violence; priests hustled,

pelted, pilloried, driven forth, with their wives and babes, to beg or die of hunger. That these outrages were to

be imputed, not to a few lawless marauders, but to the great body of the Presbyterians of Scotland, was

evident from the fact that the government had not dared either to inflict punishment on the offenders or to

grant relief to the sufferers. Was it not fit then that the Church of England should take warning? Was it

reasonable to ask her to mutilate her apostolical polity and her beautiful ritual for the purpose of conciliating

those who wanted nothing but power to rabble her as they had rabbled her sister? Already these men had

obtained a boon which they ill deserved, and which they never would have granted. They worshipped God in

perfect security. Their meeting houses were as effectually protected as the choirs of our cathedrals. While no

episcopal minister could, without putting his life in jeopardy, officiate in Ayrshire or Renfrewshire, a hundred

Presbyterian ministers preached unmolested every Sunday in Middlesex. The legislature had, with a

generosity perhaps imprudent, granted toleration to the most intolerant of men; and with toleration it behoved

Thus several causes conspired to inflame the parochial clergy against the scheme of comprehension. Their

temper was such that, if the plan framed in the Jerusalem Chamber had been directly submitted to them, it

would have been rejected by a majority of twenty to one. But in the Convocation their weight bore no

proportion to their number. The Convocation has, happily for our country, been so long utterly insignificant

that, till a recent period, none but curious students cared to inquire how it was constituted; and even now

many persons, not generally ill informed, imagine it to have been a council representing the Church of

England. In truth the Convocation so often mentioned in our ecclesiastical history is merely the synod of the

Province of Canterbury, and never had a right to speak in the name of the whole clerical body. The Province

of York had also its convocation: but, till the eighteenth century was far advanced, the Province of York was

generally so poor, so rude, and so thinly peopled, that, in political importance, it could hardly be considered

as more than a tenth part of the kingdom. The sense of the Southern clergy was therefore popularly

considered as the sense of the whole profession. When the formal concurrence of the Northern clergy was

required, it seems to have been given as a matter of course. Indeed the canons passed by the Convocation of

Canterbury in 1604 were ratified by James the First, and were ordered to be strictly observed in every part of

the kingdom, two years before the Convocation of York went through the form of approving them. Since

these ecclesiastical councils became mere names, a great change has taken place in the relative position of the

two Archbishoprics. In all the elements of power, the region beyond Trent is now at least a third part of

England. When in our own time the representative system was adjusted to the altered state of the country,

almost all the small boroughs which it was necessary to disfranchise were in the south. Two thirds of the new

members given to great provincial towns were given to the north. If therefore any English government should

suffer the Convocations, as now constituted, to meet for the despatch of business, two independent synods

would be legislating at the same time for one Church. It is by no means impossible that one assembly might

adopt canons which the other might reject, that one assembly might condemn as heretical propositions which

the other might hold to be orthodox.501 In the seventeenth century no such danger was apprehended. So little

indeed was the Convocation of York then considered, that the two Houses of Parliament had, in their address

to William, spoken only of one Convocation, which they called the Convocation of the Clergy of the

The body which they thus not very accurately designated is divided into two Houses. The Upper House is

composed of the Bishops of the Province of Canterbury. The Lower House consisted, in 1689, of a hundred

and fortyfour members. Twentytwo Deans and fiftyfour Archdeacons sate there in virtue of their offices.

Twentyfour divines sate as proctors for twentyfour chapters. Only fortyfour proctors were elected by the

eight thousand parish priests of the twentytwo dioceses. These fortyfour proctors, however, were almost

all of one mind. The elections had in former times been conducted in the most quiet and decorous manner.

But on this occasion the canvassing was eager: the contests were sharp: Rochester, the leader of the party

which in the House of Lords had opposed the ComprehensionBill, and his brother Clarendon, who had

refused to take the oaths, had gone to Oxford, the head quarters of that party, for the purpose of animating

and organizing the opposition.502 The representatives of the parochial clergy must have been men whose

chief distinction was their zeal: for in the whole list can be found not a single illustrious name, and very few

names which are now known even to curious students.503 The official members of the Lower House, among

whom were many distinguished scholars and preachers, seem to have been not very unequally divided.

During the summer of 1689 several high ecclesiastical dignities became vacant, and were bestowed on

divines who were sitting in the Jerusalem Chamber. It has already been mentioned that Thomas, Bishop of

Worcester, died just before the day fixed for taking the oaths. Lake, Bishop of Chichester, lived just long

enough to refuse them, and with his last breath declared that he would maintain even at the stake the doctrine

of indefeasible hereditary right. The see of Chichester was filled by Patrick, that of Worcester by Stillingfleet;

and the deanery of Saint Paul's which Stillingfleet quitted was given to Tillotson. That Tillotson was not

raised to the episcopal bench excited some surprise. But in truth it was because the government held his

services in the highest estimation that he was suffered to remain a little longer a simple presbyter. The most

important office in the Convocation was that of Prolocutor of the Lower House. The Prolocutor was to be

chosen by the members: and the only moderate man who had a chance of being chosen was Tillotson. It had

in fact been already determined that he should be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. When he went to kiss

hands for his new deanery he warmly thanked the King. "Your Majesty has now set me at ease for the

remainder of my life." "No such thing, Doctor, I assure you," said William. He then plainly intimated that,

whenever Sancroft should cease to fill the highest ecclesiastical station, Tillotson would succeed to it.

Tillotson stood aghast; for his nature was quiet and unambitious: he was beginning to feel the infirmities of

old age: he cared little for money: of worldly advantages those which he most valued were an honest fame

and the general good will of mankind: those advantages he already possessed; and he could not but be aware

that, if he became primate, he should incur the bitterest hatred of a powerful party, and should become a mark

for obloquy, from which his gentle and sensitive nature shrank as from the rack or the wheel. William was

earnest and resolute. "It is necessary," he said, "for my service; and I must lay on your conscience the

responsibility of refusing me your help." Here the conversation ended. It was, indeed, not necessary that the

point should be immediately decided; for several months were still to elapse before the Archbishopric would

Tillotson bemoaned himself with unfeigned anxiety and sorrow to Lady Russell, whom, of all human beings,

he most honoured and trusted.504 He hoped, he said, that he was not inclined to shrink from the service of

the Church; but he was convinced that his present line of service was that in which he could be most useful. If

he should be forced to accept so high and so invidious a post as the primacy, he should soon sink under the

load of duties and anxieties too heavy for his strength. His spirits, and with his spirits his abilities, would fail

him. He gently complained of Burnet, who loved and admired him with a truly generous heartiness, and who

had laboured to persuade both the King and Queen that there was in England only one man fit for the highest

ecclesiastical dignity. "The Bishop of Salisbury," said Tillotson, "is one of the best and worst friends that I

Nothing that was not a secret to Burnet was likely to be long a secret to any body. It soon began to be

whispered about that the King had fixed on Tillotson to fill the place of Sancroft. The news caused cruel

mortification to Compton, who, not unnaturally, conceived that his own claims were unrivalled. He had

educated the Queen and her sister; and to the instruction which they had received from him might fairly be

ascribed, at least in part, the firmness with which, in spite of the influence of their father, they had adhered to

the established religion. Compton was, moreover, the only prelate who, during the late reign, had raised his

voice in Parliament against the dispensing power, the only prelate who had been suspended by the High

Commission, the only prelate who had signed the invitation to the Prince of Orange, the only prelate who had

actually taken arms against Popery and arbitrary power, the only prelate, save one, who had voted against a

Regency. Among the ecclesiastics of the Province of Canterbury who had taken the oaths, he was highest in

rank. He had therefore held, during some months, a vicarious primacy: he had crowned the new Sovereigns:

he had consecrated the new Bishops: he was about to preside in the Convocation. It may be added, that he

was the son of an Earl; and that no person of equally high birth then sate, or had ever sate, since the

Reformation, on the episcopal bench. That the government should put over his head a priest of his own

diocese, who was the son of a Yorkshire clothier, and who was distinguished only by abilities and virtues,

was provoking; and Compton, though by no means a badhearted man, was much provoked. Perhaps his

vexation was increased by the reflection that he had, for the sake of those by whom he was thus slighted,

done some things which had strained his conscience and sullied his reputation, that he had at one time

practised the disingenuous arts of a diplomatist, and at another time given scandal to his brethren by wearing

the buff coat and jackboots of a trooper. He could not accuse Tillotson of inordinate ambition. But, though

Tillotson was most unwilling to accept the Archbishopric himself, he did not use his influence in favour of

Compton, but earnestly recommended Stillingfleet as the man fittest to preside over the Church of England.

The consequence was that, on the eve of the meeting of Convocation, the Bishop who was to be at the head of

the Upper House became the personal enemy of the presbyter whom the government wished to see at the

head of the Lower House. This quarrel added new difficulties to difficulties which little needed any

It was not till the twentieth of November that the Convocation met for the despatch of business. The place of

meeting had generally been Saint Paul's Cathedral. But Saint Paul's Cathedral was slowly rising from its

ruins; and, though the dome already towered high above the hundred steeples of the City, the choir had not

yet been opened for public worship. The assembly therefore sate at Westminster.506 A table was placed in

the beautiful chapel of Henry the Seventh. Compton was in the chair. On his right and left those suffragans of

Canterbury who had taken the oaths were ranged in gorgeous vestments of scarlet and miniver. Below the

table was assembled the crowd of presbyters. Beveridge preached a Latin sermon, in which he warmly

eulogized the existing system, and yet declared himself favourable to a moderate reform. Ecclesiastical laws

were, he said, of two kinds. Some laws were fundamental and eternal: they derived their authority from God;

nor could any religious community repeal them without ceasing to form a part of the universal Church. Other

laws were local and temporary. They had been framed by human wisdom, and might be altered by human

wisdom. They ought not indeed to be altered without grave reasons. But surely, at that moment, such reasons

were not wanting. To unite a scattered flock in one fold under one shepherd, to remove stumbling blocks

from the path of the weak, to reconcile hearts long estranged, to restore spiritual discipline to its primitive

vigour, to place the best and purest of Christian societies on a base broad enough to stand against all the

attacks of earth and hell, these were objects which might well justify some modification, not of Catholic

The Lower House, having heard this discourse, proceeded to appoint a Prolocutor. Sharp, who was probably

put forward by the members favourable to a comprehension as one of the highest churchmen among them,

proposed Tillotson. Jane, who had refused to act under the Royal Commission, was proposed on the other

side. After some animated discussion, Jane was elected by fifty five votes to twentyeight.508

The Prolocutor was formally presented to the Bishop of London, and made, according to ancient usage, a

Latin oration. In this oration the Anglican Church was extolled as the most perfect of all institutions. There

was a very intelligible intimation that no change whatever in her doctrine, her discipline, or her ritual was

required; and the discourse concluded with a most significant sentence. Compton, when a few months before

he exhibited himself in the somewhat unclerical character of a colonel of horse, had ordered the colours of his

regiment to be embroidered with the well known words "Nolumus leges Angliae mutari"; and with these

Still the Low Churchmen did not relinquish all hope. They very wisely determined to begin by proposing to

substitute lessons taken from the canonical books for the lessons taken from the Apocrypha. It should seem

that this was a suggestion which, even if there had not been a single dissenter in the kingdom, might well

have been received with favour. For the Church had, in her sixth Article, declared that the canonical books

were, and that the Apocryphal books were not, entitled to be called Holy Scriptures, and to be regarded as the

rule of faith. Even this reform, however, the High Churchmen were determined to oppose. They asked, in

pamphlets which covered the counters of Paternoster Row and Little Britain, why country congregations

should be deprived of the pleasure of hearing about the ball of pitch with which Daniel choked the dragon,

and about the fish whose liver gave forth such a fume as sent the devil flying from Ecbatana to Egypt. And

were there not chapters of the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach far more interesting and edifying than the

genealogies and muster rolls which made up a large part of the Chronicles of the Jewish Kings and of the

narrative of Nehemiah? No grave divine however would have liked to maintain, in Henry the Seventh's

Chapel, that it was impossible to find, in many hundreds of pages dictated by the Holy Spirit, fifty or sixty

chapters more edifying than any thing which could be extracted from the works of the most respectable

uninspired moralist or historian. The leaders of the majority therefore determined to shun a debate in which

they must have been reduced to a disagreeable dilemma. Their plan was, not to reject the recommendations of

the Commissioners, but to prevent those recommendations from being discussed; and with this view a system

The law, as it had been interpreted during a long course of years, prohibited the Convocation from even

deliberating on any ecclesiastical ordinance without a previous warrant from the Crown. Such a warrant,

sealed with the great seal, was brought in form to Henry the Seventh's Chapel by Nottingham. He at the same

time delivered a message from the King. His Majesty exhorted the assembly to consider calmly and without

prejudice the recommendations of the Commission, and declared that he had nothing in view but the honour

and advantage of the Protestant religion in general, and of the Church of England in particular.510

The Bishops speedily agreed on an address of thanks for the royal message, and requested the concurrence of

the Lower House. Jane and his adherents raised objection after objection. First they claimed the privilege of

presenting a separate address. When they were forced to waive this claim, they refused to agree to any

expression which imported that the Church of England had any fellowship with any other Protestant

community. Amendments and reasons were sent backward and forward. Conferences were held at which

Burnet on one side and Jane on the other were the chief speakers. At last, with great difficulty, a compromise

was made; and an address, cold and ungracious compared with that which the Bishops had framed, was

presented to the King in the Banqueting House. He dissembled his vexation, returned a kind answer, and

intimated a hope that the assembly would now at length proceed to consider the great question of

Such however was not the intention of the leaders of the Lower House. As soon as they were again in Henry

the Seventh's Chapel, one of them raised a debate about the nonjuring bishops. In spite of the unfortunate

scruple which those prelates entertained, they were learned and holy men. Their advice might, at this

conjuncture, be of the greatest service to the Church. The Upper House was hardly an Upper House in the

absence of the Primate and of many of his most respectable suffragans. Could nothing be done to remedy this

evil?512 Another member complained of some pamphlets which had lately appeared, and in which the

Convocation was not treated with proper deference. The assembly took fire. Was it not monstrous that this

heretical and schismatical trash should be cried by the hawkers about the streets, and should be exposed to

sale in the booths of Westminster Hall, within a hundred yards of the Prolocutor's chair? The work of

mutilating the Liturgy and of turning cathedrals into conventicles might surely be postponed till the Synod

had taken measures to protect its own freedom and dignity. It was then debated how the printing of such

scandalous books should be prevented. Some were for indictments, some for ecclesiastical censures.513 In

such deliberations as these week after week passed away. Not a single proposition tending to a

Comprehension had been even discussed. Christmas was approaching. At Christmas there was to be a recess.

The Bishops were desirous that, during the recess, a committee should sit to prepare business. The Lower

House refused to consent.514 That House, it was now evident, was fully determined not even to enter on the

consideration of any part of the plan which had been framed by the Royal Commissioners. The proctors of

the dioceses were in a worse humour than when they first came up to Westminster. Many of them had

probably never before passed a week in the capital, and had not been aware how great the difference was

between a town divine and a country divine. The sight of the luxuries and comforts enjoyed by the popular

preachers of the city raised, not unnaturally, some sore feeling in a Lincolnshire or Caernarvonshire vicar

who was accustomed to live as hardly as small farmer. The very circumstance that the London clergy were

generally for a comprehension made the representatives of the rural clergy obstinate on the other side.515

The prelates were, as a body, sincerely desirous that some concession might be made to the nonconformists.

But the prelates were utterly unable to curb the mutinous democracy. They were few in number. Some of

them were objects of extreme dislike to the parochial clergy. The President had not the full authority of a

primate; nor was he sorry to see those who had, as he concerned, used him ill, thwarted and mortified. It was

necessary to yield. The Convocation was prorogued for six weeks. When those six weeks had expired, it was

prorogued again; and many years elapsed before it was permitted to transact business.

So ended, and for ever, the hope that the Church of England might be induced to make some concession to

the scruples of the nonconformists. A learned and respectable minority of the clerical order relinquished that

hope with deep regret. Yet in a very short time even Barnet and Tillotson found reason to believe that their

defeat was really an escape, and that victory would have been a disaster. A reform, such as, in the days of

Elizabeth, would have united the great body of English Protestants, would, in the days of William, have

alienated more hearts than it would have conciliated. The schism which the oaths had produced was, as yet,

insignificant. Innovations such as those proposed by the Royal Commissioners would have given it a terrible

importance. As yet a layman, though he might think the proceedings of the Convention unjustifiable, and

though he might applaud the virtue of the nonjuring clergy, still continued to sit under the accustomed pulpit,

and to kneel at the accustomed altar. But if, just at this conjuncture, while his mind was irritated by what he

thought the wrong done to his favourite divines, and while he was perhaps doubting whether he ought not to

follow them, his ears and eyes had been shocked by changes in the worship to which he was fondly attached,

if the compositions of the doctors of the Jerusalem Chamber had taken the place of the old collects, if he had

seen clergymen without surplices carrying the chalice and the paten up and down the aisle to seated

communicants, the tie which bound him to the Established Church would have been dissolved. He would

have repaired to some nonjuring assembly, where the service which he loved was performed without

mutilation. The new sect, which as yet consisted almost exclusively of priests, would soon have been swelled

by numerous and large congregations; and in those congregations would have been found a much greater

proportion of the opulent, of the highly descended, and of the highly educated, than any other body of

dissenters could show. The Episcopal schismatics, thus reinforced, would probably have been as formidable

to the new King and his successors as ever the Puritan schismatics had been to the princes of the House of

Stuart. It is an indisputable and a most instructive fact, that we are, in a great measure, indebted for the civil

and religious liberty which we enjoy to the pertinacity with which the High Church party, in the Convocation

The Parliament meets; Retirement of HalifaxSupplies votedThe Bill of Rights passedInquiry into

Naval AbusesInquiry into the Conduct of the Irish WarReception of Walker in England Edmund

HampdenThe Corporation Bill Debates on the Indemnity BillCase of Sir Robert SawyerThe King

purposes to retire to HollandHe is induced to change his Intention; the Whigs oppose his going to

IrelandHe prorogues the ParliamentJoy of the ToriesDissolution and General ElectionChanges in

the Executive DepartmentsCaermarthen Chief MinisterSir John LowtherRise and Progress of

Parliamentary Corruption in EnglandSir John TrevorGodolphin retires; Changes at the

AdmiraltyChanges in the Commissions of LieutenancyTemper of the Whigs; Dealings of some Whigs

with Saint Germains; Shrewsbury; FergusonHopes of the Jacobites Meeting of the new Parliament;

Settlement of the Revenue Provision for the Princess of DenmarkBill declaring the Acts of the

preceding Parliament validDebate on the Changes in the Lieutenancy of LondonAbjuration BillAct

of GraceThe Parliament prorogued; Preparations for the first War Administration of James at

DublinAn auxiliary Force sent from France to IrelandPlan of the English Jacobites; Clarendon,

Aylesbury, DartmouthPennPrestonThe Jacobites betrayed by FullerCrone arrestedDifficulties

of WilliamConduct of ShrewsburyThe Council of NineConduct of ClarendonPenn held to

BailInterview between William and Burnet; William sets out for IrelandTrial of CroneDanger of

Invasion and Insurrection; Tourville's Fleet in theChannelArrests of suspected Persons Torrington

ordered to give Battle to TourvilleBattle of Beachy HeadAlarm in London; Battle of FleurusSpirit of

WHILE the Convocation was wrangling on one side of Old Palace Yard, the Parliament was wrangling even

more fiercely on the other. The Houses, which had separated on the twentieth of August, had met again on

the nineteenth of October. On the day of meeting an important change struck every eye. Halifax was no

longer on the woolsack. He had reason to expect that the persecution, from which in the preceding session he

had narrowly escaped, would be renewed. The events which had taken place during the recess, and especially

the disasters of the campaign in Ireland, had furnished his persecutors with fresh means of annoyance. His

administration had not been successful; and, though his failure was partly to be ascribed to causes against

which no human wisdom could have contended, it was also partly to be ascribed to the peculiarities of his

temper and of his intellect. It was certain that a large party in the Commons would attempt to remove him;

and he could no longer depend on the protection of his master. It was natural that a prince who was

emphatically a man of action should become weary of a minister who was a man of speculation. Charles, who

went to Council as he went to the play, solely to be amused, was delighted with an adviser who had a hundred

pleasant and ingenious things to say on both sides of every question. But William had no taste for

disquisitions and disputations, however lively and subtle, which occupied much time and led to no

conclusion. It was reported, and is not improbable, that on one occasion he could not refrain from expressing

in sharp terms at the council board his impatience at what seemed to him a morbid habit of indecision.517

Halifax, mortified by his mischances in public life, dejected by domestic calamities, disturbed by

apprehensions of an impeachment, and no longer supported by royal favour, became sick of public life, and

began to pine for the silence and solitude of his seat in Nottinghamshire, an old Cistercian Abbey buried deep

among woods. Early in October it was known that he would no longer preside in the Upper House. It was at

the same time whispered as a great secret that he meant to retire altogether from business, and that he retained

the Privy Seal only till a successor should he named. Chief Baron Atkyns was appointed Speaker of the

On some important points there appeared to be no difference of opinion in the legislature. The Commons

unanimously resolved that they would stand by the King in the work of reconquering Ireland, and that they

would enable him to prosecute with vigour the war against France.519 With equal unanimity they voted an

extraordinary supply of two millions.520 It was determined that the greater part of this sum should he levied

by an assessment on real property. The rest was to be raised partly by a poll tax, and partly by new duties on

tea, coffee and chocolate. It was proposed that a hundred thousand pounds should be exacted from the Jews;

and this proposition was at first favourably received by the House: but difficulties arose. The Jews presented

a petition in which they declared that they could not afford to pay such a sum, and that they would rather

leave the kingdom than stay there to be ruined. Enlightened politicians could not but perceive that special

taxation, laid on a small class which happens to be rich, unpopular and defenceless, is really confiscation, and

must ultimately improverish rather than enrich the State. After some discussion, the Jew tax was

The Bill of Rights, which, in the last Session, had, after causing much altercation between the Houses, been

suffered to drop, was again introduced, and was speedily passed. The peers no longer insisted that any person

should be designated by name as successor to the crown, if Mary, Anne and William should all die without

posterity. During eleven years nothing more was heard of the claims of the House of Brunswick.

The Bill of Rights contained some provisions which deserve special mention. The Convention had resolved

that it was contrary to the interest of the kingdom to be governed by a Papist, but had prescribed no test

which could ascertain whether a prince was or was not a Papist. The defect was now supplied. It was enacted

that every English sovereign should, in full Parliament, and at the coronation, repeat and subscribe the

It was also enacted that no person who should marry a Papist should be capable of reigning in England, and

that, if the Sovereign should marry a Papist, the subject should be absolved from allegiance. Burnet boasts

that this part of the Bill of Rights was his work. He had little reason to boast: for a more wretched specimen

of legislative workmanship will not easily be found. In the first place, no test is prescribed. Whether the

consort of a Sovereign has taken the oath of supremacy, has signed the declaration against transubstantiation,

has communicated according to the ritual of the Church of England, are very simple issues of fact. But

whether the consort of a Sovereign is or is not a Papist is a question about which people may argue for ever.

What is a Papist? The word is not a word of definite signification either in law or in theology. It is merely a

popular nickname, and means very different things in different mouths. Is every person a Papist who is

willing to concede to the Bishop of Rome a primacy among Christian prelates? If so, James the First, Charles

the First, Laud, Heylyn, were Papists.522 Or is the appellation to be confined to persons who hold the

ultramontane doctrines touching the authority of the Holy See? If so, neither Bossuet nor Pascal was a Papist.

What again is the legal effect of the words which absolve the subject from his allegiance? Is it meant that a

person arraigned for high treason may tender evidence to prove that the Sovereign has married a Papist?

Would Whistlewood, for example, have been entitled to an acquittal, if he could have proved that King

George the Fourth had married Mrs. Fitzherbert, and that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Papist? It is not easy to

believe that any tribunal would have gone into such a question. Yet to what purpose is it to enact that, in a

certain case, the subject shall be absolved from his allegiance, if the tribunal before which he is tried for a

violation of his allegiance is not to go into the question whether that case has arisen?

The question of the dispensing power was treated in a very different manner, was fully considered, and was

finally settled in the only way in which it could be settled. The Declaration of Right had gone no further than

to pronounce that the dispensing power, as of late exercised, was illegal. That a certain dispensing power

belonged to the Crown was a proposition sanctioned by authorities and precedents of which even Whig

lawyers could not speak without respect; but as to the precise extent of this power hardly any two jurists were

agreed; and every attempt to frame a definition had failed. At length by the Bill of Rights the anomalous

prerogative which had caused so many fierce disputes was absolutely and for ever taken away.523

In the House of Commons there was, as might have been expected, a series of sharp debates on the

misfortunes of the autumn. The negligence or corruption of the Navy Board, the frauds of the contractors, the

rapacity of the captains of the King's ships, the losses of the London merchants, were themes for many keen

speeches. There was indeed reason for anger. A severe inquiry, conducted by William in person at the

Treasury, had just elicited the fact that much of the salt with which the meat furnished to the fleet had been

cured had been by accident mixed with galls such as are used for the purpose of making ink. The victuallers

threw the blame on the rats, and maintained that the provisions thus seasoned, though certainly disagreeable

to the palate, were not injurious to health.524 The Commons were in no temper to listen to such excuses.

Several persons who had been concerned in cheating the government and poisoning the sailors were taken

into custody by the Serjeant.525 But no censure was passed on the chief offender, Torrington, nor does it

appear that a single voice was raised against him. He had personal friends in both parties. He had many

popular qualities. Even his vices were not those which excite public hatred. The people readily forgave a

courageous openhanded sailor for being too fond of his bottle, his boon companions and his mistresses and

did not sufficiently consider how great must be the perils of a country of which the safety depends on a man

sunk in indolence, stupified by wine, enervated by licentiousness, ruined by prodigality, and enslaved by

The sufferings of the army in Ireland called forth strong expressions of sympathy and indignation. The

Commons did justice to the firmness and wisdom with which Schomberg had conducted the most arduous of

all campaigns. That he had not achieved more was attributed chiefly to the villany of the Commissariat. The

pestilence itself it was said, would have been no serious calamity if it had not been aggravated by the

wickedness of man. The disease had generally spared those who had warm garments and bedding, and had

swept away by thousands those who were thinly clad and who slept on the wet ground. Immense sums had

been drawn out of the Treasury: yet the pay of the troops was in arrear. Hundreds of horses, tens of thousands

of shoes, had been paid for by the public: yet the baggage was left behind for want of beasts to draw it; and

the soldiers were marching barefoot through the mire. Seventeen hundred pounds had been charged to the

government for medicines: yet the common drugs with which every apothecary in the smallest market town

was provided were not to be found in the plaguestricken camp. The cry against Shales was loud. An address

was carried to the throne, requesting that he might be sent for to England, and that his accounts and papers

might be secured. With this request the King readily complied; but the Whig majority was not satisfied. By

whom had Shales been recommended for so important a place as that of Commissary General? He had been a

favourite at Whitehall in the worst times. He had been zealous for the Declaration of Indulgence. Why had

this creature of James been entrusted with the business of catering for the army of William? It was proposed

by some of those who were bent on driving all Tories and Trimmers from office to ask His Majesty by whose

advice a man so undeserving of the royal confidence had been employed. The most moderate and judicious

Whigs pointed out the indecency and impolicy of interrogating the King, and of forcing him either to accuse

his ministers or to quarrel with the representatives of his people. "Advise His Majesty, if you will," said

Somers, "to withdraw his confidence from the counsellors who recommended this unfortunate appointment.

Such advice, given, as we should probably give it, unanimously, must have great weight with him. But do not

put to him a question such as no private gentleman would willingly answer. Do not force him, in defence of

his own personal dignity, to protect the very men whom you wish him to discard." After a hard fight of two

days, and several divisions, the address was carried by a hundred and ninety five votes to a hundred and forty

six.526 The King, as might have been foreseen, coldly refused to turn informer; and the House did not press

him further.527 To another address, which requested that a Commission might be sent to examine into the

state of things in Ireland, William returned a very gracious answer, and desired the Commons to name the

Commissioners. The Commons, not to be outdone in courtesy, excused themselves, and left it to His

In the midst of the angry debates on the Irish war a pleasing incident produced for a moment goodhumour

and unanimity. Walker had arrived in London, and had been received there with boundless enthusiasm. His

face was in every print shop. Newsletters describing his person and his demeanour were sent to every corner

of the kingdom. Broadsides of prose and verse written in his praise were cried in every street. The Companies

of London feasted him splendidly in their halls. The common people crowded to gaze on him wherever he

moved, and almost stifled him with rough caresses. Both the Universities offered him the degree of Doctor of

Divinity. Some of his admirers advised him to present himself at the palace in that military garb in which he

had repeatedly headed the sallies of his fellow townsmen. But, with a better judgment than he sometimes

showed, he made his appearance at Hampton Court in the peaceful robe of his profession, was most

graciously received, and was presented with an order for five thousand pounds. "And do not think, Doctor,"

William said, with great benignity, "that I offer you this sum as payment for your services. I assure you that I

It is true that amidst the general applause the voice of detraction made itself heard. The defenders of

Londonderry were men of two nations and of two religions. During the siege, hatred of the Irishry had held

together all Saxons; and hatred of Popery had held together all Protestants. But, when the danger was over,

the Englishman and the Scotchman, the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian, began to wrangle about the

distribution of praises and rewards. The dissenting preachers, who had zealously assisted Walker in the hour

of peril, complained that, in the account which he published of the siege, he had, though acknowledging that

they had done good service, omitted to mention their names. The complaint was just; and, had it been made

in language becoming Christians and gentlemen, would probably have produced a considerable effect on the

public mind. But Walker's accusers in their resentment disregarded truth and decency, used scurrilous

language, brought calumnious accusations which were triumphantly refuted, and thus threw away the

advantage which they had possessed. Walker defended himself with moderation and candour. His friends

fought his battle with vigour, and retaliated keenly on his assailants. At Edinburgh perhaps the public opinion

might have been against him. But in London the controversy seems only to have raised his character. He was

regarded as an Anglican divine of eminent merit, who, after having heroically defended his religion against

He presented to the Commons a petition setting forth the destitute condition to which the widows and

orphans of some brave men who had fallen during the siege were now reduced. The Commons instantly

passed a vote of thanks to him, and resolved to present to the King an address requesting that ten thousand

pounds might be distributed among the families whose sufferings had been so touchingly described. The next

day it was rumoured about the benches that Walker was in the lobby. He was called in. The Speaker, with

great dignity and grace, informed him that the House had made haste to comply with his request, commended

him in high terms for having taken on himself to govern and defend a city betrayed by its proper governors

and defenders, and charged him to tell those who had fought under him that their fidelity and valour would

About the same time the course of parliamentary business was diversified by another curious and interesting

episode, which, like the former, sprang out of the events of the Irish war. In the preceding spring, when every

messenger from Ireland brought evil tidings, and when the authority of James was acknowledged in every

part of that kingdom, except behind the ramparts of Londonderry and on the banks of Lough Erne, it was

natural that Englishmen should remember with how terrible an energy the great Puritan warriors of the

preceding generation had crushed the insurrection of the Celtic race. The names of Cromwell, of Ireton, and

of the other chiefs of the conquering army, were in many mouths. One of those chiefs, Edmund Ludlow, was

still living. At twentytwo he had served as a volunteer in the parliamentary army; at thirty he had risen to

the rank of Lieutenant General. He was now old; but the vigour of his mind was unimpaired. His courage was

of the truest temper; his understanding strong, but narrow. What he saw he saw clearly: but he saw not much

at a glance. In an age of perfidy and levity, he had, amidst manifold temptations and dangers, adhered firmly

to the principles of his youth. His enemies could not deny that his life had been consistent, and that with the

same spirit with which he had stood up against the Stuarts he had stood up against the Cromwells. There was

but a single blemish on his fame: but that blemish, in the opinion of the great majority of his countrymen, was

one for which no merit could compensate and which no time could efface. His name and seal were on the

After the Restoration, Ludlow found a refuge on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. He was accompanied

thither by another member of the High Court of Justice, John Lisle, the husband of that Alice Lisle whose

death has left a lasting stain on the memory of James the Second. But even in Switzerland the regicides were

not safe. A large price was set on their heads; and a succession of Irish adventurers, inflamed by national and

religious animosity, attempted to earn the bribe. Lisle fell by the hand of one of these assassins. But Ludlow

escaped unhurt from all the machinations of his enemies. A small knot of vehement and determined Whigs

regarded him with a veneration, which increased as years rolled away, and left him almost the only survivor,

certainly the most illustrious survivor, of a mighty race of men, the conquerors in a terrible civil war, the

judges of a king, the founders of a republic. More than once he had been invited by the enemies of the House

of Stuart to leave his asylum, to become their captain, and to give the signal for rebellion: but he had wisely

refused to take any part in the desperate enterprises which the Wildmans and Fergusons were never weary of

The Revolution opened a new prospect to him. The right of the people to resist oppression, a right which,

during many years, no man could assert without exposing himself to ecclesiastical anathemas and to civil

penalties, had been solemnly recognised by the Estates of the realm, and had been proclaimed by Garter King

at Arms on the very spot where the memorable scaffold had been set up forty years before. James had not,

indeed, like Charles, died the death of a traitor. Yet the punishment of the son might seem to differ from the

punishment of the father rather in degree than in principle. Those who had recently waged war on a tyrant,

who had turned him out of his palace, who had frightened him out of his country, who had deprived him of

his crown, might perhaps think that the crime of going one step further had been sufficiently expiated by

thirty years of banishment. Ludlow's admirers, some of whom appear to have been in high public situations,

assured him that he might safely venture over, nay, that he might expect to be sent in high command to

Ireland, where his name was still cherished by his old soldiers and by their children.533 He came and early in

September it was known that he was in London.534 But it soon appeared that he and his friends had

misunderstood the temper of the English people. By all, except a small extreme section of the Whig party, the

act, in which he had borne a part never to be forgotten, was regarded, not merely with the disapprobation due

to a great violation of law and justice, but with horror such as even the Gunpowder Plot had not excited. The

absurd and almost impious service which is still read in our churches on the thirtieth of January had produced

in the minds of the vulgar a strange association of ideas. The sufferings of Charles were confounded with the

sufferings of the Redeemer of mankind; and every regicide was a Judas, a Caiaphas or a Herod. It was true

that, when Ludlow sate on the tribunal in Westminster Hall, he was an ardent enthusiast of twenty eight, and

that he now returned from exile a greyheaded and wrinkled man in his seventieth year. Perhaps, therefore, if

he had been content to live in close retirement, and to shun places of public resort, even zealous Royalists

might not have grudged the old Republican a grave in his native soil. But he had no thought of hiding

himself. It was soon rumoured that one of those murderers, who had brought on England guilt, for which she

annually, in sackcloth and ashes, implored God not to enter into judgment with her, was strutting about the

streets of her capital, and boasting that he should ere long command her armies. His lodgings, it was said,

were the head quarters of the most noted enemies of monarchy and episcopacy.535 The subject was brought

before the House of Commons. The Tory members called loudly for justice on the traitor. None of the Whigs

ventured to say a word in his defence. One or two faintly expressed a doubt whether the fact of his return had

been proved by evidence such as would warrant a parliamentary proceeding. The objection was disregarded.

It was resolved, without a division, that the King should be requested to issue a proclamation for the

apprehending of Ludlow. Seymour presented the address; and the King promised to do what was asked.

Some days however elapsed before the proclamation appeared.536 Ludlow had time to make his escape, and

again hid himself in his Alpine retreat, never again to emerge. English travellers are still taken to see his

house close to the lake, and his tomb in a church among the vineyards which overlook the little town of

Vevay. On the house was formerly legible an inscription purporting that to him to whom God is a father

every land is a fatherland537; and the epitaph on the tomb still attests the feelings with which the stern old

Tories and Whigs had concurred, or had affected to concur, in paying honour to Walker and in putting a

brand on Ludlow. But the feud between the two parties was more bitter than ever. The King had entertained a

hope that, during the recess, the animosities which had in the preceding session prevented an Act of

Indemnity from passing would have been mitigated. On the day on which the Houses reassembled, he had

pressed them earnestly to put an end to the fear and discord which could never cease to exist, while great

numbers held their property and their liberty, and not a few even their lives, by an uncertain tenure. His

exhortation proved of no effect. October, November, December passed away; and nothing was done. An

Indemnity Bill indeed had been brought in, and read once; but it had ever since lain neglected on the table of

the House.538 Vindictive as had been the mood in which the Whigs had left Westminster, the mood in which

they returned was more vindictive still. Smarting from old sufferings, drunk with recent prosperity, burning

with implacable resentment, confident of irresistible strength, they were not less rash and headstrong than in

the days of the Exclusion Bill. Sixteen hundred and eighty was come again. Again all compromise was

rejected. Again the voices of the wisest and most upright friends of liberty were drowned by the clamour of

hotheaded and designing agitators. Again moderation was despised as cowardice, or execrated as treachery.

All the lessons taught by a cruel experience were forgotten. The very same men who had expiated, by years

of humiliation, of imprisonment, of penury, of exile, the folly with which they had misused the advantage

given them by the Popish plot, now misused with equal folly the advantage given them by the Revolution.

The second madness would, in all probability, like the first, have ended in their proscription, dispersion,

decimation, but for the magnanimity and wisdom of that great prince, who, bent on fulfilling his mission, and

insensible alike to flattery and to outrage, coldly and inflexibly saved them in their own despite.

It seemed that nothing but blood would satisfy them. The aspect and the temper of the House of Commons

reminded men of the time of the ascendency of Oates; and, that nothing might be wanting to the resemblance,

Oates himself was there. As a witness, indeed, he could now render no service: but he had caught the scent of

carnage, and came to gloat on the butchery in which he could no longer take an active part. His loathsome

features were again daily seen, and his well known "Ah Laard, ah Laard!" was again daily heard in the

lobbies and in the gallery.539 The House fell first on the renegades of the late reign. Of those renegades the

Earls of Peterborough and Salisbury were the highest in rank, but were also the lowest in intellect: for

Salisbury had always been an idiot; and Peterborough had long been a dotard. It was however resolved by the

Commons that both had, by joining the Church of Rome, committed high treason, and that both should be

impeached.540 A message to that effect was sent to the Lords. Poor old Peterborough was instantly taken into

custody, and was sent, tottering on a crutch, and wrapped up in woollen stuffs, to the Tower. The next day

Salisbury was brought to the bar of his peers. He muttered something about his youth and his foreign

education, and was then sent to bear Peterborough company.541 The Commons had meanwhile passed on to

offenders of humbler station and better understanding. Sir Edward Hales was brought before them. He had

doubtless, by holding office in defiance of the Test Act, incurred heavy penalties. But these penalties fell far

short of what the revengeful spirit of the victorious party demanded; and he was committed as a traitor.542

Then Obadiah Walker was led in. He behaved with a pusillanimity and disingenuousness which deprived him

of all claim to respect or pity. He protested that he had never changed his religion, that his opinions had

always been and still were those of some highly respectable divines of the Church of England, and that there

were points on which he differed from the Papists. In spite of this quibbling, he was pronounced guilty of

high treason, and sent to prison.543 Castlemaine was put next to the bar, interrogated, and committed under a

warrant which charged him with the capital crime of trying to reconcile the kingdom to the Church of

In the meantime the Lords had appointed a Committee to Inquire who were answerable for the deaths of

Russell, of Sidney, and of some other eminent Whigs. Of this Committee, which was popularly called the

Murder Committee, the Earl of Stamford, a Whig who had been deeply concerned in the plots formed by his

party against the Stuarts, was chairman.545 The books of the Council were inspected: the clerks of the

Council were examined: some facts disgraceful to the Judges, to the Solicitors of the Treasury, to the

witnesses for the Crown, and to the keepers of the state prisons, were elicited: but about the packing of the

juries no evidence could be obtained. The Sheriffs kept their own counsel. Sir Dudley North, in particular,

underwent a most severe cross examination with characteristic clearness of head and firmness of temper, and

steadily asserted that he had never troubled himself about the political opinions of the persons whom he put

on any panel, but had merely inquired whether they were substantial citizens. He was undoubtedly lying; and

so some of the Whig peers told him in very plain words and in very loud tones: but, though they were morally

certain of his guilt, they could find no proofs which would support a criminal charge against him. The

indelible stain however remains on his memory, and is still a subject of lamentation to those who, while

loathing his dishonesty and cruelty, cannot forget that he was one of the most original, profound and accurate

Halifax, more fortunate than Dudley North, was completely cleared, not only from legal, but also from moral

guilt. He was the chief object of attack; and yet a severe examination brought nothing to light that was not to

his honour. Tillotson was called as a witness. He swore that he had been the channel of communication

between Halifax and Russell when Russell was a prisoner in the Tower. "My Lord Halifax," said the Doctor,

"showed a very compassionate concern for my Lord Russell; and my Lord Russell charged me with his last

thanks for my Lord Halifax's humanity and kindness." It was proved that the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth

had borne similar testimony to Halifax's good nature. One hostile witness indeed was produced, John

Hampden, whose mean supplications and enormous bribes had saved his neck from the halter. He was now a

powerful and prosperous man: he was a leader of the dominant party in the House of Commons; and yet he

was one of the most unhappy beings on the face of the earth. The recollection of the pitiable figure which he

had made at the bar of the Old Bailey embittered his temper, and impelled him to avenge himself without

mercy on those who had directly or indirectly contributed to his humiliation. Of all the Whigs he was the

most intolerant and the most obstinately hostile to all plans of amnesty. The consciousness that he had

disgraced himself made him jealous of his dignity and quick to take offence. He constantly paraded his

services and his sufferings, as if he hoped that this ostentatious display would hide from others the stain

which nothing could hide from himself. Having during many months harangued vehemently against Halifax

in the House of Commons, he now came to swear against Halifax before the Lords. The scene was curious.

The witness represented himself as having saved his country, as having planned the Revolution, as having

placed their Majesties on the throne. He then gave evidence intended to show that his life had been

endangered by the machinations of the Lord Privy Seal: but that evidence missed the mark at which it was

aimed, and recoiled on him from whom it proceeded. Hampden was forced to acknowledge that he had sent

his wife to implore the intercession of the man whom he was now persecuting. "Is it not strange," asked

Halifax, "that you should have requested the good offices of one whose arts had brought your head into

peril?" "Not at all," said Hampden; "to whom was I to apply except to the men who were in power? I applied

to Lord Jeffreys: I applied to Father Petre; and I paid them six thousand pounds for their services." "But did

Lord Halifax take any money?" "No, I cannot say that he did." "And, Mr. Hampden, did not you afterwards

send your wife to thank him for his kindness?" "Yes, I believe I did," answered Hampden; "but I know of no

solid effects of that kindness. If there were any, I should be obliged to my Lord to tell me what they were."

Disgraceful as had been the appearance which this degenerate heir of an illustrious name had made at the Old

Bailey, the appearance which he made before the Committee of Murder was more disgraceful still.547 It is

pleasing to know that a person who had been far more cruelly wronged than he, but whose nature differed

widely from his, the nobleminded Lady Russell, remonstrated against the injustice with which the extreme

The malice of John Hampden, however, was unwearied and unabashed. A few days later, in a committee of

the whole House of Commons on the state of the nation, he made a bitter speech, in which he ascribed all the

disasters of the year to the influence of the men who had, in the days of the Exclusion Bill, been censured by

Parliaments, of the men who had attempted to mediate between James and William. The King, he said, ought

to dismiss from his counsels and presence all the three noblemen who had been sent to negotiate with him at

Hungerford. He went on to speak of the danger of employing men of republican principles. He doubtless

alluded to the chief object of his implacable malignity. For Halifax, though from temper averse to violent

changes, was well known to be in speculation a republican, and often talked, with much ingenuity and

pleasantry, against hereditary monarchy. The only effect, however, of the reflection now thrown on him was

to call forth a roar of derision. That a Hampden, that the grandson of the great leader of the Long Parliament,

that a man who boasted of having conspired with Algernon Sidney against the royal House, should use the

word republican as a term of reproach! When the storm of laughter had subsided, several members stood up

to vindicate the accused statesmen. Seymour declared that, much as he disapproved of the manner in which

the administration had lately been conducted, he could not concur in the vote which John Hampden had

proposed. "Look where you will," he said, "to Ireland, to Scotland, to the navy, to the army, you will find

abundant proofs of mismanagement. If the war is still to be conducted by the same hands, we can expect

nothing but a recurrence of the same disasters. But I am not prepared to proscribe men for the best thing that

they ever did in their lives, to proscribe men for attempting to avert a revolution by timely mediation." It was

justly said by another speaker that Halifax and Nottingham had been sent to the Dutch camp because they

possessed the confidence of the nation, because they were universally known to be hostile to the dispensing

power, to the Popish religion, and to the French ascendency. It was at length resolved that the King should be

requested in general terms to find out and to remove the authors of the late miscarriages.549 A committee

was appointed to prepare an Address. John Hampden was chairman, and drew up a representation in terms so

bitter that, when it was reported to the House, his own father expressed disapprobation, and one member

exclaimed: "This an address! It is a libel." After a sharp debate, the Address was recommitted, and was not

Indeed, the animosity which a large part of the House had felt against Halifax was beginning to abate. It was

known that, though he had not yet formally delivered up the Privy Seal, he had ceased to be a confidential

adviser of the Crown. The power which he had enjoyed during the first months of the reign of William and

Mary had passed to the more daring, more unscrupulous and more practical Caermarthen, against whose

influence Shrewsbury contended in vain. Personally Shrewsbury stood high in the royal favour: but he was a

leader of the Whigs, and, like all leaders of parties, was frequently pushed forward against his will by those

who seemed to follow him. He was himself inclined to a mild and moderate policy: but he had not sufficient

firmness to withstand the clamorous importunity with which such politicians as John Howe and John

Hampden demanded vengeance on their enemies. His advice had therefore, at this time, little weight with his

master, who neither loved the Tories nor trusted them, but who was fully determined not to proscribe them.

Meanwhile the Whigs, conscious that they had lately sunk in the opinion both of the King and of the nation,

resolved on making a bold and crafty attempt to become independent of both. A perfect account of that

attempt cannot be constructed out of the scanty and widely dispersed materials which have come down to us.

A bill for restoring the rights of those corporations which had surrendered their charters to the Crown during

the last two reigns had been brought into the House of Commons, had been received with general applause by

men of all parties, had been read twice, and had been referred to a select committee, of which Somers was

chairman. On the second of January Somers brought up the report. The attendance of Tories was scanty: for,

as no important discussion was expected, many country gentlemen had left town, and were keeping a merry

Christmas by the chimney fires of their manor houses. The muster of zealous Whigs was strong. As soon as

the bill had been reported, Sacheverell, renowned in the stormy parliaments of the reign of Charles the

Second as one of the ablest and keenest of the Exclusionists, stood up and moved to add a clause providing

that every municipal functionary who had in any manner been a party to the surrendering of the franchises of

a borough should be incapable for seven years of holding any office in that borough. The constitution of

almost every corporate town in England had been remodelled during that hot fit of loyalty which followed the

detection of the Rye House Plot; and, in almost every corporate town, the voice of the Tories had been for

delivering up the charter, and for trusting every thing to the paternal care of the Sovereign. The effect of

Sacheverell's clause, therefore, was to make some thousands of the most opulent and highly considered men

in the kingdom incapable, during seven years, of bearing any part in the government of the places in which

they resided, and to secure to the Whig party, during seven years, an overwhelming influence in borough

The minority exclaimed against the gross injustice of passing, rapidly and by surprise, at a season when

London was empty, a law of the highest importance, a law which retrospectively inflicted a severe penalty on

many hundreds of respectable gentlemen, a law which would call forth the strongest passions in every town

from Berwick to St. Ives, a law which must have a serious effect on the composition of the House itself.

Common decency required at least an adjournment. An adjournment was moved: but the motion was rejected

by a hundred and twentyseven votes to eightynine. The question was then put that Sacheverell's clause

should stand part of the bill, and was carried by a hundred and thirtythree to sixtyeight. Sir Robert Howard

immediately moved that every person who, being under Sacheverell's clause disqualified for municipal

office, should presume to take any such office, should forfeit five hundred pounds, and should be for life

incapable of holding any public employment whatever. The Tories did not venture to divide.551 The rules of

the House put it in the power of a minority to obstruct the progress of a bill; and this was assuredly one of the

very rare occasions on which that power would have been with great propriety exerted. It does not appear,

however, that the parliamentary tacticians of that age were aware of the extent to which a small number of

It was immediately resolved that the bill, enlarged by Sacheverell's and Howard's clauses, should be

ingrossed. The most vehement Whigs were bent on finally passing it within fortyeight hours. The Lords,

indeed, were not likely to regard it very favourably. But it should seem that some desperate men were

prepared to withhold the supplies till it should pass, nay, even to tack it to the bill of supply, and thus to place

the Upper House under the necessity of either consenting to a vast proscription of the Tories or refusing to the

government the means of carrying on the war.552 There were Whigs, however, honest enough to wish that

fair play should be given to the hostile party, and prudent enough to know that an advantage obtained by

violence and cunning could not be permanent. These men insisted that at least a week should be suffered to

elapse before the third reading, and carried their point. Their less scrupulous associates complained bitterly

that the good cause was betrayed. What new laws of war were these? Why was chivalrous courtesy to be

shown to foes who thought no stratagem immoral, and who had never given quarter? And what had been

done that was not in strict accordance with the law of Parliament? That law knew nothing of short notices and

long notices, of thin houses and full houses. It was the business of a representative of the people to be in his

place. If he chose to shoot and guzzle at his country seat when important business was under consideration at

Westminster, what right had he to murmur because more upright and laborious servants of the public passed,

in his absence, a bill which appeared to them necessary to the public safety? As however a postponement of a

few days appeared to be inevitable, those who had intended to gain the victory by stealing a march now

disclaimed that intention. They solemnly assured the King, who could not help showing some displeasure at

their conduct, and who felt much more displeasure than he showed, that they had owed nothing to surprise,

and that they were quite certain of a majority in the fullest house. Sacheverell is said to have declared with

great warmth that he would stake his seat on the issue, and that if he found himself mistaken he would never

show his face in Parliament again. Indeed, the general opinion at first was that the Whigs would win the day.

But it soon became clear that the fight would be a hard one. The mails had carried out along all the high roads

the tidings that, on the second of January, the Commons had agreed to a retrospective penal law against the

whole Tory party, and that, on the tenth, that law would be considered for the last time. The whole kingdom

was moved from Northumberland to Cornwall. A hundred knights and squires left their halls hung with

mistletoe and holly, and their boards groaning with brawn and plum porridge, and rode up post to town,

cursing the short days, the cold weather, the miry roads and the villanous Whigs. The Whigs, too, brought up

reinforcements, but not to the same extent; for the clauses were generally unpopular, and not without good

cause. Assuredly no reasonable man of any party will deny that the Tories, in surrendering to the Crown all

the municipal franchises of the realm, and, with those franchises, the power of altering the constitution of the

House of Commons, committed a great fault. But in that fault the nation itself had been an accomplice. If the

Mayors and Aldermen whom it was now proposed to punish had, when the tide of loyal enthusiasm ran high,

sturdily refused to comply with the wish of their Sovereign, they would have been pointed at in the street as

Roundhead knaves, preached at by the Rector, lampooned in ballads, and probably burned in effigy before

their own doors. That a community should be hurried into errors alternately by fear of tyranny and by fear of

anarchy is doubtless a great evil. But the remedy for that evil is not to punish for such errors some persons

who have merely erred with the rest, and who have since repented with the rest. Nor ought it to have been

forgotten that the offenders against whom Sacheverell's clause was directed had, in 1688, made large

atonement for the misconduct of which they had been guilty in 1683. They had, as a class, stood up firmly

against the dispensing power; and most of them had actually been turned out of their municipal offices by

James for refusing to support his policy. It is not strange therefore that the attempt to inflict on all these men

without exception a degrading punishment should have raised such a storm of public indignation as many

As the decisive conflict drew near, and as the muster of the Tories became hourly stronger and stronger, the

uneasiness of Sacheverell and of his confederates increased. They found that they could hardly hope for a

complete victory. They must make some concession. They must propose to recommit the bill. They must

declare themselves willing to consider whether any distinction could be made between the chief offenders

and the multitudes who had been misled by evil example. But as the spirit of one party fell the spirit of the

other rose. The Tories, glowing with resentment which was but too just, were resolved to listen to no terms of

The tenth of January came; and, before the late daybreak of that season, the House was crowded. More than a

hundred and sixty members had come up to town within a week. From dawn till the candles had burned down

to their sockets the ranks kept unbroken order; and few members left their seats except for a minute to take a

crust of bread or a glass of claret. Messengers were in waiting to carry the result to Kensington, where

William, though shaken by a violent cough, sate up till midnight, anxiously expecting the news, and writing

The only remaining account of the debate is defective and confused. But from that account it appears that the

excitement was great. Sharp things were said. One young Whig member used language so hot that he was in

danger of being called to the bar. Some reflections were thrown on the Speaker for allowing too much licence

to his own friends. But in truth it mattered little whether he called transgressors to order or not. The House

had long been quite unmanageable; and veteran members bitterly regretted the old gravity of debate and the

old authority of the chair.553 That Somers disapproved of the violence of the party to which he belonged may

be inferred, both from the whole course of his public life, and from the very significant fact that, though he

had charge of the Corporation Bill, he did not move the penal clauses, but left that ungracious office to men

more impetuous and less sagacious than himself. He did not however abandon his allies in this emergency,

but spoke for them, and tried to make the best of a very bad case. The House divided several times. On the

first division a hundred and seventyfour voted with Sacheverell, a hundred and seventynine against him.

Still the battle was stubbornly kept up; but the majority increased from five to ten, from ten to twelve, and

from twelve to eighteen. Then at length, after a stormy sitting of fourteen hours, the Whigs yielded. It was

near midnight when, to the unspeakable joy and triumph of the Tories, the clerk tore away from the

parchment on which the bill had been engrossed the odious clauses of Sacheverell and Howard.554

Emboldened by this great victory, the Tories made an attempt to push forward the Indemnity Bill which had

lain many weeks neglected on the table.555 But the Whigs, notwithstanding their recent defeat, were still the

majority of the House; and many members, who had shrunk from the unpopularity which they would have

incurred by supporting the Sacheverell clause and the Howard clause, were perfectly willing to assist in

retarding the general pardon. They still propounded their favourite dilemma. How, they asked, was it possible

to defend this project of amnesty without condemning the Revolution? Could it be contended that crimes

which had been grave enough to justify resistance had not been grave enough to deserve punishment? And, if

those crimes were of such magnitude that they could justly be visited on the Sovereign whom the

Constitution had exempted from responsibility, on what principle was immunity to be granted to his advisers

and tools, who were beyond all doubt responsible? One facetious member put this argument in a singular

form. He contrived to place in the Speaker's chair a paper which, when examined, appeared to be a Bill of

Indemnity for King James, with a sneering preamble about the mercy which had, since the Revolution, been

extended to more heinous offenders, and about the indulgence due to a King, who, in oppressing his people,

On the same day on which this mock Bill of Indemnity disturbed the gravity of the Commons, it was moved

that the House should go into Committee on the real Bill. The Whigs threw the motion out by a hundred and

ninetythree votes to a hundred and fiftysix. They then proceeded to resolve that a bill of pains and

penalties against delinquents should be forthwith brought in, and engrafted on the Bill of Indemnity.557

A few hours later a vote passed that showed more clearly than any thing that had yet taken place how little

chance there was that the public mind would be speedily quieted by an amnesty. Few persons stood higher in

the estimation of the Tory party than Sir Robert Sawyer. He was a man of ample fortune and aristocratical

connections, of orthodox opinions and regular life, an able and experienced lawyer, a well read scholar, and,

in spite of a little pomposity, a good speaker. He had been Attorney General at the time of the detection of the

Rye House Plot; he had been employed for the Crown in the prosecutions which followed; and he had

conducted those prosecutions with an eagerness which would, in our time, be called cruelty by all parties, but

which, in his own time, and to his own party, seemed to be merely laudable zeal. His friends indeed asserted

that he was conscientious even to scrupulosity in matters of life and death;558 but this is an eulogy which

persons who bring the feelings of the nineteenth century to the study of the State Trials of the seventeenth

century will have some difficulty in understanding. The best excuse which can be made for this part of his

life is that the stain of innocent blood was common to him with almost all the eminent public men of those

evil days. When we blame him for prosecuting Russell, we must not forget that Russell had prosecuted

Great as Sawyer's offences were, he had made great atonement for them. He had stood up manfully against

Popery and despotism; he had, in the very presence chamber, positively refused to draw warrants in

contravention of Acts of Parliament; he had resigned his lucrative office rather than appear in Westminster

Hall as the champion of the dispensing power; he had been the leading counsel for the seven Bishops; and he

had, on the day of their trial, done his duty ably, honestly, and fearlessly. He was therefore a favourite with

High Churchmen, and might be thought to have fairly earned his pardon from the Whigs. But the Whigs were

not in a pardoning mood; and Sawyer was now called to account for his conduct in the case of Sir Thomas

If Armstrong was not belied, he was deep in the worst secrets of the Rye House Plot, and was one of those

who undertook to slay the two royal brothers. When the conspiracy was discovered, he fled to the Continent

and was outlawed. The magistrates of Leyden were induced by a bribe to deliver him up. He was hurried on

board of an English ship, carried to London, and brought before the King's Bench. Sawyer moved the Court

to award execution on the outlawry. Armstrong represented that a year had not yet elapsed since he had been

outlawed, and that, by an Act passed in the reign of Edward the Sixth, an outlaw who yielded himself within

the year was entitled to plead Not Guilty, and to put himself on his country. To this it was answered that

Armstrong had not yielded himself, that he had been dragged to the bar a prisoner, and that he had no right to

claim a privilege which was evidently meant to be given only to persons who voluntarily rendered themselves

up to public justice. Jeffreys and the other judges unanimously overruled Armstrong's objection, and granted

the award of execution. Then followed one of the most terrible of the many terrible scenes which, in those

times, disgraced our Courts. The daughter of the unhappy man was at his side. "My Lord," she cried out, "you

will not murder my father. This is murdering a man." "How now?" roared the Chief Justice. "Who is this

woman? Take her, Marshal. Take her away." She was forced out, crying as she went, "God Almighty's

judgments light on you!" "God Almighty's judgment," said Jeffreys, "will light on traitors. Thank God, I am

clamour proof." When she was gone, her father again insisted on what he conceived to be his right. "I ask" he

said, "only the benefit of the law." "And, by the grace of God, you shall have it," said the judge. "Mr. Sheriff,

see that execution be done on Friday next. There is the benefit of the law for you." On the following Friday,

Armstrong was hanged, drawn and quartered; and his head was placed over Westminster Hall.559

The insolence and cruelty of Jeffreys excite, even at the distance of so many years, an indignation which

makes it difficult to be just to him. Yet a perfectly dispassionate inquirer may perhaps think it by no means

clear that the award of execution was illegal. There was no precedent; and the words of the Act of Edward the

Sixth may, without any straining, be construed as the Court construed them. Indeed, had the penalty been

only fine or imprisonment, nobody would have seen any thing reprehensible in the proceeding. But to send a

man to the gallows as a traitor, without confronting him with his accusers, without hearing his defence, solely

because a timidity which is perfectly compatible with innocence has impelled him to hide himself, is surely a

violation, if not of any written law, yet of those great principles to which all laws ought to conform. The case

was brought before the House of Commons. The orphan daughter of Armstrong came to the bar to demand

vengeance; and a warm debate followed. Sawyer was fiercely attacked and strenuously defended. The Tories

declared that he appeared to them to have done only what, as counsel for the Crown, he was bound to do, and

to have discharged his duty to God, to the King, and to the prisoner. If the award was legal, nobody was to

blame; and, if the award was illegal, the blame lay, not with the Attorney General, but with the Judges. There

would be an end of all liberty of speech at the bar, if an advocate was to be punished for making a strictly

regular application to a Court, and for arguing that certain words in a statute were to be understood in a

certain sense. The Whigs called Sawyer murderer, bloodhound, hangman. If the liberty of speech claimed by

advocates meant the liberty of haranguing men to death, it was high time that the nation should rise up and

exterminate the whole race of lawyers. "Things will never be well done," said one orator, "till some of that

profession be made examples." "No crime to demand execution!" exclaimed John Hampden. "We shall be

told next that it was no crime in the Jews to cry out 'Crucify him.'" A wise and just man would probably have

been of opinion that this was not a case for severity. Sawyer's conduct might have been, to a certain extent,

culpable: but, if an Act of Indemnity was to be passed at all, it was to be passed for the benefit of persons

whose conduct had been culpable. The question was not whether he was guiltless, but whether his guilt was

of so peculiarly black a dye that he ought, notwithstanding all his sacrifices and services, to be excluded by

name from the mercy which was to be granted to many thousands of offenders. This question calm and

impartial judges would probably have decided in his favour. It was, however, resolved that he should be

On the morrow the Bill of Indemnity, now transformed into a Bill of Pains and Penalties, was again

discussed. The Whigs consented to refer it to a Committee of the whole House, but proposed to instruct the

Committee to begin its labours by making out a list of the offenders who were to be proscribed. The Tories

moved the previous question. The House divided; and the Whigs carried their point by a hundred and ninety

The King watched these events with painful anxiety. He was weary of his crown. He had tried to do justice to

both the contending parties; but justice would satisfy neither. The Tories hated him for protecting the

Dissenters. The Whigs hated him for protecting the Tories. The amnesty seemed to be more remote than

when, ten months before, he first recommended it from the throne. The last campaign in Ireland had been

disastrous. It might well be that the next campaign would be more disastrous still. The malpractices, which

had done more than the exhalations of the marshes of Dundalk to destroy the efficiency of the English troops,

were likely to be as monstrous as ever. Every part of the administration was thoroughly disorganized; and the

people were surprised and angry because a foreigner, newly come among them, imperfectly acquainted with

them, and constantly thwarted by them, had not, in a year, put the whole machine of government to rights.

Most of his ministers, instead of assisting him, were trying to get up addresses and impeachments against

each other. Yet if he employed his own countrymen, on whose fidelity and attachment he could rely, a

general cry of rage was set up by all the English factions. The knavery of the English Commissariat had

destroyed an army: yet a rumour that he intended to employ an able, experienced, and trusty Commissary

from Holland had excited general discontent. The King felt that he could not, while thus situated, render any

service to that great cause to which his whole soul was devoted. Already the glory which he had won by

conducting to a successful issue the most important enterprise of that age was becoming dim. Even his

friends had begun to doubt whether he really possessed all that sagacity and energy which had a few months

before extorted the unwilling admiration of his enemies. But he would endure his splendid slavery no longer.

He would return to his native country. He would content himself with being the first citizen of a

commonwealth to which the name of Orange was dear. As such, he might still be foremost among those who

were banded together in defence of the liberties of Europe. As for the turbulent and ungrateful islanders, who

detested him because he would not let them tear each other in pieces, Mary must try what she could do with

them. She was born on their soil. She spoke their language. She did not dislike some parts of their Liturgy,

which they fancied to be essential, and which to him seemed at best harmless. If she had little knowledge of

politics and war, she had what might be more useful, feminine grace and tact, a sweet temper, a smile and a

kind word for every body. She might be able to compose the disputes which distracted the State and the

Church. Holland, under his government, and England under hers, might act cordially together against the

He secretly ordered preparations to be made for his voyage. Having done this, he called together a few of his

chief counsellors, and told them his purpose. A squadron, he said, was ready to convey him to his country. He

had done with them. He hoped that the Queen would be more successful. The ministers were thunderstruck.

For once all quarrels were suspended. The Tory Caermarthen on one side, the Whig Shrewsbury on the other,

expostulated and implored with a pathetic vehemence rare in the conferences of statesmen. Many tears were

shed. At length the King was induced to give up, at least for the present, his design of abdicating the

government. But he announced another design which he was fully determined not to give up. Since he was

still to remain at the head of the English administration, he would go himself to Ireland. He would try

whether the whole royal authority strenuously exerted on the spot where the fate of the empire was to be

That he had seriously meditated a retreat to Holland long continued to be a secret, not only to the multitude,

but even to the Queen.563 That he had resolved to take the command of his army in Ireland was soon

rumoured all over London. It was known that his camp furniture was making, and that Sir Christopher Wren

was busied in constructing a house of wood which was to travel about, packed in two waggons, and to be set

up wherever His Majesty might fix his quarters.564 The Whigs raised a violent outcry against the whole

scheme. Not knowing, or affecting not to know, that it had been formed by William and by William alone,

and that none of his ministers had dared to advise him to encounter the Irish swords and the Irish atmosphere,

the whole party confidently affirmed that it had been suggested by some traitor in the cabinet, by some Tory

who hated the Revolution and all that had sprung from the Revolution. Would any true friend have advised

His Majesty, infirm in health as he was, to expose himself, not only to the dangers of war, but to the

malignity of a climate which had recently been fatal to thousands of men much stronger than himself? In

private the King sneered bitterly at this anxiety for his safety. It was merely, in his judgment, the anxiety

which a hard master feels lest his slaves should become unfit for their drudgery. The Whigs, he wrote to

Portland, were afraid to lose their tool before they had done their work. "As to their friendship," he added,

"you know what it is worth." His resolution, he told his friend, was unalterably fixed. Every thing was at

stake; and go he must, even though the Parliament should present an address imploring him to stay.565

He soon learned that such an address would be immediately moved in both Houses and supported by the

whole strength of the Whig party. This intelligence satisfied him that it was time to take a decisive step. He

would not discard the Whigs but he would give them a lesson of which they stood much in need. He would

break the chain in which they imagined that they had him fast. He would not let them have the exclusive

possession of power. He would not let them persecute the vanquished party. In their despite, he would grant

an amnesty to his people. In their despite, he would take the command of his army in Ireland. He arranged his

plan with characteristic prudence, firmness, and secrecy. A single Englishman it was necessary to trust: for

William was not sufficiently master of our language to address the Houses from the throne in his own words;

and, on very important occasions, his practice was to write his speech in French, and to employ a translator. It

is certain that to one person, and to one only, the King confided the momentous resolution which he had

On the twentyseventh of January, Black Rod knocked at the door of the Commons. The Speaker and the

members repaired to the House of Lords. The King was on the throne. He gave his assent to the Supply Bill,

thanked the Houses for it, announced his intention of going to Ireland, and prorogued the Parliament. None

could doubt that a dissolution would speedily follow. As the concluding words, "I have thought it convenient

now to put an end to this session," were uttered, the Tories, both above and below the bar, broke forth into a

shout of joy. The King meanwhile surveyed his audience from the throne with that bright eagle eye which

nothing escaped. He might be pardoned if he felt some little vindictive pleasure in annoying those who had

cruelly annoyed him. "I saw," he wrote to Portland the next day, "faces an ell long. I saw some of those men

A few hours after the prorogation, a hundred and fifty Tory members of Parliament had a parting dinner

together at the Apollo Tavern in Fleet Street, before they set out for their counties. They were in better temper

with William than they had been since his father in law had been turned out of Whitehall. They had scarcely

recovered from the joyful surprise with which they had heard it announced from the throne that the session

was at an end. The recollection of their danger and the sense of their deliverance were still fresh. They talked

of repairing to Court in a body to testify their gratitude: but they were induced to forego their intention; and

not without cause: for a great crowd of squires after a revel, at which doubtless neither October nor claret had

been spared, might have caused some inconvenience in the presence chamber. Sir John Lowther, who in

wealth and influence was inferior to no country gentleman of that age, was deputed to carry the thanks of the

assembly to the palace. He spoke, he told the King, the sense of a great body of honest gentlemen. They

begged His Majesty to be assured that they would in their counties do their best to serve him; and they

cordially wished him a safe voyage to Ireland, a complete victory, a speedy return, and a long and happy

reign. During the following week, many, who had never shown their faces in the circle at Saint James's since

the Revolution, went to kiss the King's hand. So warmly indeed did those who had hitherto been regarded as

half Jacobites express their approbation of the policy of the government that the thoroughgoing Jacobites

were much disgusted, and complained bitterly of the strange blindness which seemed to have come on the

All the acts of William, at this time, indicated his determination to restrain, steadily though gently, the

violence of the Whigs, and to conciliate, if possible, the good will of the Tories. Several persons whom the

Commons had thrown into prison for treason were set at liberty on bail.568 The prelates who held that their

allegiance was still due to James were treated with a tenderness rare in the history of revolutions. Within a

week after the prorogation, the first of February came, the day on which those ecclesiastics who refused to

take the oath were to be finally deprived. Several of the suspended clergy, after holding out till the last

moment, swore just in time to save themselves from beggary. But the Primate and five of his suffragans were

still inflexible. They consequently forfeited their bishoprics; but Sancroft was informed that the King had not

yet relinquished the hope of being able to make some arrangement which might avert the necessity of

appointing successors, and that the nonjuring prelates might continue for the present to reside in their palaces.

Their receivers were appointed receivers for the Crown, and continued to collect the revenues of the vacant

sees.569 Similar indulgence was shown to some divines of lower rank. Sherlock, in particular, continued,

after his deprivation, to live unmolested in his official mansion close to the Temple Church.

And now appeared a proclamation dissolving the Parliament. The writs for a general election went out; and

soon every part of the kingdom was in a ferment. Van Citters, who had resided in England during many

eventful years, declared that he had never seen London more violently agitated.570 The excitement was kept

up by compositions of all sorts, from sermons with sixteen heads down to jingling street ballads. Lists of

divisions were, for the first time in our history, printed and dispersed for the information of constituent

bodies. Two of these lists may still be seen in old libraries. One of the two, circulated by the Whigs,

contained the names of those Tories who had voted against declaring the throne vacant. The other, circulated

by the Tories, contained the names of those Whigs who had supported the Sacheverell clause.

It soon became clear that public feeling had undergone a great change during the year which had elapsed

since the Convention had met; and it is impossible to deny that this change was, at least in part, the natural

consequence and the just punishment of the intemperate and vindictive conduct of the Whigs. Of the city of

London they thought themselves sure. The Livery had in the preceding year returned four zealous Whigs

without a contest. But all the four had voted for the Sacheverell clause; and by that clause many of the

merchant princes of Lombard Street and Cornhill, men powerful in the twelve great companies, men whom

the goldsmiths followed humbly, hat in hand, up and down the arcades of the Royal Exchange, would have

been turned with all indignity out of the Court of Aldermen and out of the Common Council. The struggle

was for life or death. No exertions, no artifices, were spared. William wrote to Portland that the Whigs of the

City, in their despair, stuck at nothing, and that, as they went on, they would soon stand as much in need of

an Act of Indemnity as the Tories. Four Tories however were returned, and that by so decisive a majority,

that the Tory who stood lowest polled four hundred votes more than the Whig who stood highest.571 The

Sheriffs, desiring to defer as long as possible the triumph of their enemies, granted a scrutiny. But, though the

majority was diminished, the result was not affected.572 At Westminster, two opponents of the Sacheverell

clause were elected without a contest.573 But nothing indicated more strongly the disgust excited by the

proceedings of the late House of Commons than what passed in the University of Cambridge. Newton retired

to his quiet observatory over the gate of Trinity College. Two Tories were returned by an overwhelming

majority. At the head of the poll was Sawyer, who had, but a few days before, been excepted from the

Indemnity Bill and expelled from the House of Commons. The records of the University contain curious

proofs that the unwise severity with which he had been treated had raised an enthusiastic feeling in his

favour. Newton voted for Sawyer; and this remarkable fact justifies us in believing that the great philosopher,

in whose genius and virtue the Whig party justly glories, had seen the headstrong and revengeful conduct of

It was soon plain that the Tories would have a majority in the new House of Commons.575 All the leading

Whigs however obtained seats, with one exception. John Hampden was excluded, and was regretted only by

The King meanwhile was making, in almost every department of the executive government, a change

corresponding to the change which the general election was making in the composition of the legislature.

Still, however, he did not think of forming what is now called a ministry. He still reserved to himself more

especially the direction of foreign affairs; and he superintended with minute attention all the preparations for

the approaching campaign in Ireland. In his confidential letters he complained that he had to perform, with

little or no assistance, the task of organizing the disorganized military establishments of the kingdom. The

work, he said, was heavy; but it must be done; for everything depended on it.577 In general, the government

was still a government by independent departments; and in almost every department Whigs and Tories were

still mingled, though not exactly in the old proportions. The Whig element had decidedly predominated, in

Halifax had laid down the Privy Seal. It was offered to Chesterfield, a Tory who had voted in the Convention

for a Regency. But Chesterfield refused to quit his country house and gardens in Derbyshire for the Court and

the Council Chamber; and the Privy Seal was put into Commission.578 Caermarthen was now the chief

adviser of the Crown on all matters relating to the internal administration and to the management of the two

Houses of Parliament. The white staff, and the immense power which accompanied the white staff, William

was still determined never to entrust to any subject. Caermarthen therefore, continued to be Lord President;

but he took possession of a suite of apartments in Saint James's Palace which was considered as peculiarly

belonging to the Prime Minister.579 He had, during the preceding year, pleaded ill health as an excuse for

seldom appearing at the Council Board; and the plea was not without foundation, for his digestive organs had

some morbid peculiarities which puzzled the whole College of Physicians; his complexion was livid; his

frame was meagre; and his face, handsome and intellectual as it was, had a haggard look which indicated the

restlessness of pain as well as the restlessness of ambition.580 As soon, however, as he was once more

minister, he applied himself strenuously to business, and toiled every day, and all day long, with an energy

Though he could not obtain for himself the office of Lord Treasurer, his influence at the Treasury was great.

Monmouth, the First Commissioner, and Delamere, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, two of the most violent

Whigs in England, quitted their seats. On this, as on many other occasions, it appeared that they had nothing

but their Whiggism in common. The volatile Monmouth, sensible that he had none of the qualities of a

financier, seems to have taken no personal offence at being removed from a place which he never ought to

have occupied. He thankfully accepted a pension, which his profuse habits made necessary to him, and still

continued to attend councils, to frequent the Court, and to discharge the duties of a Lord of the

Bedchamber.581 He also tried to make himself useful in military business, which he understood, if not well,

yet better than most of his brother nobles; and he professed, during a few months, a great regard for

Caermarthen. Delamere was in a very different mood. It was in vain that his services were overpaid with

honours and riches. He was created Earl of Warrington. He obtained a grant of all the lands that could be

discovered belonging to Jesuits in five or six counties. A demand made by him on account of expenses

incurred at the time of the Revolution was allowed; and he carried with him into retirement as the reward of

his patriotic exertions a large sum, which the State could ill spare. But his anger was not to be so appeased;

and to the end of his life he continued to complain bitterly of the ingratitude with which he and his party had

Sir John Lowther became First Lord of the Treasury, and was the person on whom Caermarthen chiefly relied

for the conduct of the ostensible business of the House of Commons. Lowther was a man of ancient descent,

ample estate, and great parliamentary interest. Though not an old man, he was an old senator: for he had,

before he was of age, succeeded his father as knight of the shire for Westmoreland. In truth the representation

of Westmoreland was almost as much one of the hereditaments of the Lowther family as Lowther Hall. Sir

John's abilities were respectable; his manners, though sarcastically noticed in contemporary lampoons as too

formal, were eminently courteous; his personal courage he was but too ready to prove; his morals were

irreproachable; his time was divided between respectable labours and respectable pleasures; his chief

business was to attend the House of Commons and to preside on the Bench of justice; his favourite

amusements were reading and gardening. In opinions he was a very moderate Tory. He was attached to

hereditary monarchy and to the Established Church; but he had concurred in the Revolution; he had no

misgivings touching the title of William and Mary; he had sworn allegiance to them without any mental

reservation; and he appears to have strictly kept his oath. Between him and Caermarthen there was a close

connection. They had acted together cordially in the Northern insurrection; and they agreed in their political

views, as nearly as a very cunning statesman and a very honest country gentleman could be expected to

agree.583 By Caermarthen's influence Lowther was now raised to one of the most important places in the

kingdom. Unfortunately it was a place requiring qualities very different from those which suffice to make a

valuable county member and chairman of quarter sessions. The tongue of the new First Lord of the Treasury

was not sufficiently ready, nor was his temper sufficiently callous for his post. He had neither adroitness to

parry, nor fortitude to endure, the gibes and reproaches to which, in his new character of courtier and

placeman, he was exposed. There was also something to be done which he was too scrupulous to do;

something which had never been done by Wolsey or Burleigh; something which has never been done by any

English statesman of our generation; but which, from the time of Charles the Second to the time of George

The history of the rise, progress, and decline of parliamentary corruption in England still remains to be

written. No subject has called forth a greater quantity of eloquent vituperation and stinging sarcasm. Three

generations of serious and of sportive writers wept and laughed over the venality of the senate. That venality

was denounced on the hustings, anathematized from the pulpit, and burlesqued on the stage; was attacked by

Pope in brilliant verse, and by Bolingbroke in stately prose, by Swift with savage hatred, and by Gay with

festive malice. The voices of Tories and Whigs, of Johnson and Akenside, of Smollett and Fielding,

contributed to swell the cry. But none of those who railed or of those who jested took the trouble to verify the

Sometimes the evil was imputed to the depravity of a particular minister: but, when he had been driven from

power, and when those who had most loudly accused him governed in his stead, it was found that the change

of men had produced no change of system. Sometimes the evil was imputed to the degeneracy of the national

character. Luxury and cupidity, it was said, had produced in our country the same effect which they had

produced of old in the Roman republic. The modern Englishman was to the Englishman of the sixteenth

century what Verres and Curio were to Dentatus and Fabricius. Those who held this language were as

ignorant and shallow as people generally are who extol the past at the expense of the present. A man of sense

would have perceived that, if the English of the time of George the Second had really been more sordid and

dishonest than their forefathers, the deterioration would not have shown itself in one place alone. The

progress of judicial venality and of official venality would have kept pace with the progress of parliamentary

venality. But nothing is more certain than that, while the legislature was becoming more and more venal, the

courts of law and the public offices were becoming purer and purer. The representatives of the people were

undoubtedly more mercenary in the days of Hardwicke and Pelham than in the days of the Tudors. But the

Chancellors of the Tudors took plate and jewels from suitors without scruple or shame; and Hardwicke would

have committed for contempt any suitor who had dared to bring him a present. The Treasurers of the Tudors

raised princely fortunes by the sale of places, titles, and pardons; and Pelham would have ordered his servants

to turn out of his house any man who had offered him money for a peerage or a commissionership of

customs. It is evident, therefore, that the prevalence of corruption in the Parliament cannot be ascribed to a

general depravation of morals. The taint was local; we must look for some local cause; and such a cause will

Under our ancient sovereigns the House of Commons rarely interfered with the executive administration. The

Speaker was charged not to let the members meddle with matters of State. If any gentleman was very

troublesome he was cited before the Privy Council, interrogated, reprimanded, and sent to meditate on his

undutiful conduct in the Tower. The Commons did their best to protect themselves by keeping their

deliberations secret, by excluding strangers, by making it a crime to repeat out of doors what had passed

within doors. But these precautions were of small avail. In so large an assembly there were always talebearers

ready to carry the evil report of their brethren to the palace. To oppose the Court was therefore a service of

serious danger. In those days of course, there was little or no buying of votes. For an honest man was not to

be bought; and it was much cheaper to intimidate or to coerce a knave than to buy him.

For a very different reason there has been no direct buying of votes within the memory of the present

generation. The House of Commons is now supreme in the State, but is accountable to the nation. Even those

members who are not chosen by large constituent bodies are kept in awe by public opinion. Every thing is

printed; every thing is discussed; every material word uttered in debate is read by a million of people on the

morrow. Within a few hours after an important division, the lists of the majority and the minority are scanned

and analysed in every town from Plymouth to Inverness. If a name be found where it ought not to be, the

apostate is certain to be reminded in sharp language of the promises which he has broken and of the

professions which he has belied. At present, therefore, the best way in which a government can secure the

support of a majority of the representative body is by gaining the confidence of the nation.

But between the time when our Parliaments ceased to be controlled by royal prerogative and the time when

they began to be constantly and effectually controlled by public opinion there was a long interval. After the

Restoration, no government ventured to return to those methods by which, before the civil war, the freedom

of deliberation has been restrained. A member could no longer be called to account for his harangues or his

votes. He might obstruct the passing of bills of supply; he might arraign the whole foreign policy of the

country; he might lay on the table articles of impeachment against all the chief ministers; and he ran not the

smallest risk of being treated as Morrice had been treated by Elizabeth, or Eliot by Charles the First. The

senator now stood in no awe of the Court. Nevertheless all the defences behind which the feeble Parliaments

of the sixteenth century had entrenched themselves against the attacks of prerogative were not only still kept

up, but were extended and strengthened. No politician seems to have been aware that these defences were no

longer needed for their original purpose, and had begun to serve a purpose very different. The rules which

had been originally designed to secure faithful representatives against the displeasure of the Sovereign, now

operated to secure unfaithful representatives against the displeasure of the people, and proved much more

effectual for the latter end than they had ever been for the former. It was natural, it was inevitable, that, in a

legislative body emancipated from the restraints of the sixteenth century, and not yet subjected to the

restraints of the nineteenth century, in a legislative body which feared neither the King nor the public, there

The plague spot began to be visible and palpable in the days of the Cabal. Clifford, the boldest and fiercest of

the wicked Five, had the merit of discovering that a noisy patriot, whom it was no longer possible to send to

prison, might be turned into a courtier by a goldsmith's note. Clifford's example was followed by his

successors. It soon became a proverb that a Parliament resembled a pump. Often, the wits said, when a pump

appears to be dry, if a very small quantity of water is poured in, a great quantity of water gushes out: and so,

when a Parliament appears to be niggardly, ten thousand pounds judiciously given in bribes will often

produce a million in supplies. The evil was not diminished, nay, it was aggravated, by that Revolution which

freed our country from so many other evils. The House of Commons was now more powerful than ever as

against the Crown, and yet was not more strictly responsible than formerly to the nation. The government had

a new motive for buying the members; and the members had no new motive for refusing to sell themselves.

William, indeed, had an aversion to bribery; he resolved to abstain from it; and, during the first year of his

reign, he kept his resolution. Unhappily the events of that year did not encourage him to persevere in his good

intentions. As soon as Caermarthen was placed at the head of the internal administration of the realm, a

complete change took place. He was in truth no novice in the art of purchasing votes. He had, sixteen years

before, succeeded Clifford at the Treasury, had inherited Clifford's tactics, had improved upon them, and had

employed them to an extent which would have amazed the inventor. From the day on which Caermarthen

was called a second time to the chief direction of affairs, parliamentary corruption continued to be practised,

with scarcely any intermission, by a long succession of statesmen, till the close of the American war. Neither

of the great English parties can justly charge the other with any peculiar guilt on this account. The Tories

were the first who introduced the system and the last who clung to it; but it attained its greatest vigour in the

time of Whig ascendency. The extent to which parliamentary support was bartered for money cannot be with

any precision ascertained. But it seems probable that the number of hirelings was greatly exaggerated by

vulgar report, and was never large, though often sufficient to turn the scale on important divisions. An

unprincipled minister eagerly accepted the services of these mercenaries. An honest minister reluctantly

submitted, for the sake of the commonwealth, to what he considered as a shameful and odious extortion. But

during many years every minister, whatever his personal character might be, consented, willingly or

unwillingly, to manage the Parliament in the only way in which the Parliament could then be managed. It at

length became as notorious that there was a market for votes at the Treasury as that there was a market for

cattle in Smithfield. Numerous demagogues out of power declaimed against this vile traffic; but every one of

those demagogues, as soon as he was in power, found himself driven by a kind of fatality to engage in that

traffic, or at least to connive at it. Now and then perhaps a man who had romantic notions of public virtue

refused to be himself the paymaster of the corrupt crew, and averted his eyes while his less scrupulous

colleagues did that which he knew to be indispensable, and yet felt to be degrading. But the instances of this

prudery were rare indeed. The doctrine generally received, even among upright and honourable politicians,

was that it was shameful to receive bribes, but that it was necessary to distribute them. It is a remarkable fact

that the evil reached the greatest height during the administration of Henry Pelham, a statesman of good

intentions, of spotless morals in private life, and of exemplary disinterestedness. It is not difficult to guess by

what arguments he and other well meaning men, who, like him, followed the fashion of their age, quieted

their consciences. No casuist, however severe, has denied that it may be a duty to give what it is a crime to

take. It was infamous in Jeffreys to demand money for the lives of the unhappy prisoners whom he tried at

Dorchester and Taunton. But it was not infamous, nay, it was laudable, in the kinsmen and friends of a

prisoner to contribute of their substance in order to make up a purse for Jeffreys. The Sallee rover, who

threatened to bastinado a Christian captive to death unless a ransom was forthcoming, was an odious ruffian.

But to ransom a Christian captive from a Sallee rover was, not merely an innocent, but a highly meritorious

act. It would be improper in such cases to use the word corruption. Those who receive the filthy lucre are

corrupt already. He who bribes them does not make them wicked: he finds them so; and he merely prevents

their evil propensities from producing evil effects. And might not the same plea be urged in defence of a

minister who, when no other expedient would avail, paid greedy and lowminded men not to ruin their

It was by some such reasoning as this that the scruples of William were overcome. Honest Burnet, with the

uncourtly courage which distinguished him, ventured to remonstrate with the King. "Nobody," William

answered, "hates bribery more, than I. But I have to do with a set of men who must be managed in this vile

It was necessary for the Lord President to have in the House of Commons an agent for the purchase of

members; and Lowther was both too awkward and too scrupulous to be such an agent. But a man in whom

craft and profligacy were united in a high degree was without difficulty found. This was the Master of the

Rolls, Sir John Trevor, who had been Speaker in the single Parliament held by James. High as Trevor had

risen in the world, there were people who could still remember him a strange looking lawyer's clerk in the

Inner Temple. Indeed, nobody who had ever seen him was likely to forget him. For his grotesque features and

his hideous squint were far beyond the reach of caricature. His parts, which were quick and vigorous, had

enabled him early to master the science of chicane. Gambling and betting were his amusements; and out of

these amusements he contrived to extract much business in the way of his profession. For his opinion on a

question arising out of a wager or a game at chance had as much authority as a judgment of any court in

Westminster Hall. He soon rose to be one of the boon companions whom Jeffreys hugged in fits of maudlin

friendship over the bottle at night, and cursed and reviled in court on the morrow. Under such a teacher,

Trevor rapidly became a proficient in that peculiar kind of rhetoric which had enlivened the trials of Baxter

and of Alice Lisle. Report indeed spoke of some scolding matches between the Chancellor and his friend, in

which the disciple had been not less voluble and scurrilous than the master. These contests, however, did not

take place till the younger adventurer had attained riches and dignities such that he no longer stood in need of

the patronage which had raised him.585 Among High Churchmen Trevor, in spite of his notorious want of

principle, had at this time a certain popularity, which he seems to have owed chiefly to their conviction that,

however insincere he might be in general, his hatred of the dissenters was genuine and hearty. There was

little doubt that, in a House of Commons in which the Tories had a majority, he might easily, with the support

of the Court, be chosen Speaker. He was impatient to be again in his old post, which he well knew how to

make one of the most lucrative in the kingdom; and he willingly undertook that secret and shameful office for

Richard Hampden was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. This appointment was probably intended as a

mark of royal gratitude for the moderation of his conduct, and for the attempts which he had made to curb the

Godolphin voluntarily left the Treasury; why, we are not informed. We can scarcely doubt that the

dissolution and the result of the general election must have given him pleasure. For his political opinions

leaned towards Toryism; and he had, in the late reign, done some things which, though not very heinous,

stood in need of an indemnity. It is probable that he did not think it compatible with his personal dignity to sit

A new Commission of Admiralty was issued. At the head of the naval administration was placed Thomas

Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a high born and high bred man, who had ranked among the Tories, who had voted

for a Regency, and who had married the daughter of Sawyer. That Pembroke's Toryism, however, was not of

a narrow and illiberal kind is sufficiently proved by the fact that, immediately after the Revolution, the Essay

on the Human Understanding was dedicated to him by John Locke, in token of gratitude for kind offices done

Nothing was omitted which could reconcile Torrington to this change. For, though he had been found an

incapable administrator, he still stood so high in general estimation as a seaman that the government was

unwilling to lose his services. He was assured that no slight was intended to him. He could not serve his

country at once on the ocean and at Westminster; and it had been thought less difficult to supply his place in

his office than on the deck of his flagship. He was at first very angry, and actually laid down his commission:

but some concessions were made to his pride: a pension of three thousand pounds a year and a grant of ten

thousand acres of crown land in the Peterborough level were irresistible baits to his cupidity; and, in an evil

hour for England, he consented to remain at the head of the naval force, on which the safety of her coasts

While these changes were making in the offices round Whitehall, the Commissions of Lieutenancy all over

the kingdom were revised. The Tories had, during twelve months, been complaining that their share in the

government of the districts in which they lived bore no proportion to their number, to their wealth, and to the

consideration which they enjoyed in society. They now regained with great delight their former position in

their shires. The Whigs raised a cry that the King was foully betrayed, and that he had been induced by evil

counsellors to put the sword into the hands of men who, as soon as a favourable opportunity offered, would

turn the edge against himself. In a dialogue which was believed to have been written by the newly created

Earl of Warrington, and which had a wide circulation at the time, but has long been forgotten, the Lord

Lieutenant of a county was introduced expressing his apprehensions that the majority of his deputies were

traitors at heart.589 But nowhere was the excitement produced by the new distribution of power so great as in

the capital. By a Commission of Lieutenancy which had been issued immediately after the Revolution, the

train bands of the City had been put under the command of staunch Whigs. Those powerful and opulent

citizens whose names were omitted complained that the list was filled with elders of Puritan congregations,

with Shaftesbury's brisk boys, with Rye House plotters, and that it was scarcely possible to find, mingled with

that multitude of fanatics and levellers, a single man sincerely attached to monarchy and to the Church. A

new Commission now appeared framed by Caermarthen and Nottingham. They had taken counsel with

Compton, the Bishop of the diocese; and Compton was not a very discreet adviser. He had originally been a

High Churchman and a Tory. The severity with which he had been treated in the late reign had transformed

him into a Latitudinarian and a rebel; and he had now, from jealousy of Tillotson, turned High Churchman

and Tory again. The Whigs complained that they were ungratefully proscribed by a government which owed

its existence to them; that some of the best friends of King William had been dismissed with contumely to

make room for some of his worst enemies, for men who were as unworthy of trust as any Irish Rapparee, for

men who had delivered up to a tyrant the charter and the immemorial privileges of the City, for men who had

made themselves notorious by the cruelty with which they had enforced the penal laws against Protestant

dissenters, nay, for men who had sate on those juries which had found Russell and Cornish guilty.590 The

discontent was so great that it seemed, during a short time, likely to cause pecuniary embarrassment to the

State. The supplies voted by the late Parliament came in slowly. The wants of the public service were

pressing. In such circumstances it was to the citizens of London that the government always looked for help;

and the government of William had hitherto looked especially to those citizens who professed Whig opinions.

Things were now changed. A few eminent Whigs, in their first anger, sullenly refused to advance money.

Nay, one or two unexpectedly withdrew considerable sums from the Exchequer.591 The financial difficulties

might have been serious, had not some wealthy Tories, who, if Sacheverell's clause had become law, would

have been excluded from all municipal honours, offered the Treasury a hundred thousand pounds down, and

While the City was thus agitated, came a day appointed by royal proclamation for a general fast. The reasons

assigned for this solemn act of devotion were the lamentable state of Ireland and the approaching departure of

the King. Prayers were offered up for the safety of His Majesty's person and for the success of his arms. The

churches of London were crowded. The most eminent preachers of the capital, who were, with scarcely an

exception, either moderate Tories or moderate Whigs, exerted themselves to calm the public mind, and

earnestly exhorted their flocks not to withhold, at this great conjuncture, a hearty support from the prince,

with whose fate was bound up the fate of the whole nation. Burnet told a large congregation from the pulpit

how the Greeks, when the Great Turk was preparing to besiege Constantinople, could not be persuaded to

contribute any part of their wealth for the common defence, and how bitterly they repented of their avarice

when they were compelled to deliver up to the victorious infidels the treasures which had been refused to the

The Whigs, however, as a party, did not stand in need of such an admonition. Grieved and angry as they

were, they were perfectly sensible that on the stability of the throne of William depended all that they most

highly prized. What some of them might, at this conjuncture, have been tempted to do if they could have

found another leader, if, for example, their Protestant Duke, their King Monmouth, had still been living, may

be doubted. But their only choice was between the Sovereign whom they had set up and the Sovereign whom

they had pulled down. It would have been strange indeed if they had taken part with James in order to punish

William, when the worst fault which they imputed to William was that he did not participate in the vindictive

feeling with which they remembered the tyranny of James. Much as they disliked the Bill of Indemnity, they

had not forgotten the Bloody Circuit. They therefore, even in their ill humour, continued true to their own

King, and, while grumbling at him, were ready to stand by him against his adversary with their lives and

There were indeed exceptions; but they were very few; and they were to be found almost exclusively in two

classes, which, though widely differing from each other in social position, closely resembled each other in

laxity of principle. All the Whigs who are known to have trafficked with Saint Germains belonged, not to the

main body of the party, but either to the head or to the tail. They were either patricians high in rank and

office, or caitiffs who had long been employed in the foulest drudgery of faction. To the former class

belonged Shrewsbury. Of the latter class the most remarkable specimen was Robert Ferguson. From the day

on which the Convention Parliament was dissolved, Shrewsbury began to waver in his allegiance: but that he

had ever wavered was not, till long after, suspected by the public. That Ferguson had, a few months after the

Revolution, become a furious Jacobite, was no secret to any body, and ought not to have been matter of

surprise to any body. For his apostasy he could not plead even the miserable excuse that he had been

neglected. The ignominious services which he had formerly rendered to his party as a spy, a raiser of riots, a

dispenser of bribes, a writer of libels, a prompter of false witnesses, had been rewarded only too prodigally

for the honour of the new government. That he should hold any high office was of course impossible. But a

sinecure place of five hundred a year had been created for him in the department of the Excise. He now had

what to him was opulence: but opulence did not satisfy him. For money indeed he had never scrupled to be

guilty of fraud aggravated by hypocrisy; yet the love of money was not his strongest passion. Long habits had

developed in him a moral disease from, which people who make political agitation their calling are seldom

wholly free. He could not be quiet. Sedition, from being his business, had become his pleasure. It was as

impossible for him to live without doing mischief as for an old dram drinker or an old opium eater to live

without the daily dose of poison. The very discomforts and hazards of a lawless life had a strange attraction

for him. He could no more be turned into a peaceable and loyal subject than the fox can be turned into a

shepherd's dog, or than the kite can be taught the habits of the barn door fowl. The Red Indian prefers his

hunting ground to cultivated fields and stately cities: the gipsy, sheltered by a commodious roof, and

provided with meat in due season, still pines for the ragged tent on the moor and the meal of carrion, and

even so Ferguson became weary of plenty and security, of his salary, his house, his table and his coach, and

longed to be again the president of societies where none could enter without a password, the director of secret

presses, the distributor of inflammatory pamphlets; to see the walls placarded with descriptions of his Person

and offers of reward for his apprehension; to have six or seven names, with a different wig and cloak for

each, and to change his lodgings thrice a week at dead of night. His hostility was not to Popery or to

Protestantism, to monarchical government or to republican government, to the House of Stuart or to the

By the Jacobites this new ally was eagerly welcomed. They were at that moment busied with schemes in

which the help of a veteran plotter was much needed. There had been a great stir among them from the day

on which it had been announced that William had determined to take the command in Ireland; and they were

all looking forward with impatient hope to his departure.He was not a prince against whom men lightly

venture to set up a standard of rebellion. His courage, his sagacity, the secrecy of his counsels, the success

which had generally crowned his enterprises, overawed the vulgar. Even his most acrimonious enemies

feared him at least as much as they hated him. While he was at Kensington, ready to take horse at a moment's

notice, malecontents who prized their heads and their estates were generally content to vent their hatred by

drinking confusion to his hooked nose, and by squeezing with significant energy the orange which was his

emblem. But their courage rose when they reflected that the sea would soon roll between him and our island.

In the military and political calculations of that age, thirty leagues of water were as important as three

hundred leagues now are. The winds and waves frequently interrupted all communication between England

and Ireland. It sometimes happened that, during a fortnight or three weeks, not a word of intelligence from

London reached Dublin. Twenty English counties might be up in arms long before any rumour that an

insurrection was even apprehended could reach Ulster. Early in the spring, therefore, the leading

malecontents assembled in London for the purpose of concerting an extensive plan of action, and

Such was the temper of the English factions when, on the twentieth of March, the new Parliament met. The

first duty which the Commons had to perform was that of choosing a Speaker. Trevor was proposed by

Lowther, was elected without opposition, and was presented and approved with the ordinary ceremonial. The

King then made a speech in which he especially recommended to the consideration of the Houses two

important subjects, the settling of the revenue and the granting of an amnesty. He represented strongly the

necessity of despatch. Every day was precious, the season for action was approaching. "Let not us," he said,

The first subject which the Commons took into consideration was the state of the revenue. A great part of the

taxes had, since the accession of William and Mary, been collected under the authority of Acts passed for

short terms, and it was now time to determine on a permanent arrangement. A list of the salaries and pensions

for which provision was to be made was laid before the House; and the amount of the sums thus expended

called forth very just complaints from the independent members, among whom Sir Charles Sedley

distinguished himself by his sarcastic pleasantry. A clever speech which he made against the placemen stole

into print and was widely circulated: it has since been often republished; and it proves, what his poems and

plays might make us doubt, that his contemporaries were not mistaken in considering him as a man of parts

and vivacity. Unfortunately the ill humour which the sight of the Civil List caused evaporated in jests and

The ordinary revenue by which the government had been supported before the Revolution had been partly

hereditary, and had been partly drawn from taxes granted to each sovereign for life. The hereditary revenue

had passed, with the crown, to William and Mary. It was derived from the rents of the royal domains, from

fees, from fines, from wine licenses, from the first fruits and tenths of benefices, from the receipts of the Post

Office, and from that part of the excise which had, immediately after the Restoration, been granted to Charles

the Second and to his successors for ever in lieu of the feudal services due to our ancient kings. The income

from all these sources was estimated at between four and five hundred thousand pounds.596

Those duties of excise and customs which had been granted to James for life had, at the close of his reign,

yielded about nine hundred thousand pounds annually. William naturally wished to have this income on the

same terms on which his uncle had enjoyed it; and his ministers did their best to gratify his wishes. Lowther

moved that the grant should be to the King and Queen for their joint and separate lives, and spoke repeatedly

and earnestly in defence of this motion. He set forth William's claims to public gratitude and confidence; the

nation rescued from Popery and arbitrary power; the Church delivered from persecution; the constitution

established on a firm basis. Would the Commons deal grudgingly with a prince who had done more for

England than had ever been done for her by any of his predecessors in so short a time, with a prince who was

now about to expose himself to hostile weapons and pestilential air in order to preserve the English colony in

Ireland, with a prince who was prayed for in every corner of the world where a congregation of Protestants

could meet for the worship of God?597 But on this subject Lowther harangued in vain. Whigs and Tories

were equally fixed in the opinion that the liberality of Parliaments had been the chief cause of the disasters of

the last thirty years; that to the liberality of the Parliament of 1660 was to be ascribed the misgovernment of

the Cabal; that to the liberality of the Parliament of 1685 was to be ascribed the Declaration of Indulgence,

and that the Parliament of 1690 would be inexcusable if it did not profit by a long, a painful, an unvarying

experience. After much dispute a compromise was made. That portion of the excise which had been settled

for life on James, and which was estimated at three hundred thousand pounds a year, was settled on William

and Mary for their joint and separate lives. It was supposed that, with the hereditary revenue, and with three

hundred thousand a year more from the excise, their Majesties would have, independent of parliamentary

control, between seven and eight hundred thousand a year. Out of this income was to be defrayed the charge

both of the royal household and of those civil offices of which a list had been laid before the House. This

income was therefore called the Civil List. The expenses of the royal household are now entirely separated

from the expenses of the civil government; but, by a whimsical perversion, the name of Civil List has

remained attached to that portion of the revenue which is appropriated to the expenses of the royal household.

It is still more strange that several neighbouring nations should have thought this most unmeaning of all

names worth borrowing. Those duties of customs which had been settled for life on Charles and James

successively, and which, in the year before the Revolution, had yielded six hundred thousand pounds, were

William was by no means well pleased with this arrangement. He thought it unjust and ungrateful in a people

whose liberties he had saved to bind him over to his good behaviour. "The gentlemen of England," he said to

Burnet, "trusted King James who was an enemy of their religion and of their laws; and they will not trust me

by whom their religion and their laws have been preserved." Burnet answered very properly that there was no

mark of personal confidence which His Majesty was not entitled to demand, but that this question was not a

question of personal confidence. The Estates of the Realm wished to establish a general principle. They

wished to set a precedent which might secure a remote posterity against evils such as the indiscreet liberality

of former Parliaments had produced. "From those evils Your Majesty has delivered this generation. By

accepting the gift of the Commons on the terms on which it is offered Your Majesty will be also a deliverer

of future generations." William was not convinced; but he had too much wisdom and selfcommand to give

way to his ill humour; and he accepted graciously what he could not but consider as ungraciously given.599

The Civil List was charged with an annuity of twenty thousand pounds to the Princess of Denmark, in

addition to an annuity of thirty thousand pounds which had been settled on her at the time of her marriage.

This arrangement was the result of a compromise which had been effected with much difficulty and after

many irritating disputes. The King and Queen had never, since the commencement of their reign, been on

very good terms with their sister. That William should have been disliked by a woman who had just sense

enough to perceive that his temper was sour and his manners repulsive, and who was utterly incapable of

appreciating his higher qualities, is not extraordinary. But Mary was made to be loved. So lively and

intelligent a woman could not indeed derive much pleasure from the society of Anne, who, when in good

humour, was meekly stupid, and, when in bad humour, was sulkily stupid. Yet the Queen, whose kindness

had endeared her to her humblest attendants, would hardly have made an enemy of one whom it was her duty

and her interest to make a friend, had not an influence strangely potent and strangely malignant been

incessantly at work to divide the Royal House against itself. The fondness of the Princess for Lady

Marlborough was such as, in a superstitious age, would have been ascribed to some talisman or potion. Not

only had the friends, in their confidential intercourse with each other, dropped all ceremony and all titles, and

become plain Mrs. Morley and plain Mrs. Freeman; but even Prince George, who cared as much for the

dignity of his birth as he was capable of caring for any thing but claret and calvered salmon, submitted to be

Mr. Morley. The Countess boasted that she had selected the name of Freeman because it was peculiarly

suited to the frankness and boldness of her character; and, to do her justice, it was not by the ordinary arts of

courtiers that she established and long maintained her despotic empire over the feeblest of minds, She had

little of that tact which is the characteristic talent of her sex; she was far too violent to flatter or to dissemble:

but, by a rare chance, she had fallen in with a nature on which dictation and contradiction acted as philtres. In

this grotesque friendship all the loyalty, the patience, the selfdevotion, was on the side of the mistress. The

whims, the haughty airs, the fits of ill temper, were on the side of the waiting woman.

Nothing is more curious than the relation in which the two ladies stood to Mr. Freeman, as they called

Marlborough. In foreign countries people knew in general that Anne was governed by the Churchills. They

knew also that the man who appeared to enjoy so large a share of her favour was not only a great soldier and

politician, but also one of the finest gentlemen of his time, that his face and figure were eminently handsome,

his temper at once bland and resolute, his manners at once engaging and noble. Nothing could be more

natural than that graces and accomplishments like his should win a female heart. On the Continent therefore

many persons imagined that he was Anne's favoured lover; and he was so described in contemporary French

libels which have long been forgotten. In England this calumny never found credit even with the vulgar, and

is nowhere to be found even in the most ribald doggrel that was sung about our streets. In truth the Princess

seems never to have been guilty of a thought inconsistent with her conjugal vows. To her Marlborough, with

all his genius and his valour, his beauty and his grace, was nothing but the husband of her friend. Direct

power over Her Royal Highness he had none. He could influence her only by the instrumentality of his wife;

and his wife was no passive instrument. Though it is impossible to discover, in any thing that she ever did,

said or wrote, any indication of superior understanding, her fierce passions and strong will enabled her often

to rule a husband who was born to rule grave senates and mighty armies. His courage, that courage which the

most perilous emergencies of war only made cooler and more steady, failed him when he had to encounter his

Sarah's ready tears and voluble reproaches, the poutings of her lip and the tossings of her head. History

exhibits to us few spectacles more remarkable than that of a great and wise man, who, when he had combined

vast and profound schemes of policy, could carry them into effect only by inducing one foolish woman, who

In one point the Earl and the Countess were perfectly agreed. They were equally bent on getting money;

though, when it was got, he loved to hoard it, and she was not unwilling to spend it.600 The favour of the

Princess they both regarded as a valuable estate. In her father's reign, they had begun to grow rich by means

of her bounty. She was naturally inclined to parsimony; and, even when she was on the throne, her equipages

and tables were by no means sumptuous.601 It might have been thought, therefore, that, while she was a

subject, thirty thousand a year, with a residence in the palace, would have been more than sufficient for all

her wants. There were probably not in the kingdom two noblemen possessed of such an income. But no

income would satisfy the greediness of those who governed her. She repeatedly contracted debts which James

The Revolution opened to the Churchills a new and boundless prospect of gain. The whole conduct of their

mistress at the great crisis had proved that she had no will, no judgment, no conscience, but theirs. To them

she had sacrificed affections, prejudices, habits, interests. In obedience to them, she had joined in the

conspiracy against her father; she had fled from Whitehall in the depth of winter, through ice and mire, to a

hackney coach; she had taken refuge in the rebel camp; she had consented to yield her place in the order of

succession to the Prince of Orange. They saw with pleasure that she, over whom they possessed such

boundless influence, possessed no common influence over others. Scarcely had the Revolution been

accomplished when many Tories, disliking both the King who had been driven out and the King who had

come in, and doubting whether their religion had more to fear from Jesuits or from Latitudinarians, showed a

strong disposition to rally round Anne. Nature had made her a bigot. Such was the constitution of her mind

that to the religion of her nursery she could not but adhere, without examination and without doubt, till she

was laid in her coffin. In the court of her father she had been deaf to all that could be urged in favour of

transubstantiation and auricular confession. In the court of her brother in law she was equally deaf to all that

could be urged in favour of a general union among Protestants. This slowness and obstinacy made her

important. It was a great thing to be the only member of the Royal Family who regarded Papists and

Presbyterians with an impartial aversion. While a large party was disposed to make her an idol, she was

regarded by her two artful servants merely as a puppet. They knew that she had it in her power to give serious

annoyance to the government; and they determined to use this power in order to extort money, nominally for

her, but really for themselves. While Marlborough was commanding the English forces in the Low Countries,

the execution of the plan was necessarily left to his wife; and she acted, not as he would doubtless have acted,

with prudence and temper, but, as is plain even from her own narrative, with odious violence and insolence.

Indeed she had passions to gratify from which he was altogether free. He, though one of the most covetous,

was one of the least acrimonious of mankind; but malignity was in her a stronger passion than avarice. She

hated easily; she hated heartily; and she hated implacably. Among the objects of her hatred were all who were

related to her mistress either on the paternal or on the maternal side. No person who had a natural interest in

the Princess could observe without uneasiness the strange infatuation which made her the slave of an

imperious and reckless termagant. This the Countess well knew. In her view the Royal Family and the family

of Hyde, however they might differ as to other matters, were leagued against her; and she detested them all,

James, William and Mary, Clarendon and Rochester. Now was the time to wreak the accumulated spite of

years. It was not enough to obtain a great, a regal, revenue for Anne. That revenue must be obtained by

means which would wound and humble those whom the favourite abhorred. It must not be asked, it must not

be accepted, as a mark of fraternal kindness, but demanded in hostile tones, and wrung by force from

reluctant hands. No application was made to the King and Queen. But they learned with astonishment that

Lady Marlborough was indefatigable in canvassing the Tory members of Parliament, that a Princess's party

was forming, that the House of Commons would be moved to settle on Her Royal Highness a vast income

independent of the Crown. Mary asked her sister what these proceedings meant. "I hear," said Anne, "that my

friends have a mind to make me some settlement." It is said that the Queen, greatly hurt by an expression

which seemed to imply that she and her husband were not among her sister's friends, replied with unwonted

sharpness, "Of what friends do you speak? What friends have you except the King and me?"602 The subject

was never again mentioned between the sisters. Mary was probably sensible that she had made a mistake in

addressing herself to one who was merely a passive instrument in the hands of others. An attempt was made

to open a negotiation with the Countess. After some inferior agents had expostulated with her in vain,

Shrewsbury waited on her. It might have been expected that his intervention would have been successful; for,

if the scandalous chronicle of those times could be trusted, he had stood high, too high, in her favour.603 He

was authorised by the King to promise that, if the Princess would desist from soliciting the members of the

House of Commons to support her cause, the income of Her Royal Highness should be increased from thirty

thousand pounds to fifty thousand. The Countess flatly rejected this offer. The King's word, she had the

insolence to hint, was not a sufficient security. "I am confident," said Shrewsbury, "that His Majesty will

strictly fulfil his engagements. If he breaks them I will not serve him an hour longer." "That may be very

honourable in you," answered the pertinacious vixen, "but it will be very poor comfort to the Princess."

Shrewsbury, after vainly attempting to move the servant, was at length admitted to an audience of the

mistress. Anne, in language doubtless dictated by her friend Sarah, told him that the business had gone too far

The truth was that the Princess's prompters hoped to obtain from Parliament a much larger sum than was

offered by the King. Nothing less than seventy thousand a year would content them. But their cupidity

overreached itself. The House of Commons showed a great disposition to gratify Her Royal Highness. But,

when at length her too eager adherents ventured to name the sum which they wished to grant, the murmurs

were loud. Seventy thousand a year at a time when the necessary expenses of the State were daily increasing,

when the receipt of the customs was daily diminishing, when trade was low, when every gentleman, every

farmer, was retrenching something from the charge of his table and his cellar! The general opinion was that

the sum which the King was understood to be willing to give would be amply sufficient.605 At last

something was conceded on both sides. The Princess was forced to content herself with fifty thousand a year;

and William agreed that this sum should be settled on her by Act of Parliament. She rewarded the services of

Lady Marlborough with a pension of a thousand a year606; but this was in all probability a very small part of

After these transactions the two royal sisters continued during many months to live on terms of civility and

even of apparent friendship. But Mary, though she seems to have borne no malice to Anne, undoubtedly felt

against Lady Marlborough as much resentment as a very gentle heart is capable of feeling. Marlborough had

been out of England during a great part of the time which his wife had spent in canvassing among the Tories,

and, though he had undoubtedly acted in concert with her, had acted, as usual, with temper and decorum. He

therefore continued to receive from William many marks of favour which were unaccompanied by any

In the debates on the settling of the revenue, the distinction between Whigs and Tories does not appear to

have been very clearly marked. In truth, if there was any thing about which the two parties were agreed, it

was the expediency of granting the customs to the Crown for a time not exceeding four years. But there were

other questions which called forth the old animosity in all its strength. The Whigs were now in a minority,

but a minority formidable in numbers, and more formidable in ability. They carried on the parliamentary war,

not less acrimoniously than when they were a majority, but somewhat more artfully. They brought forward

several motions, such as no High Churchman could well support, yet such as no servant of William and Mary

could well oppose. The Tory who voted for these motions would run a great risk of being pointed at as a

turncoat by the sturdy Cavaliers of his county. The Tory who voted against those motions would run a great

It was apparently in pursuance of this policy that the Whigs laid on the table of the House of Lords a bill

declaring all the laws passed by the late Parliament to be valid laws. No sooner had this bill been read than

the controversy of the preceeding spring was renewed. The Whigs were joined on this occasion by almost all

those noblemen who were connected with the government. The rigid Tories, with Nottingham at their head,

professed themselves willing to enact that every statute passed in 1689 should have the same force that it

would have had if it had been passed by a parliament convoked in a regular manner; but nothing would

induce them to acknowledge that an assembly of lords and gentlemen, who had come together without

authority from the Great Seal, was constitutionally a Parliament. Few questions seem to have excited stronger

passions than the question, practically altogether unimportant, whether the bill should or should not be

declaratory. Nottingham, always upright and honourable, but a bigot and a formalist, was on this subject

singularly obstinate and unreasonable. In one debate he lost his temper, forgot the decorum which in general

he strictly observed, and narrowly escaped being committed to the custody of the Black Rod.607 After much

wrangling, the Whigs carried their point by a majority of seven.608 Many peers signed a strong protest

written by Nottingham. In this protest the bill, which was indeed open to verbal criticism, was impolitely

described as being neither good English nor good sense. The majority passed a resolution that the protest

should be expunged; and against this resolution Nottingham and his followers again protested.609 The King

was displeased by the pertinacity of his Secretary of State; so much displeased indeed that Nottingham

declared his intention of resigning the Seals; but the dispute was soon accommodated. William was too wise

not to know the value of an honest man in a dishonest age. The very scrupulosity which made Nottingham a

The bill went down to the Lower House; and it was full expected that the contest there would be long and

fierce; but a single speech settled the question. Somers, with a force and eloquence which surprised even an

audience accustomed to hear him with pleasure, exposed the absurdity of the doctrine held by the high Tories.

"If the Convention,"it was thus that he argued,"was not a Parliament, how can we be a Parliament? An

Act of Elizabeth provides that no person shall sit or vote in this House till he has taken the old oath of

supremacy. Not one of us has taken that oath. Instead of it, we have all taken the new oath of supremacy

which the late Parliament substituted for the old oath. It is therefore a contradiction to say that the Acts of the

late Parliament are not now valid, and yet to ask us to enact that they shall henceforth be valid. For either they

already are so, or we never can make them so." This reasoning, which was in truth as unanswerable as that of

Euclid, brought the debate to a speedy close. The bill passed the Commons within fortyeight hours after it

This was the only victory won by the Whigs during the whole session. They complained loudly in the Lower

House of the change which had been made in the military government of the city of London. The Tories,

conscious of their strength, and heated by resentment, not only refused to censure what had been done, but

determined to express publicly and formally their gratitude to the King for having brought in so many

churchmen and turned out so many schismatics. An address of thanks was moved by Clarges, member for

Westminster, who was known to be attached to Caermarthen. "The alterations which have been made in the

City," said Clarges, "show that His Majesty has a tender care of us. I hope that he will make similar

alterations in every county of the realm." The minority struggled hard. "Will you thank the King," they said,

"for putting the sword into the hands of his most dangerous enemies? Some of those whom he has been

advised to entrust with military command have not yet been able to bring themselves to take the oath of

allegiance to him. Others were well known, in the evil days, as stanch jurymen, who were sure to find an

Exclusionist guilty on any evidence or no evidence." Nor did the Whig orators refrain from using those topics

on which all factions are eloquent in the hour of distress, and which all factions are but too ready to treat

lightly in the hour of prosperity. "Let us not," they said, "pass a vote which conveys a reflection on a large

body of our countrymen, good subjects, good Protestants. The King ought to be the head of his whole people.

Let us not make him the head of a party." This was excellent doctrine; but it scarcely became the lips of men

who, a few weeks before, had opposed the Indemnity Bill and voted for the Sacheverell Clause. The address

As soon as the numbers had been announced, the minority, smarting from their defeat, brought forward a

motion which caused no little embarrassment to the Tory placemen. The oath of allegiance, the Whigs said,

was drawn in terms far too lax. It might exclude from public employment a few honest Jacobites who were

generally too dull to be mischievous; but it was altogether inefficient as a means of binding the supple and

slippery consciences of cunning priests, who, while affecting to hold the Jesuits in abhorrence, were

proficients in that immoral casuistry which was the worst part of Jesuitism. Some grave divines had openly

said, others had even dared to write, that they had sworn fealty to William in a sense altogether different from

that in which they had sworn fealty to James. To James they had plighted the entire faith which a loyal

subject owes to a rightful sovereign; but, when they promised to bear true allegiance to William, they meant

only that they would not, whilst he was able to hang them for rebelling or conspiring against him, run any

risk of being hanged. None could wonder that the precepts and example of the malecontent clergy should

have corrupted the malecontent laity. When Prebendaries and Rectors were not ashamed to avow that they

had equivocated, in the very act of kissing the New Testament, it was hardly to be expected that attorneys and

taxgatherers would be more scrupulous. The consequence was that every department swarmed with traitors;

that men who ate the King's bread, men who were entrusted with the duty of collecting and disbursing his

revenues, of victualling his ships, of clothing his soldiers, of making his artillery ready for the field, were in

the habit of calling him an usurper, and of drinking to his speedy downfall. Could any government be safe

which was hated and betrayed by its own servants? And was not the English government exposed to the

dangers which, even if all its servants were true, might well excite serious apprehensions? A disputed

succession, war with France, war in Scotland, war in Ireland, was not all this enough without treachery in

every arsenal and in every custom house? There must be an oath drawn in language too precise to be

explained away, in language which no Jacobite could repeat without the consciousness that he was perjuring

himself. Though the zealots of indefeasible hereditary right had in general no objection to swear allegiance to

William, they would probably not choose to abjure James. On such grounds as these, an Abjuration Bill of

extreme severity was brought into the House of Commons. It was proposed to enact that every person who

held any office, civil, military, or spiritual, should, on pain of deprivation, solemnly abjure the exiled King;

that the oath of abjuration might be tendered by any justice of the peace to any subject of their Majesties; and

that, if it were refused, the recusant should be sent to prison, and should lie there as long as he continued

The severity of this last provision was generally and most justly blamed. To turn every ignorant meddling

magistrate into a state inquisitor, to insist that a plain man, who lived peaceably, who obeyed the laws, who

paid his taxes, who had never held and who did not expect ever to hold any office, and who had never

troubled his head about problems of political philosophy, should declare, under the sanction of an oath, a

decided opinion on a point about which the most learned Doctors of the age had written whole libraries of

controversial books, and to send him to rot in a gaol if he could not bring himself to swear, would surely have

been the height of tyranny. The clause which required public functionaries to abjure the deposed King was

not open to the same objections. Yet even against this clause some weighty arguments were urged. A man, it

was said, who has an honest heart and a sound understanding is sufficiently bound by the present oath. Every

such man, when he swears to be faithful and to bear true allegiance to King William, does, by necessary

implication, abjure King James. There may doubtless be among the servants of the State, and even among the

ministers of the Church, some persons who have no sense of honour or religion, and who are ready to

forswear themselves for lucre. There may be others who have contracted the pernicious habit of quibbling

away the most sacred obligations of morality, and who have convinced themselves that they can innocently

make, with a mental reservation, a promise which it would be sinful to make without such a reservation.

Against these two classes of Jacobites it is true that the present test affords no security. But will the new test,

will any test, be more efficacious? Will a person who has no conscience, or a person whose conscience can be

set at rest by immoral sophistry, hesitate to repeat any phrase that you can dictate? The former will kiss the

book without any scruple at all. The scruples of the latter will be very easily removed. He now swears

allegiance to one King with a mental reservation. He will then abjure the other King with a mental

reservation. Do not flatter yourselves that the ingenuity of lawgivers will ever devise an oath which the

ingenuity of casuists will not evade. What indeed is the value of any oath in such a matter? Among the many

lessons which the troubles of the last generation have left us none is more plain than this, that no form of

words, however precise, no imprecation, however awful, ever saved, or ever will save, a government from

destruction, Was not the Solemn League and Covenant burned by the common hangman amidst the huzzas of

tens of thousands who had themselves subscribed it? Among the statesmen and warriors who bore the chief

part in restoring Charles the Second, how many were there who had not repeatedly abjured him? Nay, is it not

well known that some of those persons boastfully affirmed that, if they had not abjured him, they never could

The debates were sharp; and the issue during a short time seemed doubtful; for some of the Tories who were

in office were unwilling to give a vote which might be thought to indicate that they were lukewarm in the

cause of the King whom they served. William, however, took care to let it be understood that he had no wish

to impose a new test on his subjects. A few words from him decided the event of the conflict. The bill was

rejected thirtysix hours after it had been brought in by a hundred and ninetytwo votes to a hundred and

Even after this defeat the Whigs pertinaciously returned to the attack. Having failed in one House they

renewed the battle in the other. Five days after the Abjuration Bill had been thrown out in the Commons,

another Abjuration Bill, somewhat milder, but still very severe, was laid on the table of the Lords.614 What

was now proposed was that no person should sit in either House of Parliament or hold any office, civil,

military, or judicial, without making a declaration that he would stand by William and Mary against James

and James's adherents. Every male in the kingdom who had attained the age of sixteen was to make the same

declaration before a certain day. If he failed to do so he was to pay double taxes and to be incapable of

On the day fixed for the second reading, the King came down to the House of Peers. He gave his assent in

form to several laws, unrobed, took his seat on a chair of state which had been placed for him, and listened

with much interest to the debate. To the general surprise, two noblemen who had been eminently zealous for

the Revolution spoke against the proposed test. Lord Wharton, a Puritan who had fought for the Long

Parliament, said, with amusing simplicity, that he was a very old man, that he had lived through troubled

times, that he had taken a great many oaths in his day, and that he was afraid that he had not kept them all. He

prayed that the sin might not be laid to his charge; and he declared that he could not consent to lay any more

snares for his own soul and for the souls of his neighbours. The Earl of Macclesfield, the captain of the

English volunteers who had accompanied William from Helvoetsluys to Torbay, declared that he was much

in the same case with Lord Wharton. Marlborough supported the bill. He wondered, he said, that it should be

opposed by Macclesfield, who had borne so preeminent a part in the Revolution. Macclesfield, irritated by

the charge of inconsistency, retorted with terrible severity: "The noble Earl," he said, "exaggerates the share

which I had in the deliverance of our country. I was ready, indeed, and always shall be ready, to venture my

life in defence of her laws and liberties. But there are lengths to which, even for the sake of her laws and

liberties, I could never go. I only rebelled against a bad King; there were those who did much more."

Marlborough, though not easily discomposed, could not but feel the edge of this sarcasm; William looked

displeased; and the aspect of the whole House was troubled and gloomy. It was resolved by fiftyone votes to

forty that the bill should be committed; and it was committed, but never reported. After many hard struggles

between the Whigs headed by Shrewsbury and the Tories headed by Caermarthen, it was so much mutilated

that it retained little more than its name, and did not seem to those who had introduced it to be worth any

The discomfiture of the Whigs was completed by a communication from the King. Caermarthen appeared in

the House of Lords bearing in his hand a parchment signed by William. It was an Act of Grace for political

Between an Act of Grace originating with the Sovereign and an Act of Indemnity originating with the Estates

of the Realm there are some remarkable distinctions. An Act of Indemnity passes through all the stages

through which other laws pass, and may, during its progress, be amended by either House. An Act of Grace is

received with peculiar marks of respect, is read only once by the Lords and once by the Commons, and must

be either rejected altogether or accepted as it stands.616 William had not ventured to submit such an Act to

the preceding Parliament. But in the new Parliament he was certain of a majority. The minority gave no

trouble. The stubborn spirit which had, during two sessions, obstructed the progress of the Bill of Indemnity

had been at length broken by defeats and humiliations. Both Houses stood up uncovered while the Act of

There would not have been this unanimity had not a few great criminals been excluded from the benefits of

the amnesty. Foremost among them stood the surviving members of the High Court of Justice which had sate

on Charles the First. With these ancient men were joined the two nameless executioners who had done their

office, with masked faces, on the scaffold before the Banqueting House. None knew who they were, or of

what rank. It was probable that they had been long dead. Yet it was thought necessary to declare that, if even

now, after the lapse of forty one years, they should be discovered, they would still be liable to the

punishment of their great crime. Perhaps it would hardly have been thought necessary to mention these men,

if the animosities of the preceding generation had not been rekindled by the recent appearance of Ludlow in

England. About thirty of the agents of the tyranny of James were left to the law. With these exceptions, all

political offences, committed before the day on which the royal signature was affixed to the Act, were

covered with a general oblivion.617 Even the criminals who were by name excluded had little to fear. Many

of them were in foreign countries; and those who were in England were well assured that, unless they

The Act of Grace the nation owed to William alone; and it is one of his noblest and purest titles to renown.

From the commencement of the civil troubles of the seventeenth century down to the Revolution, every

victory gained by either party had been followed by a sanguinary proscription. When the Roundheads

triumphed over the Cavaliers, when the Cavaliers triumphed over the Roundheads, when the fable of the

Popish plot gave the ascendency to the Whigs, when the detection of the Rye House Plot transferred the

ascendency to the Tories, blood, and more blood, and still more blood had flowed. Every great explosion and

every great recoil of public feeling had been accompanied by severities which, at the time, the predominant

faction loudly applauded, but which, on a calm review, history and posterity have condemned. No wise and

humane man, whatever may be his political opinions, now mentions without reprehension the death either of

Laud or of Vane, either of Stafford or of Russell. Of the alternate butcheries the last and the worst is that

which is inseparably associated with the names of James and Jeffreys. But it assuredly would not have been

the last, perhaps it might not have been the worst, if William had not had the virtue and the firmness

resolutely to withstand the importunity of his most zealous adherents. These men were bent on exacting a

terrible retribution for all they had undergone during seven disastrous years. The scaffold of Sidney, the

gibbet of Cornish, the stake at which Elizabeth Gaunt had perished in the flames for the crime of harbouring a

fugitive, the porches of the Somersetshire churches surmounted by the skulls and quarters of murdered

peasants, the holds of those Jamaica ships from which every day the carcass of some prisoner dead of thirst

and foul air had been flung to the sharks, all these things were fresh in the memory of the party which the

Revolution had made, for a time, dominant in the State. Some chiefs of that party had redeemed their necks

by paying heavy ransom. Others had languished long in Newgate. Others had starved and shivered, winter

after winter, in the garrets of Amsterdam. It was natural that in the day of their power and prosperity they

should wish to inflict some part of what they had suffered. During a whole year they pursued their scheme of

revenge. They succeeded in defeating Indemnity Bill after Indemnity Bill. Nothing stood between them and

their victims, but William's immutable resolution that the glory of the great deliverance which he had

wrought should not be sullied by cruelty. His clemency was peculiar to himself. It was not the clemency of an

ostentatious man, or of a sentimental man, or of an easy tempered man. It was cold, unconciliating, inflexible.

It produced no fine stage effects. It drew on him the savage invectives of those whose malevolent passions he

refused to satisfy. It won for him no gratitude from those who owed to him fortune, liberty and life. While the

violent Whigs railed at his lenity, the agents of the fallen government, as soon as they found themselves safe,

instead of acknowledging their obligations to him, reproached him in insulting language with the mercy

which he had extended to them. His Act of Grace, they said, had completely refuted his Declaration. Was it

possible to believe that, if there had been any truth in the charges which he had brought against the late

government, he would have granted impunity to the guilty? It was now acknowledged by himself, under his

own hand, that the stories by which he and his friends had deluded the nation and driven away the royal

family were mere calumnies devised to serve a turn. The turn had been served; and the accusations by which

he had inflamed the public mind to madness were coolly withdrawn.618 But none of these things moved him.

He had done well. He had risked his popularity with men who had been his warmest admirers, in order to

give repose and security to men by whom his name was never mentioned without a curse. Nor had he

conferred a less benefit on those whom he had disappointed of their revenge than on those whom he had

protected. If he had saved one faction from a proscription, he had saved the other from the reaction which

such a proscription would inevitably have produced. If his people did not justly appreciate his policy, so

much the worse for them. He had discharged his duty by them. He feared no obloquy; and he wanted no

On the twentieth of May the Act of Grace was passed. The King then informed the Houses that his visit to

Ireland could no longer be delayed, that he had therefore determined to prorogue them, and that, unless some

unexpected emergency made their advice and assistance necessary to him, he should not call them again from

their homes till the next winter. "Then," he said, "I hope, by the blessing of God, we shall have a happy

The Parliament had passed an Act providing that, whenever he should go out of England, it should be lawful

for Mary to administer the government of the kingdom in his name and her own. It was added that he should

nevertheless, during his absence, retain all his authority. Some objections were made to this arrangement.

Here, it was said, were two supreme Powers in one State. A public functionary might receive diametrically

opposite orders from the King and the Queen, and might not know which to obey. The objection was, beyond

all doubt, speculatively just; but there was such perfect confidence and affection, between the royal pair that

As far as Ireland was concerned, the prospects of William were much more cheering than they had been a

few months earlier. The activity with which he had personally urged forward the preparations for the next

campaign had produced an extraordinary effect. The nerves of the government were new strung. In every

department of the military administration the influence of a vigorous mind was perceptible. Abundant

supplies of food, clothing and medicine, very different in quality from those which Shales had furnished,

were sent across Saint George's Channel. A thousand baggage waggons had been made or collected with

great expedition; and, during some weeks, the road between London and Chester was covered with them.

Great numbers of recruits were sent to fill the chasms which pestilence had made in the English ranks. Fresh

regiments from Scotland, Cheshire, Lancashire, and Cumberland had landed in the Bay of Belfast. The

uniforms and arms of the new corners clearly indicated the potent influence of the master's eye. With the

British battalions were interspersed several hardy bands of German and Scandinavian mercenaries. Before the

end of May. the English force in Ulster amounted to thirty thousand fighting men. A few more troops and an

immense quantity of military stores were on board of a fleet which lay in the estuary of the Dee, and which

James ought to have made an equally good use of the time during which his army had been in winter quarters.

Strict discipline and regular drilling might, in the interval between November and May, have turned the

athletic and enthusiastic peasants who were assembled under his standard into good soldiers. But the

opportunity was lost. The Court of Dublin was, during that season of inaction, busied with dice and claret,

love letters and challenges. The aspect of the capital was indeed not very brilliant. The whole number of

coaches which could be mustered there, those of the King and of the French Legation included, did not

amount to forty.621 But though there was little splendour there was much dissoluteness. Grave Roman

Catholics shook their heads and said that the Castle did not look like the palace of a King who gloried in

being the champion of the Church.622 The military administration was as deplorable as ever. The cavalry

indeed was, by the exertions of some gallant officers, kept in a high state of efficiency. But a regiment of

infantry differed in nothing but name from a large gang of Rapparees. Indeed a gang of Rapparees gave less

annoyance to peaceable citizens, and more annoyance to the enemy, than a regiment of infantry. Avaux

strongly represented, in a memorial which he delivered to James, the abuses which made the Irish foot a curse

and a scandal to Ireland. Whole companies, said the ambassador, quit their colours on the line of march and

wander to right and left pillaging and destroying; the soldier takes no care of his arms; the officer never

troubles himself to ascertain whether the arms are in good order; the consequence is that one man in every

three has lost his musket, and that another man in every three has a musket that will not go off. Avaux

adjured the King to prohibit marauding, to give orders that the troops should be regularly exercised, and to

punish every officer who suffered his men to neglect their weapons and accoutrements. If these things were

done, His Majesty might hope to have, in the approaching spring, an army with which the enemy would be

unable to contend. This was good advice; but James was so far from taking it that he would hardly listen to it

with patience. Before he had heard eight lines read he flew into a passion and accused the ambassador of

exaggeration. "This paper, Sir," said Avaux, "is not written to be published. It is meant solely for Your

Majesty's information; and, in a paper meant solely for Your Majesty's information, flattery and disguise

would be out of place; but I will not persist in reading what is so disagreeable." "Go on," said James very

angrily; "I will hear the whole." He gradually became calmer, took the memorial, and promised to adopt

some of the suggestions which it contained. But his promise was soon forgotten.623

His financial administration was of a piece with his military administration. His one fiscal resource was

robbery, direct or indirect. Every Protestant who had remained in any part of the three southern provinces of

Ireland was robbed directly, by the simple process of taking money out of his strong box, drink out of his

cellars, fuel from his turf stack, and clothes from his wardrobe. He was robbed indirectly by a new issue of

counters, smaller in size and baser in material than any which had yet borne the image and superscription of

James. Even brass had begun to be scarce at Dublin; and it was necessary to ask assistance from Lewis, who

charitably bestowed on his ally an old cracked piece of cannon to be coined into crowns and shillings.624

But the French king had determined to send over succours of a very different kind. He proposed to take into

his own service, and to form by the best discipline then known in the world, four Irish regiments. They were

to be commanded by Macarthy, who had been severely wounded and taken prisoner at Newton Butler. His

wounds had been healed; and he had regained his liberty by violating his parole. This disgraceful breach of

faith he had made more disgraceful by paltry tricks and sophistical excuses which would have become a

Jesuit better than a gentleman and a soldier. Lewis was willing that the Irish regiments should be sent to him

in rags and unarmed, and insisted only that the men should be stout, and that the officers should not be

bankrupt traders and discarded lacqueys, but, if possible, men of good family who had seen service. In return

for these troops, who were in number not quite four thousand, he undertook to send to Ireland between seven

and eight thousand excellent French infantry, who were likely in a day of battle to be of more use than all the

One great error he committed. The army which he was sending to assist James, though small indeed when

compared with the army of Flanders or with the army of the Rhine, was destined for a service on which the

fate of Europe might depend, and ought therefore to have been commanded by a general of eminent abilities.

There was no want of such generals in the French service. But James and his Queen begged hard for Lauzun,

and carried this point against the strong representations of Avaux, against the advice of Louvois, and against

When Lauzun went to the cabinet of Louvois to receive instructions, the wise minister held language which

showed how little confidence he felt in the vain and eccentric knight errant. "Do not, for God's sake, suffer

yourself to be hurried away by your desire of fighting. Put all your glory in tiring the English out; and, above

Not only was the appointment of Lauzun in itself a bad appointment: but, in order that one man might fill a

post for which he was unfit, it was necessary to remove two men from posts for which they were eminently

fit. Immoral and hardhearted as Rosen and Avaux were, Rosen was a skilful captain, and Avaux was a skilful

politician. Though it is not probable that they would have been able to avert the doom of Ireland, it is

probable that they might have been able to protract the contest; and it was evidently for the interest of France

that the contest should be protracted. But it would have been an affront to the old general to put him under the

orders of Lauzun; and between the ambassador and Lauzun there was such an enmity that they could not be

expected to act cordially together. Both Rosen and Avaux, therefore, were, with many soothing assurances of

royal approbation and favour, recalled to France. They sailed from Cork early in the spring by the fleet which

had conveyed Lauzun thither.627 Lauzun had no sooner landed than he found that, though he had been long

expected, nothing had been prepared for his reception. No lodgings had been provided for his men, no place

of security for his stores, no horses, no carriages.628 His troops had to undergo the hardships of a long march

through a desert before they arrived at Dublin. At Dublin, indeed, they found tolerable accommodation. They

were billeted on Protestants, lived at free quarter, had plenty of bread, and threepence a day. Lauzun was

appointed Commander in Chief of the Irish army, and took up his residence in the Castle.629 His salary was

the same with that of the Lord Lieutenant, eight thousand Jacobuses, equivalent to ten thousand pounds

sterling, a year. This sum James offered to pay, not in the brass which bore his own effigy, but in French

gold. But Lauzun, among whose faults avarice had no place, refused to fill his own coffers from an almost

On him and on the Frenchmen who accompanied him the misery of the Irish people and the imbecility of the

Irish government produced an effect which they found it difficult to describe. Lauzun wrote to Louvois that

the Court and the whole kingdom were in a state not to be imagined by a person who had always lived in well

governed countries. It was, he said, a chaos, such as he had read of in the book of Genesis. The whole

business of all the public functionaries was to quarrel with each other, and to plunder the government and the

people. After he had been about a month at the Castle, he declared that he would not go through such another

month for all the world. His ablest officers confirmed his testimony.631 One of them, indeed, was so unjust

as to represent the people of Ireland not merely as ignorant and idle, which they were, but as hopelessly

stupid and unfeeling, which they assuredly were not. The English policy, he said, had so completely

brutalised them, that they could hardly be called human beings. They were insensible to praise and blame, to

promises and threats. And yet it was pity of them; for they were physically the finest race of men in the

By this time Schomberg had opened the campaign auspiciously. He had with little difficulty taken

Charlemont, the last important fastness which the Irish occupied in Ulster. But the great work of

reconquering the three southern provinces of the island he deferred till William should arrive. William

meanwhile was busied in making arrangements for the government and defence of England during his

absence. He well knew that the Jacobites were on the alert. They had not till very lately been an united and

organized faction. There had been, to use Melfort's phrase, numerous gangs, which were all in

communication with James at Dublin Castle, or with Mary of Modena at Saint Germains, but which had no

connection with each other and were unwilling to trust each other.633 But since it had been known that the

usurper was about to cross the sea, and that his sceptre would be left in a female hand, these gangs had been

drawing close together, and had begun to form one extensive confederacy. Clarendon, who had refused the

oaths, and, Aylesbury, who had dishonestly taken them, were among the chief traitors. Dartmouth, though he

had sworn allegiance to the sovereigns who were in possession, was one of their most active enemies, and

undertook what may be called the maritime department of the plot. His mind was constantly occupied by

schemes, disgraceful to an English seaman, for the destruction of the English fleets and arsenals. He was in

close communication with some naval officers, who, though they served the new government, served it

sullenly and with half a heart; and he flattered himself that by promising these men ample rewards, and by

artfully inflaming the jealous animosity with which they regarded the Dutch flag, he should prevail on them

The conduct of Penn was scarcely less scandalous. He was a zealous and busy Jacobite; and his new way of

life was even more unfavourable than his late way of life had been to moral purity. It was hardly possible to

be at once a consistent Quaker and a courtier: but it was utterly impossible to be at once a consistent Quaker

and a conspirator. It is melancholy to relate that Penn, while professing to consider even defensive war as

sinful, did every thing in his power to bring a foreign army into the heart of his own country. He wrote to

inform James that the adherents of the Prince of Orange dreaded nothing so much as an appeal to the sword,

and that, if England were now invaded from France or from Ireland, the number of Royalists would appear to

be greater than ever. Avaux thought this letter so important, that he sent a translation of it to Lewis.635 A

good effect, the shrewd ambassador wrote, had been produced, by this and similar communications, on the

mind of King James. His Majesty was at last convinced that he could recover his dominions only sword in

hand. It is a curious fact that it should have been reserved for the great preacher of peace to produce this

conviction in the mind of the old tyrant.636 Penn's proceedings had not escaped the observation of the

government. Warrants had been out against him; and he had been taken into custody; but the evidence against

him had not been such as would support a charge of high treason: he had, as with all his faults he deserved to

have, many friends in every party; he therefore soon regained his liberty, and returned to his plots.637

But the chief conspirator was Richard Graham, Viscount Preston, who had, in the late reign, been Secretary

of State. Though a peer in Scotland, he was only a baronet in England. He had, indeed, received from Saint

Germains an English patent of nobility; but the patent bore a date posterior to that flight which the

Convention had pronounced an abdication. The Lords had, therefore, not only refused to admit him to a share

of their privileges, but had sent him to prison for presuming to call himself one of their order. He had,

however, by humbling himself, and by withdrawing his claim, obtained his liberty.638 Though the

submissive language which he had condescended to use on this occasion did not indicate a spirit prepared for

martyrdom, he was regarded by his party, and by the world in general, as a man of courage and honour. He

still retained the seals of his office, and was still considered by the adherents of indefeasible hereditary right

as the real Secretary of State. He was in high favour with Lewis, at whose court he had formerly resided, and

had, since the Revolution, been intrusted by the French government with considerable sums of money for

While Preston was consulting in the capital with the other heads of the faction, the rustic Jacobites were

laying in arms, holding musters, and forming themselves into companies, troops, and regiments. There were

alarming symptoms in Worcestershire. In Lancashire many gentlemen had received commissions signed by

James, called themselves colonels and captains, and made out long lists of noncommissioned officers and

privates. Letters from Yorkshire brought news that large bodies of men, who seemed to have met for no good

purpose, had been seen on the moors near Knaresborough. Letters from Newcastle gave an account of a great

match at football which had been played in Northumberland, and was suspected to have been a pretext for a

gathering of the disaffected. In the crowd, it was said, were a hundred and fifty horsemen well mounted and

Meantime packets of letters full of treason were constantly passing and repassing between Kent and Picardy,

and between Wales and Ireland. Some of the messengers were honest fanatics; but others were mere

Of these double traitors the most remarkable was William Fuller. This man has himself told us that, when he

was very young, he fell in with a pamphlet which contained an account of the flagitious life and horrible

death of Dangerfield. The boy's imagination was set on fire; he devoured the book; he almost got it by heart;

and he was soon seized, and ever after haunted, by a strange presentiment that his fate would resemble that of

the wretched adventurer whose history he had so eagerly read.641 It might have been supposed that the

prospect of dying in Newgate, with a back flayed and an eye knocked out, would not have seemed very

attractive. But experience proves that there are some distempered minds for which notoriety, even when

accompanied with pain and shame, has an irresistible fascination. Animated by this loathsome ambition,

Fuller equalled, and perhaps surpassed, his model. He was bred a Roman Catholic, and was page to Lady

Melfort, when Lady Melfort shone at Whitehall as one of the loveliest women in the train of Mary of

Modena. After the Revolution, he followed his mistress to France, was repeatedly employed in delicate and

perilous commissions, and was thought at Saint Germains to be a devoted servant of the House of Stuart. In

truth, however, he had, in one of his journeys to London, sold himself to the new government, and had

abjured the faith in which he had been brought up. The honour, if it is to be so called, of turning him from a

worthless Papist into a worthless Protestant he ascribed, with characteristic impudence, to the lucid reasoning

In the spring of 1690, Mary of Modena wished to send to her correspondents in London some highly

important despatches. As these despatches were too bulky to be concealed in the clothes of a single

messenger, it was necessary to employ two confidential persons. Fuller was one. The other was a zealous

young Jacobite called Crone. Before they set out, they received full instructions from the Queen herself. Not

a scrap of paper was to be detected about them by an ordinary search: but their buttons contained letters

The pair proceeded to Calais. The governor of that town furnished them with a boat, which, under cover of

the night, set them on the low marshy coast of Kent, near the lighthouse of Dungeness. They walked to a

farmhouse, procured horses, and took different roads to London. Fuller hastened to the palace at Kensington,

and delivered the documents with which he was charged into the King's hand. The first letter which William

unrolled seemed to contain only florid compliments: but a pan of charcoal was lighted: a liquor well known

to the diplomatists of that age was applied to the paper: an unsavoury steam filled the closet; and lines full of

The first thing to be done was to secure Crone. He had unfortunately had time to deliver his letters before he

was caught: but a snare was laid for him into which he easily fell. In truth the sincere Jacobites were

generally wretched plotters. There was among them an unusually large proportion of sots, braggarts, and

babblers; and Crone was one of these. Had he been wise, he would have shunned places of public resort, kept

strict guard over his lips, and stinted himself to one bottle at a meal. He was found by the messengers of the

government at a tavern table in Gracechurch Street, swallowing bumpers to the health of King James, and

ranting about the coming restoration, the French fleet, and the thousands of honest Englishmen who were

awaiting the signal to rise in arms for their rightful Sovereign. He was carried to the Secretary's office at

Whitehall. He at first seemed to be confident and at his ease: but when Fuller appeared among the bystanders

at liberty, and in a fashionable garb, with a sword, the prisoner's courage fell; and he was scarcely able to

The news that Fuller had turned king's evidence, that Crone had been arrested, and that important letters from

Saint Germains were in the hands of William, flew fast through London, and spread dismay among all who

were conscious of guilt.643 It was true that the testimony of one witness, even if that witness had been more

respectable than Fuller, was not legally sufficient to convict any person of high treason. But Fuller had so

managed matters that several witnesses could be produced to corroborate his evidence against Crone; and, if

Crone, under the strong terror of death, should imitate Fuller's example, the heads of all the chiefs of the

conspiracy would be at the mercy of the government. The spirits of the Jacobites rose, however, when it was

known that Crone, though repeatedly interrogated by those who had him in their power, and though assured

that nothing but a frank confession could save his life, had resolutely continued silent. What effect a verdict

of Guilty and the near prospect of the gallows might produce on him remained to be seen. His accomplices

were by no means willing that his fortitude should be tried by so severe a test. They therefore employed

numerous artifices, legal and illegal, to avert a conviction. A woman named Clifford, with whom he had

lodged, and who was one of the most active and cunning agents of the Jacobite faction, was entrusted with

the duty of keeping him steady to the cause, and of rendering to him services from which scrupulous or timid

agents might have shrunk. When the dreaded day came, Fuller was too ill to appear in the witness box, and

the trial was consequently postponed. He asserted that his malady was not natural, that a noxious drug had

been administered to him in a dish of porridge, that his nails were discoloured, that his hair came off, and that

able physicians pronounced him poisoned. But such stories, even when they rest on authority much better

While Crone was awaiting his trial, another agent of the Court of Saint Germains, named Tempest, was

seized on the road between Dover and London, and was found to be the bearer of numerous letters addressed

Every day it became more plain that the State was surrounded by dangers: and yet it was absolutely necessary

that, at this conjuncture, the able and resolute Chief of the State should quit his post.

William, with painful anxiety, such as he alone was able to conceal under an appearance of stoical serenity,

prepared to take his departure. Mary was in agonies of grief; and her distress affected him more than was

imagined by those who judged of his heart by his demeanour.645 He knew too that he was about to leave her

surrounded by difficulties with which her habits had not qualified her to contend. She would be in constant

need of wise and upright counsel; and where was such counsel to be found? There were indeed among his

servants many able men and a few virtuous men. But, even when he was present, their political and personal

animosities had too often made both their abilities and their virtues useless to him. What chance was there

that the gentle Mary would be able to restrain that party spirit and that emulation which had been but very

imperfectly kept in order by her resolute and politic lord? If the interior cabinet which was to assist the Queen

were composed exclusively either of Whigs or of Tories, half the nation would be disgusted. Yet, if Whigs

and Tories were mixed, it was certain that there would be constant dissension. Such was William's situation

All these difficulties were increased by the conduct of Shrewsbury. The character of this man is a curious

study. He seemed to be the petted favourite both of nature and of fortune. Illustrious birth, exalted rank,

ample possessions, fine parts, extensive acquirements, an agreeable person, manners singularly graceful and

engaging, combined to make him an object of admiration and envy. But, with all these advantages, he had

some moral and intellectual peculiarities which made him a torment to himself and to all connected with him.

His conduct at the time of the Revolution had given the world a high opinion, not merely of his patriotism,

but of his courage, energy and decision. It should seem, however, that youthful enthusiasm and the

exhilaration produced by public sympathy and applause had, on that occasion, raised him above himself.

Scarcely any other part of his life was of a piece with that splendid commencement. He had hardly become

Secretary of State when it appeared that his nerves were too weak for such a post. The daily toil, the heavy

responsibility, the failures, the mortifications, the obloquy, which are inseparable from power, broke his

spirit, soured his temper, and impaired his health. To such natures as his the sustaining power of high

religious principle seems to be peculiarly necessary; and unfortunately Shrewsbury had, in the act of shaking

off the yoke of that superstition in which he had been brought up, liberated himself also from more salutary

bands which might perhaps have braced his too delicately constituted mind into stedfastness and uprightness.

Destitute of such support, he was, with great abilities, a weak man, and, though endowed with many amiable

and attractive qualities, could not be called an honest man. For his own happiness, he should either have been

much better or much worse. As it was, he never knew either that noble peace of mind which is the reward of

rectitude, or that abject peace of mind which springs from impudence and insensibility. Few people who have

had so little power to resist temptation have suffered so cruelly from remorse and shame.

To a man of this temper the situation of a minister of state during the year which followed the Revolution

must have been constant torture. The difficulties by which the government was beset on all sides, the

malignity of its enemies, the unreasonableness of its friends, the virulence with which the hostile factions fell

on each other and on every mediator who attempted to part them, might indeed have discouraged a more

resolute spirit. Before Shrewsbury had been six months in office, he had completely lost heart and head. He

began to address to William letters which it is difficult to imagine that a prince so strongminded can have

read without mingled compassion and contempt. "I am sensible,"such was the constant burden of these

epistles,"that I am unfit for my place. I cannot exert myself. I am not the same man that I was half a year

ago. My health is giving way. My mind is on the rack. My memory is failing. Nothing but quiet and

retirement can restore me." William returned friendly and soothing answers; and, for a time, these answers

calmed the troubled mind of his minister.646 But at length the dissolution, the general election, the change in

the Commissions of Peace and Lieutenancy, and finally the debates on the two Abjuration Bills, threw

Shrewsbury into a state bordering on distraction. He was angry with the Whigs for using the King ill, and yet

was still more angry with the King for showing favour to the Tories. At what moment and by what influence,

the unhappy man was induced to commit a treason, the consciousness of which threw a dark shade over all

his remaining years, is not accurately known. But it is highly probable that his mother, who, though the most

abandoned of women, had great power over him, took a fatal advantage of some unguarded hour when he

was irritated by finding his advice slighted, and that of Danby and Nottingham preferred. She was still a

member of that Church which her son had quitted, and may have thought that, by reclaiming him from

rebellion, she might make some atonement for the violation of her marriage vow and the murder of her

lord.647 What is certain is that, before the end of the spring of 1690, Shrewsbury had offered his services to

James, and that James had accepted them. One proof of the sincerity of the convert was demanded. He must

resign the seals which he had taken from the hand of the usurper.648 It is probable that Shrewsbury had

scarcely committed his fault when he began to repent of it. But he had not strength of mind to stop short in

the path of evil. Loathing his own baseness, dreading a detection which must be fatal to his honour, afraid to

go forward, afraid to go back, he underwent tortures of which it is impossible to think without

commiseration. The true cause of his distress was as yet a profound secret; but his mental struggles and

changes of purpose were generally known, and furnished the town, during some weeks, with topics of

conversation. One night, when he was actually setting out in a state of great excitement for the palace, with

the seals in his hand, he was induced by Burnet to defer his resignation for a few hours. Some days later, the

eloquence of Tillotson was employed for the same purpose.649 Three or four times the Earl laid the ensigns

of his office on the table of the royal closet, and was three or four times induced, by the kind expostulations

of the master whom he was conscious of having wronged, to take them up and carry them away. Thus the

resignation was deferred till the eve of the King's departure. By that time agitation had thrown Shrewsbury

into a low fever. Bentinck, who made a last effort to persuade him to retain office, found him in bed and too

ill for conversation.650 The resignation so often tendered was at length accepted; and during some months

It was no small addition to William's troubles that, at such a moment, his government should be weakened by

this defection. He tried, however, to do his best with the materials which remained to him, and finally

selected nine privy councillors, by whose advice he enjoined Mary to be guided. Four of these, Devonshire,

Dorset, Monmouth, and Edward Russell, were Whigs. The other five, Caermarthen, Pembroke, Nottingham,

William ordered the Nine to attend him at the office of the Secretary of State. When they were assembled, he

came leading in the Queen, desired them to be seated, and addressed to them a few earnest and weighty

words. "She wants experience," he said; "but I hope that, by choosing you to be her counsellors, I have

supplied that defect. I put my kingdom into your hands. Nothing foreign or domestic shall be kept secret from

you. I implore you to be diligent and to be united."652 In private he told his wife what he thought of the

characters of the Nine; and it should seem, from her letters to him, that there were few of the number for

whom he expressed any high esteem. Marlborough was to be her guide in military affairs, and was to

command the troops in England. Russell, who was Admiral of the Blue, and had been rewarded for the

service which he had done at the time of the Revolution with the lucrative place of Treasurer of the Navy,

was well fitted to be her adviser on all questions relating to the fleet. But Caermarthen was designated as the

person on whom, in case of any difference of opinion in the council, she ought chiefly to rely. Caermarthen's

sagacity and experience were unquestionable; his principles, indeed, were lax; but, if there was any person in

existence to whom he was likely to be true, that person was Mary. He had long been in a peculiar manner her

friend and servant: he had gained a high place in her favour by bringing about her marriage; and he had, in

the Convention, carried his zeal for her interests to a length which she had herself blamed as excessive. There

was, therefore, every reason to hope that he would serve her at this critical conjuncture with sincere good

One of her nearest kinsmen, on the other hand, was one of her bitterest enemies. The evidence which was in

the possession of the government proved beyond dispute that Clarendon was deeply concerned in the Jacobite

schemes of insurrection. But the Queen was most unwilling that her kindred should be harshly treated; and

William, remembering through what ties she had broken, and what reproaches she had incurred, for his sake,

readily gave her uncle's life and liberty to her intercession. But, before the King set out for Ireland, he spoke

seriously to Rochester. "Your brother has been plotting against me. I am sure of it. I have the proofs under his

own hand. I was urged to leave him out of the Act of Grace; but I would not do what would have given so

much pain to the Queen. For her sake I forgive the past; but my Lord Clarendon will do well to be cautious

for the future. If not, he will find that these are no jesting matters." Rochester communicated the admonition

to Clarendon. Clarendon, who was in constant correspondence with Dublin and Saint Germains, protested

that his only wish was to be quiet, and that, though he had a scruple about the oaths, the existing government

Among the letters which the government had intercepted was one from James to Penn. That letter, indeed,

was not legal evidence to prove that the person to whom it was addressed had been guilty of high treason; but

it raised suspicions which are now known to have been well founded. Penn was brought before the Privy

Council, and interrogated. He said very truly that he could not prevent people from writing to him, and that

he was not accountable for what they might write to him. He acknowledged that he was bound to the late

King by ties of gratitude and affection which no change of fortune could dissolve. "I should be glad to do him

any service in his private affairs: but I owe a sacred duty to my country; and therefore I was never so wicked

as even to think of endeavouring to bring him back." This was a falsehood; and William was probably aware

that it was so. He was unwilling however to deal harshly with a man who had many titles to respect, and who

was not likely to be a very formidable plotter. He therefore declared himself satisfied, and proposed to

discharge the prisoner. Some of the Privy Councillors, however, remonstrated; and Penn was required to give

On the day before William's departure, he called Burnet into his closet, and, in firm but mournful language,

spoke of the dangers which on every side menaced the realm, of the fury or the contending factions, and of

the evil spirit which seemed to possess too many of the clergy. "But my trust is in God. I will go through with

my work or perish in it. Only I cannot help feeling for the poor Queen;" and twice he repeated with unwonted

tenderness, "the poor Queen." "If you love me," he added, "wait on her often, and give her what help you can.

As for me, but for one thing, I should enjoy the prospect of being on horseback and under canvass again. For

I am sure I am fitter to direct a campaign than to manage your House of Lords and Commons. But, though I

know that I am in the path of duty, it is hard on my wife that her father and I must be opposed to each other in

the field. God send that no harm may happen to him. Let me have your prayers, Doctor." Burnet retired

greatly moved, and doubtless put up, with no common fervour, those prayers for which his master had

On the following day, the fourth of June, the King set out for Ireland. Prince George had offered his services,

had equipped himself at great charge, and fully expected to be complimented with a seat in the royal coach.

But William, who promised himself little pleasure or advantage from His Royal Highness's conversation, and

who seldom stood on ceremony, took Portland for a travelling companion, and never once, during the whole

of that eventful campaign, seemed to be aware of the Prince's existence.657 George, if left to himself, would

hardly have noticed the affront. But, though he was too dull to feel, his wife felt for him; and her resentment

was studiously kept alive by mischiefmakers of no common dexterity. On this, as on many other occasions,

the infirmities of William's temper proved seriously detrimental to the great interests of which he was the

guardian. His reign would have been far more prosperous if, with his own courage, capacity and elevation of

mind, he had had a little of the easy good humour and politeness of his uncle Charles.

In four days the King arrived at Chester, where a fleet of transports was awaiting the signal for sailing. He

embarked on the eleventh of June, and was convoyed across Saint George's Channel by a squadron of men of

The month which followed William's departure from London was one of the most eventful and anxious

months in the whole history of England. A few hours after he had set out, Crone was brought to the bar of the

Old Bailey. A great array of judges was on the Bench. Fuller had recovered sufficiently to make his

appearance in court; and the trial proceeded. The Jacobites had been indefatigable in their efforts to ascertain

the political opinions of the persons whose names were on the jury list. So many were challenged that there

was some difficulty in making up the number of twelve; and among the twelve was one on whom the

malecontents thought that they could depend. Nor were they altogether mistaken; for this man held out

against his eleven companions all night and half the next day; and he would probably have starved them into

submission had not Mrs. Clifford, who was in league with him, been caught throwing sweetmeats to him

through the window. His supplies having been cut off, he yielded; and a verdict of Guilty, which, it was said,

cost two of the jurymen their lives, was returned. A motion in arrest of judgment was instantly made, on the

ground that a Latin word indorsed on the back of the indictment was incorrectly spelt. The objection was

undoubtedly frivolous. Jeffreys would have at once overruled it with a torrent of curses, and would have

proceeded to the most agreeable part of his duty, that of describing to the prisoner the whole process of half

hanging, disembowelling, mutilating, and quartering. But Holt and his brethren remembered that they were

now for the first time since the Revolution trying a culprit on a charge of high treason. It was therefore

desirable to show, in a manner not to be misunderstood, that a new era had commenced, and that the tribunals

would in future rather err on the side of humanity than imitate the cruel haste and levity with which Cornish

had, when pleading for his life, been silenced by servile judges. The passing of the sentence was therefore

deferred: a day was appointed for considering the point raised by Crone; and counsel were assigned to argue

in his behalf. "This would not have been done, Mr. Crone," said the Lord Chief Justice significantly, "in

either of the last two reigns." After a full hearing, the Bench unanimously pronounced the error to be

immaterial; and the prisoner was condemned to death. He owned that his trial had been fair, thanked the

judges for their patience, and besought them to intercede for him with the Queen.659

He was soon informed that his fate was in his own hands. The government was willing to spare him if he

would earn his pardon by a full confession. The struggle in his mind was terrible and doubtful. At one time

Mrs. Clifford, who had access to his cell, reported to the Jacobite chiefs that he was in a great agony. He

could not die, he said; he was too young to be a martyr.660 The next morning she found him cheerful and

resolute.661 He held out till the eve of the day fixed for his execution. Then he sent to ask for an interview

with the Secretary of State. Nottingham went to Newgate; but, before he arrived, Crone had changed his mind

and was determined to say nothing. "Then," said Nottingham, "I shall see you no morefor tomorrow will

assuredly be your last day." But, after Nottingham had departed, Monmouth repaired to the gaol, and flattered

himself that he had shaken the prisoner's resolution. At a very late hour that night came a respite for a

week.662 The week however passed away without any disclosure; the gallows and quartering block were

ready at Tyburn; the sledge and axe were at the door of Newgate; the crowd was thick all up Holborn Hill and

along the Oxford Road; when a messenger brought another respite, and Crone, instead of being dragged to

the place of execution, was conducted to the Council chamber at Whitehall. His fortitude had been at last

overcome by the near prospect of death; and on this occasion he gave important information.663

Such information as he had it in his power to give was indeed at that moment much needed. Both an invasion

and an insurrection were hourly expected.664 Scarcely had William set out from London when a great French

fleet commanded by the Count of Tourville left the port of Brest and entered the British Channel. Tourville

was the ablest maritime commander that his country then possessed. He had studied every part of his

profession. It was said of him that he was competent to fill any place on shipboard from that of carpenter up

to that of admiral. It was said of him, also, that to the dauntless courage of a seaman he united the suavity and

urbanity of an accomplished gentleman.665 He now stood over to the English shore, and approached it so

near that his ships could be plainly descried from the ramparts of Plymouth. From Plymouth he proceeded

slowly along the coast of Devonshire and Dorsetshire. There was great reason to apprehend that his

The Queen and her Council hastened to take measures for the defence of the country against both foreign and

domestic enemies. Torrington took the command of the English fleet which lay in the Downs, and sailed to

Saint Helen's. He was there joined by a Dutch squadron under the command of Evertsen. It seemed that the

cliffs of the Isle of Wight would witness one of the greatest naval conflicts recorded in history. A hundred

and fifty ships of the line could be counted at once from the watchtower of Saint Catharine's. On the cast of

the huge precipice of Black Gang Chine, and in full view of the richly wooded rocks of Saint Lawrence and

Ventnor, were mustered the maritime forces of England and Holland. On the west, stretching to that white

It was on the twentysixth of June, less than a fortnight after William had sailed for Ireland, that the hostile

fleets took up these positions. A few hours earlier, there had been an important and anxious sitting of the

Privy Council at Whitehall. The malecontents who were leagued with France were alert and full of hope.

Mary had remarked, while taking her airing, that Hyde Park was swarming with them. The whole board was

of opinion that it was necessary to arrest some persons of whose guilt the government had proofs. When

Clarendon was named, something was said in his behalf by his friend and relation, Sir Henry Capel. The

other councillors stared, but remained silent. It was no pleasant task to accuse the Queen's kinsman in the

Queen's presence. Mary had scarcely ever opened her lips at Council; but now, being possessed of clear

proofs of her uncle's treason in his own handwriting, and knowing that respect for her prevented her advisers

from proposing what the public safety required, she broke silence. "Sir Henry," she said, "I know, and every

body here knows as well as I, that there is too much against my Lord Clarendon to leave him out." The

warrant was drawn up; and Capel signed it with the rest. "I am more sorry for Lord Clarendon," Mary wrote

to her husband, "than, may be, will be believed." That evening Clarendon and several other noted Jacobites

When the Privy Council had risen, the Queen and the interior Council of Nine had to consider a question of

the gravest importance. What orders were to be sent to Torrington? The safety of the State might depend on

his judgment and presence of mind; and some of Mary's advisers apprehended that he would not be found

equal to the occasion. Their anxiety increased when news came that he had abandoned the coast of the Isle of

Wight to the French, and was retreating before them towards the Straits of Dover. The sagacious

Caermarthen and the enterprising Monmouth agreed in blaming these cautious tactics. It was true that

Torrington had not so many vessels as Tourville; but Caermarthen thought that, at such a time, it was

advisable to fight, although against odds; and Monmouth was, through life, for fighting at all times and

against all odds. Russell, who was indisputably one of the best seamen of the age, held that the disparity of

numbers was not such as ought to cause any uneasiness to an officer who commanded English and Dutch

sailors. He therefore proposed to send to the Admiral a reprimand couched in terms so severe that the Queen

did not like to sign it. The language was much softened; but, in the main, Russell's advice was followed.

Torrington was positively ordered to retreat no further, and to give battle immediately. Devonshire, however,

was still unsatisfied. "It is my duty, Madam," he said, to tell Your Majesty exactly what I think on a matter of

this importance; and I think that my Lord Torrington is not a man to be trusted with the fate of three

kingdoms." Devonshire was right; but his colleagues were unanimously of opinion that to supersede a

commander in sight of the enemy, and on the eve of a general action, would be a course full of danger, and it

is difficult to say that they were wrong. "You must either," said Russell, "leave him where he is, or send for

him as a prisoner." Several expedients were suggested. Caermarthen proposed that Russell should be sent to

assist Torrington. Monmouth passionately implored permission to join the fleet in any capacity, as a captain,

or as a volunteer. "Only let me be once on board; and I pledge my life that there shall be a battle." After much

discussion and hesitation, it was resolved that both Russell and Monmouth should go down to the coast.668

They set out, but too late. The despatch which ordered Torrington to fight had preceded them. It reached him

when he was off Beachy Head. He read it, and was in a great strait. Not to give battle was to be guilty of

direct disobedience. To give battle was, in his judgment, to incur serious risk of defeat. He probably

suspected,for he was of a captious and jealous temper,that the instructions which placed him in so

painful a dilemma had been framed by enemies and rivals with a design unfriendly to his fortune and his

fame. He was exasperated by the thought that he was ordered about and overruled by Russell, who, though

his inferior in professional rank, exercised, as one of the Council of Nine, a supreme control over all the

departments of the public service. There seems to be no ground for charging Torrington with disaffection.

Still less can it be suspected that an officer, whose whole life had been passed in confronting danger, and who

had always borne himself bravely, wanted the personal courage which hundreds of sailors on board of every

ship under his command possessed. But there is a higher courage of which Torrington was wholly destitute.

He shrank from all responsibility, from the responsibility of fighting, and from the responsibility of not

fighting; and he succeeded in finding out a middle way which united all the inconveniences which he wished

to avoid. He would conform to the letter of his instructions; yet he would not put every thing to hazard. Some

of his ships should skirmish with the enemy; but the great body of his fleet should not be risked. It was

evident that the vessels which engaged the French would be placed in a most dangerous situation, and would

suffer much loss; and there is but too good reason to believe that Torrington was base enough to lay his plans

in such a manner that the danger and loss might fall almost exclusively to the share of the Dutch. He bore

them no love; and in England they were so unpopular that the destruction of their whole squadron was likely

It was on the twentyninth of June that the Admiral received the order to fight. The next day, at four in the

morning, he bore down on the French fleet, and formed his vessels in order of battle. He had not sixty sail of

the line, and the French had at least eighty; but his ships were more strongly manned than those of the enemy.

He placed the Dutch in the van and gave them the signal to engage. That signal was promptly obeyed.

Evertsen and his countrymen fought with a courage to which both their English allies and their French

enemies, in spite of national prejudices, did full justice. In none of Van Tromp's or De Ruyter's battles had the

honour of the Batavian flag been more gallantly upheld. During many hours the van maintained the unequal

contest with very little assistance from any other part of the fleet. At length the Dutch Admiral drew off,

leaving one shattered and dismasted hull to the enemy. His second in command and several officers of high

rank had fallen. To keep the sea against the French after this disastrous and ignominious action was

impossible. The Dutch ships which had come out of the fight were in lamentable condition. Torrington

ordered some of them to be destroyed: the rest he took in tow: he then fled along the coast of Kent, and

sought a refuge in the Thames. As soon as he was in the river, he ordered all the buoys to be pulled up, and

thus made the navigation so dangerous, that the pursuers could not venture to follow him.669

It was, however, thought by many, and especially by the French ministers, that, if Tourville had been more

enterprising, the allied fleet might have been destroyed. He seems to have borne, in one respect, too much

resemblance to his vanquished opponent. Though a brave man, he was a timid commander. His life he

exposed with careless gaiety; but it was said that he was nervously anxious and pusillanimously cautious

when his professional reputation was in danger. He was so much annoyed by these censures that he soon

There has scarcely ever been so sad a day in London as that on which the news of the Battle of Beachy Head

arrived. The shame was insupportable; the peril was imminent. What if the victorious enemy should do what

De Ruyter had done? What if the dockyards of Chatham should again be destroyed? What if the Tower itself

should be bombarded? What if the vast wood of masts and yardarms below London Bridge should be in

ablaze? Nor was this all. Evil tidings had just arrived from the Low Countries. The allied forces under

Waldeck had, in the neighbourhood of Fleurus, encountered the French commanded by the Duke of

Luxemburg. The day had been long and fiercely disputed. At length the skill of the French general and the

impetuous valour of the French cavalry had prevailed.671 Thus at the same moment the army of Lewis was

victorious in Flanders, and his navy was in undisputed possession of the Channel. Marshal Humieres with a

considerable force lay not far from the Straits of Dover. It had been given out that he was about to join

Luxemburg. But the information which the English government received from able military men in the

Netherlands and from spies who mixed with the Jacobites, and which to so great a master of the art of war as

Marlborough seemed to deserve serious attention, was, that the army of Humieres would instantly march to

Dunkirk and would there be taken on board of the fleet of Tourville.672 Between the coast of Artois and the

Nore not a single ship bearing the red cross of Saint George could venture to show herself. The embarkation

would be the business of a few hours. A few hours more might suffice for the voyage. At any moment

London might be appalled by the news that thirty thousand French veterans were in Kent, and that the

Jacobites of half the counties of the kingdom were in arms. All the regular troops who could be assembled for

the defence of the island did not amount to more than ten thousand men. It may be doubted whether our

country has ever passed through a more alarming crisis than that of the first week of July 1690.

But the evil brought with it its own remedy. Those little knew England who imagined that she could be in

danger at once of rebellion and invasion; for in truth the danger of invasion was the best security against the

danger of rebellion. The cause of James was the cause of France; and, though to superficial observers the

French alliance seemed to be his chief support, it really was the obstacle which made his restoration

impossible. In the patriotism, the too often unamiable and unsocial patriotism of our forefathers, lay the secret

at once of William's weakness and of his strength. They were jealous of his love for Holland; but they

cordially sympathized with his hatred of Lewis. To their strong sentiment of nationality are to be ascribed

almost all those petty annoyances which made the throne of the Deliverer, from his accession to his death, so

uneasy a seat. But to the same sentiment it is to be ascribed that his throne, constantly menaced and

frequently shaken, was never subverted. For, much as his people detested his foreign favourites, they detested

his foreign adversaries still more. The Dutch were Protestants; the French were Papists. The Dutch were

regarded as selfseeking, grasping overreaching allies; the French were mortal enemies. The worst that could

be apprehended from the Dutch was that they might obtain too large a share of the patronage of the Crown,

that they might throw on us too large a part of the burdens of the war, that they might obtain commercial

advantages at our expense. But the French would conquer us; the French would enslave us; the French would

inflict on us calamities such as those which had turned the fair fields and cities of the Palatinate into a desert.

The hopgrounds of Kent would be as the vineyards of the Neckar. The High Street of Oxford and the close of

Salisbury would be piled with ruins such as those which covered the spots where the palaces and churches of

Heidelberg and Mannheim had once stood. The parsonage overshadowed by the old steeple, the farmhouse

peeping from among beehives and appleblossoms, the manorial hall embosomed in elms, would be given up

to a soldiery which knew not what it was to pity old men or delicate women or sticking children. The words,

"The French are coming," like a spell, quelled at once all murmur about taxes and abuses, about William's

ungracious manners and Portland's lucrative places, and raised a spirit as high and unconquerable as had

pervaded, a hundred years before, the ranks which Elizabeth reviewed at Tilbury. Had the army of Humieres

landed, it would assuredly have been withstood by almost every male capable of bearing arms. Not only the

muskets and pikes but the scythes and pitchforks would have been too few for the hundreds of thousands

who, forgetting all distinction of sect or faction, would have risen up like one man to defend the English soil.

The immediate effect therefore of the disasters in the Channel and in Flanders was to unite for a moment the

great body of the people. The national antipathy to the Dutch seemed to be suspended. Their gallant conduct

in the fight off Beachy Head was loudly applauded. The inaction of Torrington was loudly condemned.

London set the example of concert and of exertion. The irritation produced by the late election at once

subsided. All distinctions of party disappeared. The Lord Mayor was summoned to attend the Queen. She

requested him to ascertain as soon as possible what the capital would undertake to do if the enemy should

venture to make a descent. He called together the representatives of the wards, conferred with them, and

returned to Whitehall to report that they had unanimously bound themselves to stand by the government with

life and fortune; that a hundred thousand pounds were ready to be paid into the Exchequer; that ten thousand

Londoners, well armed and appointed, were prepared to march at an hour's notice; and that an additional

force, consisting of six regiments of foot, a strong regiment of horse, and a thousand dragoons, should be

instantly raised without costing the Crown a farthing. Of Her Majesty the City had nothing to ask, but that

she would be pleased to set over these troops officers in whom she could confide. The same spirit was shown

in every part of the country. Though in the southern counties the harvest was at hand, the rustics repaired with

unusual cheerfulness to the musters of the militia. The Jacobite country gentlemen, who had, during several

months, been making preparations for the general rising which was to take place as soon as William was gone

and as help arrived from France, now that William was gone, now that a French invasion was hourly

expected, burned their commissions signed by James, and hid their arms behind wainscots or in haystacks.

The Jacobites in the towns were insulted wherever they appeared, and were forced to shut themselves up in

Nothing is more interesting to those who love to study the intricacies of the human heart than the effect which

the public danger produced on Shrewsbury. For a moment he was again the Shrewsbury of 1688. His nature,

lamentably unstable, was not ignoble; and the thought, that, by standing foremost in the defence of his

country at so perilous a crisis, he might repair his great fault and regain his own esteem, gave new energy to

his body and his mind. He had retired to Epsom, in the hope that quiet and pure air would produce a salutary

effect on his shattered frame and wounded spirit. But a few hours after the news of the Battle of Beachy Head

had arrived, he was at Whitehall, and had offered his purse and sword to the Queen. It had been in

contemplation to put the fleet under the command of some great nobleman with two experienced naval

officers to advise him. Shrewsbury begged that, if such an arrangement were made, he might be appointed. It

concerned, he said, the interest and the honour of every man in the kingdom not to let the enemy ride

victorious in the Channel; and he would gladly risk his life to retrieve the lost fame of the English flag.674

His offer was not accepted. Indeed, the plan of dividing the naval command between a man of quality who

did not know the points of the compass, and two weatherbeaten old seamen who had risen from being cabin

boys to be Admirals, was very wisely laid aside. Active exertions were made to prepare the allied squadrons

for service. Nothing was omitted which could assuage the natural resentment of the Dutch. The Queen sent a

Privy Councillor, charged with a special mission to the States General. He was the bearer of a letter to them

in which she extolled the valour of Evertsen's gallant squadron. She assured them that their ships should be

repaired in the English dockyards, and that the wounded Dutchmen should be as carefully tended as wounded

Englishmen. It was announced that a strict inquiry would be instituted into the causes of the late disaster; and

Torrington, who indeed could not at that moment have appeared in public without risk of being torn in pieces,

During the three days which followed the arrival of the disastrous tidings from Beachy Head the aspect of

London was gloomy and agitated. But on the fourth day all was changed. Bells were pealing: flags were

flying: candles were arranged in the windows for an illumination; men were eagerly shaking hands with each

other in the streets. A courier had that morning arrived at Whitehall with great news from Ireland.

William lands at Carrickfergus, and proceeds to BelfastState of Dublin; William's military

ArrangementsWilliam marches southwardThe Irish Army retreatsThe Irish make a Stand at the

BoyneThe Army of JamesThe Army of WilliamWalker, now Bishop of Derry, accompanies the

ArmyWilliam reconnoitres the Irish Position; William is woundedBattle of the BoyneFlight of

JamesLoss of the two ArmiesFall of Drogheda; State of Dublin James flies to France; Dublin

evacuated by the French and Irish TroopsEntry of William into DublinEffect produced in France by the

News from IrelandEffect produced at Rome by the News from IrelandEffect produced in London by the

News from Ireland James arrives in France; his Reception thereTourville attempts a Descent on

EnglandTeignmouth destroyedExcitement of the English Nation against the FrenchThe Jacobite

PressThe Jacobite Form of Prayer and HumiliationClamour against the nonjuring BishopsMilitary

Operations in Ireland; Waterford takenThe Irish Army collected at Limerick; Lauzun pronounces that the

Place cannot be defendedThe Irish insist on defending LimerickTyrconnel is against defending

Limerick; Limerick defended by the Irish aloneSarsfield surprises the English ArtilleryArrival of

Baldearg O'Donnel at LimerickThe Besiegers suffer from the RainsUnsuccessful Assault on Limerick;

The Siege raisedTyrconnel and Lauzun go to France; William returns to England; Reception of William in

England Expedition to the South of IrelandMarlborough takes Cork Marlborough takes

KinsaleAffairs of Scotland; Intrigues of Montgomery with the JacobitesWar in the HighlandsFort

William built; Meeting of the Scottish ParliamentMelville Lord High Commissioner; the Government

obtains a MajorityEcclesiastical LegislationThe Coalition between the Club and the Jacobites

dissolvedThe Chiefs of the Club betray each otherGeneral Acquiescence in the new Ecclesiastical

PolityComplaints of the EpiscopaliansThe Presbyterian ConjurorsWilliam dissatisfied with the

Ecclesiastical Arrangements in ScotlandMeeting of the General Assembly of the Church of

ScotlandState of Affairs on the ContinentThe Duke of Savoy joins the CoalitionSupplies voted;

Ways and MeansProceedings against Torrington Torrington's Trial and AcquittalAnimosity of the

Whigs against CaermarthenJacobite PlotMeeting of the leading Conspirators The Conspirators

determine to send Preston to Saint Germains Papers entrusted to PrestonInformation of the Plot given to

WILLIAM had been, during the whole spring, impatiently expected in Ulster. The Protestant settlements

along the coast of that province had, in the course of the month of May, been repeatedly agitated by false

reports of his arrival. It was not, however, till the afternoon of the fourteenth of June that he landed at

Carrickfergus. The inhabitants of the town crowded the main street and greeted him with loud acclamations:

but they caught only a glimpse of him. As soon as he was on dry ground he mounted and set off for Belfast.

On the road he was met by Schomberg. The meeting took place close to a white house, the only human

dwelling then visible, in the space of many miles, on the dreary strand of the estuary of the Laggan. A village

and a cotton mill now rise where the white house then stood alone; and all the shore is adorned by a gay

succession of country houses, shrubberies and flower beds. Belfast has become one of the greatest and most

flourishing seats of industry in the British isles. A busy population of eighty thousand souls is collected there.

The duties annually paid at the Custom House exceed the duties annually paid at the Custom House of

London in the most prosperous years of the reign of Charles the Second. Other Irish towns may present more

picturesque forms to the eye. But Belfast is the only large Irish town in which the traveller is not disgusted by

the loathsome aspect and odour of long lines of human dens far inferior in comfort and cleanliness to the

dwellings which, in happier countries, are provided for cattle. No other large Irish town is so well cleaned, so

well paved, so brilliantly lighted. The place of domes and spires is supplied by edifices, less pleasing to the

taste, but not less indicative of prosperity, huge factories, towering many stories above the chimneys of the

houses, and resounding with the roar of machinery. The Belfast which William entered was a small English

settlement of about three hundred houses, commanded by a stately castle which has long disappeared, the seat

of the noble family of Chichester. In this mansion, which is said to have borne some resemblance to the

palace of Whitehall, and which was celebrated for its terraces and orchards stretching down to the river side,

preparations had been made for the King's reception. He was welcomed at the Northern Gate by the

magistrates and burgesses in their robes of office. The multitude pressed on his carriage with shouts of "God

save the Protestant King." For the town was one of the strongholds of the Reformed Faith, and, when, two

generations later, the inhabitants were, for the first time, numbered, it was found that the Roman Catholics

The night came; but the Protestant counties were awake and up. A royal salute had been fired from the castle

of Belfast. It had been echoed and reechoed by guns which Schomberg had placed at wide intervals for the

purpose of conveying signals from post to post. Wherever the peal was heard, it was known that King

William was come. Before midnight all the heights of Antrim and Down were blazing with bonfires. The

light was seen across the bays of Carlingford and Dundalk, and gave notice to the outposts of the enemy that

the decisive hour was at hand. Within fortyeight hours after William had landed, James set out from Dublin

for the Irish camp, which was pitched near the northern frontier of Leinster.677

In Dublin the agitation was fearful. None could doubt that the decisive crisis was approaching; and the agony

of suspense stimulated to the highest point the passions of both the hostile castes. The majority could easily

detect, in the looks and tones of the oppressed minority, signs which indicated the hope of a speedy

deliverance and of a terrible revenge. Simon Luttrell, to whom the care of the capital was entrusted, hastened

to take such precautions as fear and hatred dictated. A proclamation appeared, enjoining all Protestants to

remain in their houses from nightfall to dawn, and prohibiting them, on pain of death, from assembling in any

place or for any purpose to the number of more than five. No indulgence was granted even to those divines of

the Established Church who had never ceased to teach the doctrine of non resistance. Doctor William King,

who had, after long holding out, lately begun to waver in his political creed, was committed to custody. There

was no gaol large enough to hold one half of those whom the governor suspected of evil designs. The College

and several parish churches were used as prisons; and into those buildings men accused of no crime but their

The two rival princes meanwhile were busied in collecting their forces. Loughbrickland was the place

appointed by William for the rendezvous of the scattered divisions of his army. While his troops were

assembling, he exerted himself indefatigably to improve their discipline and to provide for their subsistence.

He had brought from England two hundred thousand pounds in money and a great quantity of ammunition

and provisions. Pillaging was prohibited under severe penalties. At the same time supplies were liberally

dispensed; and all the paymasters of regiments were directed to send in their accounts without delay, in order

that there might be no arrears.679 Thomas Coningsby, Member of Parliament for Leominster, a busy and

unscrupulous Whig, accompanied the King, and acted as Paymaster General. It deserves to be mentioned that

William, at this time, authorised the Collector of Customs at Belfast to pay every year twelve hundred pounds

into the hands of some of the principal dissenting ministers of Down and Antrim, who were to be trustees for

their brethren. The King declared that he bestowed this sum on the nonconformist divines, partly as a reward

for their eminent loyalty to him, and partly as a compensation for their recent losses. Such was the origin of

that donation which is still annually bestowed by the government on the Presbyterian clergy of Ulster.680

William was all himself again. His spirits, depressed by eighteen months passed in dull state, amidst factions

and intrigues which he but half understood, rose high as soon as he was surrounded by tents and

standards.681 It was strange to see how rapidly this man, so unpopular at Westminster, obtained a complete

mastery over the hearts of his brethren in arms. They observed with delight that, infirm as he was, he took his

share of every hardship which they underwent; that he thought more of their comfort than of his own, that he

sharply reprimanded some officers, who were so anxious to procure luxuries for his table as to forget the

wants of the common soldiers; that he never once, from the day on which he took the field, lodged in a house,

but, even in the neighbourhood of cities and palaces, slept in his small moveable hut of wood; that no

solicitations could induce him, on a hot day and in a high wind, to move out of the choking cloud of dust,

which overhung the line of march, and which severely tried lungs less delicate than his. Every man under his

command became familiar with his looks and with his voice; for there was not a regiment which he did not

inspect with minute attention. His pleasant looks and sayings were long remembered. One brave soldier has

recorded in his journal the kind and courteous manner in which a basket of the first cherries of the year was

accepted from him by the King, and the sprightliness with which His Majesty conversed at supper with those

On the twentyfourth of June, the tenth day after William's landing, he marched southward from

Loughbrickland with all his forces. He was fully determined to take the first opportunity of fighting.

Schomberg and some other officers recommended caution and delay. But the King answered that he had not

come to Ireland to let the grass grow under his feet. The event seems to prove that he judged rightly as a

general. That he judged rightly as a statesman cannot be doubted. He knew that the English nation was

discontented with the way in which the war had hitherto been conducted; that nothing but rapid and splendid

success could revive the enthusiasm of his friends and quell the spirit of his enemies; and that a defeat could

scarcely be more injurious to his fame and to his interests than a languid and indecisive campaign.

The country through which he advanced had, during eighteen months, been fearfully wasted both by soldiers

and by Rapparees. The cattle had been slaughtered: the plantations had been cut down: the fences and houses

were in ruins. Not a human being was to be found near the road, except a few naked and meagre wretches

who had no food but the husks of oats, and who were seen picking those husks, like chickens, from amidst

dust and cinders.683 Yet, even under such disadvantages, the natural fertility of the country, the rich green of

the earth, the bays and rivers so admirably fitted for trade, could not but strike the King's observant eye.

Perhaps he thought how different an aspect that unhappy region would have presented if it had been blessed

with such a government and such a religion as had made his native Holland the wonder of the world; how

endless a succession of pleasure houses, tulip gardens and dairy farms would have lined the road from

Lisburn to Belfast; how many hundreds of barges would have been constantly passing up and down the

Laggan; what a forest of masts would have bristled in the desolate port of Newry; and what vast warehouses

and stately mansions would have covered the space occupied by the noisome alleys of Dundalk. "The

The original intention of James seems to have been to try the chances of a pitched field on the border between

Leinster and Ulster. But this design was abandoned, in consequence, apparently, of the representations of

Lauzun, who, though very little disposed and very little qualified to conduct a campaign on the Fabian

system, had the admonitions of Louvois still in his ears.684 James, though resolved not to give up Dublin

without a battle, consented to retreat till he should reach some spot where he might have the vantage of

ground. When therefore William's advanced guard reached Dundalk, nothing was to be seen of the Irish

Army, except a great cloud of dust which was slowly rolling southwards towards Ardee. The English halted

one night near the ground on which Schomberg's camp had been pitched in the preceding year; and many sad

recollections were awakened by the sight of that dreary marsh, the sepulchre of thousands of brave men.685

Still William continued to push forward, and still the Irish receded before him, till, on the morning of

Monday the thirtieth of June, his army, marching in three columns, reached the summit of a rising ground

near the southern frontier of the county of Louth. Beneath lay a valley, now so rich and so cheerful that the

Englishman who gazes on it may imagine himself to be in one of the most highly favoured parts of his own

highly favoured country. Fields of wheat, woodlands, meadows bright with daisies and clover, slope gently

down to the edge of the Boyne. That bright and tranquil stream, the boundary of Louth and Meath, having

flowed many miles between verdant banks crowned by modern palaces, and by the ruined keeps of old

Norman barons of the pale, is here about to mingle with the sea. Five miles to the west of the place from

which William looked down on the river, now stands, on a verdant bank, amidst noble woods, Slane Castle,

the mansion of the Marquess of Conyngham. Two miles to the east, a cloud of smoke from factories and

steam vessels overhangs the busy town and port of Drogheda. On the Meath side of the Boyne, the ground,

still all corn, grass, flowers, and foliage, rises with a gentle swell to an eminence surmounted by a

conspicuous tuft of ash trees which overshades the ruined church and desolate graveyard of Donore.686

In the seventeenth century the landscape presented a very different aspect. The traces of art and industry were

few. Scarcely a vessel was on the river except those rude coracles of wickerwork covered with the skins of

horses, in which the Celtic peasantry fished for trout and salmon. Drogheda, now peopled by twenty thousand

industrious inhabitants, was a small knot of narrow, crooked and filthy lanes, encircled by a ditch and a

mound. The houses were built of wood with high gables and projecting upper stories. Without the walls of

the town, scarcely a dwelling was to be seen except at a place called Oldbridge. At Oldbridge the river was

fordable; and on the south of the ford were a few mud cabins, and a single house built of more solid

When William caught sight of the valley of the Boyne, he could not suppress an exclamation and a gesture of

delight. He had been apprehensive that the enemy would avoid a decisive action, and would protract the war

till the autumnal rains should return with pestilence in their train. He was now at ease. It was plain that the

contest would be sharp and short. The pavilion of James was pitched on the eminence of Donore. The flags of

the House of Stuart and of the House of Bourbon waved together in defiance on the walls of Drogheda. All

the southern bank of the river was lined by the camp and batteries of the hostile army. Thousands of armed

men were moving about among the tents; and every one, horse soldier or foot soldier, French or Irish, had a

white badge in his hat. That colour had been chosen in compliment to the House of Bourbon. "I am glad to

see you, gentlemen," said the King, as his keen eye surveyed the Irish lines. "If you escape me now, the fault

Each of the contending princes had some advantages over his rival. James, standing on the defensive, behind

entrenchments, with a river before him, had the stronger position;688 but his troops were inferior both in

number and in quality to those which were opposed to him. He probably had thirty thousand men. About a

third part of this force consisted of excellent French infantry and excellent Irish cavalry. But the rest of his

army was the scoff of all Europe. The Irish dragoons were bad; the Irish infantry worse. It was said that their

ordinary way of fighting was to discharge their pieces once, and then to run away bawling "Quarter" and

"Murder." Their inefficiency was, in that age, commonly imputed, both by their enemies and by their allies,

to natural poltroonery. How little ground there was for such an imputation has since been signally proved by

many heroic achievements in every part of the globe. It ought, indeed, even in the seventeenth century, to

have occurred to reasonable men, that a race which furnished some of the best horse soldiers in the world

would certainly, with judicious training, furnish good foot soldiers. But the Irish foot soldiers had not merely

not been well trained; they had been elaborately ill trained. The greatest of our generals repeatedly and

emphatically declared that even the admirable army which fought its way, under his command, from Torres

Vedras to Toulouse, would, if he had suffered it to contract habits of pillage, have become, in a few weeks,

unfit for all military purposes. What then was likely to be the character of troops who, from the day on which

they enlisted, were not merely permitted, but invited, to supply the deficiencies of pay by marauding? They

were, as might have been expected, a mere mob, furious indeed and clamorous in their zeal for the cause

which they had espoused, but incapable of opposing a stedfast resistance to a well ordered force. In truth, all

that the discipline, if it is to be so called, of James's army had done for the Celtic kerne had been to debase

and enervate him. After eighteen months of nominal soldiership, he was positively farther from being a

William had under his command near thirtysix thousand men, born in many lands, and speaking many

tongues. Scarcely one Protestant Church, scarcely one Protestant nation, was unrepresented in the army

which a strange series of events had brought to fight for the Protestant religion in the remotest island of the

west. About half the troops were natives of England. Ormond was there with the Life Guards, and Oxford

with the Blues. Sir John Lanier, an officer who had acquired military experience on the Continent, and whose

prudence was held in high esteem, was at the head of the Queen's regiment of horse, now the First Dragoon

Guards. There were Beaumont's foot, who had, in defiance of the mandate of James, refused to admit Irish

papists among them, and Hastings's foot, who had, on the disastrous day of Killiecrankie, maintained the

military reputation of the Saxon race. There were the two Tangier battalions, hitherto known only by deeds of

violence and rapine, but destined to begin on the following morning a long career of glory. The Scotch

Guards marched under the command of their countryman James Douglas. Two fine British regiments, which

had been in the service of the States General, and had often looked death in the face under William's leading,

followed him in this campaign, not only as their general, but as their native King. They now rank as the fifth

and sixth of the line. The former was led by an officer who had no skill in the higher parts of military science,

but whom the whole army allowed to be the bravest of all the brave, John Cutts. Conspicuous among the

Dutch troops were Portland's and Ginkell's Horse, and Solmes's Blue regiment, consisting of two thousand of

the finest infantry in Europe. Germany had sent to the field some warriors, sprung from her noblest houses.

Prince George of Hesse Darmstadt, a gallant youth who was serving his apprenticeship in the military art,

rode near the King. A strong brigade of Danish mercenaries was commanded by Duke Charles Frederic of

Wirtemberg, a near kinsman of the head of his illustrious family. It was reported that of all the soldiers of

William these were most dreaded by the Irish. For centuries of Saxon domination had not effaced the

recollection of the violence and cruelty of the Scandinavian sea kings; and an ancient prophecy that the Danes

would one day destroy the children of the soil was still repeated with superstitious horror.689 Among the

foreign auxiliaries were a Brandenburg regiment and a Finland regiment. But in that great array, so variously

composed, were two bodies of men animated by a spirit peculiarly fierce and implacable, the Huguenots of

France thirsting for the blood of the French, and the Englishry of Ireland impatient to trample down the Irish.

The ranks of the refugees had been effectually purged of spies and traitors, and were made up of men such as

had contended in the preceding century against the power of the House of Valois and the genius of the House

of Lorraine. All the boldest spirits of the unconquerable colony had repaired to William's camp. Mitchelburne

was there with the stubborn defenders of Londonderry, and Wolseley with the warriors who had raised the

unanimous shout of "Advance" on the day of Newton Butler. Sir Albert Conyngham, the ancestor of the

noble family whose seat now overlooks the Boyne, had brought from the neighbourhood of Lough Erne a

gallant regiment of dragoons which still glories in the name of Enniskillen, and which has proved on the

Walker, notwithstanding his advanced age and his peaceful profession, accompanied the men of

Londonderry, and tried to animate their zeal by exhortation and by example. He was now a great prelate.

Ezekiel Hopkins had taken refuge from Popish persecutors and Presbyterian rebels in the city of London, had

brought himself to swear allegiance to the government, had obtained a cure, and had died in the performance

of the humble duties of a parish priest.691 William, on his march through Louth, learned that the rich see of

Derry was at his disposal. He instantly made choice of Walker to be the new Bishop. The brave old man,

during the few hours of life which remained to him, was overwhelmed with salutations and congratulations.

Unhappily he had, during the siege in which he had so highly distinguished himself, contracted a passion for

war; and he easily persuaded himself that, in indulging this passion, he was discharging a duty to his country

and his religion. He ought to have remembered that the peculiar circumstances which had justified him in

becoming a combatant had ceased to exist, and that, in a disciplined army led by generals of long experience

and great fame a fighting divine was likely to give less help than scandal. The Bishop elect was determined to

be wherever danger was; and the way in which he exposed himself excited the extreme disgust of his royal

patron, who hated a meddler almost as much as a coward. A soldier who ran away from a battle and a

gownsman who pushed himself into a battle were the two objects which most strongly excited William's

It was still early in the day. The King rode slowly along the northern bank of the river, and closely examined

the position of the Irish, from whom he was sometimes separated by an interval of little more than two

hundred feet. He was accompanied by Schomberg, Ormond, Sidney, Solmes, Prince George of Hesse,

Coningsby, and others. "Their army is but small;" said one of the Dutch officers. Indeed it did not appear to

consist of more than sixteen thousand men. But it was well known, from the reports brought by deserters, that

many regiments were concealed from view by the undulations of the ground. "They may be stronger than

they look," said William; "but, weak or strong, I will soon know all about them."692

At length he alighted at a spot nearly opposite to Oldbridge, sate down on the turf to rest himself, and called

for breakfast. The sumpter horses were unloaded: the canteens were opened; and a tablecloth was spread on

the grass. The place is marked by an obelisk, built while many veterans who could well remember the events

While William was at his repast, a group of horsemen appeared close to the water on the opposite shore.

Among them his attendants could discern some who had once been conspicuous at reviews in Hyde Park and

at balls in the gallery of Whitehall, the youthful Berwick, the small, fairhaired Lauzun, Tyrconnel, once

admired by maids of honour as the model of manly vigour and beauty, but now bent down by years and

The chiefs of the Irish army soon discovered that the person who, surrounded by a splendid circle, was

breakfasting on the opposite bank, was the Prince of Orange. They sent for artillery. Two field pieces,

screened from view by a troop of cavalry, were brought down almost to the brink of the river, and placed

behind a hedge. William, who had just risen from his meal, and was again in the saddle, was the mark of both

guns. The first shot struck one of the holsters of Prince George of Hesse, and brought his horse to the ground.

"Ah!" cried the King; "the poor Prince is killed." As the words passed his lips, he was himself hit by a second

ball, a sixpounder. It merely tore his coat, grazed his shoulder, and drew two or three ounces of blood. Both

armies saw that the shot had taken effect; for the King sank down for a moment on his horse's neck. A yell of

exultation rose from the Irish camp. The English and their allies were in dismay. Solmes flung himself

prostrate on the earth, and burst into tears. But William's deportment soon reassured his friends. "There is no

harm done," he said: "but the bullet came quite near enough." Coningsby put his handkerchief to the wound:

a surgeon was sent for: a plaster was applied; and the King, as soon as the dressing was finished, rode round

all the posts of his army amidst loud acclamations. Such was the energy of his spirit that, in spite of his feeble

health, in spite of his recent hurt, he was that day nineteen hours on horseback.693

A cannonade was kept up on both sides till the evening. William observed with especial attention the effect

produced by the Irish shots on the English regiments which had never been in action, and declared himself

satisfied with the result. "All is right," he said; "they stand fire well." Long after sunset he made a final

inspection of his forces by torchlight, and gave orders that every thing should be ready for forcing a passage

across the river on the morrow. Every soldier was to put a green bough in his hat. The baggage and great

The King's resolution to attack the Irish was not approved by all his lieutenants. Schomberg, in particular,

pronounced the experiment too hazardous, and, when his opinion was overruled, retired to his tent in no very

good humour. When the order of battle was delivered to him, he muttered that he had been more used to give

such orders than to receive them. For this little fit of sullenness, very pardonable in a general who had won

great victories when his master was still a child, the brave veteran made, on the following morning, a noble

The first of July dawned, a day which has never since returned without exciting strong emotions of very

different kinds in the two populations which divide Ireland. The sun rose bright and cloudless. Soon after four

both armies were in motion. William ordered his right wing, under the command of Meinhart Schomberg,

one of the Duke's sons, to march to the bridge of Slane, some miles up the river, to cross there, and to turn the

left flank of the Irish army. Meinhart Schomberg was assisted by Portland and Douglas. James, anticipating

some such design, had already sent to the bridge a regiment of dragoons, commanded by Sir Neil O'Neil.

O'Neil behaved himself like a brave gentleman: but he soon received a mortal wound; his men fled; and the

This move made Lauzun uneasy. What if the English right wing should get into the rear of the army of

James? About four miles south of the Boyne was a place called Duleek, where the road to Dublin was so

narrow, that two cars could not pass each other, and where on both sides of the road lay a morass which

afforded no firm footing. If Meinhart Schomberg should occupy this spot, it would be impossible for the Irish

to retreat. They must either conquer, or be cut off to a man. Disturbed by this apprehension, the French

general marched with his countrymen and with Sarsfield's horse in the direction of Slane Bridge. Thus the

It was now near ten o'clock. William put himself at the head of his left wing, which was composed

exclusively of cavalry, and prepared to pass the river not far above Drogheda. The centre of his army, which

consisted almost exclusively of foot, was entrusted to the command of Schomberg, and was marshalled

opposite to Oldbridge. At Oldbridge the whole Irish infantry had been collected. The Meath bank bristled

with pikes and bayonets. A fortification had been made by French engineers out of the hedges and buildings;

and a breastwork had been thrown up close to the water side.694 Tyrconnel was there; and under him were

Schomberg gave the word. Solmes's Blues were the first to move. They marched gallantly, with drums

beating, to the brink of the Boyne. Then the drums stopped; and the men, ten abreast, descended into the

water. Next plunged Londonderry and Enniskillen. A little to the left of Londonderry and Enniskillen,

Caillemot crossed, at the head of a long column of French refugees. A little to the left of Caillemot and his

refugees, the main body of the English infantry struggled through the river, up to their armpits in water. Still

further down the stream the Danes found another ford. In a few minutes the Boyne, for a quarter of a mile,

It was not till the assailants had reached the middle of the channel that they became aware of the whole

difficulty and danger of the service in which they were engaged. They had as yet seen little more than half the

hostile army. Now whole regiments of foot and horse seemed to start out of the earth. A wild shout of

defiance rose from the whole shore: during one moment the event seemed doubtful: but the Protestants

pressed resolutely forward; and in another moment the whole Irish line gave way. Tyrconnel looked on in

helpless despair. He did not want personal courage; but his military skill was so small that he hardly ever

reviewed his regiment in the Phoenix Park without committing some blunder; and to rally the ranks which

were breaking all round him was no task for a general who had survived the energy of his body and of his

mind, and yet had still the rudiments of his profession to learn. Several of his best officers fell while vainly

endeavouring to prevail on their soldiers to look the Dutch Blues in the face. Richard Hamilton ordered a

body of foot to fall on the French refugees, who were still deep in water. He led the way, and, accompanied

by several courageous gentlemen, advanced, sword in hand, into the river. But neither his commands nor his

example could infuse courage into that mob of cowstealers. He was left almost alone, and retired from the

bank in despair. Further down the river Antrim's division ran like sheep at the approach of the English

column. Whole regiments flung away arms, colours and cloaks, and scampered off to the hills without

It required many years and many heroic exploits to take away the reproach which that ignominious rout left

on the Irish name. Yet, even before the day closed, it was abundantly proved that the reproach was unjust.

Richard Hamilton put himself at the head of the cavalry, and, under his command, they made a gallant,

though an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve the day. They maintained a desperate fight in the bed of the river

with Sulmes's Blues. They drove the Danish brigade back into the stream. They fell impetuously on the

Huguenot regiments, which, not being provided with pikes, then ordinarily used by foot to repel horse, began

to give ground. Caillemot, while encouraging his fellow exiles, received a mortal wound in the thigh. Four of

his men carried him back across the ford to his tent. As he passed, he continued to urge forward the rear ranks

which were still up to the breast in the water. "On; on; my lads: to glory; to glory." Schomberg, who had

remained on the northern bank, and who had thence watched the progress of his troops with the eye of a

general, now thought that the emergency required from him the personal exertion of a soldier. Those who

stood about him besought him in vain to put on his cuirass. Without defensive armour he rode through the

river, and rallied the refugees whom the fall of Caillemot had dismayed. "Come on," he cried in French,

pointing to the Popish squadrons; "come on, gentlemen; there are your persecutors." Those were his last

words. As he spoke, a band of Irish horsemen rushed upon him and encircled him for a moment. When they

retired, he was on the ground. His friends raised him; but he was already a corpse. Two sabre wounds were

on his head; and a bullet from a carbine was lodged in his neck. Almost at the same moment Walker, while

exhorting the colonists of Ulster to play the men, was shot dead. During near half an hour the battle continued

to rage along the southern shore of the river. All was smoke, dust and din. Old soldiers were heard to say that

they had seldom seen sharper work in the Low Countries. But, just at this conjuncture, William came up with

the left wing. He had found much difficulty in crossing. The tide was running fast. His charger had been

forced to swim, and had been almost lost in the mud. As soon as the King was on firm ground he took his

sword in his left hand,for his right arm was stiff with his wound and his bandage,and led his men to the

place where the fight was the hottest. His arrival decided the fate of the day. Yet the Irish horse retired

fighting obstinately. It was long remembered among the Protestants of Ulster that, in the midst of the tumult,

William rode to the head of the Enniskilleners. "What will you do for me?" he cried. He was not immediately

recognised; and one trooper, taking him for an enemy, was about to fire. William gently put aside the carbine.

"What," said he, "do you not know your friends?" "It is His Majesty;" said the Colonel. The ranks of sturdy

Protestant yeomen set up a shout of joy. "Gentlemen," said William, "you shall be my guards to day. I have

heard much of you. Let me see something of you." One of the most remarkable peculiarities of this man,

ordinarily so saturnine and reserved, was that danger acted on him like wine, opened his heart, loosened his

tongue, and took away all appearance of constraint from his manner. On this memorable day he was seen

wherever the peril was greatest. One ball struck the cap of his pistol: another carried off the heel of his

jackboot: but his lieutenants in vain implored him to retire to some station from which he could give his

orders without exposing a life so valuable to Europe. His troops, animated by his example, gained ground

fast. The Irish cavalry made their last stand at a house called Plottin Castle, about a mile and a half south of

Oldbridge. There the Enniskilleners were repelled with the loss of fifty men, and were hotly pursued, till

William rallied them and turned the chase back. In this encounter Richard Hamilton, who had done all that

could be done by valour to retrieve a reputation forfeited by perfidy696, was severely wounded, taken

prisoner, and instantly brought, through the smoke and over the carnage, before the prince whom he had

foully wronged. On no occasion did the character of William show itself in a more striking manner. "Is this

business over?" he said; "or will your horse make more fight?" "On my honour, Sir," answered Hamilton, "I

believe that they will." "Your honour I" muttered William; "your honour I" That half suppressed exclamation

was the only revenge which he condescended to take for an injury for which many sovereigns, far more

affable and gracious in their ordinary deportment, would have exacted a terrible retribution. Then, restraining

And now the battle was over. Hamilton was mistaken in thinking that his horse would continue to fight.

Whole troops had been cut to pieces. One fine regiment had only thirty unwounded men left. It was enough

that these gallant soldiers had disputed the field till they were left without support, or hope, or guidance, till

Whether James had owed his early reputation for valour to accident and flattery, or whether, as he advanced

in life, his character underwent a change, may be doubted. But it is certain that, in his youth, he was generally

believed to possess, not merely that average measure of fortitude which qualifies a soldier to go through a

campaign without disgrace, but that high and serene intrepidity which is the virtue of great commanders.698

It is equally certain that, in his later years, he repeatedly, at conjunctures such as have often inspired timorous

and delicate women with heroic courage, showed a pusillanimous anxiety about his personal safety. Of the

most powerful motives which can induce human beings to encounter peril none was wanting to him on the

day of the Boyne. The eyes of his contemporaries and of posterity, of friends devoted to his cause and of

enemies eager to witness his humiliation, were fixed upon him. He had, in his own opinion, sacred rights to

maintain and cruel wrongs to revenge. He was a King come to fight for three kingdoms. He was a father

come to fight for the birthright of his child. He was a zealous Roman Catholic, come to fight in the holiest of

crusades. If all this was not enough, he saw, from the secure position which he occupied on the height of

Donore, a sight which, it might have been thought, would have roused the most torpid of mankind to

emulation. He saw his rival, weak, sickly, wounded, swimming the river, struggling through the mud, leading

the charge, stopping the flight, grasping the sword with the left hand, managing the bridle with a bandaged

arm. But none of these things moved that sluggish and ignoble nature. He watched, from a safe distance, the

beginning of the battle on which his fate and the fate of his race depended. When it became clear that the day

was going against Ireland, he was seized with an apprehension that his flight might be intercepted, and

galloped towards Dublin. He was escorted by a bodyguard under the command of Sarsfield, who had, on that

day, had no opportunity of displaying the skill and courage which his enemies allowed that he possessed.699

The French auxiliaries, who had been employed the whole morning in keeping William's right wing in check,

covered the flight of the beaten army. They were indeed in some danger of being broken and swept away by

the torrent of runaways, all pressing to get first to the pass of Duleek, and were forced to fire repeatedly on

these despicable allies.700 The retreat was, however, effected with less loss than might have been expected.

For even the admirers of William owned that he did not show in the pursuit the energy which even his

detractors acknowledged that he had shown in the battle. Perhaps his physical infirmities, his hurt, and the

fatigue which he had undergone, had made him incapable of bodily or mental exertion. Of the last forty hours

he had passed thirtyfive on horseback. Schomberg, who might have supplied his place, was no more. It was

said in the camp that the King could not do every thing, and that what was not done by him was not done at

The slaughter had been less than on any battle field of equal importance and celebrity. Of the Irish only about

fifteen hundred had fallen; but they were almost all cavalry, the flower of the army, brave and well

disciplined men, whose place could not easily be supplied. William gave strict orders that there should be no

unnecessary bloodshed, and enforced those orders by an act of laudable severity. One of his soldiers, after the

fight was over, butchered three defenceless Irishmen who asked for quarter. The King ordered the murderer

The loss of the conquerors did not exceed five hundred men but among them was the first captain in Europe.

To his corpse every honour was paid. The only cemetery in which so illustrious a warrior, slain in arms for

the liberties and religion of England, could properly be laid was that venerable Abbey, hallowed by the dust

of many generations of princes, heroes and poets. It was announced that the brave veteran should have a

public funeral at Westminster. In the mean time his corpse was embalmed with such skill as could be found

Walker was treated less respectfully. William thought him a busybody who had been properly punished for

running into danger without any call of duty, and expressed that feeling, with characteristic bluntness, on the

field of battle. "Sir," said an attendant, the Bishop of Derry has been killed by a shot at the ford." "What took

The victorious army advanced that day to Duleek, and passed the warm summer night there under the open

sky. The tents and the baggage waggons were still on the north of the river. William's coach had been brought

over; and he slept in it surrounded by his soldiers. On the following day, Drogheda surrendered without a

Meanwhile Dublin had been in violent commotion. On the thirtieth of June it was known that the armies were

face to face with the Boyne between them, and that a battle was almost inevitable. The news that William had

been wounded came that evening. The first report was that the wound was mortal. It was believed, and

confidently repeated, that the usurper was no more; and couriers started bearing the glad tidings of his death

to the French ships which lay in the ports of Munster. From daybreak on the first of July the streets of Dublin

were filled with persons eagerly asking and telling news. A thousand wild rumours wandered to and fro

among the crowd. A fleet of men of war under the white flag had been seen from the hill of Howth. An army

commanded by a Marshal of France had landed in Kent. There had been hard fighting at the Boyne; but the

Irish had won the day; the English right wing had been routed; the Prince of Orange was a prisoner. While the

Roman Catholics heard and repeated these stories in all the places of public resort, the few Protestants who

were still out of prison, afraid of being torn to pieces, shut themselves up in their inner chambers. But,

towards five in the afternoon, a few runaways on tired horses came straggling in with evil tidings. By six it

was known that all was lost. Soon after sunset, James, escorted by two hundred cavalry, rode into the Castle.

At the threshold he was met by the wife of Tyrconnel, once the gay and beautiful Fanny Jennings, the

loveliest coquette in the brilliant Whitehall of the Restoration. To her the vanquished King had to announce

the ruin of her fortunes and of his own. And now the tide of fugitives came in fast. Till midnight all the

northern avenues of the capital were choked by trains of cars and by bands of dragoons, spent with running

and riding, and begrimed with dust. Some had lost their fire arms, and some their swords. Some were

disfigured by recent wounds. At two in the morning Dublin was still: but, before the early dawn of

midsummer, the sleepers were roused by the peal of trumpets; and the horse, who had, on the preceding day,

so well supported the honour of their country, came pouring through the streets, with ranks fearfully thinned,

yet preserving, even in that extremity, some show of military order. Two hours later Lauzun's drums were

heard; and the French regiments, in unbroken array, marched into the city.704 Many thought that, with such a

force, a stand might still be made. But, before six o'clock, the Lord Mayor and some of the principal Roman

Catholic citizens were summoned in haste to the Castle. James took leave of them with a speech which did

him little honour. He had often, he said, been warned that Irishmen, however well they might look, would

never acquit themselves well on a field of battle; and he had now found that the warning was but too true. He

had been so unfortunate as to see himself in less than two years abandoned by two armies. His English troops

had not wanted courage; but they had wanted loyalty. His Irish troops were, no doubt, attached to his cause,

which was their own. But as soon as they were brought front to front with an enemy, they ran away. The loss

indeed had been little. More shame for those who had fled with so little loss. "I will never command an Irish

army again. I must shift for myself; and so must you." After thus reviling his soldiers for being the rabble

which his own mismanagement had made them, and for following the example of cowardice which he had

himself set them, he uttered a few words more worthy of a King. He knew, he said, that some of his adherents

had declared that they would burn Dublin down rather than suffer it to fall into the hands of the English. Such

an act would disgrace him in the eyes of all mankind: for nobody would believe that his friends would

venture so far without his sanction. Such an act would also draw on those who committed it severities which

otherwise they had no cause to apprehend: for inhumanity to vanquished enemies was not among the faults of

the Prince of Orange. For these reasons James charged his hearers on their allegiance neither to sack nor to

destroy the city.705 He then took his departure, crossed the Wicklow hills with all speed, and never stopped

till he was fifty miles from Dublin. Scarcely had he alighted to take some refreshment when he was scared by

an absurd report that the pursuers were close upon him. He started again, rode hard all night, and gave orders

that the bridges should be pulled down behind him. At sunrise on the third of July he reached the harbour of

Waterford. Thence he went by sea to Kinsale, where he embarked on board of a French frigate, and sailed for

After his departure the confusion in Dublin increased hourly. During the whole of the day which followed the

battle, flying foot soldiers, weary and soiled with travel, were constantly coming in. Roman Catholic citizens,

with their wives, their families and their household stuff, were constantly going out. In some parts of the

capital there was still an appearance of martial order and preparedness. Guards were posted at the gates: the

Castle was occupied by a strong body of troops; and it was generally supposed that the enemy would not be

admitted without a struggle. Indeed some swaggerers, who had, a few hours before, run from the breastwork

at Oldbridge without drawing a trigger, now swore that they would lay the town in ashes rather than leave it

to the Prince of Orange. But towards the evening Tyrconnel and Lauzun collected all their forces, and

marched out of the city by the road leading to that vast sheepwalk which extends over the table land of

Kildare. Instantly the face of things in Dublin was changed. The Protestants every where came forth from

their hiding places. Some of them entered the houses of their persecutors and demanded arms. The doors of

the prisons were opened. The Bishops of Meath and Limerick, Doctor King, and others, who had long held

the doctrine of passive obedience, but who had at length been converted by oppression into moderate Whigs,

formed themselves into a provisional government, and sent a messenger to William's camp, with the news

that Dublin was prepared to welcome him. At eight that evening a troop of English dragoons arrived. They

were met by the whole Protestant population on College Green, where the statue of the deliverer now stands.

Hundreds embraced the soldiers, hung fondly about the necks of the horses, and ran wildly about, shaking

hands with each other. On the morrow a large body of cavalry arrived; and soon from every side came news

of the effects which the victory of the Boyne had produced. James had quitted the island. Wexford had

declared for William. Within twentyfive miles of the capital there was not a Papist in arms. Almost all the

baggage and stores of the defeated army had been seized by the conquerors. The Enniskilleners had taken not

less than three hundred cars, and had found among the booty ten thousand pounds in money, much plate,

many valuable trinkets, and all the rich camp equipage of Tyrconnel and Lauzun.707

William fixed his head quarters at Ferns, about two miles from Dublin. Thence, on the morning of Sunday,

the sixth of July, he rode in great state to the cathedral, and there, with the crown on his head, returned public

thanks to God in the choir which is now hung with the banners of the Knights of Saint Patrick. King

preached, with all the fervour of a neophyte, on the great deliverance which God had wrought for the Church.

The Protestant magistrates of the city appeared again, after a long interval, in the pomp of office. William

could not be persuaded to repose himself at the Castle, but in the evening returned to his camp, and slept

The fame of these great events flew fast, and excited strong emotions all over Europe. The news of William's

wound every where preceded by a few hours the news of his victory. Paris was roused at dead of night by the

arrival of a courier who brought the joyful intelligence that the heretic, the parricide, the mortal enemy of the

greatness of France, had been struck dead by a cannon ball in the sight of the two armies. The commissaries

of police ran about the city, knocked at the doors, and called the people up to illuminate. In an hour streets,

quays and bridges were in a blaze: drums were beating and trumpets sounding: the bells of Notre Dame were

ringing; peals of cannon were resounding from the batteries of the Bastile. Tables were set out in the streets;

and wine was served to all who passed. A Prince of Orange, made of straw, was trailed through the mud, and

at last committed to the flames. He was attended by a hideous effigy of the devil, carrying a scroll, on which

was written, "I have been waiting for thee these two years." The shops of several Huguenots who had been

dragooned into calling themselves Catholics, but were suspected of being still heretics at heart, were sacked

by the rabble. It was hardly safe to question the truth of the report which had been so eagerly welcomed by

the multitude. Soon, however, some coolheaded people ventured to remark that the fact of the tyrant's death

was not quite so certain as might be wished. Then arose a vehement controversy about the effect of such

wounds; for the vulgar notion was that no person struck by a cannon ball on the shoulder could recover. The

disputants appealed to medical authority; and the doors of the great surgeons and physicians were thronged, it

was jocosely said, as if there had been a pestilence in Paris. The question was soon settled by a letter from

At Rome the news from Ireland produced a sensation of a very different kind. There too the report of

William's death was, during a short time, credited. At the French embassy all was joy and triumph: but the

Ambassadors of the House of Austria were in despair; and the aspect of the Pontifical Court by no means

indicated exultation.710 Melfort, in a transport of joy, sate down to write a letter of congratulation to Mary of

Modena. That letter is still extant, and would alone suffice to explain why he was the favourite of James.

Herod,so William was designated, was gone. There must be a restoration; and that restoration ought to be

followed by a terrible revenge and by the establishment of despotism. The power of the purse must be taken

away from the Commons. Political offenders must be tried, not by juries, but by judges on whom the Crown

could depend. The Habeas Corpus Act must be rescinded. The authors of the Revolution must be punished

with merciless severity. "If," the cruel apostate wrote, "if the King is forced to pardon, let it be as few rogues

as he can."711 After the lapse of some anxious hours, a messenger bearing later and more authentic

intelligence alighted at the palace occupied by the representative of the Catholic King. In a moment all was

changed. The enemies of France,and all the population, except Frenchmen and British Jacobites, were her

enemies, eagerly felicitated one another. All the clerks of the Spanish legation were too few to make

transcripts of the despatches for the Cardinals and Bishops who were impatient to know the details of the

victory. The first copy was sent to the Pope, and was doubtless welcome to him.712

The good news from Ireland reached London at a moment when good news was needed. The English flag had

been disgraced in the English seas. A foreign enemy threatened the coast. Traitors were at work within the

realm. Mary had exerted herself beyond her strength. Her gentle nature was unequal to the cruel anxieties of

her position; and she complained that she could scarcely snatch a moment from business to calm herself by

prayer. Her distress rose to the highest point when she learned that the camps of her father and her husband

were pitched near to each other, and that tidings of a battle might be hourly expected. She stole time for a

visit to Kensington, and had three hours of quiet in the garden, then a rural solitude.713 But the recollection

of days passed there with him whom she might never see again overpowered her. "The place," she wrote to

him, "made me think how happy I was there when I had your dear company. But now I will say no more; for

I shall hurt my own eyes, which I want now more than ever. Adieu. Think of me, and love me as much as I

Early on the morning after these tender lines had been despatched, Whitehall was roused by the arrival of a

post from Ireland. Nottingham was called out of bed. The Queen, who was just going to the chapel where she

daily attended divine service, was informed that William had been wounded. She had wept much; but till that

moment she had wept alone, and had constrained herself to show a cheerful countenance to her Court and

Council. But when Nottingham put her husband's letter into her hands, she burst into tears. She was still

trembling with the violence of her emotions, and had scarcely finished a letter to William in which she

poured out her love, her fears and her thankfulness, with the sweet natural eloquence of her sex, when another

messenger arrived with the news that the English army had forced a passage across the Boyne, that the Irish

were flying in confusion, and that the King was well. Yet she was visibly uneasy till Nottingham had assured

her that James was safe. The grave Secretary, who seems to have really esteemed and loved her, afterwards

described with much feeling that struggle of filial duty with conjugal affection. On the same day she wrote to

adjure her husband to see that no harm befell her father. "I know," she said, "I need not beg you to let him be

taken care of; for I am confident you will for your own sake; yet add that to all your kindness; and, for my

sake, let people know you would have no hurt happen to his person."715 This solicitude, though amiable, was

superfluous. Her father was perfectly competent to take care of himself. He had never, during the battle, run

the smallest risk of hurt; and, while his daughter was shuddering at the dangers to which she fancied that he

It chanced that the glad tidings arrived at Whitehall on the day to which the Parliament stood prorogued. The

Speaker and several members of the House of Commons who were in London met, according to form, at ten

in the morning, and were summoned by Black Rod to the bar of the Peers. The Parliament was then again

prorogued by commission. As soon as this ceremony had been performed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer

put into the hands of the Clerk the despatch which had just arrived from Ireland, and the Clerk read it with a

loud voice to the lords and gentlemen present.716 The good news spread rapidly from Westminster Hall to all

the coffeehouses, and was received with transports of joy. For those Englishmen who wished to see an

English army beaten and an English colony extirpated by the French and Irish were a minority even of the

On the ninth day after the battle of the Boyne James landed at Brest, with an excellent appetite, in high

spirits, and in a talkative humour. He told the history of his defeat to everybody who would listen to him. But

French officers who understood war, and who compared his story with other accounts, pronounced that,

though His Majesty had witnessed the battle, he knew nothing about it, except that his army had been

routed.717 From Brest he proceeded to Saint Germains, where, a few hours after his arrival, he was visited by

Lewis. The French King had too much delicacy and generosity to utter a word which could sound like

reproach. Nothing, he declared, that could conduce to the comfort of the royal family of England should be

wanting, as far as his power extended. But he was by no means disposed to listen to the political and military

projects of his unlucky guest. James recommended an immediate descent on England. That kingdom, he said,

had been drained of troops by the demands of Ireland. The seven or eight thousand regular soldiers who were

left would be unable to withstand a great French army. The people were ashamed of their error and impatient

to repair it. As soon as their rightful King showed himself, they would rally round him in multitudes.718

Lewis was too polite and goodnatured to express what he must have felt. He contented himself with

answering coldly that he could not decide upon any plan about the British islands till he had heard from his

generals in Ireland. James was importunate, and seemed to think himself ill used, because, a fortnight after he

had run away from one army, he was not entrusted with another. Lewis was not to be provoked into uttering

an unkind or uncourteous word: but he was resolute and, in order to avoid solicitation which gave him pain,

he pretended to be unwell. During some time, whenever James came to Versailles, he was respectfully

informed that His Most Christian Majesty was not equal to the transaction of business. The highspirited and

quickwitted nobles who daily crowded the antechambers could not help sneering while they bowed low to the

royal visitor, whose poltroonery and stupidity had a second time made him an exile and a mendicant. They

even whispered their sarcasms loud enough to call up the haughty blood of the Guelphs in the cheeks of Mary

of Modena. But the insensibility of James was of no common kind. It had long been found proof against

reason and against pity. It now sustained a still harder trial, and was found proof even against contempt.719

While he was enduring with ignominious fortitude the polite scorn of the French aristocracy, and doing his

best to weary out his benefactor's patience and good breeding by repeating that this was the very moment for

an invasion of England, and that the whole island was impatiently expecting its foreign deliverers, events

were passing which signally proved how little the banished oppressor understood the character of his

Tourville had, since the battle of Beachy Head, ranged the Channel unopposed. On the twentyfirst of July

his masts were seen from the rocks of Portland. On the twentysecond he anchored in the harbour of Torbay,

under the same heights which had, not many months before, sheltered the armament of William. The French

fleet, which now had a considerable number of troops on board, consisted of a hundred and eleven sail. The

galleys, which formed a large part of this force, resembled rather those ships with which Alcibiades and

Lysander disputed the sovereignty of the Aegean than those which contended at the Nile and at Trafalgar.

The galley was very long and very narrow, the deck not more than two feet from the water edge. Each galley

was propelled by fifty or sixty huge oars, and each oar was tugged by five or six slaves. The full complement

of slaves to a vessel was three hundred and thirtysix; the full complement of officers and soldiers a hundred

and fifty. Of the unhappy rowers some were criminals who had been justly condemned to a life of hardship

and danger; a few had been guilty only of adhering obstinately to the Huguenot worship; the great majority

were purchased bondsmen, generally Turks and Moors. They were of course always forming plans for

massacring their tyrants and escaping from servitude, and could be kept in order only by constant stripes and

by the frequent infliction of death in horrible forms. An Englishman, who happened to fall in with about

twelve hundred of these most miserable and most desperate of human beings on their road from Marseilles to

join Tourville's squadron, heard them vowing that, if they came near a man of war bearing the cross of Saint

In the Mediterranean galleys were in ordinary use: but none had ever before been seen on the stormy ocean

which roars round our island. The flatterers of Lewis said that the appearance of such a squadron on the

Atlantic was one of those wonders which were reserved for his reign; and a medal was struck at Paris to

commemorate this bold experiment in maritime war.721 English sailors, with more reason, predicted that the

first gale would send the whole of this fairweather armament to the bottom of the Channel. Indeed the galley,

like the ancient trireme, generally kept close to the shore, and ventured out of sight of land only when the

water was unruffled and the sky serene. But the qualities which made this sort of ship unfit to brave tempests

and billows made it peculiarly fit for the purpose of landing soldiers. Tourville determined to try what effect

would be produced by a disembarkation. The English Jacobites who had taken refuge in France were all

confident that the whole population of the island was ready to rally round an invading army; and he probably

Never was there a greater error. Indeed the French admiral is said by tradition to have received, while he was

still out at sea, a lesson which might have taught him not to rely on the assurances of exiles. He picked up a

fishing boat, and interrogated the owner, a plain Sussex man, about the sentiments of the nation. "Are you,"

he said, "for King James?" "I do not know much about such matters," answered the fisherman. "I have

nothing to say against King James. He is a very worthy gentleman, I believe. God bless him!" "A good

fellow!" said Tourville: "then I am sure you will have no objection to take service with us." "What!" cried the

prisoner; "I go with the French to fight against the English! Your honour must excuse me; I could not do it to

save my life."722 This poor fisherman, whether he was a real or an imaginary person, spoke the sense of the

nation. The beacon on the ridge overlooking Teignmouth was kindled; the High Tor and Causland made

answer; and soon all the hill tops of the West were on re, Messengers were riding hard all night from Deputy

Lieutenant to Deputy Lieutenant. Early the next morning, without chief, without summons, five hundred

gentlemen and yeomen, armed and mounted, had assembled on the summit of Haldon Hill. In twentyfour

hours all Devonshire was up. Every road in the county from sea to sea was covered by multitudes of fighting

men, all with their faces set towards Torbay. The lords of a hundred manors, proud of their long pedigrees

and old coats of arms, took the field at the head of their tenantry, Drakes, Prideauxes and Rolles, Fowell of

Fowelscombe and Fulford of Fulford, Sir Bourchier Wray of Tawstock Park and Sir William Courtenay of

Powderham Castle. Letters written by several of the Deputy Lieutenants who were most active during this

anxious week are still preserved. All these letters agree in extolling the courage and enthusiasm of the people.

But all agree also in expressing the most painful solicitude as to the result of an encounter between a raw

militia and veterans who had served under Turenne and Luxemburg; and all call for the help of regular

troops, in language very unlike that which, when the pressure of danger was not felt, country gentlemen were

Tourville, finding that the whole population was united as one man against him, contented himself with

sending his galleys to ravage Teignmouth, now a gay watering place consisting of twelve hundred houses,

then an obscure village of about forty cottages. The inhabitants had fled. Their dwellings were burned; the

venerable parish church was sacked, the pulpit and the communion table demolished, the Bibles and Prayer

Books torn and scattered about the roads; the cattle and pigs were slaughtered; and a few small vessels which

were employed in fishing or in the coasting trade, were destroyed. By this time sixteen or seventeen thousand

Devonshire men had encamped close to the shore; and all the neighbouring counties had risen. The tin mines

of Cornwall had sent forth a great multitude of rude and hardy men mortally hostile to Popery. Ten thousand

of them had just signed an address to the Queen, in which they had promised to stand by her against every

enemy; and they now kept their word.723 In truth, the whole nation was stirred. Two and twenty troops of

cavalry, furnished by Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, were reviewed by Mary at

Hounslow, and were complimented by Marlborough on their martial appearance. The militia of Kent and

Surrey encamped on Blackheath.724 Van Citters informed the States General that all England was up in

arms, on foot or on horseback, that the disastrous event of the battle of Beachy Head had not cowed, but

exasperated the people, and that every company of soldiers which he passed on the road was shouting with

Charles Granville, Lord Lansdowne, eldest son of the Earl of Bath, came with some troops from the garrison

of Plymouth to take the command of the tumultuary army which had assembled round the basin of Torbay.

Lansdowne was no novice. He had served several hard campaigns against the common enemy of

Christendom, and had been created a Count of the Roman Empire in reward of the valour which he had

displayed on that memorable day, sung by Filicaja and by Waller, when the infidels retired from the walls of

Vienna. He made preparations for action; but the French did not choose to attack him, and were indeed

impatient to depart. They found some difficulty in getting away. One day the wind was adverse to the sailing

vessels. Another day the water was too rough for the galleys. At length the fleet stood out to sea. As the line

of ships turned the lofty cape which overlooks Torquay, an incident happened which, though slight in itself,

greatly interested the thousands who lined the coast. Two wretched slaves disengaged themselves from an

oar, and sprang overboard. One of them perished. The other, after struggling more than an hour in the water,

came safe to English ground, and was cordially welcomed by a population to which the discipline of the

galleys was a thing strange and shocking. He proved to be a Turk, and was humanely sent back to his own

A pompous description of the expedition appeared in the Paris Gazette. But in truth Tourville's exploits had

been inglorious, and yet less inglorious than impolitic. The injury which he had done bore no proportion to

the resentment which he had roused. Hitherto the Jacobites had tried to persuade the nation that the French

would come as friends and deliverers, would observe strict discipline, would respect the temples and the

ceremonies of the established religion, and would depart as soon as the Dutch oppressors had been expelled

and the ancient constitution of the realm restored. The short visit of Tourville to our coast had shown how

little reason there was to expect such moderation from the soldiers of Lewis. They had been in our island only

a few hours, and had occupied only a few acres. But within a few hours and a few acres had been exhibited in

miniature the devastation of the Palatinate. What had happened was communicated to the whole kingdom far

more rapidly than by gazettes or news letters. A brief for the relief of the people of Teignmouth was read in

all the ten thousand parish churches of the land. No congregation could hear without emotion that the Popish

marauders had made desolate the habitations of quiet and humble peasants, had outraged the altars of God,

had torn to pieces the Gospels and the Communion service. A street, built out of the contributions of the

charitable, on the site of the dwellings which the invaders had destroyed, still retains the name of French

The outcry against those who were, with good reason, suspected of having invited the enemy to make a

descent on our shores was vehement and general, and was swollen by many voices which had recently been

loud in clamour against the government of William. The question had ceased to be a question between two

dynasties, and had become a question between England and France. So strong was the national sentiment that

nonjurors and Papists shared or affected to share it. Dryden, not long after the burning of Teignmouth, laid a

play at the feet of Halifax, with a dedication eminently ingenious, artful, and eloquent. The dramatist

congratulated his patron on having taken shelter in a calm haven from the storms of public life, and, with

great force and beauty of diction, magnified the felicity of the statesman who exchanges the bustle of office

and the fame of oratory for philosophic studies and domestic endearments. England could not complain that

she was defrauded of the service to which she had a right. Even the severe discipline of ancient Rome

permitted a soldier, after many campaigns, to claim his dismission; and Halifax had surely done enough for

his country to be entitled to the same privilege. But the poet added that there was one case in which the

Roman veteran, even after his discharge, was required to resume his shield and his pilum; and that one case

was an invasion of the Gauls. That a writer who had purchased the smiles of James by apostasy, who had

been driven in disgrace from the court of William, and who had a deeper interest in the restoration of the

exiled House than any man who made letters his calling, should have used, whether sincerely or insincerely,

such language as this, is a fact which may convince us that the determination never to be subjugated by

There was indeed a Jacobite literature in which no trace of this patriotic spirit can be detected, a literature the

remains of which prove that there were Englishmen perfectly willing to see the English flag dishonoured, the

English soil invaded, the English capital sacked, the English crown worn by a vassal of Lewis, if only they

might avenge themselves on their enemies, and especially on William, whom they hated with a hatred half

frightful half ludicrous. But this literature was altogether a work of darkness. The law by which the

Parliament of James had subjected the press to the control of censors was still in force; and, though the

officers whose business it was to prevent the infraction of that law were not extreme to mark every

irregularity committed by a bookseller who understood the art of conveying a guinea in a squeeze of the

hand, they could not wink at the open vending of unlicensed pamphlets filled with ribald insults to the

Sovereign, and with direct instigations to rebellion. But there had long lurked in the garrets of London a class

of printers who worked steadily at their calling with precautions resembling those employed by coiners and

forgers. Women were on the watch to give the alarm by their screams if an officer appeared near the

workshop. The press was immediately pushed into a closet behind the bed; the types were flung into the

coalhole, and covered with cinders: the compositor disappeared through a trapdoor in the roof, and made off

over the tiles of the neighbouring houses. In these dens were manufactured treasonable works of all classes

and sizes, from halfpenny broadsides of doggrel verse up to massy quartos filled with Hebrew quotations. It

was not safe to exhibit such publications openly on a counter. They were sold only by trusty agents, and in

secret places. Some tracts which were thought likely to produce a great effect were given away in immense

numbers at the expense of wealthy Jacobites. Sometimes a paper was thrust under a door, sometimes dropped

on the table of a coffeehouse. One day a thousand copies of a scurrilous pamphlet went out by the postbags.

On another day, when the shopkeepers rose early to take down their shutters, they found the whole of Fleet

Of the numerous performances which were ushered into the world by such shifts as these, none produced a

greater sensation than a little book which purported to be a form of prayer and humiliation for the use of the

persecuted Church. It was impossible to doubt that a considerable sum had been expended on this work. Ten

thousand copies were, by various means, scattered over the kingdom. No more mendacious, more malignant

or more impious lampoon was ever penned. Though the government had as yet treated its enemies with a

lenity unprecedented in the history of our country, though not a single person had, since the Revolution,

suffered death for any political offence, the authors of this liturgy were not ashamed to pray that God would

assuage their enemy's insatiable thirst for blood, or would, if any more of them were to be brought through

the Red Sea to the Land of Promise, prepare them for the passage.729 They complained that the Church of

England, once the perfection of beauty, had become a scorn and derision, a heap of ruins, a vineyard of wild

grapes; that her services had ceased to deserve the name of public worship; that the bread and wine which she

dispensed had no longer any sacramental virtue; that her priests, in the act of swearing fealty to the usurper,

had lost the sacred character which had been conferred on them by their ordination.730 James was profanely

described as the stone which foolish builders had rejected; and a fervent petition was put up that Providence

would again make him the head of the corner. The blessings which were called down on our country were of

a singular description. There was something very like a prayer for another Bloody Circuit; "Give the King the

necks of his enemies;" there was something very like a prayer for a French invasion; "Raise him up friends

abroad;" and there was a more mysterious prayer, the best comment on which was afterwards furnished by

the Assassination Plot; "Do some great thing for him; which we in particular know not how to pray for."731

This liturgy was composed, circulated, and read, it is said, in some congregations of Jacobite schismatics,

before William set out for Ireland, but did not attract general notice till the appearance of a foreign armament

on our coast had roused the national spirit. Then rose a roar of indignation against the Englishmen who had

dared, under the hypocritical pretence of devotion, to imprecate curses on England. The deprived Prelates

were suspected, and not without some show of reason. For the nonjurors were, to a man, zealous

Episcopalians. Their doctrine was that, in ecclesiastical matters of grave moment, nothing could be well done

without the sanction of the Bishop. And could it be believed that any who held this doctrine would compose a

service, print it, circulate it, and actually use it in public worship, without the approbation of Sancroft, whom

the whole party revered, not only as the true Primate of all England, but also as a Saint and a Confessor? It

was known that the Prelates who had refused the oaths had lately held several consultations at Lambeth. The

subject of those consultations, it was now said, might easily be guessed. The holy fathers had been engaged in

framing prayers for the destruction of the Protestant colony in Ireland, for the defeat of the English fleet in

the Channel, and for the speedy arrival of a French army in Kent. The extreme section of the Whig party

pressed this accusation with vindictive eagerness. This then, said those implacable politicians, was the fruit of

King William's merciful policy. Never had he committed a greater error than when he had conceived the hope

that the hearts of the clergy were to be won by clemency and moderation. He had not chosen to give credit to

men who had learned by a long and bitter experience that no kindness will tame the sullen ferocity of a

priesthood. He had stroked and pampered when he should have tried the effect of chains and hunger. He had

hazarded the good will of his best friends by protecting his worst enemies. Those Bishops who had publicly

refused to acknowledge him as their Sovereign, and who, by that refusal, had forfeited their dignities and

revenues, still continued to live unmolested in palaces which ought to be occupied by better men: and for this

indulgence, an indulgence unexampled in the history of revolutions, what return had been made to him? Even

this, that the men whom he had, with so much tenderness, screened from just punishment, had the insolence

to describe him in their prayers as a persecutor defiled with the blood of the righteous; they asked for grace to

endure with fortitude his sanguinary tyranny; they cried to heaven for a foreign fleet and army to deliver them

from his yoke; nay, they hinted at a wish so odious that even they had not the front to speak it plainly. One

writer, in a pamphlet which produced a great sensation, expressed his wonder that the people had not, when

Tourville was riding victorious in the Channel, bewitted the nonjuring Prelates. Excited as the public mind

then was, there was some danger that this suggestion might bring a furious mob to Lambeth. At Norwich

indeed the people actually rose, attacked the palace which the Bishop was still suffered to occupy, and would

have pulled it down but for the timely arrival of the trainbands.732 The government very properly instituted

criminal proceedings against the publisher of the work which had produced this alarming breach of the

peace.733 The deprived Prelates meanwhile put forth a defence of their conduct. In this document they

declared, with all solemnity, and as in the presence of God, that they had no hand in the new liturgy, that they

knew not who had framed it, that they had never used it, that they had never held any correspondence directly

or indirectly with the French court, that they were engaged in no plot against the existing government, and

that they would willingly shed their blood rather than see England subjugated by a foreign prince, who had,

in his own kingdom, cruelly persecuted their Protestant brethren. As to the write who had marked them out to

the public vengeance by a fearful word, but too well understood, they commended him to the Divine mercy,

and heartily prayed that his great sin might be forgiven him. Most of those who signed this paper did so

doubtless with perfect sincerity: but it soon appeared that one at least of the subscribers had added to the

crime of betraying his country the crime of calling God to witness a falsehood.734

The events which were passing in the Channel and on the Continent compelled William to make repeated

changes in his plans. During the week which followed his triumphal entry into Dublin, messengers charged

with evil tidings arrived from England in rapid succession. First came the account of Waldeck's defeat at

Fleurus. The King was much disturbed. All the pleasure, he said, which his own victory had given him was at

an end. Yet, with that generosity which was hidden under his austere aspect, he sate down, even in the

moment of his first vexation, to write a kind and encouraging letter to the unfortunate general.735 Three days

later came intelligence more alarming still. The allied fleet had been ignominiously beaten. The sea from the

Downs to the Land's End was in possession of the enemy. The next post might bring news that Kent was

invaded. A French squadron might appear in Saint George's Channel, and might without difficulty burn all

the transports which were anchored in the Bay of Dublin. William determined to return to England; but he

wished to obtain, before he went, the command of a safe haven on the eastern coast of Ireland. Waterford was

the place best suited to his purpose; and towards Waterford he immediately proceeded. Clonmel and

Kilkenny were abandoned by the Irish troops as soon as it was known that he was approaching. At Kilkenny

he was entertained, on the nineteenth of July, by the Duke of Ormond in the ancient castle of the Butlers,

which had not long before been occupied by Lauzun, and which therefore, in the midst of the general

devastation, still had tables and chairs, hangings on the walls, and claret in the cellars. On the twentyfirst

two regiments which garrisoned Waterford consented to march out after a faint show of resistance; a few

hours later, the fort of Duncannon, which, towering on a rocky promontory, commanded the entrance of the

harbour, was surrendered; and William was master of the whole of that secure and spacious basin which is

formed by the united waters of the Suir, the Nore and the Barrow. He then announced his intention of

instantly returning to England, and, having declared Count Solmes Commander in Chief of the army of

But good news met him on the road. Tourville had appeared on the coast of Devonshire, had put some troops

on shore, and had sacked Teignmouth; but the only effect of this insult had been to raise the whole population

of the western counties in arms against the invaders. The enemy had departed, after doing just mischief

enough to make the cause of James as odious for a time to Tories as to Whigs. William therefore again

changed his plans, and hastened back to his army, which, during his absence, had moved westward, and

About this time he received from Mary a letter requesting him to decide an important question on which the

Council of Nine was divided. Marlborough was of opinion that all danger of invasion was over for that year.

The sea, he said, was open; for the French ships had returned into port, and were refitting. Now was the time

to send an English fleet, with five thousand troops on board, to the southern extremity of Ireland. Such a

force might easily reduce Cork and Kinsale, two of the most important strongholds still occupied by the

forces of James. Marlborough was strenuously supported by Nottingham, and as strenuously opposed by the

other members of the interior council with Caermarthen at their head. The Queen referred the matter to her

husband. He highly approved of the plan, and gave orders that it should be executed by the General who had

formed it. Caermarthen submitted, though with a bad grace, and with some murmurs at the extraordinary

William meanwhile was advancing towards Limerick. In that city the army which he had put to rout at the

Boyne had taken refuge, discomfited, indeed, and disgraced, but very little diminished. He would not have

had the trouble of besieging the place, if the advice of Lauzun and of Lauzun's countrymen had been

followed. They laughed at the thought of defending such fortifications, and indeed would not admit that the

name of fortifications could properly be given to heaps of dirt, which certainly bore little resemblance to the

works of Valenciennes and Philipsburg. "It is unnecessary," said Lauzun, with an oath, "for the English to

bring cannon against such a place as this. What you call your ramparts might be battered down with roasted

apples." He therefore gave his voice for evacuating Limerick, and declared that, at all events, he was

determined not to throw away in a hopeless resistance the lives of the brave men who had been entrusted to

his care by his master.739 The truth is, that the judgment of the brilliant and adventurous Frenchman was

biassed by his inclinations. He and his companions were sick of Ireland. They were ready to face death with

courage, nay, with gaiety, on a field of battle. But the dull, squalid, barbarous life, which they had now been

leading during several months, was more than they could bear. They were as much out of the pale of the

civilised world as if they had been banished to Dahomey or Spitzbergen. The climate affected their health and

spirits. In that unhappy country, wasted by years of predatory war, hospitality could offer little more than a

couch of straw, a trencher of meat half raw and half burned, and a draught of sour milk. A crust of bread, a

pint of wine, could hardly be purchased for money. A year of such hardships seemed a century to men who

had always been accustomed to carry with them to the camp the luxuries of Paris, soft bedding, rich tapestry,

sideboards of plate, hampers of Champagne, opera dancers, cooks and musicians. Better to be a prisoner in

the Bastille, better to be a recluse at La Trappe, than to be generalissimo of the half naked savages who

burrowed in the dreary swamps of Munster. Any plea was welcome which would serve as an excuse for

returning from that miserable exile to the land of cornfields and vineyards, of gilded coaches and laced

Very different was the feeling of the children of the soil. The island, which to French courtiers was a

disconsolate place of banishment, was the Irishman's home. There were collected all the objects of his love

and of his ambition; and there he hoped that his dust would one day mingle with the dust of his fathers. To

him even the heaven dark with the vapours of the ocean, the wildernesses of black rushes and stagnant water,

the mud cabins where the peasants and the swine shared their meal of roots, had a charm which was wanting

to the sunny skies, the cultured fields and the stately mansions of the Seine. He could imagine no fairer spot

than his country, if only his country could be freed from the tyranny of the Saxons; and all hope that his

country would be freed from the tyranny of the Saxons must be abandoned if Limerick were surrendered.

The conduct of the Irish during the last two months had sunk their military reputation to the lowest point.

They had, with the exception of some gallant regiments of cavalry, fled disgracefully at the Boyne, and had

thus incurred the bitter contempt both of their enemies and of their allies. The English who were at Saint

Germains never spoke of the Irish but as a people of dastards and traitors.741 The French were so much

exasperated against the unfortunate nation, that Irish merchants, who had been many years settled at Paris,

durst not walk the streets for fear of being insulted by the populace.742 So strong was the prejudice, that

absurd stories were invented to explain the intrepidity with which the horse had fought. It was said that the

troopers were not men of Celtic blood, but descendants of the old English of the pale.743 It was also said that

they had been intoxicated with brandy just before the battle.744 Yet nothing can be more certain than that

they must have been generally of Irish race; nor did the steady valour which they displayed in a long and

almost hopeless conflict against great odds bear any resemblance to the fury of a coward maddened by strong

drink into momentary hardihood. Even in the infantry, undisciplined and disorganized as it was, there was

much spirit, though little firmness. Fits of enthusiasm and fits of faintheartedness succeeded each other. The

same battalion, which at one time threw away its arms in a panic and shrieked for quarter, would on another

occasion fight valiantly. On the day of the Boyne the courage of the ill trained and ill commanded kernes had

ebbed to the lowest point. When they had rallied at Limerick, their blood was up. Patriotism, fanaticism,

shame, revenge, despair, had raised them above themselves. With one voice officers and men insisted that the

city should be defended to the last. At the head of those who were for resisting was the brave Sarsfield; and

his exhortations diffused through all ranks a spirit resembling his own. To save his country was beyond his

power. All that he could do was to prolong her last agony through one bloody and disastrous year.745

Tyrconnel was altogether incompetent to decide the question on which the French and the Irish differed. The

only military qualities that he had ever possessed were personal bravery and skill in the use of the sword.

These qualities had once enabled him to frighten away rivals from the doors of his mistresses, and to play the

Hector at cockpits and hazard tables. But more was necessary to enable him to form an opinion as to the

possibility of defending Limerick. He would probably, had his temper been as hot as in the days when he

diced with Grammont and threatened to cut the old Duke of Ormond's throat, have voted for running any risk

however desperate. But age, pain and sickness had left little of the canting, bullying, fighting Dick Talbot of

the Restoration. He had sunk into deep despondency. He was incapable of strenuous exertion. The French

officers pronounced him utterly ignorant of the art of war. They had observed that at the Boyne he had

seemed to be stupified, unable to give directions himself, unable even to make up his mind about the

suggestions which were offered by others.746 The disasters which had since followed one another in rapid

succession were not likely to restore the tone of a mind so pitiably unnerved. His wife was already in France

with the little which remained of his once ample fortune: his own wish was to follow her thither: his voice

At last a compromise was made. Lauzun and Tyrconnel, with the French troops, retired to Galway. The great

body of the native army, about twenty thousand strong, remained at Limerick. The chief command there was

entrusted to Boisseleau, who understood the character of the Irish better, and consequently, judged them more

favourably, than any of his countrymen. In general, the French captains spoke of their unfortunate allies with

boundless contempt and abhorrence, and thus made themselves as hateful as the English.747

Lauzun and Tyrconnel had scarcely departed when the advanced guard of William's army came in sight.

Soon the King himself, accompanied by Auverquerque and Ginkell, and escorted by three hundred horse,

rode forward to examine the fortifications. The city, then the second in Ireland, though less altered since that

time than most large cities in the British isles, has undergone a great change. The new town did not then

exist. The ground now covered by those smooth and broad pavements, those neat gardens, those stately shops

flaming with red brick, and gay with shawls and china, was then an open meadow lying without the walls.

The city consisted of two parts, which had been designated during several centuries as the English and the

Irish town. The English town stands on an island surrounded by the Shannon, and consists of a knot of

antique houses with gable ends, crowding thick round a venerable cathedral. The aspect of the streets is such

that a traveller who wanders through them may easily fancy himself in Normandy or Flanders. Not far from

the cathedral, an ancient castle overgrown with weeds and ivy looks down on the river. A narrow and rapid

stream, over which, in 1690, there was only a single bridge, divides the English town from the quarter

anciently occupied by the hovels of the native population. The view from the top of the cathedral now

extends many miles over a level expanse of rich mould, through which the greatest of Irish rivers winds

between artificial banks. But in the seventeenth century those banks had not been constructed; and that wide

plain, of which the grass, verdant even beyond the verdure of Munster, now feeds some of the finest cattle in

When it was known that the French troops had quitted Limerick, and that the Irish only remained, the general

expectation in the English camp was that the city would be an easy conquest.749 Nor was that expectation

unreasonable; for even Sarsfield desponded. One chance, in his opinion, there still was. William had brought

with him none but small guns. Several large pieces of ordnance, a great quantity of provisions and

ammunition, and a bridge of tin boats, which in the watery plain of the Shannon was frequently needed, were

slowly following from Cashel. If the guns and gunpowder could be intercepted and destroyed, there might be

some hope. If not, all was lost; and the best thing that a brave and high spirited Irish gentleman could do was

to forget the country which he had in vain tried to defend, and to seek in some foreign land a home or a grave.

A few hours, therefore, after the English tents had been pitched before Limerick, Sarsfield set forth, under

cover of the night, with a strong body of horse and dragoons. He took the road to Killaloe, and crossed the

Shannon there. During the day he lurked with his band in a wild mountain tract named from the silver mines

which it contains. Those mines had many years before been worked by English proprietors, with the help of

engineers and labourers imported from the Continent. But, in the rebellion of 1641, the aboriginal population

had destroyed the works and massacred the workmen; nor had the devastation then committed been since

repaired. In this desolate region Sarsfield found no lack of scouts or of guides; for all the peasantry of

Munster were zealous on his side. He learned in the evening that the detachment which guarded the English

artillery had halted for the night about seven miles from William's camp, on a pleasant carpet of green turf

under the ruined walls of an old castle that officers and men seemed to think themselves perfectly secure; that

the beasts had been turned loose to graze, and that even the sentinels were dozing. When it was dark the Irish

horsemen quitted their hiding place, and were conducted by the people of the country to the place where the

escort lay sleeping round the guns. The surprise was complete. Some of the English sprang to their arms and

made an attempt to resist, but in vain. About sixty fell. One only was taken alive. The rest fled. The

victorious Irish made a huge pile of waggons and pieces of cannon. Every gun was stuffed with powder, and

fixed with its mouth in the ground; and the whole mass was blown up. The solitary prisoner, a lieutenant, was

treated with great civility by Sarsfield. "If I had failed in this attempt," said the gallant Irishman, "I should

Intelligence had been carried to William's head quarters that Sarsfield had stolen out of Limerick and was

ranging the country. The King guessed the design of his brave enemy, and sent five hundred horse to protect

the guns. Unhappily there was some delay, which the English, always disposed to believe the worst of the

Dutch courtiers, attributed to the negligence or perverseness of Portland. At one in the morning the

detachment set out, but had scarcely left the camp when a blaze like lightning and a crash like thunder

Sarsfield had long been the favourite of his countrymen; and this most seasonable exploit, judiciously

planned and vigorously executed, raised him still higher in their estimation. Their spirits rose; and the

besiegers began to lose heart. William did his best to repair his loss. Two of the guns which had been blown

up were found to be still serviceable. Two more were sent for from Waterford. Batteries were constructed of

small field pieces, which, though they might have been useless against one of the fortresses of Hainault or

Brabant, made some impression on the feeble defences of Limerick. Several outworks were carried by storm;

During these operations, the English army was astonished and amused by an incident, which produced indeed

no very important consequences, but which illustrates in the most striking manner the real nature of Irish

Jacobitism. In the first rank of those great Celtic houses, which, down to the close of the reign of Elizabeth,

bore rule in Ulster, were the O'Donnels. The head of that house had yielded to the skill and energy of

Mountjoy, had kissed the hand of James the First, and had consented to exchange the rude independence of a

petty prince for an eminently honourable place among British subjects. During a short time the vanquished

chief held the rank of an Earl, and was the landlord of an immense domain of which he had once been the

sovereign. But soon he began to suspect the government of plotting against him, and, in revenge or in

selfdefence, plotted against the government. His schemes failed; he fled to the continent; his title and his

estates were forfeited; and an Anglosaxon colony was planted in the territory which he had governed. He

meanwhile took refuge at the court of Spain. Between that court and the aboriginal Irish there had, during the

long contest between Philip and Elizabeth, been a close connection. The exiled chieftain was welcomed at

Madrid as a good Catholic flying from heretical persecutors. His illustrious descent and princely dignity,

which to the English were subjects of ridicule, secured to him the respect of the Castilian grandees. His

honours were inherited by a succession of banished men who lived and died far from the land where the

memory of their family was fondly cherished by a rude peasantry, and was kept fresh by the songs of

minstrels and the tales of begging friars. At length, in the eightythird year of the exile of this ancient

dynasty, it was known over all Europe that the Irish were again in arms for their independence. Baldearg

O'Donnel, who called himself the O'Donnel, a title far prouder, in the estimation of his race, than any

marquisate or dukedom, had been bred in Spain, and was in the service of the Spanish government. He

requested the permission of that government to repair to Ireland. But the House of Austria was now closely

leagued with England; and the permission was refused. The O'Donnel made his escape, and by a circuitous

route, in the course of which he visited Turkey, arrived at Kinsale a few days after James had sailed thence

for France. The effect produced on the native population by the arrival of this solitary wanderer was

marvellous. Since Ulster had been reconquered by the Englishry, great multitudes of the Irish inhabitants of

that province had migrated southward, and were now leading a vagrant life in Connaught and Munster. These

men, accustomed from their infancy to hear of the good old times, when the O'Donnel, solemnly inaugurated

on the rock of Kilmacrenan by the successor of Saint Columb, governed the mountains of Donegal in

defiance of the strangers of the pale, flocked to the standard of the restored exile. He was soon at the head of

seven or eight thousand Rapparees, or, to use the name peculiar to Ulster, Creaghts; and his followers

adhered to him with a loyalty very different from the languid sentiment which the Saxon James had been able

to inspire. Priests and even Bishops swelled the train of the adventurer. He was so much elated by his

reception that he sent agents to France, who assured the ministers of Lewis that the O'Donnel would, if

furnished with arms and ammunition, bring into the field thirty thousand Celts from Ulster, and that the Celts

of Ulster would be found far superior in every military quality to those of Leinster, Munster and Connaught.

No expression used by Baldearg indicated that he considered himself as a subject. His notion evidently was

that the House of O'Donnel was as truly and as indefeasibly royal as the House of Stuart; and not a few of his

countrymen were of the same mind. He made a pompous entrance into Limerick; and his appearance there

raised the hopes of the garrison to a strange pitch. Numerous prophecies were recollected or invented. An

O'Donnel with a red mark was to be the deliverer of his country; and Baldearg meant a red mark. An

O'Donnel was to gain a great battle over the English near Limerick; and at Limerick the O'Donnel and the

While these predictions were eagerly repeated by the defenders of the city, evil presages, grounded not on

barbarous oracles, but on grave military reasons, began to disturb William and his most experienced officers.

The blow struck by Sarsfield had told; the artillery had been long in doing its work; that work was even now

very imperfectly done; the stock of powder had begun to run low; the autumnal rain had begun to fall. The

soldiers in the trenches were up to their knees in mire. No precaution was neglected; but, though drains were

dug to carry off the water, and though pewter basins of usquebaugh and brandy blazed all night in the tents,

cases of fever had already occurred, and it might well be apprehended that, if the army remained but a few

days longer on that swampy soil, there would be a pestilence more terrible than that which had raged twelve

months before under the walls of Dundalk.753 A council of war was held. It was determined to make one

On the twentyseventh of August, at three in the afternoon, the signal was given. Five hundred grenadiers

rushed from the English trenches to the counterscarp, fired their pieces, and threw their grenades. The Irish

fled into the town, and were followed by the assailants, who, in the excitement of victory, did not wait for

orders. Then began a terrible street fight. The Irish, as soon as they had recovered from their surprise, stood

resolutely to their arms; and the English grenadiers, overwhelmed by numbers, were, with great loss, driven

back to the counterscarp. There the struggle was long and desperate. When indeed was the Roman Catholic

Celt to fight if he did not fight on that day? The very women of Limerick mingled, in the combat, stood

firmly under the hottest fire, and flung stones and broken bottles at the enemy. In the moment when the

conflict was fiercest a mine exploded, and hurled a fine German battalion into the air. During four hours the

carnage and uproar continued. The thick cloud which rose from the breach streamed out on the wind for

many miles, and disappeared behind the hills of Clare. Late in the evening the besiegers retired slowly and

sullenly to their camp. Their hope was that a second attack would be made on the morrow; and the soldiers

vowed to have the town or die. But the powder was now almost exhausted; the rain fell in torrents; the

gloomy masses of cloud which came up from the south west threatened a havoc more terrible than that of the

sword; and there was reason to fear that the roads, which were already deep in mud, would soon be in such a

state that no wheeled carriage could be dragged through them. The King determined to raise the siege, and to

move his troops to a healthier region. He had in truth staid long enough; for it was with great difficulty that

The history of the first siege of Limerick bears, in some respects, a remarkable analogy to the history of the

siege of Londonderry. The southern city was, like the northern city, the last asylum of a Church and of a

nation. Both places were crowded by fugitives from all parts of Ireland. Both places appeared to men who

had made a regular study of the art of war incapable of resisting an enemy. Both were, in the moment of

extreme danger, abandoned by those commanders who should have defended them. Lauzun and Tyrconnel

deserted Limerick as Cunningham and Lundy had deserted Londonderry. In both cases, religious and

patriotic enthusiasm struggled unassisted against great odds; and, in both cases, religious and patriotic

It was with no pleasurable emotions that Lauzun and Tyrconnel learned at Galway the fortunate issue of the

conflict in which they had refused to take a part. They were weary of Ireland; they were apprehensive that

their conduct might be unfavourably represented in France; they therefore determined to be beforehand with

Tyrconnel, before he departed, delegated his civil authority to one council, and his military authority to

another. The young Duke of Berwick was declared Commander in Chief; but this dignity was merely

nominal. Sarsfield, undoubtedly the first of Irish soldiers, was placed last in the list of the councillors to

whom the conduct of the war was entrusted; and some believed that he would not have been in the list at all,

had not the Viceroy feared that the omission of so popular a name might produce a mutiny.

William meanwhile had reached Waterford, and had sailed thence for England. Before he embarked, he

entrusted the government of Ireland to three Lords Justices. Henry Sydney, now Viscount Sydney, stood first

in the commission; and with him were joined Coningsby and Sir Charles Porter. Porter had formerly held the

Great Seal of the kingdom, had, merely because he was a Protestant, been deprived of it by James, and had

On the sixth of September the King, after a voyage of twentyfour hours, landed at Bristol. Thence he

travelled to London, stopping by the road at the mansions of some great lords, and it was remarked that all

those who were thus honoured were Tories. He was entertained one day at Badminton by the Duke of

Beaufort, who was supposed to have brought himself with great difficulty to take the oaths, and on a

subsequent day at a large house near Marlborough which, in our own time, before the great revolution

produced by railways, was renowned as one of the best inns in England, but which, in the seventeenth

century, was a seat of the Duke of Somerset. William was every where received with marks of respect and

joy. His campaign indeed had not ended quite so prosperously as it had begun; but on the whole his success

had been great beyond expectation, and had fully vindicated the wisdom of his resolution to command his

army in person. The sack of Teignmouth too was fresh in the minds of Englishmen, and had for a time

reconciled all but the most fanatical Jacobites to each other and to the throne. The magistracy and clergy of

the capital repaired to Kensington with thanks and congratulations. The people rang bells and kindled

bonfires. For the Pope, whom good Protestants had been accustomed to immolate, the French King was on

this occasion substituted, probably by way of retaliation for the insults which had been offered to the effigy of

William by the Parisian populace. A waxen figure, which was doubtless a hideous caricature of the most

graceful and majestic of princes, was dragged about Westminster in a chariot. Above was inscribed, in large

letters, "Lewis the greatest tyrant of fourteen." After the procession, the image was committed to the flames,

When William arrived in London, the expedition destined for Cork, was ready to sail from Portsmouth, and

Marlborough had been some time on board waiting for a fair wind. He was accompanied by Grafton. This

young man had been, immediately after the departure of James, and while the throne was still vacant, named

by William Colonel of the First Regiment of Foot Guards. The Revolution had scarcely been consummated,

when signs of disaffection began to appear in that regiment, the most important, both because of its peculiar

duties and because of its numerical strength, of all the regiments in the army. It was thought that the Colonel

had not put this bad spirit down with a sufficiently firm hand. He was known not to be perfectly satisfied with

the new arrangement; he had voted for a Regency; and it was rumoured, perhaps without reason, that he had

dealings with Saint Germains. The honourable and lucrative command to which he had just been appointed

was taken from him.756 Though severely mortified, he behaved like a man of sense and spirit. Bent on

proving that he had been wrongfully suspected, and animated by an honourable ambition to distinguish

himself in his profession, he obtained permission to serve as a volunteer under Marlborough in Ireland.

At length, on the eighteenth of September, the wind changed. The fleet stood out to sea, and on the

twentyfirst appeared before the harbour of Cork. The troops landed, and were speedily joined by the Duke

of Wirtemberg, with several regiments, Dutch, Danish, and French, detached from the army which had lately

besieged Limerick. The Duke immediately put forward a claim which, if the English general had not been a

man of excellent judgment and temper, might have been fatal to the expedition. His Highness contended that,

as a prince of a sovereign house, he was entitled to command in chief. Marlborough calmly and politely

showed that the pretence was unreasonable. A dispute followed, in which it is said that the German behaved

with rudeness, and the Englishman with that gentle firmness to which, more perhaps than even to his great

abilities, he owed his success in life. At length a Huguenot officer suggested a compromise. Marlborough

consented to waive part of his rights, and to allow precedence to the Duke on the alternate days. The first

morning on which Marlborough had the command, he gave the word "Wirtemberg." The Duke's heart was

But, whoever might give the word, genius asserted its indefeasible superiority. Marlborough was on every

day the real general. Cork was vigorously attacked. Outwork after outwork was rapidly carried. In fortyeight

hours all was over. The traces of the short struggle may still be seen. The old fort, where the Irish made the

hardest fight, lies in ruins. The Daria Cathedral, so ungracefully joined to the ancient tower, stands on the site

of a Gothic edifice which was shattered by the English cannon. In the neighbouring churchyard is still shown

the spot where stood, during many ages, one of those round towers which have perplexed antiquaries. This

venerable monument shared the fate of the neighbouring church. On another spot, which is now called the

Mall, and is lined by the stately houses of banking companies, railway companies, and insurance companies,

but which was then a bog known by the name of the Rape Marsh, four English regiments, up to the shoulders

in water, advanced gallantly to the assault. Grafton, ever foremost in danger, while struggling through the

quagmire, was struck by a shot from the ramparts, and was carried back dying. The place where he fell, then

about a hundred yards without the city, but now situated in the very centre of business and population, is still

called Grafton Street. The assailants had made their way through the swamp, and the close fighting was just

about to begin, when a parley was beaten. Articles of capitulation were speedily adjusted. The garrison,

between four and five thousand fighting men, became prisoners. Marlborough promised to intercede with the

King both for them and for the inhabitants, and to prevent outrage and spoliation. His troops he succeeded in

restraining; but crowds of sailors and camp followers came into the city through the breach; and the houses of

No commander has ever understood better than Marlborough how to improve a victory. A few hours after

Cork had fallen, his cavalry were on the road to Kinsale. A trumpeter was sent to summon the place. The

Irish threatened to hang him for bringing such a message, set fire to the town, and retired into two forts called

the Old and the New. The English horse arrived just in time to extinguish the flames. Marlborough speedily

followed with his infantry. The Old Fort was scaled; and four hundred and fifty men who defended it were all

killed or taken. The New Fort it was necessary to attack in a more methodical way. Batteries were planted;

trenches were opened; mines were sprung; in a few days the besiegers were masters of the counterscarp; and

all was ready for storming, when the governor offered to capitulate. The garrison, twelve hundred strong, was

suffered to retire to Limerick; but the conquerors took possession of the stores, which were of considerable

value. Of all the Irish ports Kinsale was the best situated for intercourse with France. Here, therefore, was a

plenty unknown in any other part of Munster. At Limerick bread and wine were luxuries which generals and

privy councillors were not always able to procure. But in the New Fort of Kinsale Marlborough found a

His success had been complete and rapid; and indeed, had it not been rapid, it would not have been complete.

His campaign, short as it was, had been long enough to allow time for the deadly work which, in that age, the

moist earth and air of Ireland seldom failed, in the autumnal season, to perform on English soldiers. The

malady which had thinned the ranks of Schomberg's army at Dundalk, and which had compelled William to

make a hasty retreat from the estuary of the Shannon, had begun to appear at Kinsale. Quick and vigorous as

Marlborough's operations were, he lost a much greater number of men by disease than by the fire of the

enemy. He presented himself at Kensington only five weeks after he had sailed from Portsmouth, and was

most graciously received. "No officer living," said William, "who has seen so little service as my Lord

In Scotland, as in Ireland, the aspect of things had, during this memorable summer, changed greatly for the

better. That club of discontented Whigs which had, in the preceding year, ruled the Parliament, browbeaten

the ministers, refused the supplies and stopped the signet, had sunk under general contempt, and had at length

ceased to exist. There was harmony between the Sovereign and the Estates; and the long contest between two

forms of ecclesiastical government had been terminated in the only way compatible with the peace and

This happy turn in affairs is to be chiefly ascribed to the errors of the perfidious, turbulent and revengeful

Montgomery. Some weeks after the close of that session during which he had exercised a boundless authority

over the Scottish Parliament, he went to London with his two principal confederates, the Earl of Annandale

and the Lord Ross. The three had an audience of William, and presented to him a manifesto setting forth what

they demanded for the public. They would very soon have changed their tone if he would have granted what

they demanded for themselves. But he resented their conduct deeply, and was determined not to pay them for

annoying him. The reception which be gave them convinced them that they had no favour to expect.

Montgomery's passions were fierce; his wants were pressing; he was miserably poor; and, if he could not

speedily force himself into a lucrative office, he would be in danger of rotting in a gaol. Since his services

were not likely to be bought by William, they must be offered to James. A broker was easily found.

Montgomery was an old acquaintance of Ferguson. The two traitors soon understood each other. They were

kindred spirits, differing widely in intellectual power, but equally vain, restless, false and malevolent.

Montgomery was introduced to Neville Payne, one of the most adroit and resolute agents of the exiled family,

Payne had been long well known about town as a dabbler in poetry and politics. He had been an intimate

friend of the indiscreet and unfortunate Coleman, and had been committed to Newgate as an accomplice in

the Popish plot. His moral character had not stood high; but he soon had an opportunity of proving that he

possessed courage and fidelity worthy of a better cause than that of James and of a better associate than

The negotiation speedily ended in a treaty of alliance, Payne confidently promised Montgomery, not merely

pardon, but riches, power and dignity. Montgomery as confidently undertook to induce the Parliament of

Scotland to recall the rightful King. Ross and Annandale readily agreed to whatever their able and active

colleague proposed. An adventurer, who was sometimes called Simpson and sometimes Jones, who was

perfectly willing to serve or to betray any government for hire, and who received wages at once from

Portland and from Neville Payne, undertook to carry the offers of the Club to James. Montgomery and his

two noble accomplices returned to Edinburgh, and there proceeded to form a coalition with their old enemies,

The Scottish opposition, strangely made up of two factions, one zealous for bishops, the other zealous for

synods, one hostile to all liberty, the other impatient of all government, flattered itself during a short time

with hopes that the civil war would break out in the Highlands with redoubled fury. But those hopes were

disappointed. In the spring of 1690 an officer named Buchan arrived in Lochaber from Ireland. He bore a

commission which appointed him general in chief of all the forces which were in arms for King James

throughout the kingdom of Scotland. Cannon, who had, since the death of Dundee, held the first post and had

proved himself unfit for it, became second in command. Little however was gained by the change. It was no

easy matter to induce the Gaelic princes to renew the war. Indeed, but for the influence and eloquence of

Lochiel, not a sword would have been drawn for the House of Stuart. He, with some difficulty, persuaded the

chieftains, who had, in the preceding year, fought at Killiecrankie, to come to a resolution that, before the end

of the summer, they would muster all their followers and march into the Lowlands. In the mean time twelve

hundred mountaineers of different tribes were placed under the orders of Buchan, who undertook, with this

force, to keep the English garrisons in constant alarm by feints and incursions, till the season for more

important operations should arrive. He accordingly marched into Strathspey. But all his plans were speedily

disconcerted by the boldness and dexterity of Sir Thomas Livingstone, who held Inverness for King William.

Livingstone, guided and assisted by the Grants, who were firmly attached to the new government, came, with

a strong body of cavalry and dragoons, by forced marches and through arduous defiles, to the place where the

Jacobites had taken up their quarters. He reached the camp fires at dead of night. The first alarm was given by

the rush of the horses over the terrified sentinels into the midst Of the crowd of Celts who lay sleeping in

their plaids. Buchan escaped bareheaded and without his sword. Cannon ran away in his shirt. The

conquerors lost not a man. Four hundred Highlanders were killed or taken. The rest fled to their hills and

This event put an end to all thoughts of civil war. The gathering which had been planned for the summer

never took place. Lochiel, even if he had been willing, was not able to sustain any longer the falling cause.

He had been laid on his bed by a mishap which would alone suffice to show how little could be effected by a

confederacy of the petty kings of the mountains. At a consultation of the Jacobite leaders, a gentleman from

the Lowlands spoke with severity of those sycophants who had changed their religion to curry favour with

King James. Glengarry was one of those people who think it dignified to suppose that every body is always

insulting them. He took it into his head that some allusion to himself was meant. "I am as good a Protestant as

you." he cried, and added a word not to be patiently borne by a man of spirit. In a moment both swords were

out. Lochiel thrust himself between the combatants, and, while forcing them asunder, received a wound

So effectually had the spirit of the disaffected clans been cowed that Mackay marched unresisted from Perth

into Lochaber, fixed his head quarters at Inverlochy, and proceeded to execute his favourite design of

erecting at that place a fortress which might overawe the mutinous Camerons and Macdonalds. In a few days

the walls were raised; the ditches were sunk; the pallisades were fixed; demiculverins from a ship of war

were ranged along the parapets, and the general departed, leaving an officer named Hill in command of a

sufficient garrison. Within the defences there was no want of oatmeal, red herrings, and beef; and there was

rather a superabundance of brandy. The new stronghold, which, hastily and rudely as it had been constructed,

seemed doubtless to the people of the neighbourhood the most stupendous work that power and science

By this time the Scottish Parliament had reassembled at Edinburgh. William had found it no easy matter to

decide what course should be taken with that capricious and unruly body. The English Commons had

sometimes put him out of temper. Yet they had granted him millions, and had never asked from him such

concessions as had been imperiously demanded by the Scottish legislature, which could give him little and

had given him nothing. The English statesmen with whom he had to deal did not generally stand or serve to

stand high in his esteem. Yet few of them were so utterly false and shameless as the leading Scottish

politicians. Hamilton was, in morality and honour, rather above than below his fellows; and even Hamilton

was fickle, false and greedy. "I wish to heaven," William was once provoked into exclaiming, "that Scotland

were a thousand miles off, and that the Duke of Hamilton were King of it. Then I should be rid of them both."

After much deliberation William determined to send Melville down to Edinburgh as Lord High

Commissioner. Melville was not a great statesman; he was not a great orator; he did not look or move like the

representative of royalty; his character was not of more than standard purity; and the standard of purity

among Scottish senators was not high; but he was by no means deficient in prudence or temper; and he

succeeded, on the whole, better than a man of much higher qualities might have done.

During the first days of the Session, the friends of the government desponded, and the chiefs of the

opposition were sanguine. Montgomery's head, though by no means a weak one, had been turned by the

triumphs of the preceding year. He believed that his intrigues and his rhetoric had completely subjugated the

Estates. It seemed to him impossible that, having exercised a boundless empire in the Parliament House when

the Jacobites were absent, he should be defeated when they were present, and ready to support whatever he

proposed. He had not indeed found it easy to prevail on them to attend: for they could not take their seats

without taking the oaths. A few of them had some slight scruple of conscience about foreswearing

themselves; and many, who did not know what a scruple of conscience meant, were apprehensive that they

might offend the rightful King by vowing fealty to the actual King. Some Lords, however, who were

supposed to be in the confidence of James, asserted that, to their knowledge, he wished his friends to perjure

themselves; and this assertion induced most of the Jacobites, with Balcarras at their head, to be guilty of

It soon appeared, however, that Montgomery's faction, even with this reinforcement, was no longer a

majority of the legislature. For every supporter that he had gained he had lost two. He had committed an error

which has more than once, in British history, been fatal to great parliamentary leaders. He had imagined that,

as soon as he chose to coalesce with those to whom he had recently been opposed, all his followers would

imitate his example. He soon found that it was much easier to inflame animosities than to appease them. The

great body Of Whigs and Presbyterians shrank from the fellowship of the Jacobites. Some waverers were

purchased by the government; nor was the purchase expensive, for a sum which would hardly be missed in

the English Treasury was immense in the estimation of the needy barons of the North.763 Thus the scale was

turned; and, in the Scottish Parliaments of that age, the turn of the scale was every thing; the tendency of

The first question on which a vote was taken related to the election for a borough. The ministers carried their

point by six voices.764 In an instant every thing was changed; the spell was broken; the Club, from being a

bugbear, became a laughingstock; the timid and the venal passed over in crowds from the weaker to the

stronger side. It was in vain that the opposition attempted to revive the disputes of the preceding year. The

King had wisely authorised Melville to give up the Committee of Articles. The Estates, on the other hand,

showed no disposition to pass another Act of Incapacitation, to censure the government for opening the

Courts of justice, or to question the right of the Sovereign to name the judges. An extraordinary supply was

voted, small, according to the notions of English financiers, but large for the means of Scotland. The sum

granted was a hundred and sixtytwo thousand pounds sterling, to be raised in the course of four years.765

The Jacobites, who found that they had forsworn themselves to no purpose, sate, bowed down by shame and

writhing with vexation, while Montgomery, who had deceived himself and them, and who, in his rage, had

utterly lost, not indeed his parts and his fluency, but all decorum and selfcommand, scolded like a waterman

on the Thames, and was answered with equal asperity and even more than equal ability by Sir John

The most important acts of this Session were those which fixed the ecclesiastical constitution of Scotland. By

the Claim of Right it had been declared that the authority of Bishops was an insupportable grievance; and

William, by accepting the Crown, had bound himself not to uphold an institution condemned by the very

instrument on which his title to the Crown depended. But the Claim of Right had not defined the form of

Church government which was to be substituted for episcopacy; and, during the stormy Session held in the

summer of 1689, the violence of the Club had made legislation impossible. During many months therefore

every thing had been in confusion. One polity had been pulled down; and no other polity had been set up. In

the Western Lowlands, the beneficed clergy had been so effectually rabbled, that scarcely one of them had

remained at his post. In Berwickshire, the three Lothians and Stirlingshire, most of the curates had been

removed by the Privy Council for not obeying that vote of the Convention which had directed all ministers of

parishes, on pain of deprivation, to proclaim William and Mary King and Queen of Scotland. Thus,

throughout a great part of the realm, there was no public worship except what was performed by Presbyterian

divines, who sometimes officiated in tents, and sometimes, without any legal right, took possession of the

churches. But there were large districts, especially on the north of the Tay, where the people had no strong

feeling against episcopacy; and there were many priests who were not disposed to lose their manses, and

stipends for the sake of King James. Hundreds of the old curates, therefore, having been neither hunted by the

populace nor deposed by the Council, still performed their spiritual functions. Every minister was, during this

time of transition, free to conduct the service and to administer the sacraments as he thought fit. There was no

controlling authority. The legislature had taken away the jurisdiction of Bishops, and had not established the

To put an end to this anarchy was one of the first duties of the Parliament. Melville had, with the powerful

assistance of Carstairs, obtained, in spite of the remonstrances of English Tories, authority to assent to such

ecclesiastical arrangements as might satisfy the Scottish nation. One of the first laws which the Lord

Commissioner touched with the sceptre repealed the Act of Supremacy. He next gave the royal assent to a

law enacting that those Presbyterian divines who had been pastors of parishes in the days of the Covenant,

and had, after the Restoration, been ejected for refusing to acknowledge episcopal authority, should be

restored. The number of those Pastors had originally been about three hundred and fifty: but not more than

The Estates then proceeded to fix the national creed. The Confession of Faith drawn up by the Assembly of

Divines at Westminster, the Longer and Shorter Catechism, and the Directory, were considered by every

good Presbyterian as the standards of orthodoxy; and it was hoped that the legislature would recognise them

as such.769 This hope, however, was in part disappointed. The Confession was read at length, amidst much

yawning, and adopted without alteration. But, when it was proposed that the Catechisms and the Directory

should be taken into consideration, the ill humour of the audience broke forth into murmurs. For that love of

long sermons which was strong in the Scottish commonalty was not shared by the Scottish aristocracy. The

Parliament had already been listening during three hours to dry theology, and was not inclined to hear any

thing more about original sin and election. The Duke of Hamilton said that the Estates had already done all

that was essential. They had given their sanction to a digest of the great principles of Christianity. The rest

might well be left to the Church. The weary majority eagerly assented, in spite of the muttering of some

zealous Presbyterian ministers who had been admitted to hear the debate, and who could sometimes hardly

The memorable law which fixed the ecclesiastical constitution of Scotland was brought in by the Earl of

Sutherland. By this law the synodical polity was reestablished. The rule of the Church was entrusted to the

sixty ejected ministers who had just been restored, and to such other persons, whether ministers or elders, as

the Sixty should think fit to admit to a participation of power. The Sixty and their nominees were authorised

to visit all the parishes in the kingdom, and to turn out all ministers who were deficient in abilities,

scandalous in morals, or unsound in faith. Those parishes which had, during the interregnum, been deserted

by their pastors, or, in plain words, those parishes of which the pastors had been rabbled, were declared

To the clause which reestablished synodical government no serious opposition appears to have been made.

But three days were spent in discussing the question whether the Sovereign should have power to convoke

and to dissolve ecclesiastical assemblies; and the point was at last left in dangerous ambiguity. Some other

clauses were long and vehemently debated. It was said that the immense power given to the Sixty was

incompatible with the fundamental principle of the polity which the Estates were about to set up. That

principle was that all presbyters were equal, and that there ought to be no order of ministers of religion

superior to the order of presbyters. What did it matter whether the Sixty were called prelates or not, if they

were to lord it with more than prelatical authority over God's heritage? To the argument that the proposed

arrangement was, in the very peculiar circumstances of the Church, the most convenient that could be made,

the objectors replied that such reasoning might suit the mouth of an Erastian, but that all orthodox

Presbyterians held the parity of ministers to be ordained by Christ, and that, where Christ had spoken,

With much greater warmth and much stronger reason the minority attacked the clause which sanctioned the

lawless acts of the Western fanatics. Surely, it was said, a rabbled curate might well be left to the severe

scrutiny of the sixty Inquisitors. If he was deficient in parts or learning, if he was loose in life, if he was

heterodox in doctrine, those stern judges would not fail to detect and to depose him. They would probably

think a game at bowls, a prayer borrowed from the English Liturgy, or a sermon in which the slightest taint of

Arminianism could be discovered, a sufficient reason for pronouncing his benefice vacant. Was it not

monstrous, after constituting a tribunal from which he could scarcely hope for bare justice, to condemn him

without allowing him to appear even before that tribunal, to condemn him without a trial, to condemn him

without an accusation? Did ever any grave senate, since the beginning of the world, treat a man as a criminal

merely because he had been robbed, pelted, hustled, dragged through snow and mire, and threatened with

death if he returned to the house which was his by law? The Duke of Hamilton, glad to have so good an

Opportunity of attacking the new Lord Commissioner, spoke with great vehemence against this odious

clause. We are told that no attempt was made to answer him; and, though those who tell us so were zealous

Episcopalians, we may easily believe their report; for what answer was it possible to return? Melville, on

whom the chief responsibility lay, sate on the throne in profound silence through the whole of this

tempestuous debate. It is probable that his conduct was determined by considerations which prudence and

shame prevented him from explaining. The state of the southwestern shires was such that it would have been

impossible to put the rabbled minister in possession of their dwellings and churches without employing a

military force, without garrisoning every manse, without placing guards round every pulpit, and without

handing over some ferocious enthusiasts to the Provost Marshal; and it would be no easy task for the

government to keep down by the sword at once the Jacobites of the Highlands and the Covenanters of the

Lowlands. The majority, having made up their minds for reasons which could not well be produced, became

clamorous for the question. "No more debate," was the cry: "We have heard enough: a vote! a vote!" The

question was put according to the Scottish form, "Approve or not approve the article?" Hamilton insisted that

the question, should be, "Approve or not approve the rabbling?" After much altercation, he was overruled,

and the clause passed. Only fifteen or sixteen members voted with him. He warmly and loudly exclaimed,

amidst much angry interruption, that he was sorry to see a Scottish Parliament disgrace itself by such

iniquity. He then left the house with several of his friends. It is impossible not to sympathize with the

indignation which he expressed. Yet we ought to remember that it is the nature of injustice to generate

injustice. There are wrongs which it is almost impossible to repair without committing other wrongs; and

such a wrong had been done to the people of Scotland in the preceding generation. It was because the

Parliament of the Restoration had legislated in insolent defiance of the sense of the nation that the Parliament

When Hamilton and his adherents had retired, one of the preachers who had been admitted to the hall called

out to the members who were near him; "Fie! Fie! Do not lose time. Make haste, and get all over before he

comes back." This advice was taken. Four or five sturdy Prelatists staid to give a last vote against Presbytery.

Four or five equally sturdy Covenanters staid to mark their dislike of what seemed to them a compromise

between the Lord and Baal. But the Act was passed by an overwhelming majority.773

Two supplementary Acts speedily followed. One of them, now happily repealed, required every officebearer

in every University of Scotland to sign the Confession of Faith and to give in his adhesion to the new form of

Church government.774 The other settled the important and delicate question of patronage. Knox had, in the

First Book of Discipline, asserted the right of every Christian congregation to choose its own pastor. Melville

had not, in the Second Book of Discipline, gone quite so far; but he had declared that no pastor could

lawfully be forced on an unwilling congregation. Patronage had been abolished by a Covenanted Parliament

in 1649, and restored by a Royalist Parliament in 1661. What ought to be done in 1690 it was no easy matter

to decide. Scarcely any question seems to have caused so much anxiety to William. He had, in his private

instructions, given the Lord Commissioner authority to assent to the abolition of patronage, if nothing else

would satisfy the Estates. But this authority was most unwillingly given; and the King hoped that it would not

be used. "It is," he said, "the taking of men's property." Melville succeeded in effecting a compromise.

Patronage was abolished; but it was enacted that every patron should receive six hundred marks Scots,

equivalent to about thirtyfive pounds sterling, as a compensation for his rights. The sum seems ludicrously

small. Yet, when the nature of the property and the poverty of the country are considered, it may be doubted

whether a patron would have made much more by going into the market. The largest sum that any member

ventured to propose was nine hundred marks, little more than fifty pounds sterling. The right of proposing a

minister was given to a parochial council consisting of the Protestant landowners and the elders. The

congregation might object to the person proposed; and the Presbytery was to judge of the objections. This

arrangement did not give to the people all the power to which even the Second Book of Discipline had

declared that they were entitled. But the odious name of patronage was taken away; it was probably thought

that the elders and landowners of a parish would seldom persist in nominating a person to whom the majority

of the congregation had strong objections; and indeed it does not appear that, while the Act of 1690 continued

in force, the peace of the Church was ever broken by disputes such as produced the schisms of 1732, of 1756,

Montgomery had done all in his power to prevent the Estates from settling the ecclesiastical polity of the

realm. He had incited the zealous Covenanters to demand what he knew that the government would never

grant. He had protested against all Erastianism, against all compromise. Dutch Presbyterianism, he said,

would not do for Scotland. She must have again the system of 1649. That system was deduced from the Word

of God: it was the most powerful check that had ever been devised on the tyranny of wicked kings; and it

ought to be restored without addition or diminution. His Jacobite allies could not conceal their disgust and

mortification at hearing him hold such language, and were by no means satisfied with the explanations which

he gave them in private. While they were wrangling with him on this subject, a messenger arrived at

Edinburgh with important despatches from James and from Mary of Modena. These despatches had been

written in the confident expectation that the large promises of Montgomery would be fulfilled, and that the

Scottish Estates would, under his dexterous management, declare for the rightful Sovereign against the

Usurper. James was so grateful for the unexpected support of his old enemies, that he entirely forgot the

services and disregarded the feelings of his old friends. The three chiefs of the Club, rebels and Puritans as

they were, had become his favourites. Annandale was to be a Marquess, Governor of Edinburgh Castle, and

Lord High Commissioner. Montgomery was to be Earl of Ayr and Secretary of State. Ross was to be an Earl

and to command the guards. An unprincipled lawyer named James Stewart, who had been deeply concerned

in Argyle's insurrection, who had changed sides and supported the dispensing power, who had then changed

sides a second time and concurred in the Revolution, and who had now changed sides a third time and was

scheming to bring about a Restoration, was to be Lord Advocate. The Privy Council, the Court of Session,

the army, were to be filled with Whigs. A Council of Five was appointed, which all loyal subjects were to

obey; and in this Council Annandale, Ross and Montgomery formed the majority. Mary of Modena informed

Montgomery that five thousand pounds sterling had been remitted to his order, and that five thousand more

would soon follow. It was impossible that Balcarras and those who had acted with him should not bitterly

resent the manner in which they were treated. Their names were not even mentioned. All that they had done

and suffered seemed to have faded from their master's mind. He had now given them fair notice that, if they

should, at the hazard of their lands and lives, succeed in restoring him, all that he had to give would be given

to those who had deposed him. They too, when they read his letters, knew, what he did not know when the

letters were written, that he had been duped by the confident boasts and promises of the apostate Whigs. He

imagined that the Club was omnipotent at Edinburgh; and, in truth, the Club had become a mere byword of

contempt. The Tory Jacobites easily found pretexts for refusing to obey the Presbyterian Jacobites to whom

the banished King had delegated his authority. They complained that Montgomery had not shown them all

the despatches which he had received. They affected to suspect that he had tampered with the seals. He called

God Almighty to witness that the suspicion was unfounded. But oaths were very naturally regarded as

insufficient guarantees by men who had just been swearing allegiance to a King against whom they were

conspiring. There was a violent outbreak of passion on both sides; the coalition was dissolved; the papers

were flung into the fire; and, in a few days, the infamous triumvirs who had been, in the short space of a year,

violent Williamites and violent Jacobites, became Williamites again, and attempted to make their peace with

Ross was the first who turned informer. After the fashion of the school in which he had been bred, he

committed this base action with all the forms of sanctity. He pretended to be greatly troubled in mind, sent

for a celebrated Presbyterian minister named Dunlop, and bemoaned himself piteously: "There is a load on

my conscience; there is a secret which I know that I ought to disclose; but I cannot bring myself to do it."

Dunlop prayed long and fervently; Ross groaned and wept; at last it seemed that heaven had been stormed by

the violence of supplication; the truth came out, and many lies with it. The divine and the penitent then

returned thanks together. Dunlop went with the news to Melville. Ross set off for England to make his peace

at court, and performed his journey in safety, though some of his accomplices, who had heard of his

repentance, but had been little edified by it, had laid plans for cutting his throat by the way. At London he

protested, on his honour and on the word of a gentleman, that he had been drawn in, that he had always

Dunlop was, in the mean time, magnifying, wherever he went, the divine goodness which had, by so humble

an instrument as himself, brought a noble person back to the right path. Montgomery no sooner heard of this

wonderful work of grace than he too began to experience compunction. He went to Melville, made a

confession not exactly coinciding with Ross's, and obtained a pass for England. William was then in Ireland;

and Mary was governing in his stead. At her feet Montgomery threw himself. He tried to move her pity by

speaking of his broken fortunes, and to ingratiate himself with her by praising her sweet and affable manners.

He gave up to her the names of his fellow plotters. He vowed to dedicate his whole life to her service, if she

would obtain for him some place which might enable him to subsist with decency. She was so much touched

by his supplications and flatteries that she recommended him to her husband's favour; but the just distrust and

Before the traitor had been admitted to Mary's presence, he had obtained a promise that he should be allowed

to depart in safety. The promise was kept. During some months, he lay hid in London, and contrived to carry

on a negotiation with the government. He offered to be a witness against his accomplices on condition of

having a good place. William would bid no higher than a pardon. At length the communications were broken

off. Montgomery retired for a time to France. He soon returned to London, and passed the miserable remnant

of his life in forming plots which came to nothing, and in writing libels which are distinguished by the grace

and vigour of their style from most of the productions of the Jacobite press.779

Annandale, when he learned that his two accomplices had turned approvers, retired to Bath, and pretended to

drink the waters. Thence he was soon brought up to London by a warrant. He acknowledged that he had been

seduced into treason; but he declared that he had only said Amen to the plans of others, and that his childlike

simplicity had been imposed on by Montgomery, that worst, that falsest, that most unquiet of human beings.

The noble penitent then proceeded to make atonement for his own crime by criminating other people, English

and Scotch, Whig and Tory, guilty and innocent. Some he accused on his own knowledge, and some on mere

hearsay. Among those whom he accused on his own knowledge was Neville Payne, who had not, it should

Payne, pursued by messengers and warrants, was so ill advised as to take refuge in Scotland. Had he

remained in England he would have been safe; for, though the moral proofs of his guilt were complete, there

was not such legal evidence as would have satisfied a jury that he had committed high treason; he could not

be subjected to torture in order to force him to furnish evidence against himself; nor could he be long

confined without being brought to trial. But the moment that he passed the border he was at the mercy of the

government of which he was the deadly foe. The Claim of Right had recognised torture as, in cases like his, a

legitimate mode of obtaining information; and no Habeas Corpus Act secured him against a long detention.

The unhappy man was arrested, carried to Edinburgh, and brought before the Privy Council. The general

notion was that he was a knave and a coward, and that the first sight of the boots and thumbscrews would

bring out all the guilty secrets with which he had been entrusted. But Payne had a far braver spirit than those

highborn plotters with whom it was his misfortune to have been connected. Twice he was subjected to

frightful torments; but not a word inculpating himself or any other person could be wrung out of him. Some

councillors left the board in horror. But the pious Crawford presided. He was not much troubled with the

weakness of compassion where an Amalekite was concerned, and forced the executioner to hammer in wedge

after wedge between the knees of the prisoner till the pain was as great as the human frame can sustain

without dissolution. Payne was then carried to the Castle of Edinburgh, where he long remained, utterly

forgotten, as he touchingly complained, by those for whose sake he had endured more than the bitterness of

death. Yet no ingratitude could damp the ardour of his fanatical loyalty; and he continued, year after year, in

Before Payne's arrest the Estates had been adjourned after a Session as important as any that had ever been

held in Scotland. The nation generally acquiesced in the new ecclesiastical constitution. The indifferent, a

large portion of every society, were glad that the anarchy was over, and conformed to the Presbyterian

Church as they had conformed to the Episcopal Church. To the moderate Presbyterians the settlement which

had been made was on the whole satisfactory. Most of the strict Presbyterians brought themselves to accept it

under protest, as a large instalment of what was due. They missed indeed what they considered as the perfect

beauty and symmetry of that Church which had, forty years before, been the glory of Scotland. But, though

the second temple was not equal to the first, the chosen people might well rejoice to think that they were,

after a long captivity in Babylon, suffered to rebuild, though imperfectly, the House of God on the old

foundations; nor could it misbecome them to feel for the latitudinarian William a grateful affection such as

There were however two parties which regarded the settlement of 1690 with implacable detestation. Those

Scotchmen who were Episcopalians on conviction and with fervour appear to have been few; but among

them were some persons superior, not perhaps in natural parts, but in learning, in taste, and in the art of

composition, to the theologians of the sect which had now become dominant. It might not have been safe for

the ejected Curates and Professors to give vent in their own country to the anger which they felt. But the

English press was open to them; and they were sure of the approbation of a large part of the English people.

During several years they continued to torment their enemies and to amuse the public with a succession of

ingenious and spirited pamphlets. In some of these works the hardships suffered by the rabbled priests of the

western shires are set forth with a skill which irresistibly moves pity and indignation. In others, the cruelty

with which the Covenanters had been treated during the reigns of the last two kings of the House of Stuart is

extenuated by every artifice of sophistry. There is much joking on the bad Latin which some Presbyterian

teachers had uttered while seated in academic chairs lately occupied by great scholars. Much was said about

the ignorant contempt which the victorious barbarians professed for science and literature. They were accused

of anathematizing the modern systems of natural philosophy as damnable heresies, of condemning geometry

as a souldestroying pursuit, of discouraging even the study of those tongues in which the sacred books were

written. Learning, it was said, would soon be extinct in Scotland. The Universities, under their new rulers,

were languishing and must soon perish. The booksellers had been half ruined: they found that the whole

profit of their business would not pay the rent of their shops, and were preparing to emigrate to some country

where letters were held in esteem by those whose office was to instruct the public. Among the ministers of

religion no purchaser of books was left. The Episcopalian divine was glad to sell for a morsel of bread

whatever part of his library had not been torn to pieces or burned by the Christmas mobs; and the only library

of a Presbyterian divine consisted of an explanation of the Apocalypse and a commentary on the Song of

Songs.782 The pulpit oratory of the triumphant party was an inexhaustible subject of mirth. One little

volume, entitled The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed, had an immense success in the South among

both High Churchmen and scoffers, and is not yet quite forgotten. It was indeed a book well fitted to lie on

the hall table of a Squire whose religion consisted in hating extemporaneous prayer and nasal psalmody. On a

rainy day, when it was impossible to hunt or shoot, neither the card table nor the backgammon board would

have been, in the intervals of the flagon and the pasty, so agreeable a resource. Nowhere else, perhaps, can be

found, in so small a compass, so large a collection of ludicrous quotations and anecdotes. Some grave men,

however, who bore no love to the Calvinistic doctrine or discipline, shook their heads over this lively jest

book, and hinted their opinion that the writer, while holding up to derision the absurd rhetoric by which

coarseminded and ignorant men tried to illustrate dark questions of theology and to excite devotional feeling

among the populace, had sometimes forgotten the reverence due to sacred things. The effect which tracts of

this sort produced on the public mind of England could not be fully discerned, while England and Scotland

were independent of each other, but manifested itself, very soon after the union of the kingdoms, in a way

which we still have reason, and which our posterity will probably long have reason to lament.

The extreme Presbyterians were as much out of humour as the extreme Prelatists, and were as little inclined

as the extreme Prelatists to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. Indeed, though the Jacobite

nonjuror and the Cameronian nonjuror were diametrically opposed to each other in opinion, though they

regarded each other with mortal aversion, though neither of them would have had any scruple about

persecuting the other, they had much in common. They were perhaps the two most remarkable specimens that

the world could show of perverse absurdity. Each of them considered his darling form of ecclesiastical polity,

not as a means but as an end, as the one thing needful, as the quintessence of the Christian religion. Each of

them childishly fancied that he had found a theory of civil government in his Bible. Neither shrank from the

frightful consequences to which his theory led. To all objections both had one answer,Thus saith the Lord.

Both agreed in boasting that the arguments which to atheistical politicians seemed unanswerable presented no

difficulty to the Saint. It might be perfectly true that, by relaxing the rigour of his principles, he might save

his country from slavery, anarchy, universal ruin. But his business was not to save his country, but to save his

soul. He obeyed the commands of God, and left the event to God. One of the two fanatical sects held that, to

the end of time, the nation would be bound to obey the heir of the Stuarts; the other held that, to the end of

time, the nation would be bound by the Solemn League and Covenant; and thus both agreed in regarding the

The Presbyterian nonjurors have scarcely been heard of out of Scotland; and perhaps it may not now be

generally known, even in Scotland, how long they continued to form a distinct class. They held that their

country was under a precontract to the Most High, and could never, while the world lasted, enter into any

engagement inconsistent with that precontract. An Erastian, a latitudinarian, a man who knelt to receive the

bread and wine from the hands of bishops, and who bore, though not very patiently, to hear anthems chaunted

by choristers in white vestments, could not be King of a covenanted kingdom. William had moreover

forfeited all claim to the crown by committing that sin for which, in the old time, a dynasty preternaturally

appointed had been preternaturally deposed. He had connived at the escape of his father in law, that idolater,

that murderer, that man of Belial, who ought to have been hewn in pieces before the Lord, like Agag. Nay,

the crime of William had exceeded that of Saul. Saul had spared only one Amalekite, and had smitten the

rest. What Amalekite had William smitten? The pure Church had been twentyeight years under persecution.

Her children had been imprisoned, transported, branded, shot, hanged, drowned, tortured. And yet he who

called himself her deliverer had not suffered her to see her desire upon her enemies.783 The bloody

Claverhouse had been graciously received at Saint James's. The bloody Mackenzie had found a secure and

luxurious retreat among the malignants of Oxford. The younger Dalrymple who had prosecuted the Saints,

the elder Dalrymple who had sate in judgment on the Saints, were great and powerful. It was said by careless

Gallios, that there was no choice but between William and James, and that it was wisdom to choose the less

of two evils. Such was indeed the wisdom of this world. But the wisdom which was from above taught us that

of two things, both of which were evil in the sight of God, we should choose neither. As soon as James was

restored, it would be a duty to disown and withstand him. The present duty was to disown and withstand his

son in law. Nothing must be said, nothing must be done that could be construed into a recognition of the

authority of the man from Holland. The godly must pay no duties to him, must hold no offices under him,

must receive no wages from him, must sign no instruments in which he was styled King. Anne succeeded

William; and Anne was designated, by those who called themselves the remnant of the true Church, as the

pretended Queen, the wicked woman, the Jezebel. George the First succeeded Anne; and George the First

was the pretended King, the German Beast.784 George the Second succeeded George the First; George the

Second too was a pretended King, and was accused of having outdone the wickedness of his wicked

predecessors by passing a law in defiance of that divine law which ordains that no witch shall be suffered to

live.785 George the Third succeeded George the Second; and still these men continued, with unabated

stedfastness, though in language less ferocious than before, to disclaim all allegiance to an uncovenanted

Sovereign.786 So late as the year 1806, they were still bearing their public testimony against the sin of

owning his government by paying taxes, by taking out excise licenses, by joining the volunteers, or by

labouring on public works.787 The number of these zealots went on diminishing till at length they were so

thinly scattered over Scotland that they were nowhere numerous enough to have a meeting house, and were

known by the name of the Nonhearers. They, however, still assembled and prayed in private dwellings, and

still persisted in considering themselves as the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the

peculiar people, which, amidst the common degeneracy, alone preserved the faith of a better age. It is by no

means improbable that this superstition, the most irrational and the most unsocial into which Protestant

Christianity has ever been corrupted by human prejudices and passions, may still linger in a few obscure

The King was but half satisfied with the manner in which the ecclesiastical polity of Scotland had been

settled. He thought that the Episcopalians had been hardly used; and he apprehended that they might be still

more hardly used when the new system was fully organized. He had been very desirous that the Act which

established the Presbyterian Church should be accompanied by an Act allowing persons who were not

members of that Church to hold their own religious assemblies freely; and he had particularly directed

Melville to look to this.788 But some popular preachers harangued so vehemently at Edinburgh against

liberty of conscience, which they called the mystery of iniquity, that Melville did not venture to obey his

master's instructions. A draught of a Toleration Act was offered to the Parliament by a private member, but

William, however, was fully determined to prevent the dominant sect from indulging in the luxury of

persecution; and he took an early opportunity of announcing his determination. The first General Assembly

of the newly established Church met soon after his return from Ireland. It was necessary that he should

appoint a Commissioner and send a letter. Some zealous Presbyterians hoped that Crawford would be the

Commissioner; and the ministers of Edinburgh drew up a paper in which they very intelligibly hinted that this

was their wish. William, however, selected Lord Carmichael, a nobleman distinguished by good sense,

humanity and moderation.790 The royal letter to the Assembly was eminently wise in substance and

impressive in language. "We expect," the King wrote, "that your management shall be such that we may have

no reason to repent of what we have done. We never could be of the mind that violence was suited to the

advancing of true religion; nor do we intend that our authority shall ever be a tool to the irregular passions of

any party. Moderation is what religion enjoins, what neighbouring Churches expect from you, and what we

recommend to you." The Sixty and their associates would probably have been glad to reply in language

resembling that which, as some of them could well remember, had been held by the clergy to Charles the

Second during his residence in Scotland. But they had just been informed that there was in England a strong

feeling in favour of the rabbled curates, and that it would, at such a conjuncture, be madness in the body

which represented the Presbyterian Church to quarrel with the King.791 The Assembly therefore returned a

grateful and respectful answer to the royal letter, and assured His Majesty that they had suffered too much

Meanwhile the troops all over the Continent were going into winter quarters. The campaign had everywhere

been indecisive. The victory gained by Luxemburg at Fleurus had produced no important effect. On the

Upper Rhine great armies had eyed each other, month after month, without exchanging a blow. In Catalonia a

few small forts had been taken. In the cast of Europe the Turks had been successful on some points, the

Christians on other points; and the termination of the contest seemed to be as remote as ever. The coalition

had in the course of the year lost one valuable member and gained another. The Duke of Lorraine, the ablest

captain in the Imperial service, was no more. He had died, as he had lived, an exile and a wanderer, and had

bequeathed to his children nothing but his name and his rights. It was popularly said that the confederacy

could better have spared thirty thousand soldiers than such a general. But scarcely had the allied Courts gone

into mourning for him when they were consoled by learning that another prince, superior to him in power,

and not inferior to him in capacity or courage, had joined the league against France.

This was Victor Amadeus Duke of Savoy. He was a young man; but he was already versed in those arts for

which the statesmen of Italy had, ever since the thirteenth century, been celebrated, those arts by which

Castruccio Castracani and Francis Sforza rose to greatness, and which Machiavel reduced to a system. No

sovereign in modern Europe has, with so small a principality, exercised so great an influence during so long a

period. He had for a time submitted, with a show of cheerfulness, but with secret reluctance and resentment,

to the French ascendency. When the war broke out, he professed neutrality, but entered into private

negotiations with the House of Austria. He would probably have continued to dissemble till he found some

opportunity of striking an unexpected blow, had not his crafty schemes been disconcerted by the decision and

vigour of Lewis. A French army commanded by Catinat, an officer of great skill and valour, marched into

Piedmont. The Duke was informed that his conduct had excited suspicions which he could remove only by

admitting foreign garrisons into Turin and Vercelli. He found that he must be either the slave or the open

enemy of his powerful and imperious neighbour. His choice was soon made; and a war began which, during

seven years, found employment for some of the best generals and best troops of Lewis. An Envoy

Extraordinary from Savoy went to the Hague, proceeded thence to London, presented his credentials in the

Banqueting House, and addressed to William a speech which was speedily translated into many languages

and read in every part of Europe. The orator congratulated the King on the success of that great enterprise

which had restored England to her ancient place among the nations, and had broken the chains of Europe.

"That my master," he said, "can now at length venture to express feelings which have been long concealed in

the recesses of his heart, is part of the debt which he owes to Your Majesty. You have inspired him with the

It had been determined that, during the approaching winter a Congress of all the powers hostile to France

should be held at the Hague. William was impatient to proceed thither. But it was necessary that he should

first hold a Session of Parliament. Early in October the Houses reassembled at Westminster. The members

had generally come up in good humour. Those Tories whom it was possible to conciliate had been conciliated

by the Act of Grace, and by the large share which they had obtained of the favours of the Crown. Those

Whigs who were capable of learning had learned much from the lesson which William had given them, and

had ceased to expect that he would descend from the rank of a King to that of a party leader. Both Whigs and

Tories had, with few exceptions, been alarmed by the prospect of a French invasion and cheered by the news

of the victory of the Boyne. The Sovereign who had shed his blood for their nation and their religion stood at

this moment higher in public estimation than at any time since his accession. His speech from the throne

called forth the loud acclamations of Lords and Commons.794 Thanks were unanimously voted by both

Houses to the King for his achievements in Ireland, and to the Queen for the prudence with which she had,

during his absence, governed England.795 Thus commenced a Session distinguished among the Sessions of

that reign by harmony and tranquillity. No report of the debates has been preserved, unless a long forgotten

lampoon, in which some of the speeches made on the first day are burlesqued in doggrel rhymes, may be

called a report.796 The time of the Commons appears to have been chiefly occupied in discussing questions

arising out of the elections of the preceding spring. The supplies necessary for the war, though large, were

granted with alacrity. The number of regular troops for the next year was fixed at seventy thousand, of whom

twelve thousand were to be horse or dragoons. The charge of this army, the greatest that England had ever

maintained, amounted to about two million three hundred thousand pounds; the charge of the navy to about

eighteen hundred thousand pounds. The charge of the ordnance was included in these sums, and was roughly

estimated at one eighth of the naval and one fifth of the military expenditure.797 The whole of the

The Commons justly thought that the extraordinary liberality with which they had provided for the public

service entitled them to demand extraordinary securities against waste and peculation. A bill was brought in

empowering nine Commissioners to examine and state the public accounts. The nine were named in the bill,

and were all members of the Lower House. The Lords agreed to the bill without amendments; and the King

The debates on the Ways and Means occupied a considerable part of the Session. It was resolved that sixteen

hundred and fifty thousand pounds should be raised by a direct monthly assessment on land. The excise

duties on ale and beer were doubled; and the import duties on raw silk, linen, timber, glass, and some other

articles, were increased.799 Thus far there was little difference of opinion. But soon the smooth course of

business was disturbed by a proposition which was much more popular than just or humane. Taxes of

unprecedented severity had been imposed; and yet it might well be doubted whether these taxes would be

sufficient. Why, it was asked, should not the cost of the Irish war be borne by the Irish insurgents? How those

insurgents had acted in their mock Parliament all the world knew; and nothing could be more reasonable than

to mete to them from their own measure. They ought to be treated as they had treated the Saxon colony.

Every acre which the Act of Settlement had left them ought to be seized by the state for the purpose of

defraying that expense which their turbulence and perverseness had made necessary. It is not strange that a

plan which at once gratified national animosity, and held out the hope of pecuniary relief, should have been

welcomed with eager delight. A bill was brought in which bore but too much resemblance to some of the

laws passed by the Jacobite legislators of Dublin. By this bill it was provided that the property of every

person who had been in rebellion against the King and Queen since the day on which they were proclaimed

should be confiscated, and that the proceeds should be applied to the support of the war. An exception was

made in favour of such Protestants as had merely submitted to superior force; but to Papists no indulgence

was shown. The royal prerogative of clemency was limited. The King might indeed, if such were his

pleasure, spare the lives of his vanquished enemies; but he was not to be permitted to save any part of their

estates from the general doom. He was not to have it in his power to grant a capitulation which should secure

to Irish Roman Catholics the enjoyment of their hereditary lands. Nay, he was not to be allowed to keep faith

with persons whom he had already received to mercy, who had kissed his hand, and had heard from his lips

the promise of protection. An attempt was made to insert a proviso in favour of Lord Dover. Dover, who,

with all his faults, was not without some English feelings, had, by defending the interests of his native

country at Dublin, made himself odious to both the Irish and the French. After the battle of the Boyne his

situation was deplorable. Neither at Limerick nor at Saint Germains could he hope to be welcomed. In his

despair, he threw himself at William's feet, promised to live peaceably, and was graciously assured that he

had nothing to fear. Though the royal word seemed to be pledged to this unfortunate man, the Commons

resolved, by a hundred and nineteen votes to a hundred and twelve, that his property should not be exempted

The bill went up to the Peers, but the Peers were not inclined to pass it without considerable amendments;

and such amendments there was not time to make. Numerous heirs at law, reversioners, and creditors

implored the Upper House to introduce such provisoes as might secure the innocent against all danger of

being involved in the punishment of the guilty. Some petitioners asked to be heard by counsel. The King had

made all his arrangements for a voyage to the Hague; and the day beyond which he could not postpone his

departure drew near. The bill was therefore, happily for the honour of English legislation, consigned to that

dark repository in which the abortive statutes of many generations sleep a sleep rarely disturbed by the

Another question, which slightly and but slightly discomposed the tranquillity of this short session, arose out

of the disastrous and disgraceful battle of Beachy Head. Torrington had, immediately after that battle, been

sent to the Tower, and had ever since remained there. A technical difficulty had arisen about the mode of

bringing him to trial. There was no Lord High Admiral; and whether the Commissioners of the Admiralty

were competent to execute martial law was a point which to some jurists appeared not perfectly clear. The

majority of the judges held that the Commissioners were competent; but, for the purpose of removing all

doubt, a bill was brought into the Upper House; and to this bill several Lords offered an opposition which

seems to have been most unreasonable. The proposed law, they said, was a retrospective penal law, and

therefore objectionable. If they used this argument in good faith, they were ignorant of the very rudiments of

the science of legislation. To make a law for punishing that which, at the time when it was done, was not

punishable, is contrary to all sound principle. But a law which merely alters the criminal procedure may with

perfect propriety be made applicable to past as well as to future offences. It would have been the grossest

injustice to give a retrospective operation to the law which made slavetrading felony. But there was not the

smallest injustice in enacting that the Central Criminal Court should try felonies committed long before that

Court was in being. In Torrington's case the substantive law continued to be what it had always been. The

definition of the crime, the amount of the penalty, remained unaltered. The only change was in the form of

procedure; and that change the legislature was perfectly justified in making retrospectively.

It is indeed hardly possible to believe that some of those who opposed the bill were duped by the fallacy of

which they condescended to make use. The feeling of caste was strong among the Lords. That one of

themselves should be tried for his life by a court composed of plebeians seemed to them a degradation of

their whole order. If their noble brother had offended, articles of impeachment ought to be exhibited against

him: Westminster Hall ought to be fitted up: his peers ought to meet in their robes, and to give in their verdict

on their honour; a Lord High Steward ought to pronounce the sentence and to break the staff. There was an

end of privilege if an Earl was to be doomed to death by tarpaulins seated round a table in the cabin of a ship.

These feelings had so much influence that the bill passed the Upper House by a majority of only two.801 In

the Lower House, where the dignities and immunities of the nobility were regarded with no friendly feeling,

there was little difference of opinion. Torrington requested to be heard at the bar, and spoke there at great

length, but weakly and confusedly. He boasted of his services, of his sacrifices, and of his wounds. He abused

the Dutch, the Board of Admiralty, and the Secretary of State. The bill, however, went through all its stages

Early in December Torrington was sent under a guard down the river to Sheerness. There the Court Martial

met on board of a frigate named the Kent. The investigation lasted three days; and during those days the

ferment was great in London. Nothing was heard of on the exchange, in the coffeehouses, nay even at the

church doors, but Torrington. Parties ran high; wagers to an immense amount were depending; rumours were

hourly arriving by land and water, and every rumour was exaggerated and distorted by the way. From the day

on which the news of the ignominious battle arrived, down to the very eve of the trial, public opinion had

been very unfavourable to the prisoner. His name, we are told by contemporary pamphleteers, was hardly

ever mentioned without a curse. But, when the crisis of his fate drew nigh, there was, as in our country there

often is, a reaction. All his merits, his courage, his good nature, his firm adherence to the Protestant religion

in the evil times, were remembered. It was impossible to deny that he was sunk in sloth and luxury, that he

neglected the most important business for his pleasures, and that he could not say No to a boon companion or

to a mistress; but for these faults excuses and soft names were found. His friends used without scruple all the

arts which could raise a national feeling in his favour; and these arts were powerfully assisted by the

intelligence that the hatred which was felt towards him in Holland bad vented itself in indignities to some of

his countrymen. The cry was that a bold, jolly, freehanded English gentleman, of whom the worst that could

be said was that he liked wine and women, was to be shot in order to gratify the spite of the Dutch. What

passed at the trial tended to confirm the populace in this notion. Most of the witnesses against the prisoner

were Dutch officers. The Dutch real admiral, who took on himself the part of prosecutor, forgot himself so far

as to accuse the judges of partiality. When at length, on the evening of the third day, Torrington was

pronounced not guilty, many who had recently clamoured for his blood seemed to be well pleased with his

acquittal. He returned to London free, and with his sword by his side. As his yacht went up the Thames, every

ship which he passed saluted him. He took his seat in the House of Lords, and even ventured to present

himself at court. But most of the peers looked coldly on him; William would not see him, and ordered him to

There was another subject about which no vote was passed by either of the Houses, but about which there is

reason to believe that some acrimonious discussion took place in both. The Whigs, though much less violent

than in the preceding year, could not patiently see Caermarthen as nearly prime minister as any English

subject could be under a prince of William's character. Though no man had taken a more prominent part in

the Revolution than the Lord President, though no man had more to fear from a counterrevolution, his old

enemies would not believe that he had from his heart renounced those arbitrary doctrines for which he had

once been zealous, or that he could bear true allegiance to a government sprung from resistance. Through the

last six months of 1690 he was mercilessly lampooned. Sometimes he was King Thomas and sometimes Tom

the Tyrant.804 William was adjured not to go to the Continent leaving his worst enemy close to the ear of the

Queen. Halifax, who had, in the preceding year, been ungenerously and ungratefully persecuted by the

Whigs, was now mentioned by them with respect and regret; for he was the enemy of their enemy.805 The

face, the figure, the bodily infirmities of Caermarthen, were ridiculed.806 Those dealings with the French

Court in which, twelve years before, he had, rather by his misfortune than by his fault, been implicated, were

represented in the most odious colours. He was reproached with his impeachment and his imprisonment.

Once, it was said, he had escaped; but vengeance might still overtake him, and London might enjoy the long

deferred pleasure of seeing the old traitor flung off the ladder in the blue riband which he disgraced. All the

members of his family, wife, son, daughters, were assailed with savage invective and contemptuous

sarcasm.807 All who were supposed to be closely connected with him by political ties came in for a portion

of this abuse; and none had so large a portion as Lowther. The feeling indicated by these satires was strong

among the Whigs in Parliament. Several of them deliberated on a plan of attack, and were in hopes that they

should be able to raise such a storm as would make it impossible for him to remain at the head of affairs. It

should seem that, at this time, his influence in the royal closet was not quite what it had been. Godolphin,

whom he did not love, and could not control, but whose financial skill had been greatly missed during the

summer, was brought back to the Treasury, and made First Commissioner. Lowther, who was the Lord

President's own man, still sate at the board, but no longer presided there. It is true that there was not then such

a difference as there now is between the First Lord and his colleagues. Still the change was important and

significant. Marlborough, whom Caermarthen disliked, was, in military affairs, not less trusted than

Godolphin in financial affairs. The seals which Shrewsbury had resigned in the summer had ever since been

lying in William's secret drawer. The Lord President probably expected that he should be consulted before

they were given away; but he was disappointed. Sidney was sent for from Ireland; and the seals were

delivered to him. The first intimation which the Lord President received of this important appointment was

not made in a manner likely to soothe his feelings. "Did you meet the new Secretary of State going out?" said

William. "No, Sir," answered the Lord President; "I met nobody but my Lord Sidney." "He is the new

Secretary," said William. "He will do till I find a fit man; and he will be quite willing to resign as soon as I

find a fit man. Any other person that I could put in would think himself ill used if I were to put him out." If

William had said all that was in his mind, he would probably have added that Sidney, though not a great

orator or statesman, was one of the very few English politicians who could be as entirely trusted as Bentinck

or Zulestein. Caermarthen listened with a bitter smile. It was new, he afterwards said, to see a nobleman

placed in the Secretary's office, as a footman was placed in a box at the theatre, merely in order to keep a seat

till his betters came. But this jest was a cover for serious mortification and alarm. The situation of the prime

minister was unpleasant and even perilous; and the duration of his power would probably have been short,

had not fortune, just at this moment, put it in his power to confound his adversaries by rendering a great

The Jacobites had seemed in August to be completely crushed. The victory of the Boyne, and the irresistible

explosion of patriotic feeling produced by the appearance of Tourville's fleet on the coast of Devonshire, had

cowed the boldest champions of hereditary right. Most of the chief plotters passed some weeks in

confinement or in concealment. But, widely as the ramifications of the conspiracy had extended, only one

traitor suffered the punishment of his crime. This was a man named Godfrey Cross, who kept an inn on the

beach near Rye, and who, when the French fleet was on the coast of Sussex, had given information to

Tourville. When it appeared that this solitary example was thought sufficient, when the danger of invasion

was over, when the popular enthusiasm excited by that danger had subsided, when the lenity of the

government had permitted some conspirators to leave their prisons and had encouraged others to venture out

of their hidingplaces, the faction which had been prostrated and stunned began to give signs of returning

animation. The old traitors again mustered at the old haunts, exchanged significant looks and eager whispers,

and drew from their pockets libels on the Court of Kensington, and letters in milk and lemon juice from the

Court of Saint Germains. Preston, Dartmouth, Clarendon, Penn, were among the most busy. With them, was

leagued the nonjuring Bishop of Ely, who was still permitted by the government to reside in the palace, now

no longer his own, and who had, but a short time before, called heaven to witness that he detested the thought

of inviting foreigners to invade England. One good opportunity had been lost; but another was at hand, and

must not be suffered to escape. The usurper would soon be again out of England. The administration would

soon be again confided to a weak woman and a divided council. The year which was closing had certainly

In December a meeting of the leading Jacobites was held.809 The sense of the assembly, which consisted

exclusively of Protestants, was that something ought to be attempted, but that the difficulties were great.

None ventured to recommend that James should come over unaccompanied by regular troops. Yet all, taught

by the experience of the preceding summer, dreaded the effect which might be produced by the sight of

French uniforms and standards on English ground. A paper was drawn up which would, it was hoped,

convince both James and Lewis that a restoration could not be effected without the cordial concurrence of the

nation. France,such was the substance of this remarkable document,might possibly make the island a

heap of ruins, but never a subject province. It was hardly possible for any person, who had not had an

opportunity of observing the temper of the public mind, to imagine the savage and dogged determination with

which men of all classes, sects and factions were prepared to resist any foreign potentate who should attempt

to conquer the kingdom by force of arms. Nor could England be governed as a Roman Catholic country.

There were five millions of Protestants in the realm: there were not a hundred thousand Papists: that such a

minority should keep down such a majority was physically impossible; and to physical impossibility all other

considerations must give way. James would therefore do well to take without delay such measures as might

indicate his resolution to protect the established religion. Unhappily every letter which arrived from France

contained something tending to irritate feelings which it was most desirable to soothe. Stories were every

where current of slights offered at Saint Germains to Protestants who had given the highest proof of loyalty

by following into banishment a master zealous for a faith which was not their own. The edicts which had

been issued against the Huguenots might perhaps have been justified by the anarchical opinions and practices

of those sectaries; but it was the height of injustice and of inhospitality to put those edicts in force against

men who had been driven from their country solely on account of their attachment to a Roman Catholic King.

Surely sons of the Anglican Church, who had, in obedience to her teaching, sacrificed all that they most

prized on earth to the royal cause, ought not to be any longer interdicted from assembling in some modest

edifice to celebrate her rites and to receive her consolations. An announcement that Lewis had, at the request

of James, permitted the English exiles to worship God according to their national forms would be the best

prelude to the great attempt. That attempt ought to be made early in the spring. A French force must

undoubtedly accompany His Majesty. But he must declare that he brought that force only for the defence of

his person and for the protection of his loving subjects, and that, as soon as the foreign oppressors had been

expelled, the foreign deliverers should be dismissed. He must also promise to govern according to law, and

must refer all the points which had been in dispute between him and his people to the decision of a

It was determined that Preston should carry to Saint Germains the resolutions and suggestions of the

conspirators, John Ashton, a person who had been clerk of the closet to Mary of Modena when she was on

the throne, and who was entirely devoted to the interests of the exiled family, undertook to procure the means

of conveyance, and for this purpose engaged the cooperation of a hotheaded young Jacobite named Elliot,

who only knew in general that a service of some hazard was to be rendered to the good cause.

It was easy to find in the port of London a vessel the owner of which was not scrupulous about the use for

which it might be wanted. Ashton and Elliot were introduced to the master of a smack named the James and

Elizabeth. The Jacobite agents pretended to be smugglers, and talked of the thousands of pounds which might

be got by a single lucky trip to France and back again. A bargain was struck: a sixpence was broken; and all

Preston was charged by his friends with a packet containing several important papers. Among these was a list

of the English fleet furnished by Dartmouth, who was in communication with some of his old companions in

arms, a minute of the resolutions which had been adopted at the meeting of the conspirators, and the Heads of

a Declaration which it was thought desirable that James should publish at the moment of his landing. There

were also six or seven letters from persons of note in the Jacobite party. Most of these letters were parables,

but parables which it was not difficult to unriddle. One plotter used the cant of the law. There was hope that

Mr. Jackson would soon recover his estate. The new landlord was a hard man, and had set the freeholders

against him. A little matter would redeem the whole property. The opinions of the best counsel were in Mr.

Jackson's favour. All that was necessary was that he should himself appear in Westminster Hall. The final

hearing ought to be before the close of Easter Term. Other writers affected the style of the Royal Exchange.

There was a great demand for a cargo of the right sort. There was reason to hope that the old firm would soon

form profitable connections with houses with which it had hitherto had no dealings. This was evidently an

allusion to the discontented Whigs. But, it was added, the shipments must not be delayed. Nothing was so

dangerous as to overstay the market. If the expected goods did not arrive by the tenth of March, the whole

profit of the year would be lost. As to details, entire reliance might be placed on the excellent factor who was

going over. Clarendon assumed the character of a matchmaker. There was great hope that the business which

he had been negotiating would be brought to bear, and that the marriage portion would be well secured.

"Your relations," he wrote, in allusion to his recent confinement, "have been very hard on me this last

summer. Yet, as soon as I could go safely abroad, I pursued the business." Catharine Sedley entrusted Preston

with a letter in which, without allegory or circumlocution, she complained that her lover had left her a

daughter to support, and begged very hard for money. But the two most important despatches were from

Bishop Turner. They were directed to Mr. and Mrs. Redding: but the language was such as it would be

thought abject in any gentleman to hold except to royalty. The Bishop assured their Majesties that he was

devoted to their cause, that he earnestly wished for a great occasion to prove his zeal, and that he would no

more swerve from his duty to them than renounce his hope of heaven. He added, in phraseology metaphorical

indeed, but perfectly intelligible, that he was the mouthpiece of several of the nonjuring prelates, and

especially of Sancroft. "Sir, I speak in the plural,"these are the words of the letter to James, "because I

write my elder brother's sentiments as well as my own, and the rest of our family." The letter to Mary of

Modena is to the same effect. "I say this in behalf of my elder brother, and the rest of my nearest relations, as

All the letters with which Preston was charged referred the Court of Saint Germains to him for fuller

information. He carried with him minutes in his own handwriting of the subjects on which he was to converse

with his master and with the ministers of Lewis. These minutes, though concise and desultory, can for the

most part be interpreted without difficulty. The vulnerable points of the coast are mentioned. Gosport is

defended only by palisades. The garrison of Portsmouth is small. The French fleet ought to be out in April,

and to fight before the Dutch are in the Channel. There are a few broken words clearly importing that some at

least of the nonjuring bishops, when they declared, before God, that they abhorred the thought of inviting the

Every thing was now ready for Preston's departure. But the owner of the James and Elizabeth had conceived

a suspicion that the expedition for which his smack had been hired was rather of a political than of a

commercial nature. It occurred to him that more might be made by informing against his passengers than by

conveying them safely. Intelligence of what was passing was conveyed to the Lord President. No intelligence

could be more welcome to him. He was delighted to find that it was in his power to give a signal proof of his

attachment to the government which his enemies had accused him of betraying. He took his measures with

his usual energy and dexterity. His eldest son, the Earl of Danby, a bold, volatile, and somewhat eccentric

young man, was fond of the sea, lived much among sailors, and was the proprietor of a small yacht of

marvellous speed. This vessel, well manned, was placed under the command of a trusty officer named Billop,

At dead of night, the last night of the year 1690, Preston, Ashton and Elliot went on board of their smack near

the Tower. They were in great dread lest they should be stopped and searched, either by a frigate which lay

off Woolwich, or by the guard posted at the blockhouse of Gravesend. But, when they had passed both frigate

and blockhouse without being challenged, their spirits rose: their appetite became keen; they unpacked a

hamper well stored with roast beef, mince pies, and bottles of wine, and were just sitting down to their

Christmas cheer, when the alarm was given that a vessel from Tilbury was flying through the water after

them. They had scarcely time to hide themselves in a dark hole among the gravel which was the ballast of

their smack, when the chase was over, and Billop, at the head of an armed party, came on board. The hatches

were taken up: the conspirators were arrested; and their clothes were strictly examined. Preston, in his

agitation, had dropped on the gravel his official seal and the packet of which he was the bearer. The seal was

discovered where it had fallen. Ashton, aware of the importance of the papers, snatched them up and tried to

The prisoners then tried to cajole or to corrupt Billop. They called for wine, pledged him, praised his

gentlemanlike demeanour, and assured him that, if he would accompany them, nay, if he would only let that

little roll of paper fall overboard into the Thames, his fortune would be made. The tide of affairs, they said,

was on the turn, things could not go on for ever as they had gone on of late and it was in the captain's power

to be as great and as rich as he could desire. Billop, though courteous, was inflexible. The conspirators

became sensible that their necks were in imminent danger. The emergency brought out strongly the true

characters of all the three, characters which, but for such an emergency, might have remained for ever

unknown. Preston had always been reputed a highspirited and gallant gentleman; but the near prospect of a

dungeon and a gallows altogether unmanned him. Elliot stormed and blasphemed, vowed that, if he ever got

free, he would be revenged, and, with horrible imprecations, called on the thunder to strike the yacht, and on

London Bridge to fall in and crush her. Ashton alone behaved with manly firmness.

Late in the evening the yacht reached Whitehall Stairs; and the prisoners, strongly guarded, were conducted

to the Secretary's office. The papers which had been found in Ashton's bosom were inspected that night by

Nottingham and Caermarthen, and were, on the following morning, put by Caermarthen into the hands of the

Soon it was known all over London that a plot had been detected, that the messengers whom the adherents of

James had sent to solicit the help of an invading army from France had been arrested by the agents of the

vigilant and energetic Lord President, and that documentary evidence, which might affect the lives of some

great men, was in the possession of the government. The Jacobites were terrorstricken; the clamour of the

Whigs against Caermarthen was suddenly hushed; and the Session ended in perfect harmony. On the fifth of

January the King thanked the Houses for their support, and assured them that he would not grant away any

forfeited property in Ireland till they should reassemble. He alluded to the plot which had just been

discovered, and expressed a hope that the friends of England would not, at such a moment, be less active or

less firmly united than her enemies. He then signified his pleasure that the Parliament should adjourn. On the

following day he set out, attended by a splendid train of nobles, for the Congress at the Hague.812

FN 1 Letter from Lady Cavendish to Sylvia. Lady Cavendish, like most of the clever girls of that generation,

had Scudery's romances always in her head. She is Dorinda: her correspondent, supposed to be her cousin

Jane Allington, is Sylvia: William is Ormanzor, and Mary Phenixana. London Gazette, Feb. 14 1688/9;

Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. Luttrell's Diary, which I shall very often quote, is in the library of All Souls'

College. I am greatly obliged to the Warden for the kindness with which he allowed me access to this

FN 2 See the London Gazettes of February and March 1688/9, and Narcissus Luttrell's Diary,

FN 3 Wagenaar, lxi. He quotes the proceedings of the States of the 2nd of March, 1689. London Gazette,

FN 4 "I may be positive," says a writer who had been educated at Westminster School, "where I heard one

sermon of repentance, faith, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost, I heard three of the other; and 'tis hard to

say whether Jesus Christ or King Charles the First were oftener mentioned and magnified." Bisset's Modern

FN 6 Grey's Debates; Howe's speech; Feb. 26. 1688/9; Boscawen's speech, March 1; Narcissus Luttrell's

FN 8 This illustration is repeated to satiety in sermons and pamphlets of the time of William the Third. There

is a poor imitation of Absalom and Ahitophel entitled the Murmurers. William is Moses; Corah, Dathan and

FN 10 Here, and in many other places, I abstain from citing authorities, because my authorities are too

numerous to cite. My notions of the temper and relative position of political and religious parties in the reign

of William the Third, have been derived, not from any single work, but from thousands of forgotten tracts,

sermons, and satires; in fact, from a whole literature which is mouldering in old libraries.

FN 11 The following passage in a tract of that time expresses the general opinion. "He has better knowledge

of foreign affairs than we have; but in English business it is no dishonour to him to be told his relation to us,

FN 16 These memoirs will be found in a manuscript volume, which is part of the Harleian Collection, and is

numbered 6584. They are in fact, the first outlines of a great part of Burnet's History of His Own Times. The

dates at which the different portions of this most curious and interesting book were composed are marked.

Almost the whole was written before the death of Mary. Burnet did not begin to prepare his History of

William's reign for the press till ten years later. By that time his opinions both of men and of things, had

undergone great changes. The value of the rough draught is therefore very great: for it contains some facts

which he afterwards thought it advisable to suppress, and some judgments which he afterwards saw cause to

alter. I must own that I generally like his first thoughts best. Whenever his History is reprinted, it ought to be

When I refer to the Burnet MS. Harl. 6584, I wish the reader to understand that the MS. contains something

As to Nottingham's appointment, see Burnet, ii. 8; the London Gazette of March 7. 1688/9; and Clarendon's

FN 21 I have followed what seems to me the most probable story. But it has been doubted whether

Nottingham was invited to be Chancellor, or only to be First Commissioner of the Great Seal. Compare

Burnet ii. 3., and Boyer's History of William, 1702. Narcissus Luttrell repeatedly, and even as late as the

FN 26 These appointments were not announced in the Gazette till the 6th of May; but some of them were

FN 27 Kennet's Funeral Sermon on the first Duke of Devonshire, and Memoirs of the Family of Cavendish,

FN 29 See Prior's Dedication of his Poems to Dorset's son and successor, and Dryden's Essay on Satire

prefixed to the Translations from Juvenal. There is a bitter sneer on Dryden's effeminate querulousness in

Collier's Short View of the Stage. In Blackmore's Prince Arthur, a poem which, worthless as it is, contains

some curious allusions to contemporary men and events, are the following lines "The poets' nation did

obsequious wait For the kind dole divided at his gate. Laurus among the meagre crowd appeared, An old,

revolted, unbelieving bard, Who thronged, and shoved, and pressed, and would be heard. Sakil's high roof,

the Muses' palace, rung With endless cries, and endless sons he sung. To bless good Sakil Laurus would be

first; But Sakil's prince and Sakil's God he curst. Sakil without distinction threw his bread, Despised the

flatterer, but the poet fed." I need not say that Sakil is Sackville, or that Laurus is a translation of the famous

FN 30 Scarcely any man of that age is more frequently mentioned in pamphlets and satires than Howe. In the

famous petition of Legion, he is designated as "that impudent scandal of Parliaments." Mackay's account of

him is curious. In a poem written in 1690, which I have never seen except in manuscript, are the following

lines "First for Jack Howe with his terrible talent, Happy the female that scopes his lampoon; Against the

FN 31 Sprat's True Account; North's Examen; Letter to Chief Justice Holt, 1694; Letter to Secretary

FN 33 Stat. I W.sess. i. c. I. See the Journals of the two Houses, and Grey's Debates. The argument in favour

FN 34 Both Van Citters and Ronquillo mention the anxiety which was felt in London till the result was

FN 36 See the letters of Rochester and of Lady Ranelagh to Burnet on this occasion.

FN 37 Journals of the Commons, March 2. 1688/9 Ronquillo wrote as follows: "Es de gran consideracion que

Seimor haya tomado el juramento; porque es el arrengador y el director principal, en la casa de los Comunes,

FN 41 Commons' Journals, March 15. 1688/9 So late as 1713, Arbuthnot, in the fifth part of John Bull,

alluded to this transaction with much pleasantry. "As to your Venire Facias," says John to Nick Frog, "I have

FN 45 Commons' Journals, and Grey's Debates, March 15. 1688/9; London Gazette, March 18.

FN 46 As to the state of this region in the latter part of the seventeenth and the earlier part of the eighteenth

century, see Pepys's Diary, Sept. 18. 1663, and the Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, 1724.

FN 47 London Gazette, March 25. 1689; Van Citters to the States General, March 22/April 1 Letters of

Nottingham in the State Paper Office, dated July 23 and August 9. 1689; Historical Record of the First

Regiment of Foot, printed by authority. See also a curious digression in the Compleat History of the Life and

FN 51 See the account given in Spence's Anecdotes of the Origin of Dryden's Medal.

FN 53 There is abundant proof that William, though a very affectionate, was not always a polite husband. But

no credit is due to the story contained in the letter which Dalrymple was foolish enough to publish as

Nottingham's in 1773, and wise enough to omit in the edition of 1790. How any person who knew any thing

of the history of those times could be so strangely deceived, it is not easy to understand particularly as the

handwriting bears no resemblance to Nottingham's, with which Dalrymple was familiar. The letter is

evidently a common newsletter, written by a scribbler, who had never seen the King and Queen except at

some public place, and whose anecdotes of their private life rested on no better authority than coffeehouse

FN 54 Ronquillo; Burnet, ii. 2.; Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. In a pastoral dialogue between

Philander and Palaemon, published in 1691, the dislike with which women of fashion regarded William is

"But man methinks his reason should recall, Nor let frail woman work his second fall."

FN 56 Prior, who was treated by William with much kindness, and who was very grateful for it, informs us

that the King did not understand poetical eulogy. The passage is in a highly curious manuscript, the property

FN 57 Memoires originaux sur le regne et la cour de Frederic I, Roi de Prusse, ecrits par Christophe Comte

de Dohna. Berlin, 1833. It is strange that this interesting volume should be almost unknown in England. The

only copy that I have ever seen of it was kindly given to me by Sir Robert Adair. "Le Roi," Dohna says,

"avoit une autre qualite tres estimable, qui est celle de n'aimer point qu'on rendit de mauvais offices a

personne par des railleries." The Marquis de La Fork tried to entertain His Majesty at the expense of an

English nobleman. "Ce prince," says Dohna "prit son air severe, et, le regardant sans mot dire, lui fit rentrer

les paroles dans le ventre. Le Marquis m'en fit ses plaintes quelques heures apres. 'J'ai mal pris ma bisque,'

dit il; 'j'ai cru faire l'agreable sur le chapitre de Milord . . mais j'ai trouva a qui parler, et j'ai attrape un regard

du roi qui m'a fait passer l'envie de tire.'" Dohna supposed that William might be less sensitive about the

character of a Frenchman, and tried the experiment. But, says he, "j'eus a pert pres le meme sort que M. de la

FN 58 Compare the account of Mary by the Whig Burnet with the mention of her by the Tory Evelyn in his

Diary, March 8. 1694/5, and with what is said of her by the Nonjuror who wrote the Letter to Archbishop

Tennison on her death in 1695. The impression which the bluntness and reserve of William and the grace and

gentleness of Mary had made on the populace may be traced in the remains of the street poetry of that time.

"Then bespoke Mary, our most royal Queen, 'My gracious king William, where are you going?' He answered

her quickly, 'I count him no man That telleth his secret unto a woman.' The Queen with a modest behaviour

replied, 'I wish that kind Providence may be thy guide, To keep thee from danger, my sovereign Lord, He

These lines are in an excellent collection formed by Mr. Richard Heber, and now the property of Mr.

Broderip, by whom it was kindly lent to me; in one of the most savage Jacobite pasquinades of 1689, William

FN 59 Burnet, ii. 2.; Burnet, MS. Harl. 6484. But Ronquillo's account is much more circumstantial. "Nada se

ha visto mas desfigurado; y, quantas veces he estado con el, le he visto toser tanto que se le saltaban las

lagrimas, y se ponia moxado y arrancando; y confiesan los medicos que es una asma incurable," Mar. 8/18

1689. Avaux wrote to the same effect from Ireland. "La sante de l'usurpateur est fort mauvaise. L'on ne croit

FN 60 "Hasta decir los mismos Hollandeses que lo desconozcan," says Ronquillo. "Il est absolument mal

propre pour le role qu'il a a jouer a l'heure qu'il est," says Avaux. "Slothful and sickly," says Evelyn. March

FN 62 Every person who is well acquainted with Pope and Addison will remember their sarcasms on this

taste. Lady Mary Wortley Montague took the other side. "Old China," she says, "is below nobody's taste,

since it has been the Duke of Argyle's, whose understanding has never been doubted either by his friends or

FN 63 As to the works at Hampton Court, see Evelyn's Diary, July 16. 1689; the Tour through Great Britain,

1724; the British Apelles; Horace Walpole on Modern Gardening; Burnet, ii. 2, 3.

FN When Evelyn was at Hampton Court, in 1662, the cartoons were not to be seen. The Triumphs of Andrea

FN 64 Burnet, ii. 2.; Reresby's Memoirs. Ronquillo wrote repeatedly to the same effect. For example, "Bien

quisiera que el Rey fuese mas comunicable, y se acomodase un poco mas al humor sociable de los Ingleses, y

que estubiera en Londres: pero es cierto que sus achaques no se lo permiten." July 8/18 1689. Avaux, about

the same time, wrote thus to Croissy from Ireland: "Le Prince d'Orange est toujours a Hampton Court, et

jamais a la ville: et le peuple est fort mal satisfait de cette maniere bizarre et retiree."

"We blame the King that he relies too much On strangers, Germans, Huguenots, and Dutch, And seldom does

his great affairs of state To English counsellors communicate. The fact might very well be answered thus, He

has too often been betrayed by us. He must have been a madman to rely On English gentlemen's fidelity. The

foreigners have faithfully obeyed him, And none but Englishmen have e'er betrayed him."

FN 68 Ronquillo had the good sense and justice to make allowances which the English did not make. After

describing, in a despatch dated March 1/11. 1689, the lamentable state of the military and naval

establishments, he says, "De esto no tiene culpa el Principe de Oranges; porque pensar que se han de poder

volver en dos meses tres Reynos de abaxo arriba es una extravagancia." Lord President Stair, in a letter

written from London about a month later, says that the delays of the English administration had lowered the

FN 73 "How does he do to distribute his hours, Some to the Court, and some to the City, Some to the State,

FN 75 Ronquillo calls the Whig functionaries "Gente que no tienen practica ni experiencia." He adds, "Y de

esto procede el pasarse un mes y un otro, sin executarse nada." June 24. 1689. In one of the innumerable

Dialogues which appeared at that time, the Tory interlocutor puts the question, "Do you think the government

would be better served by strangers to business?" The Whig answers, "Better ignorant friends than

FN 77 The original correspondence of William and Heinsius is in Dutch. A French translation of all

William's letters, and an English translation of a few of Heinsius's Letters, are among the Mackintosh MSS.

The Baron Sirtema de Grovestins, who has had access to the originals, frequently quotes passages in his

"Histoire des luttes et rivalites entre les puissances maritimes et la France." There is very little difference in

substance, though much in phraseology, between his version and that which I have used.

FN 78 Though these very convenient names are not, as far as I know, to be found in any book printed during

the earlier years of William's reign, I shall use them without scruple, as others have done, in writing about the

FN 79 Burnet, ii. 8.; Birch's Life of Tillotson; Life of Kettlewell, part iii. section 62.

FN 80 Swift, writing under the name of Gregory Misosarum, most malignantly and dishonestly represents

Burnet as grudging this grant to the Church. Swift cannot have been ignorant that the Church was indebted

FN 81 See the Life of Burnet at the end of the second volume of his history, his manuscript memoirs, Harl.

6584, his memorials touching the First Fruits and Tenths, and Somers's letter to him on that subject. See also

what Dr. King, Jacobite as he was, had the justice to say in his Anecdotes. A most honourable testimony to

Burnet's virtues, given by another Jacobite who had attacked him fiercely, and whom he had treated

generously, the learned and upright Thomas Baker, will be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for August

FN 82 Oldmixon would have us believe that Nottingham was not, at this time, unwilling to give up the Test

Act. But Oldmixon's assertion, unsupported by evidence, is of no weight whatever; and all the evidence

FN 83 Burnet, ii. 6.; Van Citters to the States General, March 1/11 1689; King William's Toleration, being an

explanation of that liberty of conscience which may be expected from His Majesty's Declaration, with a Bill

for Comprehension and Indulgence, drawn up in order to an Act of Parliament, licensed March 25. 1689.

FN 85 Sense of the subscribed articles by the Ministers of London, 1690; Calamy's Historical Additions to

FN 86 The bill will be found among the Archives of the House of Lords. It is strange that this vast collection

of important documents should have been altogether neglected, even by our most exact and diligent

historians. It was opened to me by one of the most valued of my friends, Mr. John Lefevre; and my

FN 87 Among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library is a very curious letter from Compton to Sancroft,

about the Toleration Bill and the Comprehension Bill, "These," says Compton, "are two great works in which

the being of our Church is concerned: and I hope you will send to the House for copies. For, though we are

under a conquest, God has given us favour in the eyes of our rulers; and they may keep our Church if we

FN 88 The distaste of the High Churchman for the Articles is the subject of a curious pamphlet published in

FN 89 Tom Brown says, in his scurrilous way, of the Presbyterian divines of that time, that their preaching

"brings in money, and money buys land; and land is an amusement they all desire, in spite of their

hypocritical cant. If it were not for the quarterly contributions, there would be no longer schism or

separation." He asks how it can be imagined that, while "they are maintained like gentlemen by the breach

they will ever preach up healing doctrines?"Brown's Amusements, Serious and Comical. Some curious

instances of the influence exercised by the chief dissenting ministers may be found in Hawkins's Life of

Johnson. In the Journal of the retired citizen (Spectator, 317.) Addison has indulged in some exquisite

pleasantry on this subject. The Mr. Nisby whose opinions about the peace, the Grand Vizier, and laced

coffee, are quoted with so much respect, and who is so well regaled with marrow bones, ox cheek, and a

bottle of Brooks and Hellier, was John Nesbit, a highly popular preacher, who about the time of the

Revolution, became pastor of a dissenting congregation in flare Court Aldersgate Street. In Wilson's History

and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses in London, Westminster, and Southwark, will be

found several instances of nonconformist preachers who, about this time, made handsome fortunes, generally,

FN 90 See, among many other tracts, Dodwell's Cautionary Discourse, his Vindication of the Deprived

Bishops, his Defence of the Vindication, and his Paraenesis; and Bisby's Unity of Priesthood, printed in 1692.

See also Hody's tracts on the other side, the Baroccian MS., and Solomon and Abiathar, a Dialogue between

FN 91 Burnet, ii. 135. Of all attempts to distinguish between the deprivations of 1559 and the deprivations of

1689, the most absurd was made by Dodwell. See his Doctrine of the Church of England concerning the

FN 92 As to this controversy, see Burnet, ii. 7, 8, 9.; Grey's Debates, April 19. and 22. 1689; Commons'

FN 95 Burnet says (ii. 8.) that the proposition to abolish the sacramental test was rejected by a great majority

in both Houses. But his memory deceived him; for the only division on the subject in the House of Commons

was that mentioned in the text. It is remarkable that Gwyn and Rowe, who were tellers for the majority, were

FN 98 Commons' Journals, March 28. April 1. 1689; Paris Gazette, April 23. Part of the passage in the Paris

Gazette is worth quoting. "Il y eut, ce jour le (March 28), une grande contestation dans la Chambre Basse, sur

la proposition qui fut faite de remettre les s�ences apres les fetes de Pasques observees toujours par l'Eglise

Anglicane. Les Protestans conformistes furent de cet avis; et les Presbyterians emporterent a la pluralite des

voix que les seances recommenceroient le Lundy, seconde feste de Pasques." The Low Churchmen are

frequently designated as Presbyterians by the French and Dutch writers of that age. There were not twenty

Presbyterians, properly so called, in the House of Commons. See A. Smith and Cutler's plain Dialogue about

FN 99 Accounts of what passed at the Conferences will be found in the Journals of the Houses, and deserve

FN 101 I will quote some expressions which have been preserved in the concise reports of these debates.

Those expressions are quite decisive as to the sense in which the oath was understood by the legislators who

framed it. Musgrave said, "There is no occasion for this proviso. It cannot be imagined that any bill from

hence will ever destroy the legislative power." Pinch said, "The words established by law, hinder not the

King from passing any bill for the relief of Dissenters. The proviso makes the scruple, and gives the occasion

for it." Sawyer said, "This is the first proviso of this nature that ever was in any bill. It seems to strike at the

legislative power." Sir Robert Cotton said, "Though the proviso looks well and Healing, yet it seems to imply

a defect. Not able to alter laws as occasion requires! This, instead of one scruple, raises more, as if you were

so bound up to the ecclesiastical government that you cannot make any new laws without such a proviso." Sir

Thomas Lee said, "It will, I fear, creep in that other laws cannot be made without such a proviso therefore I

FN 102 Lady Henrietta whom her uncle Clarendon calls "pretty little Lady Henrietta," and "the best child in

the world" (Diary, Jan. 168I), was soon after married to the Earl of Dalkeith, eldest son of the unfortunate

FN 103 The sermon deserves to be read. See the London Gazette of April 14. 1689; Evelyn's Diary;

Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; and the despatch of the Dutch Ambassadors to the States General.

FN 104 A specimen of the prose which the Jacobites wrote on this subject will be found in the Somers Tracts.

The Jacobite verses were generally too loathsome to be quoted. I select some of the most decent lines from a

"The eleventh of April has come about, To Westminster went the rabble rout, In order to crown a bundle of

"Descended he is from the Orange tree; But, if I can read his destiny, He'll once more descend from another

"He has gotten part of the shape of a man, But more of a monkey, deny it who can; He has the head of a

A Frenchman named Le Noble, who had been banished from his own country for his crimes, but, by the

connivance of the police, lurked in Paris, and earned a precarious livelihood as a bookseller's hack published

on this occasion two pasquinades, now extremely scarce, "Le Couronnement de Guillemot et de Guillemette,

avec le Sermon du grand Docteur Burnet," and "Le Festin de Guillemot." In wit, taste and good sense, Le

Noble's writings are not inferior to the English poem which I have quoted. He tells us that the Archbishop of

York and the Bishop of London had a boxing match in the Abbey; that the champion rode up the Hall on an

ass, which turned restive and kicked over the royal table with all the plate; and that the banquet ended in a

fight between the peers armed with stools and benches, and the cooks armed with spits. This sort of

pleasantry, strange to say, found readers; and the writer's portrait was pompously engraved with the motto

FN 106 For the history of the devastation of the Palatinate, see the Memoirs of La Fare, Dangeau, Madame

de la Fayette, Villars, and Saint Simon, and the Monthly Mercuries for March and April, 1689. The

pamphlets and broadsides are too numerous to quote. One broadside, entitled "A true Account of the

barbarous Cruelties committed by the French in the Palatinate in January and February last," is perhaps the

FN 108 I will quote a few lines from Leopold's letter to James: "Nunc autem quo loco res nostrae sint, ut

Serenitati vestrae auxilium praestari possit a nobis, qui non Turcico tantum bello impliciti, sed insuper etiam

crudelissimo et iniquissimo a Gallis, rerun suarum, ut putabant, in Anglia securis, contra datam fidem

impediti sumus, ipsimet Serenitati vestrae judicandum relinquimus . . . . Galli non tantum in nostrum et totius

Christianae orbis perniciem foedifraga arma cum juratis Sanctae Crucis hostibus sociare fas sibi ducunt; sed

etiam in imperio, perfidiam perfidia cumulando, urbes deditione occupatas contra datam fidem immensis

tributis exhaurire exhaustas diripere, direptas funditus exscindere aut flammis delere Palatia Principum ab

omni antiquitate inter saevissima bellorum incendia intacta servata exurere, templa spoliare, dedititios in

servitutem more apud barbaros usitato abducere, denique passim, imprimis vero etiam in Catholicorum

ditionibus, alia horrenda, et ipsam Turcorum tyrannidem superantia immanitatis et saevitiae exempla edere

FN 109 See the London Gazettes of Feb. 25. March 11. April 22. May 2. and the Monthly Mercuries. Some

FN 113 The Declaration is dated on the 7th of May, but was not published in the London Gazette till the

FN 114 The general opinion of the English on this subject is clearly expressed in a little tract entitled

"Aphorisms relating to the Kingdom of Ireland," which appeared during the vacancy of the throne.

FN 116 King, iii. 3. Clarendon, in a letter to Rochester (June 1. 1686), calls Nugent "a very troublesome,

FN 118 King, ii. 6., iii. 3. Clarendon, in a letter to Ormond (Sep. 28. 1686), speaks highly of Nagle's

knowledge and ability, but in the Diary (Jan. 31. 1686/7) calls him "a covetous, ambitious man."

FN 119 King, ii. 5. 1, iii. 3. 5.; A Short View of the Methods made use of in Ireland for the Subversion and

Destruction of the Protestant Religion and Interests, by a Clergyman lately escaped from thence, licensed

FN 120 King, iii. 2. I cannot find that Charles Leslie, who was zealous on the other side, has, in his Answer

to King, contradicted any of these facts. Indeed Leslie gives up Tyrconnel's administration. "I desire to

obviate one objection which I know will be made, as if I were about wholly to vindicate all that the Lord

Tyrconnel and other of King James's ministers have done in Ireland, especially before this revolution began,

and which most of any thing brought it on. No; I am far from it. I am sensible that their carriage in many

particulars gave greater occasion to King James's enemies than all the other in maladministrations which

FN 121 A True and Impartial Account of the most material Passages in Ireland since December 1688, by a

FN 123 There have been in the neighbourhood of Killarney specimens of the arbutus thirty feet high and four

FN 124 In a very full account of the British isles published at Nuremberg in 1690 Kerry is described as "an

vielen Orten unwegsam und voller Wilder and Geburge." Wolves still infested Ireland. "Kein schadlich Thier

ist da, ausserhalb Wolff and Fuchse." So late as the year 1710 money was levied on presentments of the

Grand Jury of Kerry for the destruction of wolves in that county. See Smith's Ancient and Modern State of

the County of Kerry, 1756. I do not know that I have ever met with a better book of the kind and of the size.

In a poem published as late as 1719, and entitled Macdermot, or the Irish Fortune Hunter, in six cantos,

wolfhunting and wolfspearing are represented as common sports in Munster. In William's reign Ireland was

sometimes called by the nickname of Wolfland. Thus in a poem on the battle of La Vogue, called Advice to a

FN 126 Exact Relation of the Persecutions, Robberies, and Losses, sustained by the Protestants of Killmare

FN 128 A True Relation of the Actions of the Inniskilling men, by Andrew Hamilton, Rector of Kilskerrie,

and one of the Prebends of the Diocese of Clogher, an Eyewitness thereof and Actor therein, licensed Jan. 15.

1689/90; A Further Impartial Account of the Actions of the Inniskilling men, by Captain William Mac

FN 130 Concise View of the Irish Society, 1822; Mr. Heath's interesting Account of the Worshipful

FN 131 The Interest of England in the preservation of Ireland, licensed July 17. 1689.

FN 133 The best account that I have seen of what passed at Londonderry during the war which began in 1641

FN 135 My authority for this unfavourable account of the corporation is an epic poem entitled the Londeriad.

This extraordinary work must have been written very soon after the events to which it relates; for it is

dedicated to Robert Rochfort, Speaker of the House of Commons; and Rochfort was Speaker from 1695 to

1699. The poet had no invention; he had evidently a minute knowledge of the city which he celebrated; and

"For burgesses and freemen they had chose Broguemakers, butchers, raps, and such as those In all the

FN 136 See a sermon preached by him at Dublin on Jan. 31. 1669. The text is "Submit yourselves to every

FN 137 Walker's Account of the Siege of Derry, 1689; Mackenzie's Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry,

1689; An Apology for the failures charged on the Reverend Mr. Walker's Account of the late Siege of Derry,

1689; A Light to the Blind. This last work, a manuscript in the possession of Lord Fingal, is the work of a

zealous Roman Catholic and a mortal enemy of England. Large extracts from it are among the Mackintosh

FN 138 As to Mountjoy's character and position, see Clarendon's letters from Ireland, particularly that to

Lord Dartmouth of Feb. 8., and that to Evelyn of Feb. 14 1685/6. "Bon officier, et homme d'esprit," says

FN 141 Burnet, i. 807; and the notes by Swift and Dartmouth. Tutchin, in the Observator, repeats this idle

FN 144 Burnet, i. 808; Life of James, ii. 320.; Commons' Journals, July 29. 1689.

FN 146 Clarke's Life of James, ii. 321.; Mountjoy's Circular Letter, dated Jan. 10 1688/9;; King, iv. 8. In

FN 149 The connection of the priests with the old Irish families is mentioned in Petty's Political Anatomy of

Ireland. See the Short View by a Clergyman lately escaped, 1689; Ireland's Lamentation, by an English

Protestant that lately narrowly escaped with life from thence, 1689; A True Account of the State of Ireland,

by a person who with great difficulty left Dublin, 1689; King, ii. 7. Avaux confirms all that these writers say

FN 150 At the French War Office is a report on the State of Ireland in February 1689. In that report it is said

that the Irish who had enlisted as soldiers were fortyfive thousand, and that the number would have been a

hundred thousand if all who volunteered had been admitted. See the Sad and Lamentable Condition of the

Protestants in Ireland, 1689; Hamilton's True Relation, 1690; The State of Papist and Protestant Properties in

the Kingdom of Ireland, 1689; A true Representation to the King and People of England how Matters were

carried on all along in Ireland, licensed Aug. 16. 1689; Letter from Dublin, 1689; Ireland's Lamentation,

1689; Compleat History of the Life and Military Actions of Richard, Earl of Tyrconnel, Generalissimo of all

FN 153 Ten years, says the French ambassador; twenty years, says a Protestant fugitive.

FN 154 Animadversions on the proposal for sending back the nobility and gentry of Ireland; 1689/90.

FN 155 King, iii. 10; The Sad Estate and Condition of Ireland, as represented in a Letter from a Worthy

Person who was in Dublin on Friday last March. 1689; Short View by a Clergyman, 1689; Lamentation of

Ireland 1689; Compleat History of the Life and Actions of Richard, Earl of Tyrconnel, 1689; The Royal

Voyage, acted in 1689 and 1690. This drama, which, I believe, was performed at Bartholomew Fair, is one of

the most curious of a curious class of compositions, utterly destitute of literary merit, but valuable as showing

what were then the most successful claptraps for an audience composed of the common people. "The end of

this play," says the author in his preface, "is chiefly to expose the perfidious base, cowardly, and bloody

nature of the Irish." The account which the fugitive Protestants give of the wanton destruction of cattle is

confirmed by Avaux in a letter to Lewis, dated April 13/23 1689, and by Desgrigny in a letter to Louvois,

dated May 17/27. 1690. Most of the despatches written by Avaux during his mission to Ireland are contained

in a volume of which a very few copies were printed some years ago at the English Foreign Office. Of many I

have also copies made at the French Foreign Office. The letters of Desgrigny, who was employed in the

Commissariat, I found in the Library of the French War Office. I cannot too strongly express my sense of the

liberality and courtesy with which the immense and admirably arranged storehouses of curious information at

FN 156 "A remarkable thing never to be forgotten was that they that were in government then"at the end

of 1688"seemed to favour us and endeavour to preserve Friends." history of the Rise and Progress of the

People called Quakers in Ireland, by Wight and Rutty, Dublin, 1751. King indeed (iii. 17) reproaches the

FN 158 Life of James, ii. 327. Orig. Mem. Macarthy and his feigned name are repeatedly mentioned by

FN 159 Exact Relation of the Persecutions, Robberies and Losses sustained by the Protestants of Killmare in

FN 160 A true Representation to the King and People of England how Matters were carried on all along in

Ireland by the late King James, licensed Aug. 16. 1689; A true Account of the Present State of Ireland by a

FN 163 Mackenzie's Narrative; Mac Cormack's Further Impartial Account; Story's Impartial History of the

Affairs of Ireland, 1691; Apology for the Protestants of Ireland; Letter from Dublin of Feb. 25. 1689; Avaux

FN 164 Memoires de Madame de la Fayette; Madame de Sevigne to Madame de Grignan, Feb. 28. 1689.

FN 167 Dangeau, Feb. 15/25 17/27 1689; Madame de Sevigne, 18/28 Feb. 20/March; Memoires de Madame

FN 168 Memoirs of La Fare and Saint Simon; Note of Renaudot on English affairs 1697, in the French

Archives; Madame de Sevigne, Feb 20/March 2, March 11/21, 1689; Letter of Madame de Coulanges to M.

FN 169 See Saint Simon's account of the trick by which Avaux tried to pass himself off at Stockholm as a

FN 170 This letter, written to Lewis from the harbour of Brest, is in the Archives of the French Foreign

FN 171 A full and true Account of the Landing and Reception of the late King James at Kinsale, in a letter

from Bristol, licensed April 4. 1689; Leslie's Answer to King; Ireland's Lamentation; Avaux, March 13/23

FN 175 A full and true Account of the Landing and Reception of the late King James; Ireland's Lamentation;

FN 176 See the calculations of Petty, King, and Davenant. If the average number of inhabitants to a house

was the same in Dublin as in London, the population of Dublin would have been about thirty four thousand.

FN 177 John Damon speaks of College Green near Dublin. I have seen letters of that age directed to the

College, by Dublin. There are some interesting old maps of Dublin in the British Museum.

FN 178 Clarendon to Rochester, Feb. 8. 1685/6, April 20. Aug. 12. Nov. 30. 1686.

FN 179 Clarke's Life of James II, ii. 330.; Full and true Account of the Landing and Reception, Ireland's

FN 180 Clarendon's Diary; Reresby's Memoirs; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. I have followed Luttrell's version

of Temple's last words. It agrees in substance with Clarendon's, but has more of the abruptness natural on

such an occasion. If anything could make so tragical an event ridiculous, it would be the lamentation of the

"The wretched youth against his friend exclaims, And in despair drowns himself in the Thames."

FN 181 Much light is thrown on the dispute between the English and Irish parties in James's Council, by a

remarkable letter of Bishop Maloney to Bishop Tyrrel, which will be found in the Appendix to Kings State of

FN 182 Avaux, March 25/April 4 1689, April. But it is less from any single letter, than from the whole

tendency and spirit of the correspondence of Avaux, that I have formed my notion of his objects.

FN 183 "Il faut donc, oubliant qu'il a este Roy d'Angleterre et d'Escosse, ne penser qu'a ce qui peut bonifier

l'Irlande, et luy faciliter les moyens d'y subsister." Louvois to Avaux, June 3/13. 1689.

FN 184 See the despatches written by Avaux during April 1689; Light to the Blind.

FN 188 This lamentable account of the Irish beer is taken from a despatch which Desgrigny wrote from Cork

FN 192 Avaux, April 17/27. 1689. The story of these strange changes of purpose is told very disingenuously

FN 194 Memoirs of Saint Simon. Some English writers ignorantly speak of Rosen as having been, at this

time, a Marshal of France. He did not become so till 1703. He had long been a Marechal de Camp, which is a

very different thing, and had been recently promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General.

FN 195 Avaux, April 4/14 1689, Among the MSS. in the British Museum is a curious report on the defences

of Londonderry, drawn up in 1705 for the Duke of Ormond by a French engineer named Thomas.

FN 197 The best history of these transactions will be found in the journals of the House of Commons, August

FN 200 See the Character of the Protestants of Ireland 1689, and the Interest of England in the Preservation

of Ireland, 1689. The former pamphlet is the work of an enemy, the latter of a zealous friend.

FN 201 There was afterwards some idle dispute about the question whether Walker was properly Governor or

FN 203 Walker's True Account, 1689. See also The Apology for the True Account, and the Vindication of

the True Account, published in the same year. I have called this man by the name by which he was known in

Ireland. But his real name was Houstoun. He is frequently mentioned in the strange volume entitled Faithful

FN 204 A View of the Danger and Folly of being publicspirited, by William Hamill, 1721

FN 206 Walker; Mackenzie; Avaux, April 26/May 6 1689. There is a tradition among the Protestants of

Ulster that Maumont fell by the sword of Murray: but on this point the report made by the French ambassador

to his master is decisive. The truth is that there are almost as many mythical stories about the siege of

Londonderry as about the siege of Troy. The legend about Murray and Maumont dates from 1689. In the

Royal Voyage which was acted in that year, the combat between the heroes is described in these sonorous

"They met; and Monsieur at the first encounter Fell dead, blaspheming, on the dusty plain, And dying, bit the

FN 207 "Si c'est celuy qui est sorti de France le dernier, qui s'appelloit Richard, il n'a jamais veu de siege,

FN 208 Walker; Mackenzie; Avaux to Louvois, May 2/12. 4/14 1689; James to Hamilton, May 28/June 8 in

the library of the Royal Irish Academy. Louvois wrote to Avaux in great indignation. "La mauvaise conduite

que l'on a tenue devant Londondery a couste la vie a M. de Maumont et a M. de Pusignan. Il ne faut pas que

sa Majest� Britannique croye qu'en faisant tuer des officiers generaux comme des soldats, on puisse ne l'en

point laisser manquer. Ces sortes de gens sont rates en tout pays, et doivent estre menagez."

FN 210 As to the discipline of Galmoy's Horse, see the letter of Avaux to Louvois, dated Sept. 10/30.

Horrible stories of the cruelty, both of the colonel and of his men, are told in the Short View, by a Clergyman,

printed in 1689, and in several other pamphlets of that year. For the distribution of the Irish forces, see the

contemporary maps of the siege. A catalogue of the regiments, meant, I suppose to rival the catalogue in the

FN 211 Life of Admiral Sir John Leake, by Stephen M. Leake, Clarencieux King at Arms, 1750. Of this book

FN 212 Avaux, May 8/18 May 26/June 5 1689; London Gazette, May 9.; Life of James, ii. 370.; Burchett's

Naval Transactions; Commons' Journals, May 18, 21. From the Memoirs of Madame de la Fayette it appears

FN 213 King, iii. 12; Memoirs of Ireland from the Restoration, 1716. Lists of both Houses will be found in

FN 214 I found proof of Plowden's connection with the Jesuits in a Treasury Letterbook, June 12, 1689.

FN 215 "Sarsfield," Avaux wrote to Louvois, Oct. 11/21. 1689, "n'est pas un homme de la naissance de

mylord Galloway" (Galmoy, I suppose) "ny de Makarty: mais c'est un gentilhomme distingue par son merite,

qui a plus de credit dans ce royaume qu'aucun homme que je connoisse. Il a de la valeur, mais surtout de

l'honneur et de la probite a toute epreuve . . . homme qui sera toujours a la tete de ses troupes, et qui en aura

grand soin." Leslie, in his Answer to King, says that the Irish Protestants did justice to Sarsfield's integrity

and honour. Indeed justice is done to Sarsfield even in such scurrilous pieces as the Royal Flight.

FN 216 Journal of the Parliament in Ireland, 1689. The reader must not imagine that this journal has an

official character. It is merely a compilation made by a Protestant pamphleteer and printed in London.

FN 220 A True Account of the Present State of Ireland, by a Person that with Great Difficulty left Dublin,

1689; Letter from Dublin, dated June 12. 1689; Journal of the Parliament in Ireland.

FN 221 Life of James, ii. 361, 362, 363. In the Life it is said that the proclamation was put forth without the

privity of James, but that he subsequently approved of it. See Welwood's Answer to the Declaration, 1689.

FN 222 Light to the Blind; An Act declaring that the Parliament of England cannot bind Ireland against Writs

FN 223 An Act concerning Appropriate Tythes and other Duties payable to Ecclesiastical Dignitaries.

FN 224 An Act for repealing the Acts of Settlement and Explanation and all Grants, Patents, and Certificates

FN 225 See the paper delivered to James by Chief Justice Keating, and the speech of the Bishop of Meath.

FN 226 Leslie's Answer to King; Avaux, May 26/June 5 1689; Life of James, ii. 358.

FN 227 Avaux May 28/June 7 1689, and June 20/July 1. The author of Light to the Blind strongly condemns

FN 228 King, iii. 11.; Brief Memoirs by Haynes, Assay Master of the Mint, among the Lansdowne MSS. at

the British Museum, No. 801. I have seen several specimens of this coin. The execution is surprisingly good,

FN 230 An Act for the Attainder of divers Rebels and for preserving the Interest of loyal Subjects, London,

FN 232 His name is in the first column of page 30. in that edition of the List which was licensed March 26,

1690. I should have thought that the proscribed person must have been some other Henry Dodwell. But

Bishop Kennet's second letter to the Bishop of Carlisle, 1716, leaves no doubt about the matter.

FN 233 A list of most of the Names of the Nobility, Gentry, and Commonalty of England and Ireland

(amongst whom are several Women and Children) who are all, by an Act of a Pretended parliament

assembled in Dublin, attainted of High Treason, 1690; An Account of the Transactions of the late King James

FN 238 "En comparazion de lo que se hace in Irlanda con los Protestantes, es nada." April 29/May 6 1689;

"Para que vea Su Santitad que aqui estan los Catolicos mas benignamente tratados que los Protestantes in

FN 243 Hamilton's True Relation; Mac Cormick's Further Account. Of the island generally, Avaux says, "On

n'attend rien de cette recolte cy, les paysans ayant presque tous pris les armes.Letters to Louvois, March

FN 248 Walker; Mackenzie; Light to the Blind; King, iii. 13; Leslie's Answer to King; Life of James, ii, 364.

FN 249 Leslie's Answer to King; Avaux, July 5/15. 1689. "Je trouvay l'expression bien forte: mais je ne

FN 251 Walker's Account. "The fat man in Londonderry" became a proverbial expression for a person whose

FN 252 This, according to Narcissus Luttrell was the report made by Captain Withers, afterwards a highly

FN 253 The despatch which positively commanded Kirke to attack the boom, was signed by Schomberg, who

had already been appointed commander in chief of all the English forces in Ireland. A copy of it is among the

Nairne MSS. in the Bodleian Library. Wodrow, on no better authority than the gossip of a country parish in

Dumbartonshire, attributes the relief of Londonderry to the exhortations of a heroic Scotch preacher named

Gordon. I am inclined to think that Kirke was more likely to be influenced by a peremptory order from

Schomberg, than by the united eloquence of a whole synod of presbyterian divines.

FN 254 Walker; Mackenzie; Histoire de la Revolution d'Irlande, Amsterdarn, 1691; London Gazette, Aug.

5/15; 1689; Letter of Buchan among the Nairne MSS.; Life of Sir John Leake; The Londeriad; Observations

FN 256 "You will see here, as you have all along, that the tradesmen of Londonderry had more skill in their

defence than the great officers of the Irish army in their attacks." Light to the Blind. The author of this work

is furious against the Irish gunners. The boom he thinks, would never have been broken if they had done their

duty. Were they drunk? Were they traitors? He does not determine the point. "Lord," he exclaims, "who seest

the hearts of people, we leave the judgment of this affair to thy mercy. In the interim those gunners lost

FN 257 In a collection entitled "Derriana," which was published more than sixty years ago, is a curious letter

FN 259 Hamilton's True Relation; Mac Cormick's Further Account; London Gazette, Aug. 22. 1689; Life of

James, ii. 368, 369.; Avaux to Lewis, Aug. 30., and to Louvois of the same date. Story mentions a report that

the panic among the Irish was caused by the mistake of an officer who called out "Right about face" instead

of "Right face." Neither Avaux nor James had heard any thing about this mistake. Indeed the dragoons who

set the example of flight were not in the habit of waiting for orders to turn their backs on an enemy. They had

run away once before on that very day. Avaux gives a very simple account of the defeat: "Ces mesmes

dragons qui avoient fuy le matin lascherent le pied avec tout le reste de la cavalerie, sans tirer un coup de

pistolet; et ils s'enfuidrent tous avec une telle epouvante qu'ils jetterent mousquetons, pistolets, et espees; et la

plupart d'eux, ayant creve leurs chevaux, se deshabillerent pour aller plus viste a pied."

FN 262 Balcarras's Memoirs; Short History of the Revolution in Scotland in a letter from a Scotch gentleman

FN 264 A Memorial for His Highness the Prince of Orange in relation to the Affairs of Scotland, by two

FN 265 See Calvin's letter to Haller, iv. Non. Jan. 155I: "Priusquam urbem unquam ingrederer, nullae prorsus

erant feriae praeter diem Dominicum. Ex quo sum revocatus hoc temperamentum quaesivi, ut Christi natalis

FN 266 In the Act Declaration, and Testimony of the Seceders, dated in December, 1736 it is said that

"countenance is given by authority of Parliament to the observation of holidays in Scotland, by the vacation

of our most considerable Courts of justice in the latter end of December." This is declared to be a national sin,

and a ground of the Lord's indignation. In March 1758, the Associate Synod addressed a Solemn Warning to

the Nation, in which the same complaint was repeated. A poor crazy creature, whose nonsense has been

thought worthy of being reprinted even in our own time, says: "I leave my testimony against the abominable

Act of the pretended Queen Anne and her pretended British, really Brutish Parliament, for enacting the

observance of that which is called the Yule Vacancy."The Dying Testimony of William Wilson sometime

FN 267 An Account of the Present Persecution of the Church in Scotland, in several Letters, 1690; The Case

of the afflicted Clergy in Scotland truly represented, 1690; Faithful Contendings Displayed; Burnet, i. 805

FN 268 The form of notice will be found in the book entitled Faithful Contendings Displayed.

FN 269 Account of the Present Persecution, 1690; Case of the afflicted Clergy, 1690; A true Account of that

Interruption that was made of the Service of God on Sunday last, being the 17th of February, 1689, signed by

FN 272 Scobell, 1654, cap. 9., and Oliver's Ordinance in Council of the 12th of April in the same year.

FN 273 Burnet and Fletcher of Saltoun mention the prosperity of Scotland under the Protector, but ascribe it

to a cause quite inadequate to the production of such an effect. "There was," says Burnet, "a considerable

force of about seven or eight thousand men kept in Scotland. The pay of the army brought so much money

into the kingdom that it continued all that while in a very flourishing state . . . . . . We always reckon those

eight years of usurpation a time of great peace and prosperity." "During the time of the usurper Cromwell,"

says Fletcher, "we imagined ourselves to be in a tolerable condition with respect to the last particular (trade

and money) by reason of that expense which was made in the realm by those forces that kept us in

subjection." The true explanation of the phenomenon about which Burnet and Fletcher blundered so grossly

will be found in a pamphlet entitled "Some seasonable and modest Thoughts partly occasioned by and partly

concerning the Scotch East India Company, Edinburgh, 1696. See the Proceedings of the Wednesday Club in

Friday Street, upon the subject of an Union with Scotland, December 1705. See also the Seventh Chapter of

FN 274 See the paper in which the demands of the Scotch Commissioners are set forth. It will be found in the

FN 277 See, for example, a pamphlet entitled "Some questions resolved concerning episcopal and

presbyterian government in Scotland, 1690." One of the questions is, whether Scottish presbytery be

agreeable to the general inclinations of that people. The author answers the question in the negative, on the

ground that the upper and middle classes had generally conformed to the episcopal Church before the

FN 278 The instructions are in the Leven and Melville Papers. They bear date March 7, 1688/9. On the first

occasion on which I quote this most valuable collection, I cannot refrain from acknowledging the obligations

under which I, and all who take an interest in the history of our island, lie to the gentleman who has

FN 279 As to the Dalrymples; see the Lord President's own writings, and among them his Vindication of the

Divine Perfections; Wodrow's Analecta; Douglas's Peerage; Lockhart's Memoirs; the Satyre on the Familie of

Stairs; the Satyric Lines upon the long wished for and timely Death of the Right Honourable Lady Stairs;

Law's Memorials; and the Hyndford Papers, written in 1704/5 and printed with the Letters of Carstairs.

Lockhart, though a mortal enemy of John Dalrymple, says, "There was none in the parliament capable to take

FN 280 As to Melville, see the Leven and Melville Papers, passim, and the preface; the Act. Parl. Scot. June

16. 1685; and the Appendix, June 13.; Burnet, ii. 24; and the Burnet MS. Had. 6584.

FN 284 About the early relation between William and Dundee, some Jacobite, many years after they were

both dead, invented a story which by successive embellishments was at last improved into a romance which it

seems strange that even a child should believe to be true. The last edition runs thus. William's horse was

killed under him at Seneff, and his life was in imminent danger. Dundee, then Captain Graham, mounted His

Highness again. William promised to reward this service with promotion but broke his word and gave to

another the commission which Graham had been led to expect. The injured hero went to Loo. There he met

his successful competitor, and gave him a box on the ear. The punishment for striking in the palace was the

loss of the offending right hand; but this punishment the Prince of Orange ungraciously remitted. "You," he

Those who down to our own time, have repeated this nonsense seem to have thought, first, that the Act of

Henry the Eighth "for punishment of murder and malicious bloodshed within the King's Court" (Stat 33 Hen.

VIII. c. 2.) was law in Guelders; and, secondly, that, in 1674, William was a King, and his house a King's

Court. They were also not aware that he did not purchase Loo till long after Dundee had left the Netherlands.

This legend, of which I have not been able to discover the slightest trace in the voluminous Jacobite literature

of William's reign, seems to have originated about a quarter of a century after Dundee's death, and to have

FN 289 Act. Parl. Scot., Mar. 14. 1689; History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690; An Account of the

FN 290 Balcarras's narrative exhibits both Hamilton and Athol in a most unfavourable light. See also the Life

FN 291 Act. Parl. Scot., March 14. 1688/9; Balcarras's Memoirs; History of the late Revolution in Scotland;

FN 293 Act. Parl. Scot., March 14. and 15. 1689; Balcarras's Memoirs; London Gazette, March 25.; History

of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690; Account of the Proceedings of the Estates of Scotland, 1689.

FN 294 See Cleland's Poems, and the commendatory poems contained in the same volume, Edinburgh, 1697.

It has been repeatedly asserted that this William Cleland was the father of William Cleland, the

Commissioner of Taxes, who was well known twenty year later in the literary society of London, who

rendered some not very reputable services to Pope, and whose son John was the author of an infamous book

but too widely celebrated. This is an entire mistake. William Cleland, who fought at Bothwell Bridge, was

not twentyeight when he was killed in August, 1689; and William Cleland, the Commissioner of Taxes,

died at sixtyseven in September, 1741. The former therefore cannot have been the father of the latter. See

the Exact Narrative of the Battle of Dunkeld; the Gentleman's Magazine for 1740; and Warburton's note on

the Letter to the Publisher of the Dunciad, a letter signed W. Cleland, but really written by Pope. In a paper

drawn up by Sir Robert Hamilton, the oracle of the extreme Covenanters, and a bloodthirsty ruffian, Cleland

is mentioned as having been once leagued with those fanatics, but afterwards a great opposer of their

testimony. Cleland probably did not agree with Hamilton in thinking it a sacred duty to cut the throats of

prisoners of war who had been received to quarter. See Hamilton's Letter to the Societies, Dec 7. 1685.

FN 296 Balcarras's Memoirs. But the fullest account of these proceedings is furnished by some manuscript

notes which are in the library of the Faculty of Advocates. Balcarras's dates are not quite exact. He probably

trusted to his memory for them. I have corrected them from the Parliamentary Records.

FN 297 Act. Parl. Scot., Mar. 16. 1688/9; Balcarras's Memoirs; History of the late Revolution in Scotland,

1690; Account of the Proceedings of the Estates of Scotland, 1689; London Gaz., Mar. 25. 1689; Life of

FN 299 Act. Parl. Scot., Mar. 19. 1688/9; History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690.

FN 302 Act. Parl. Scot.; History of the late Revolution, 1690; Memoirs of North Britain, 1715.

FN 304 Every reader will remember the malediction which Sir Walter Scott, in the Fifth Canto of Marmion,

FN 305 "It will be neither secuir nor kynd to the King to expect it be (by) Act of Parliament after the

settlement, which will lay it at his door."Dalrymple to Melville, 5 April, 1689; Leven and Melville Papers.

FN 307 Act. Parl. Scot., April 1 1689; Orders of Committee of Estates, May 16. 1689; London Gazette, April

FN 308 As it has lately been denied that the extreme Presbyterians entertained an unfavourable opinion of the

Lutherans, I will give two decisive proof of the truth of what I have asserted in the text. In the book entitled

Faithful Contendings Displayed is a report of what passed at the General Meeting of the United Societies of

Covenanters on the 24th of October 1688. The question was propounded whether there should be an

association with the Dutch. "It was concluded unanimously," says the Clerk of the Societies, "that we could

not have an association with the Dutch in one body, nor come formally under their conduct, being such a

promiscuous conjunction of reformed Lutheran malignants and sectaries, to loin with whom were repugnant

to the testimony of the Church of Scotland." In the Protestation and Testimony drawn up on the 2nd of

October 1707, the United Societies complain that the crown has been settled on "the Prince of Hanover, who

has been bred and brought up in the Lutheran religion which is not only different from, but even in many

things contrary unto that purity in doctrine, reformation, and religion, we in these nations had attained unto,

as is very well known." They add "The admitting such a person to reign over us is not only contrary to our

FN 309 History of the late Revolution in Scotland; London Gazette, May 16, 1689. The official account of

what passed was evidently drawn up with great care. See also the Royal Diary, 1702. The writer of this work

FN 310 See Crawford's Letters and Speeches, passim. His style of begging for a place was peculiar. After

owning, not without reason, that his heart was deceitful and desperately wicked, he proceeded thus: "The

same Omnipotent Being who hath said, when the poor and needy seek water and there is none, and their

tongue faileth for thirst, he will not forsake them; notwithstanding of my present low condition, can build me

a house if He think fit." Letter to Melville, of May 28. 1689. As to Crawford's poverty and his passion for

Bishops' lands, see his letter to Melville of the 4th of December 1690. As to his humanity, see his letter to

Melville, Dec 11 1690. All these letters are among the Leven and Melville Papers, The author of An Account

of the Late Establishment of Presbyterian Government says of a person who had taken a bribe of ten or

twelve pounds, "Had he been as poor as my Lord Crawford, perhaps he had been the more excusable." See

also the dedication of the celebrated tract entitled Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed.

FN 311 Burnet, ii. 23. 24.; Fountainhall Papers, 73, Aug, 1684; 14. and 15. Oct. 1684; 3. May, 1685;

Montgomery to Melville, June 22. 1689, in the Leven and Melville Papers; Pretences of the French Invasion

FN 312 See the Life and Correspondence of Carstairs, and the interesting memorials of him in the Caldwell

Papers, printed 1854. See also Mackay's character of him, and Swift's note. Swift's word is not to be taken

against a Scotchman and a Presbyterian. I believe, however, that Carstairs, though an honest and pious man in

FN 313 Sir John Dalrymple to Lord Melville, June 18. 20 25. 1689; Leven and Melville Papers.

FN 314 There is an amusing description of Sir Patrick in the Hyndford MS., written about 1704, and printed

among the Carstairs Papers. "He is a lover of set speeches, and can hardly give audience to private friends

FN 315 "No man, though not a member, busier than Saltoun." Lockhart to Melville, July 11 1689; Leven

and Melville Papers. See Fletcher's own works, and the descriptions of him in Lockhart's and Mackay's

FN 316 Dalrymple says, in a letter of the 5th of June, "All the malignant, for fear, are come into the Club; and

FN 319 "Shall I tire yon with a description of this unfruitful country, where I must lead you over their hills all

brown with heath, or their valleys scarce able to feed a rabbit. . . , Every part of the country presents the same

dismal landscape. No grove or brook lend their music to cheer the stranger,"Goldsmith to Bryanton,

Edinburgh, Sept. 26. 1753. In a letter written soon after from Leyden to the Reverend Thomas Contarine,

Goldsmith says, "I was wholly taken up in observing the face of the country, Nothing can equal its beauty.

Wherever I turned my eye, fine houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas presented themselves,

Scotland and this country bear the highest contrast: there, hills and rocks intercept every prospect; here it is

all a continued plain." See Appendix C, to the First Volume of Mr. Forster's Life of Goldsmith,

FN 320 Northern Memoirs, by R. Franck Philanthropus, 1690. The author had caught a few glimpses of

Highland scenery, and speaks of it much as Burt spoke in the following generation: "It is a part of the

creation left undressed; rubbish thrown aside when the magnificent fabric of the world was created; as void of

FN 321 Journey through Scotland, by the author of the Journey through England, 1723.

FN 322 Almost all these circumstances are taken from Burt's Letters. For the tar, I am indebted to Cleland's

"The reason is, they're smeared with tar, Which doth defend their head and neck, Just as it doth their sheep

FN 323 A striking illustration of the opinion which was entertained of the Highlander by his Lowland

neighbours, and which was by them communicated to the English, will be found in a volume of Miscellanies

published by Afra Behn in 1685. One of the most curious pieces in the collection is a coarse and profane

Scotch poem entitled, "How the first Hielandman was made." How and of what materials he was made I shall

not venture to relate. The dialogue which immediately follows his creation may be quoted, I hope, without

"Says God to the Hielandman, 'Quhair wilt thou now?' 'I will down to the Lowlands, Lord, and there steal a

cow.' 'Ffy,' quod St. Peter, 'thou wilt never do weel, 'An thou, but new made, so sane gaffs to steal.' 'Umff,'

quod the Hielandman, and swore by yon kirk, 'So long as I may geir get to steal, will I nevir work."'

Another Lowland Scot, the brave Colonel Cleland, about the same time, describes the Highlander in the same

"For a misobliging word She'll dirk her neighbour o'er the board. If any ask her of her drift, Forsooth, her

Much to the same effect are the very few words which Franck Philanthropus (1694) spares to the

Highlanders: "They live like lauds and die like loons, hating to work and no credit to borrow: they make

depredations and rob their neighbours." In the History of the Revolution in Scotland, printed at Edinburgh in

1690, is the following passage: "The Highlanders of Scotland are a sort of wretches that have no other

consideration of honour, friendship, obedience, or government, than as, by any alteration of affairs or

revolution in the government, they can improve to themselves an opportunity of robbing or plundering their

FN 324 Since this passage was written I was much pleased by finding that Lord Fountainhall used, in July

1676, exactly the same illustration which had occurred to me. He says that "Argyle's ambitious grasping at

the mastery of the Highlands and Western Islands of Mull, Ila, stirred up other clans to enter into a

combination for hearing him dowse, like the confederat forces of Germanic, Spain, Holland, against the

FN 325 In the introduction to the Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron is a very sensible remark: "It may appear

paradoxical: but the editor cannot help hazarding the conjecture that the motives which prompted the

Highlanders to support King James were substantially the same as those by which the promoters of the

Revolution were actuated." The whole introduction, indeed, well deserves to be read.

FN 327 See the Memoirs of the Life of Sir Ewan Cameron, and the Historical and Genealogical Account of

the Clan Maclean, by a Senachie. Though this last work was published so late as 1838, the writer seems to

have been inflamed by animosity as fierce as that with which the Macleans of the seventeenth century

regarded the Campbells. In the short compass of one page the Marquess of Argyle is designated as "the

diabolical Scotch Cromwell," "the vile vindictive persecutor," "the base traitor," and "the Argyle impostor."

In another page he is "the insidious Campbell, fertile in villany," "the avaricious slave," "the coward of

Argyle" and "the Scotch traitor." In the next page he is "the base and vindictive enemy of the House of

Maclean" "the hypocritical Covenanter," "the incorrigible traitor," "the cowardly and malignant enemy." It is

a happy thing that passions so violent can now vent themselves only in scolding.

FN 328 Letter of Avaux to Louvois, April 6/16 1689, enclosing a paper entitled Memoire du Chevalier

FN 329 See the singularly interesting Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, printed at Edinburgh for the

Abbotsford Club in 1842. The MS. must have been at least a century older. See also in the same volume the

account of Sir Ewan's death, copied from the Balhadie papers. I ought to say that the author of the Memoirs

of Sir Ewan, though evidently well informed about the affairs of the Highlands and the characters of the most

distinguished chiefs, was grossly ignorant of English politics and history. I will quote what Van Litters wrote

to the States General about Lochiel, Nov 26/Dec 6 1689: "Sir Evan Cameron, Lord Locheale, een man, soo

ik hoor van die hem lange gekent en dagelyk hebben mede omgegaan,van so groot verstant, courage, en

FN 331 See Burt's Third and Fourth Letters. In the early editions is an engraving of the market cross of

Inverness, and of that part of the street where the merchants congregated. I ought here to acknowledge my

obligations to Mr. Robert Carruthers, who kindly furnished me with much curious information about

FN 332 I am indebted to Mr. Carruthers for a copy of the demands of the Macdonalds and of the answer of

FN 336 There is among the Nairne Papers in the Bodleian Library a curious MS. entitled "Journal de ce qui

s'est passe en Irlande depuis l'arrivee de sa Majeste." In this journal there are notes and corrections in English

and French; the English in the handwriting of James, the French in the handwriting of Melfort. The letters

intercepted by Hamilton are mentioned, and mentioned in a way which plainly shows that they were genuine;

FN 337 "Nor did ever," says Balcarras, addressing James, "the Viscount of Dundee think of going to the

Highlands without further orders from you, till a party was sent to apprehend him."

FN 338 See the narrative sent to James in Ireland and received by him July 7, 1689. It is among the Nairne

Papers. See also the Memoirs of Dundee, 1714; Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron; Balcarras's Memoirs;

Mackay's Memoirs. These narratives do not perfectly agree with each other or with the information which I

FN 339 Memoirs of Dundee; Tarbet to Melville, 1st June 7688, in the Levers and Melville Papers.

FN 340 Narrative in the Nairne Papers; Depositions of Colt, Osburne, Malcolm, and Stewart of Ballachan in

the Appendix to the Act. Parl. of July 14. 1690; Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. A few touches I have taken

from an English translation of some passages in a lost epic poem written in Latin, and called the Grameis.

The writer was a zealous Jacobite named Phillipps. I have seldom made use of the Memoirs of Dundee,

printed in 1714, and never without some misgiving. The writer was certainly not, as he pretends, one of

Dundee's officers, but a stupid and ignorant Grub Street garreteer. He is utterly wrong both as to the place

and as to the time of the battle of Killiecrankie. He says that it was fought on the banks of the Tummell, and

on the 13th of June. It was fought on the banks of the Garry, and on the 27th of July. After giving such a

FN 341 From a letter of Archibald Karl of Argyle to Lauderdale, which bears date the 25th of June, 1664, it

appears that a hundred thousand marks Scots, little more than five thousand pounds sterling, would, at that

time, have very nearly satisfied all the claims of Mac Callum More on his neighbours.

FN 342 Mackay's Memoirs; Tarbet to Melville, June 1, 1689, in the Leven and Melville Papers; Dundee to

FN 343 See Mackay's Memoirs, and his letter to Hamilton of the 14th of June, 1689.

FN 348 See Faithful Contendings Displayed, particularly the proceedings of April 29. and 30. and of May 13.

and 14., 1689; the petition to Parliament drawn up by the regiment, on July 18. 1689; the protestation of Sir

Robert Hamilton of November 6. 1689; and the admonitory Epistle to the Regiment, dated March 27. 1690.

The Society people, as they called themselves, seem to have been especially shocked by the way in which the

King's birthday had been kept. "We hope," they wrote, "ye are against observing anniversary days as well as

we, and that ye will mourn for what ye have done." As to the opinions and temper of Alexander Shields, see

FN 349 Siege of the Castle of Edinburgh, printed for the Bannatyne Club; Lond. Gaz,, June 10/20. 1689.

FN 352 As to Sir Patrick's views, see his letter of the 7th of June, and Lockhart's letter of the 11th of July, in

FN 353 My chief materials for the history of this session have been the Acts, the Minutes, and the Leven and

FN 354 "Athol," says Dundee contemptuously, "is gone to England, who did not know what to

do."Dundee to Melfort, June 27. 1689. See Athol's letters to Melville of the 21st of May and the 8th of

FN 367 As to the battle, see Mackay's Memoirs Letters, and Short Relation the Memoirs of Dundee; Memoirs

of Sir Ewan Cameron; Nisbet's and Osburne's depositions in the Appendix to the Act. Parl. Of July 14. 1690.

See also the account of the battle in one of Burt's Letters. Macpherson printed a letter from Dundee to James,

dated the day after the battle. I need not say that it is as impudent a forgery as Fingal. The author of the

Memoirs of Dundee says that Lord Leven was scared by the sight of the highland weapons, and set the

example of flight. This is a spiteful falsehood. That Leven behaved remarkably well is proved by Mackay's

FN 369 Letter of the Extraordinary Ambassadors to the Greffier of the States General, August 2/12. 1689;

FN 371 The tradition is certainly much more than a hundred and twenty years old. The stone was pointed out

FN 372 See the History prefixed to the poems of Alexander Robertson. In this history he is represented as

having joined before the battle of Killiecrankie. But it appears from the evidence which is �n the Appendix to

FN 377 See Portland's Letters to Melville of April 22 and May 15. 1690, in the Leven and Melville Papers.

FN 379 Exact Narrative of the Conflict at Dunkeld between the Earl of Angus's Regiment and the Rebels,

collected from several Officers of that Regiment who were Actors in or Eyewitnesses of all that's here

narrated in Reference to those Actions; Letter of Lieutenant Blackader to his brother, dated Dunkeld, Aug.

21. 1689; Faithful Contendings Displayed; Minute of the Scotch Privy Council of Aug. 28., quoted by Mr.

FN 380 The history of Scotland during this autumn will be best studied in the Leven and Melville Papers.

FN 381 See the Lords' Journals of Feb. 5. 1688 and of many subsequent days; Braddon's pamphlet, entitled

the Earl of Essex's Memory and Honour Vindicated, 1690; and the London Gazettes of July 31. and August

FN 382 Whether the attainder of Lord Russell would, if unreversed, have prevented his son from succeeding

to the earldom of Bedford is a difficult question. The old Earl collected the opinions of the greatest lawyers of

the age, which may still be seen among the archives at Woburn. It is remarkable that one of these opinions is

signed by Pemberton, who had presided at the trial. This circumstance seems to prove that the family did not

impute to him any injustice or cruelty; and in truth he had behaved as well as any judge, before the

FN 384 The Acts which reversed the attainders of Russell Sidney, Cornish, and Alice Lisle were private Acts.

Only the titles therefore are printed in the Statute Book; but the Acts will he found in Howell's Collection of

FN 386 Johnson tells this story himself in his strange pamphlet entitled, Notes upon the Phoenix Edition of

FN 387 Some Memorials of the Reverend Samuel Johnson, prefixed to the folio edition of his works, 1710.

FN 389 North's Examen, 224. North's evidence is confirmed by several contemporary squibs in prose and

"Come listen, ye Whigs, to my pitiful moan, All you that have ears, when the Doctor has none."

"Witness, ye Hills, ye Johnsons, Scots, Shebbeares; Hark to my call: for some of you have ears."

FN 393 North's Examen, 224. 254. North says "six hundred a year." But I have taken the larger sum from the

impudent petition which Gates addressed to the Commons, July 25. 1689. See the Journals.

FN 394 Van Citters, in his despatches to the States General, uses this nickname quite gravely.

FN 396 Lords' Journals, May 31. 1689; Commons' Journals, Aug. 2.; North's Examen, 224; Narcissus

FN 397 Sir Robert was the original hero of the Rehearsal, and was called Bilboa. In the remodelled Dunciad,

"And highborn Howard, more majestic sire, With Fool of Quality completes the quire."

FN 398 Key to the Rehearsal; Shadwell's Sullen Lovers; Pepys, May 5. 8. 1668; Evelyn, Feb. 16. 1684/5.

FN 401 Commons' Journals, Aug. 2. 1689; Dutch Ambassadors Extraordinary to the States General, July

FN 402 Lords' Journals, July 30. 1689; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Clarendon's Diary, July 31. 1689.

FN 405 Oldmixon accuses the Jacobites, Barnet the republicans. Though Barnet took a prominent part in the

discussion of this question, his account of what passed is grossly inaccurate. He says that the clause was

warmly debated in the Commons, and that Hampden spoke strongly for it. But we learn from the journals

(June 19 1689) that it was rejected nemine contradicente. The Dutch Ambassadors describe it as "een

FN 407 The history of this Bill may be traced in the journals of the two Houses, and in Grey's Debates.

FN 408 See Grey's Debates, and the Commons' Journals from March to July. The twelve categories will be

FN 410 The Life and Death of George Lord Jeffreys; Finch's speech in Grey's Debates, March 1. 1688/9.

FN 411 See, among many other pieces, Jeffreys's Elegy, the Letter to the Lord Chancellor exposing to him

the sentiments of the people, the Elegy on Dangerfield, Dangerfield's Ghost to Jeffreys, The Humble Petition

of Widows and fatherless Children in the West, the Lord Chancellor's Discovery and Confession made in the

lime of his sickness in the Tower; Hickeringill's Ceremonymonger; a broadside entitled "O rare show! O rare

sight! O strange monster! The like not in Europe! To be seen near Tower Hill, a few doors beyond the Lion's

FN 414 See the Life of Archbishop Sharp by his son. What passed between Scott and Jeffreys was related by

Scott to Sir Joseph Jekyl. See Tindal's History; Echard, iii. 932. Echard's informant, who is not named, but

who seems to have had good opportunities of knowing the truth, said that Jeffreys died, not, as the vulgar

believed, of drink, but of the stone. The distinction seems to be of little importance. It is certain that Jeffreys

was grossly intemperate; and his malady was one which intemperance notoriously tends to aggravate.

FN 415 See a Full and True Account of the Death of George Lord Jeffreys, licensed on the day of his death.

The wretched Le Noble was never weary of repeating that Jeffreys was poisoned by the usurper. I will give a

short passage as a specimen of the calumnies of which William was the object. "Il envoya," says Pasquin "ce

fin ragout de champignons au Chancelier Jeffreys, prisonnier dans la Tour, qui les trouva du meme goust, et

du mmee assaisonnement que furent les derniers dont Agrippine regala le bonhomme Claudius son epoux,

et que Neron appella depuis la viande des Dieux." Marforio asks: "Le Chancelier est donc mort dans la

Tour?" Pasquin answers: "Il estoit trop fidele a son Roi legitime, et trop habile dans les loix du royaume, pour

echapper a l'Usurpateur qu'il ne vouloit point reconnoistre. Guillemot prit soin de faire publier que ce

malheureux prisonnier estoit attaque du'ne fievre maligne; mais, a parler franchement, i1 vivroit peutestre

encore s'i1 n'avoit rien mange que de la main de ses anciens cuisiniers."Le Festin de Guillemot, 1689.

FN 416 Among the numerous pieces in which the malecontent Whigs vented their anger, none is more

curious than the poem entitled the Ghost of Charles the Second. Charles addresses William thus:

"Hail my blest nephew, whom the fates ordain To fill the measure of the Stuart's reign, That all the ills by our

whole race designed In thee their full accomplishment might find 'Tis thou that art decreed this point to clear,

FN 418 See Commons' Journals, and Grey's Debates, June 1. 3. and 4. 1689; Life of William, 1704.

FN 420 As to the minutes of the Privy Council, see the Commons' Journals of June 22. and 28., and of July 3.

FN 421 The letter of Halifax to Lady Russell is dated on the 23d of July 1689, about a fortnight after the

attack on him in the Lords, and about a week before the attack on him in the Commons.

FN 422 See the Lords' Journals of July 10. 1689, and a letter from London dated July 11/21, and transmitted

by Croissy to Avaux. Don Pedro de Ronquillo mentions this attack of the Whig Lords on Halifax in a

FN 423 This was on Saturday the 3d of August. As the division was in Committee, the numbers do not

appear in the journals. Clarendon, in his Diary, says that the majority was eleven. But Narcissus Luttrell,

Oldmixon, and Tindal agree in putting it at fourteen. Most of the little information which I have been able to

find about the debate is contained in a despatch of Don Pedro de Ronquillo. "Se resolvio" he says, "que el

sabado, en comity de toda la casa, se tratasse del estado de la nation para representarle al Rey. Emperose por

acusar al Marques de Olifax; y reconociendo sus emulos que no tenian partido bastante, quisieron remitir para

otro dia esta motion: pero el Conde de Elan, primogenito del Marques de Olifax, miembro de la casa, les dijo

que su padre no era hombre para andar peloteando con el, y que se tubiesse culpa lo acabasen de castigar, que

el no havia menester estar en la corte para portarse conforme a su estado, pues Dios le havia dado

abundamente para poderlo hazer; conque por pluralidad de votes vencio su partido." I suspect that Lord Eland

meant to sneer at the poverty of some of his father's persecutors, and at the greediness of others.

FN 424 This change of feeling, immediately following the debate on the motion for removing Halifax, is

FN 425 As to Ruvigny, see Saint Simon's Memoirs of the year 1697: Burnet, i. 366. There is some interesting

information about Ruvigny and about the Huguenot regiments in a narrative written by a French refugee of

the name of Dumont. This narrative, which is in manuscript, and which I shall occasionally quote as the

FN 426 See the Abrege de la Vie de Frederic Duc de Schomberg by Lunancy, 1690, the Memoirs of Count

FN 428 Journals of the Lords and Commons, Aug. 20. 1689; London Gazette, Aug, 22.

FN 429 J'estois d'avis qu', apres que la descente seroit faite, si on apprenoit que des Protestans se fassent

soulevez en quelques endroits du royaume, on fit main basse sur tous generalement."Avaux, July 31/Aug 10

FN 430 "Le Roy d'Angleterre m'avoit ecoute assez paisiblement la premi�re fois que je luy avois propose ce

FN 431 Avaux, Aug. 4/14. He says, "Je m'imagine qu'il est persuade que, quoiqu'il ne donne point d'ordre sur

cela, la plupart des Catholiques de la campagne se jetteront sur les Protestans."

FN 432 Lewis, Aug 27/Sept 6, reprimanded Avaux, though much too gently, for proposing to butcher the

whole Protestant population of Leinster, Connaught, and Munster. "Je n'approuve pas cependant la

proposition que vous faites de faire main basse sur tous les Protestans du royaume, du moment qu', en

quelque endroit que ce soit, ils se seront soulevez: et, outre que la punition du'ne infinite d'innocens pour peu

de coupables ne seroit pas juste, d'ailleurs les represailles contre les Catholiques seroient d'autant plus

dangereuses, que les premiers se trouveront mieux armez et soutenus de toutes les forces d'Angleterre."

FN 433 Ronquillo, Aug. 9/19 speaking of the siege of Londonderry, expresses his astonishment "que una

plaza sin fortification y sin genies de guerra aya hecho una defensa tan gloriosa, y que los sitiadores al

FN 434 This account of the Irish army is compiled from numerous letters written by Avaux to Lewis and to

Lewis's ministers. I will quote a few of the most remarkable passages. "Les plus beaux hommes," Avaux says

of the Irish, "qu'on peut voir. Il n'y en a presque point au dessous de cinq pieds cinq a six pouces." It will be

remembered that the French foot is longer than ours. "Ils sont tres bien faits: mais; il ne sont ny disciplinez ny

armez, et de surplus sont de grands voleurs." "La plupart de ces regimens sont levez par des gentilshommes

qui n'ont jamais este � l'armee. Ce sont des tailleurs, des bouchers, des cordonniers, qui ont forme les

compagnies et qui en sont les Capitaines." "Jamais troupes n'ont marche comme font cellescy. Ils vent

comme des bandits, et pillent tout ce qu'ils trouvent en chemin." "Quoiqu'il soit vrai que les soldats paroissent

fort resolus a bien faire, et qu'ils soient fort animez contre les rebelles, neantmoins il ne suffit pas de cela pour

combattre . . . . . Les officiers subalternes sont mauvais, et, a la reserve d'un tres peut nombre, il n'y en a point

qui ayt soin des soldats, des armes, et de la discipline." "On a beaucoup plus de confiance en la cavalerie,

dont la plus grande partie est assez bonne." Avaux mentions several regiments of horse with particular praise.

Of two of these he says, "On ne peut voir de meilleur regiment." The correctness of the opinion which he had

formed both of the infantry and of the cavalry was, after his departure from Ireland, signally proved at the

FN 435 I will quote a passage or two from the despatches written at this time by Avaux. On September 7/17.

he says: "De quelque coste qu'on se tournat, on ne pouvoir rien prevoir que de desagreable. Mais dans cette

extremite chacun s'est evertue. Les officiers ont fait leurs recrues avec beaucoup de diligence." Three days

later he says: "Il y a quinze jours que nous n'esperions guare de pouvoir mettre les choses en si bon estat mais

my Lord Tyrconnel et tous les Irlandais ont travaille avec tant d'empressement qu'on s'est mis en estat de

FN 436 Avaux, Aug 25/Sep 4 Aug 26/Sep 5; Life of James, ii. 373.; Melfort's vindication of himself among

the Nairne Papers. Avaux says: "Il pourra partir ce soir a la nuit: car je vois bien qu'il apprehende qu'il ne sera

FN 437 Story's Impartial History of the Wars of Ireland, 1693; Life of James, ii. 374; Avaux, Sept. 7/17

FN 440 Avaux, Sep. 10/20. 1689; Story's Impartial History; Life of James, ii. 377, 378 Orig. Mem. Story and

James agree in estimating the Irish army at about twenty thousand men. See also Dangeau, Oct. 28. 1689.

FN 442 See Grey's Debates, Nov. 26, 27, 28. 1689, and the Dialogue between a Lord Lieutenant and one of

FN 443 Nihell's Journal. A French officer, in a letter to Avaux, written soon after Schomberg's landing, says,

"Les Huguenots font plus de mal que les Anglois, et tuent force Catholiques pour avoir fait resistance."

FN 444 Story; Narrative transmitted by Avaux to Seignelay, Nov 26/Dec 6 1689 London Gazette, Oct. 14.

1689. It is curious that, though Dumont was in the camp before Dundalk, there is in his MS. no mention of

FN 445 Story's Impartial History; Dumont MS. The profaneness and dissoluteness of the camp during the

sickness are mentioned in many contemporary pamphlets both in verse and prose. See particularly a Satire

FN 447 Avaux, Oct. 11/21. Nov. 14/24 1689; Story's Impartial History; Life of James, ii. 382, 383. Orig.

FN 448 Story's Impartial History; Schomberg's Despatches; Nihell's Journal, and James's Life; Burnet, ii. 20.;

Dangeau's journal during this autumn; the Narrative sent by Avaux to Seignelay, and the Dumont MS. The

lying of the London Gazette is monstrous. Through the whole autumn the troops are constantly said to be in

good condition. In the absurd drama entitled the Royal Voyage, which was acted for the amusement of the

rabble of London in 1689, the Irish are represented as attacking some of the sick English. The English put the

FN 451 Commons' Journals, Nov. 13, 23. 1689; Grey's Debates, Nov. 13. 14. 18. 23. 1689. See, among

numerous pasquinades, the Parable of the Bearbaiting, Reformation of Manners, a Satire, the Mock

FN 452 The best account of these negotiations will be found in Wagenaar, lxi. He had access to Witsen's

papers, and has quoted largely from them. It was Witsen who signed in violent agitation, "zo als" he says,

"myne beevende hand getuigen kan." The treaties will be found in Dumont's Corps Diplomatique. They were

FN 453 The treaty between the Emperor and the States General is dated May 12. 1689. It will be found in

FN 454 See the despatch of Waldeck in the London Gazette, Aug. 26, 1689; historical Records of the First

FN 455 See the Dear Bargain, a Jacobite pamphlet clandestinely printed in 1690. "I have not patience," says

the writer, "after this wretch (Marlborough) to mention any other. All are innocent comparatively, even Kirke

FN 456 See the Mercuries for September 1689, and the four following months. See also Welwood's

Mercurius Reformatus of Sept. 18. Sept. 25. and Oct. 8. 1689. Melfort's Instructions, and his memorials to the

Pope and the Cardinal of Este, are among the Nairne Papers; and some extracts have been printed by

FN 457 See the Answer of a Nonjuror to the Bishop of Sarum's challenge in the Appendix to the Life of

Kettlewell. Among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library is a paper which, as Sancroft thought it worth

preserving, I venture to quote. The writer, a strong nonjuror, after trying to evade, by many pitiable shifts the

argument drawn by a more compliant divine from the practice of the primitive Church, proceeds thus:

"Suppose the primitive Christians all along, from the time of the very Apostles, had been as regardless of

their oaths by former princes as he suggests will he therefore say that their practice is to be a rule? Ill things

have been done, and very generally abetted, by men of otherwise very orthodox principles." The argument

from the practice of the primitive Christians is remarkably well put in a tract entitled The Doctrine of

Nonresistance or Passive Obedience No Way concerned in the Controversies now depending between the

Williamites and the Jacobites, by a Lay Gentleman, of the Communion of the Church of England, as by Law

FN 458 One of the most adulatory addresses ever voted by a Convocation was to Richard the Third. It will be

found in Wilkins's Concilia. Dryden, in his fine rifacimento of one of the finest passages in the Prologue to

the Canterbury Tales, represents the Good Parson as choosing to resign his benefice rather than acknowledge

the Duke of Lancaster to be King of England. For this representation no warrant can be found in Chaucer's

Poem, or any where else. Dryden wished to write something that would gall the clergy who had taken the

oaths, and therefore attributed to a Roman Catholic priest of the fourteenth century a superstition which

FN 459 See the defence of the profession which the Right Reverend Father in God John Lake, Lord Bishop

of Chichester, made upon his deathbed concerning passive obedience and the new oaths. 1690.

FN 460 London Gazette, June 30. 1689; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. "The eminentest men," says Luttrell.

FN 461 See in Kettlewell's Life, iii. 72., the retractation drawn by him for a clergyman who had taken the

FN 462 See the account of Dr. Dove's conduct in Clarendon's Diary, and the account of Dr. Marsh's conduct

FN 467 See Turner's Letter to Sancroft, dated on Ascension Day, 1689. The original is among the Tanner

MSS. in the Bodleian Library. But the letter will be found with much other curious matter in the Life of Ken

by a Layman, lately published. See also the Life of Kettlewell, iii. 95.; and Ken's letter to Burnet, dated Oct.

5. 1689, in Hawkins's Life of Ken. "I am sure," Lady Russell wrote to Dr. Fitzwilliam, "the Bishop of Bath

and Wells excited others to comply, when he could not bring himself to do so, but rejoiced when others did."

Ken declared that he had advised nobody to take the oaths, and that his practice had been to remit those who

asked his advice to their own studies and prayers. Lady Russell's assertion and Ken's denial will be found to

come nearly to the same thing, when we make those allowances which ought to be made for situation and

feeling, even in weighing the testimony of the most veracious witnesses. Ken, having at last determined to

cast in his lot with the nonjurors, naturally tried to vindicate his consistency as far as he honestly could. Lady

Russell, wishing to induce her friend to take the oaths, naturally made as munch of Ken's disposition to

compliance as she honestly could. She went too far in using the word "excited." On the other hand it is clear

that Ken, by remitting those who consulted him to their own studies and prayers, gave them to understand

that, in his opinion, the oath was lawful to those who, after a serious inquiry, thought it lawful. If people had

asked him whether they might lawfully commit perjury or adultery, he would assuredly have told them, not to

consider the point maturely and to implore the divine direction, but to abstain on peril of their souls.

FN 468 See the conversation of June 9. 1784, in Boswell's Life of Johnson, and the note. Boswell, with his

usual absurdity, is sure that Johnson could not have recollected "that the seven bishops, so justly celebrated

for their magnanimous resistance to arbitrary power, were yet nonjurors." Only five of the seven were

nonjurors; and anybody but Boswell would have known that a man may resist arbitrary power, and yet not be

a good reasoner. Nay, the resistance which Sancroft and the other nonjuring bishops offered to arbitrary

power, while they continued to hold the doctrine of nonresistance, is the most decisive proof that they were

incapable of reasoning. It must be remembered that they were prepared to take the whole kingly power from

James and to bestow it on William, with the title of Regent. Their scruple was merely about the word King.

I am surprised that Johnson should have pronounced William Law no reasoner. Law did indeed fall into great

errors; but they were errors against which logic affords no security. In mere dialectical skill he had very few

superiors. That he was more than once victorious over Hoadley no candid Whig will deny. But Law did not

FN 471 Johnson's Notes on the Phoenix Edition of Burnet's Pastoral Letter, 1692.

FN 472 The best notion of Hickes's character will be formed from his numerous controversial writings,

particularly his Jovian, written in 1684, his Thebaean Legion no Fable, written in 1687, though not published

till 1714, and his discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, 1695. His literary fame rests on works of a

FN 473 Collier's Tracts on the Stage are, on the whole his best pieces. But there is much that is striking in his

political pamphlets. His "Persuasive to Consider anon, tendered to the Royalists, particularly those of the

Church of England," seems to me one of the best productions of the Jacobite press.

FN 474 See Brokesby's Life of Dodwell. The Discourse against Marriages in different Communions is known

to me, I ought to say, only from Brokesby's copious abstract. That Discourse is very rare. It was originally

printed as a preface to a sermon preached by Leslie. When Leslie collected his works he omitted the

discourse, probably because he was ashamed of it. The Treatise on the Lawfulness of Instrumental Music I

FN 475 Dodwell tells us that the title of the work in which he first promulgated this theory was framed with

great care and precision. I will therefore transcribe the titlepage. "An Epistolary Discourse proving from

Scripture and the First Fathers that the Soul is naturally Mortal, but Immortalized actually by the Pleasure of

God to Punishment or to Reward, by its Union with the Divine Baptismal Spirit, wherein is proved that none

have the Power of giving this Divine Immortalizing Spirit since the Apostles but only the Bishops. By H.

Dodwell." Dr. Clarke, in a Letter to Dodwell (1706), says that this Epistolary Discourse is "a book at which

FN 477 See his works, and the highly curious life of him which was compiled from the papers of his friends

FN 478 See Fitzwilliam's correspondence with Lady Russell, and his evidence on the trial of Ashton, in the

State Trials. The only work which Fitzwilliam, as far as I have been able to discover, ever published was a

sermon on the Rye House Plot, preached a few weeks after Russell's execution. There are some sentences in

FN 479 Cyprian, in one of his Epistles, addresses the confessors thus: "Quosdam audio inficere numerum

vestrum, et laudem praecipui nominis prava sua conversatione destruere. . . Cum quanto nominis vestri

pudore delinquitur quando alius aliquis temulentus et lasciviens demoratur; alius in eam patriam unde extorris

est regreditur, ut deprehensus non eam quasi Christianus, sed quasi nocens pereat." He uses still stronger

language in the book de Unitate Ecclesiae: "Neque enim confessio immunem facet ab insidiis diaboli, aut

contra tentationes et pericula et incursus atque impetus saeculares adhuc in saeculo positum perpetua

securitate defendit; caeterum nunquam in confessoribus fraudes et stupra et adulteria postmodum videremus,

FN 480 Much curious information about the nonjurors will be found in the Biographical Memoirs of William

Bowyer, printer, which forms the first volume of Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the eighteenth century. A

FN 481 Cibber's play, as Cibber wrote it, ceased to he popular when the Jacobites ceased to be formidable,

and is now known only to the curious. In 1768 Bickerstaffe altered it into the Hypocrite, and substituted Dr.

Cantwell, the Methodist, for Dr. Wolfe, the Nonjuror. "I do not think," said Johnson, "the character of the

Hypocrite justly applicable to the Methodists; but it was very applicable to the nonjurors." Boswell asked him

if it were true that the nonjuring clergymen intrigued with the wives of their patrons. "I am afraid," said

Johnson, "many of them did." This conversation took place on the 27th of March I775. It was not merely in

careless tally that Johnson expressed an unfavourable opinion of the nonjurors. In his Life of Fenton, who

was a nonjuror, are these remarkable words: "It must be remembered that he kept his name unsullied, and

never suffered himself to be reduced, like too many of the same sect to mean arts and dishonourable shifts."

See the Character of a Jacobite, 1690. Even in Kettlewell's Life compiled from the papers of his friends

Hickes and Nelson, will be found admissions which show that, very soon after the schism, some of the

nonjuring clergy fell into habits of idleness, dependence, and mendicancy, which lowered the character of the

whole party. "Several undeserving persons, who are always the most confident, by their going up and down,

did much prejudice to the truly deserving, whose modesty would not suffer them to solicit for themselves . . .

. . . Mr. Kettlewell was also very sensible that some of his brethren spent too much of their time in places of

concourse and news, by depending for their subsistence upon those whom they there got acquainted with."

FN 485 Birch's Life of Tillotson; Life of Prideaux; Gentleman's Magazine for June and July, 1745.

FN 486 Diary of the Proceedings of the Commissioners, taken by Dr. Williams afterwards Bishop of

Chichester, one of the Commissioners, every night after he went home from the several meetings. This most

FN 490 See the alterations in the Book of Common Prayer prepared by the Royal Commissioners for the

revision of the Liturgy in 1689, and printed by order of the House of Commons in 1854.

FN 491 It is difficult to conceive stronger or clearer language than that used by the Council. Touton toinun

anagnosthenton orisan e agia sunodos, eteran pistin medeni ekseinai prospherein, egoun suggraphein, e

suntithenia, para ten oristheisan para ton agion pateron ton en te Nikaeon sunegthonton sun agio pneumati

tous de tolmontas e suntithenai pistin eteran, egoun prokomizein, e prospherein tois ethegousin epistrephein

eis epignosin tes agetheias e eks Ellinismou e eks Ioudaismon, i eks aireseos oiasdepotoun, toutous, ei men

eien episkopoi i klerikoi, allotrious einai tous episkopon, tes episkopes, kai tous klerikous ton kliron ei de

FN 493 It is curious to consider how those great masters of the Latin tongue who used to sup with Maecenas

and Pollio would have been perplexed by "Tibi Cherubim et Seraphim incessabili voce proclamant, Sanctus,

Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth;" or by "Ideo cum angelis et archangelis, cum thronis et

FN 494 I will give two specimens of Patrick's workmanship. "He maketh me," says David, "to lie down in

green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters." Patrick's version is as follows: "For as a good shepherd

leads his sheep in the violent heat to shady places, where they may lie down and feed (not in parched but) in

fresh and green pastures, and in the evening leads them (not to muddy and troubled waters, but) to pure and

quiet streams; so hath he already made a fair and plentiful provision for me, which I enjoy in peace without

In the Song of Solomon is an exquisitely beautiful verse. "I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find

my beloved, that ye tell him that I am sick of love." Patrick's version runs thus: "So I turned myself to those

of my neighbours and familiar acquaintance who were awakened by my cries to come and see what the

matter was; and conjured them, as they would answer it to God, that, if they met with my beloved, they

would let him know What shall I say?What shall I desire you to tell him but that I do not enjoy myself

FN 495 William's dislike of the Cathedral service is sarcastically noticed by Leslie in the Rehearsal, No. 7.

See also a Letter from a Member of the House of Commons to his Friend in the Country, 1689, and Bisset's

FN 497 See Collier's Desertion discussed, 1689. Thomas Carte, who was a disciple, and, at one time, an

assistant of Collier, inserted, so late as the year 1747, in a bulky History of England, an exquisitely absurd

note in which he assured the world that, to his certain knowledge, the Pretender had cured the scrofula, and

very gravely inferred that the healing virtue was transmitted by inheritance, and was quite independent of any

FN 498 See the Preface to a Treatise on Wounds, by Richard Wiseman, Sergeant Chirurgeon to His Majesty,

1676. But the fullest information on this curious subject will he found in the Charisma Basilicon, by John

Browne, Chirurgeon in ordinary to His Majesty, 1684. See also The Ceremonies used in the Time of King

Henry VII. for the Healing of them that be Diseased with the King's Evil, published by His Majesty's

Command, 1686; Evelyn's Diary, March 18. 1684; and Bishop Cartwright's Diary, August 28, 29, and 30.

1687. It is incredible that so large a proportion of the population should have been really scrofulous. No

doubt many persons who had slight and transient maladies were brought to the king, and the recovery of these

FN 500 See Whiston's Life of himself. Poor Whiston, who believed in every thing but the Trinity, tells us

gravely that the single person whom William touched was cured, notwithstanding His Majesty's want of faith.

FN 501 In several recent publications the apprehension that differences might arise between the Convocation

of York and the Convocation of Canterbury has been contemptuously pronounced chimerical. But it is not

easy to understand why two independent Convocations should be less likely to differ than two Houses of the

same Convocation; and it is matter of notoriety that, in the reigns of William the Third and Anne, the two

FN 502 Birch's Life of Tillotson; Life of Prideaux. From Clarendon's Diary, it appears that he and Rochester

FN 503 See the Roll in the Historical Account of the present Convocation, appended to the second edition of

Vox Cleri, 1690. The most considerable name that I perceive in the list of proctors chosen by the parochial

FN 505 Birch's Life of Tillotson. The account there given of the coldness between Compton and Tillotson

was taken by Birch from the MSS. of Henry Wharton, and is confirmed by many circumstances which are

FN 508 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Historical Account of the Present Convocation.

FN 511 Historical Account of the Present Convocation; Burnet, ii. 58.; Kennet's History of the Reign of

FN 515 That there was such a jealousy as I have described is admitted in the pamphlet entitled Vox Cleri.

"Some country ministers now of the Convocation, do now see in what great ease and plenty the City

ministers live, who have their readers and lecturers, and frequent supplies, and sometimes tarry in the vestry

till prayers be ended, and have great dignities in the Church, besides their rich parishes in the City." The

author of this tract, once widely celebrated, was Thomas Long, proctor for the clergy of the diocese of Exeter.

In another pamphlet, published at this time, the rural clergymen are said to have seen with an evil eye their

London brethren refreshing themselves with sack after preaching. Several satirical allusions to the fable of

the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse will be found in the pamphlets of that winter.

FN 516 Barnet, ii, 33, 34. The best narratives of what passed in this Convocation are the Historical Account

appended to the second edition of Vox Cleri, and the passage in Kennet's History to which I have already

referred the reader. The former narrative is by a very high churchman, the latter by a very low churchman.

Those who are desirous of obtaining fuller information must consult the contemporary pamphlets. Among

them are Vox Populi; Vox Laici; Vox Regis et Regni; the Healing Attempt; the Letter to a Friend, by Dean

Prideaux the Letter from a Minister in the Country to a Member of the Convocation; the Answer to the Merry

Answer to Vox Cleri; the Remarks from the Country upon two Letters relating to the Convocation; the

Vindication of the Letters in answer to Vox Cleri; the Answer to the Country Minister's Letter. All these

FN 517 "Halifax a eu une reprimande severe publiquement dans le conseil par le Prince d'Orange pour avoir

trop balance."Avaux to De Croissy, Dublin, June 1689. "his mercurial Wit," says Burnet, ii. 4., "was not

FN 521 Commons' Journals, Nov. 7. 19., Dec. 30 1689. The rule of the House then was that no petition could

be received against the imposition of a tax. This rule was, after a very hard fight, rescinded in 1842. The

petition of the Jews was not received, and is not mentioned in the Journals. But something may be learned

about it from Narcissus Luttrell's Diary and from Grey's Debates, Nov. 19. 1689,

FN 522 James, in the very treatise in which he tried to prove the Pope to be Antichrist, says "For myself, if

that were yet the question, I would with all my heart give my consent that the Bishop of Rome should have

the first seat." There is a remarkable letter on this subject written by James to Charles and Buckingham, when

they were in Spain. Heylyn, speaking of Laud's negotiation with Rome, says: "So that upon the point the

Pope was to content himself among us in England with a priority instead of a superiority over other Bishops,

and with a primacy instead of a supremacy in those parts of Christendom, which I conceive no man of

FN 529 London Gazette, Septemher 2 1689; Observations upon Mr. Walker's Account of the Siege of

Londonderry, licensed October 4. 1689; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Mr. J. Mackenzie's Narrative a False

FN 530 Walker's True Account, 1689; An Apology for the Failures charged on the True Account, 1689;

Reflections on the Apology, 1689; A Vindication of the True Account by Walker, 1689; Mackenzie's

Narrative, 1690; Mr. Mackenzie's Narrative a False Libel, 1690; Dr. Walker's Invisible Champion foyled by

Mackenzie, 1690; Weiwood's Mercurius Reformatus, Dec. 4. and 11 1689. The Oxford editor of Burnet's

History expresses his surprise at the silence which the Bishop observes about Walker. In the Burnet MS.

Harl. 6584. there is an animated panegyric on Walker. Why that panegyric does not appear in the History, I

FN 534 "Colonel Ludlow, an old Oliverian, and one of King Charles the First his Judges, is arrived lately in

FN 536 Commons' Journals, November 6. and 8. 1689; Grey's Debates; London Gazette, November 18.

FN 537 "Omme solum forti patria, quia patris." See Addison's Travels. It is a remarkable circumstance that

Addison, though a Whig, speaks of Ludlow in language which would better have become a Tory, and sneers

FN 543 Commons' Journals, Oct. 26. 1689; Wood's Athenae Oxonienses; Dod's Church History, VIII. ii. 3.

FN 544 Commons' Journals, October 28. 5689. The proceedings will be found in the collection of State

FN 547 The report is in the Lords' Journals, Dec. 20. 1689. Hampden's examination was on the 18th of

FN 548 This, I think, is clear from a letter of Lady Montague to Lady Russell, dated Dec. 23. 1689, three

FN 549 Commons' Journals, Dec. 14. 1689; Grey's Debates; Boyer's Life of William.

FN 552 Thus, I think, must be understood some remarkable words in a letter written by William to Portland,

on the day after Sacheverell's bold and unexpected move. William calculates the amount of the supplies, and

then says: "S'ils n'y mettent des conditions que vous savez, c'est une bonne affaire: mais les Wigges sont si

FN 553 "The authority of the chair, the awe and reverence to order, and the due method of debates being

irrecoverably lost by the disorder and tumultuousness of the House."Sir J. Trevor to the King, Appendix to

FN 554 Commons' Journals, Jan. 10. 1689/90 I have done my best to frame an account of this contest out of

very defective materials. Burnet's narrative contains more blunders than lines. He evidently trusted to his

memory, and was completely deceived by it. My chief authorities are the Journals; Grey's Debates; William's

Letters to Portland; the Despatches of Van Citters; a Letter concerning the Disabling Clauses, lately offered

to the House of Commons, for regulating Corporations, 1690; The True Friends to Corporations vindicated,

in an answer to a letter concerning the Disabling Clauses, 1690; and Some Queries concerning the Election of

Members for the ensuing Parliament, 1690. To this last pamphlet is appended a list of those who voted for the

Sacheverell Clause. See also Clarendon's Diary, Jan. 10. 1689/90, and the Third Part of the Caveat against the

Whigs, 1712. William's Letter of the 10th of January ends thus. The news of the first division only had

reached Kensington. "Il est a present onze eures de nuit, et dix eures la Chambre Basse estoit encore

ensemble. Ainsi je ne vous puis escrire par cette ordinaire l'issue de l'affaire. Les previos questions les Tories

l'ont emporte de cinq vois. Ainsi vous pouvez voir que la chose est bien disputee. J'ay si grand somiel, et mon

toux m'incomode que je ne vous en saurez dire davantage. Josques a mourir a vous."

On the same night Van Citters wrote to the States General. The debate he said, had been very sharp. The

design of the Whigs, whom he calls the Presbyterians, had been nothing less than to exclude their opponents

from all offices, and to obtain for themselves the exclusive possession of power.

FN 556 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Jan. 16. 1690; Van Citters to the States General, Jan. 21/31

FN 561 Commons' Journals, Jan. 21. 1689/90 On the same day William wrote thus from Kensington to

Portland: "C'est aujourd'hui le grand jour l'eguard du Bill of Indemnite. Selon tout ce que is puis aprendre, il

y aura beaucoup de chaleur, et rien determiner; et de la maniere que la chose est entourre, il n'y a point

d'aparence que cette affaire viene a aucune conclusion. Et ainsi il se pouroit que la cession fust fort courts;

n'ayant plus dargent a esperer; et les esprits s'aigrissent ton contre l'autre de plus en plus." Three days later

Van Citters informed the States General that the excitement about the Bill of Indemnity was extreme.

FN 562 Burnet, ii. 39.; MS. Memoir written by the first Lord Lonsdale in the Mackintosh Papers.

FN 565 William to Portland, Jan. 10/20 1690. "Les Wiges ont peur de me perdre trop tost, avant qu'ils n'ayent

fait avec moy ce qu'ils veulent: car, pour leur amitie, vous savez ce qu'il y a a compter ladessus en ce pays

icy." Jan. 14/24 "Me voila le plus embarasse du monde, ne sachant quel parti prendre, estant toujours

persuade que, sans que j'aille en Irlande, l'on n'y faira rien qui vaille. Pour avoir du conseil en cette affaire, je

n'en ay point a attendre, personne n'ausant dire ses sentimens. Et l'on commence deja a dire ouvertement que

ce sont des traitres qui m'ont conseille de preudre cette resolution." Jan. 21/31 "Je nay encore rien dit,"he

means to the Parliament,"de mon voyage pour l'Irlande. Et je ne suis point encore determine si j'en

parlerez: mais je crains que nonobstant j'aurez une adresse pour n'y point aller ce qui m'embarassera

FN 566 William to Portland, Jan 28/Feb 7 1690; Van Citters to the States General, same date; Evelyn's Diary;

Lords' Journals, Jan. 27. I will quote William's own words. "Vous voirez mon harangue imprimee: ainsi je ne

vous en direz rien. Et pour les raisone qui m'y ont oblige, je les reserverez a vous les dire jusques a vostre

retour. Il semble que les Toris en sont bien aise, male point les Wiggs. Ils estoient tous fort surpris quand je

leur parlois, n'ayant communique mon dessin qu'a une seule personne. Je vie des visages long comme un

aune, change de couleur vingt fois pendant que je parlois. Tous ces particularites jusques a vostre heureux

FN 567 Evelyn's Diary; Clarendon's Diary, Feb. 9. 1690; Van Citters to the States General, Jan 31/Feb 10.;

FN 571 William to Portland, Feb 28/March 10 29. 1690; Van Citters to the States General, March 4/14;

FN 574 The votes were for Sawyer 165, for Finch 141, for Bennet, whom I suppose to have been a Whig, 87.

At the University every voter delivers his vote in writing. One of the votes given on this occasion is in the

following words, "Henricus Jenkes, ex amore justitiae, eligit virum consultissimum Robertum Sawyer."

FN 576 It is amusing to see how absurdly foreign pamphleteers, ignorant of the real state of things in

England, exaggerated the importance of John Hampden, whose name they could not spell. In a French

Dialogue between William and the Ghost of Monmouth, William says, "Entre ces membres de la Chambre

Basse etoit un certain homme hardy, opiniatre, et zele a l'exces pour sa creance; on l'appelle Embden,

egalement dangereux par son esprit et par son credit. . . . je ne trouvay point de chemin plus court pour me

delivrer de cette traverse que de casser le parlement, en convoquer un autre, et empescher que cet homme, qui

me faisoit tant d'ombrages, ne fust nomme pour un des deputez au nouvel parlement." "Ainsi," says the

Ghost, "cette cassation de parlement qui a fait tant de bruit, et a produit tant de raisonnemens et de

speculations, n'estoit que pour exclure Embden. Mais s'il estoit si adroit et si zele, comment astu pu trouver

le moyen de le faire exclure du nombre des deputez?" To this very sensible question the King answers, "Il

m'a fallu faire d'etranges manoeuvres pour en venir a bout."L'Ombre de Monmouth, 1690.

FN 577 "A present tout dependra d'un bon succes en Irlande; et a quoy il faut que je m'aplique entierement

pour regler le mieux que je puis toutte chose. . . . je vous asseure que je n'ay pas peu sur les bras, estant aussi

FN 578 Van Citters, Feb. 14/24 1689/90; Memoir of the Earl of Chesterfield by himself; Halifax to

Chesterfield, Feb. 6.; Chesterfield to Halifax, Feb 8. The editor of the letters of the second Earl of

Chesterfield, not allowing for the change of style, has misplaced this correspondence by a year.

FN 580 A strange peculiarity of his constitution is mentioned in an account of him which was published a

few months after his death. See the volume entitled "Lives and Characters of the most Illustrious Persons,

FN 581 Monmouth's pension and the good understanding between him and the Court are mentioned in a

letter from a Jacobite agent in England, which is in the Archives of the French War Office. The date is April

FN 582 The grants of land obtained by Delamere are mentioned by Narcissus Luttrell. It appears from the

Treasury Letter Book of 1690 that Delamere continued to dim the government for money after his retirement.

As to his general character it would not be safe to trust the representations of satirists. But his own writings,

and the admissions of the divine who preached his funeral sermon, show that his temper was not the most

gentle. Clarendon remarks (Dec. 17. 1688) that a little thing sufficed to put Lord Delamere into a passion. In

"His boding looks a mind distracted show; And envy sits engraved upon his brow."

FN 583 My notion of Lowther's character has been chiefly formed from two papers written by himself, one of

which has been printed, though I believe not published. A copy of the other is among the Mackintosh MSS.

Something I have taken from contemporary satires. That Lowther was too ready to expose his life in private

encounters is sufficiently proved by the fact that, when he was First Lord of the Treasury, he accepted a

challenge from a custom house officer whom he had dismissed. There was a duel; and Lowther was severely

FN 586 Till some years after this time the First Lord of the Treasury was always the man of highest rank at

the Board. Thus Monmouth, Delamere and Godolphin took their places according to the order of precedence

FN 587 The dedication, however, was thought too laudatory. "The only thing," Mr. Pope used to say, "he

could never forgive his philosophic master was the dedication to the Essay."Ruffhead's Life of Pope.

FN 588 Van Citters to the States General April 25/May 5, 1690. Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Treasury Letter

FN 589 The Dialogue between a Lord Lieutenant and one of his Deputies will not be found in the collection

of Warrington's writings which was published in 1694, under the sanction, as it should seem, of his family.

FN 590 Van Citters, to the States General, March 18/28 April 4/14 1690; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Burnet,

ii. 72.; The Triennial Mayor, or the Rapparees, a Poem, 1691. The poet says of one of the new civic

"Soon his pretence to conscience we can rout, And in a bloody jury find him out, Where noble Publius

FN 593 Van Citters, March 14/24 1690. The sermon is extant. It was preached at Bow Church before the

FN 598 Commons' Journals, Mar. 28. 1690. A very clear and exact account of the way in which the revenue

"Oh, happy couple! In their life There does appear no sign of strife. They do agree so in the main, To

FN 601 Swift mentions the deficiency of hospitality and magnificence in her household. Journal to Stella,

FN 602 Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. But the Duchess was so abandoned a liar, that it is impossible

FN 604 The Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. With that habitual inaccuracy, which, even when she has

no motive for lying, makes it necessary to read every word written by her with suspicion, she creates

Shrewsbury a Duke, and represents herself as calling him "Your Grace." He was not made a Duke till 1694.

FN 611 Commons' Journals, April 8. and 9. 1690; Grey's Debates; Burnet, ii. 42. Van Citters, writing on the

FN 613 Commons' Journals, April 24, 25, and 26; Grey's Debates; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. Narcissus is

unusually angry. He calls the bill "a perfect trick of the fanatics to turn out the Bishops and most of the

Church of England Clergy." In a Whig pasquinade entitled "A speech intended to have been spoken on the

Triennial Bill, on Jan. 28. 1692/3 the King is said to have "browbeaten the Abjuration Bill."

FN 614 Lords' Journals, May 1. 1690. This bill is among the Archives of the House of Lords. Burnet

confounds it with the bill which the Commons had rejected in the preceding week. Ralph, who saw that

Burnet had committed a blunder, but did not see what the blunder was, has, in trying to correct it, added

several blunders of his own; and the Oxford editor of Burnet has been misled by Ralph.

FN 615 Lords' Journals, May 2. and 3. 1690; Van Citters, May 2.; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Burnet, ii. 44.;

and Lord Dartmouth's note. The changes made by the Committee may be seen on the bill in the Archives of

FN 616 These distinctions were much discussed at the time. Van Citters, May 20/30 1690.

FN 618 Roger North was one of the many malecontents who were never tired of harping on this string.

FN 619 Stat. 2 W.sess. 1. c. 6.; Grey's Debates, April 29., May 1. 5, 6, 7. 1690.

FN 622 Macariae Excidium. This most curious work has been recently edited with great care and diligence

by Mr. O'Callaghan. I owe so much to his learning and industry that I most readily excuse the national

partiality which sometimes, I cannot but think, perverts his judgment. When I quote the Macariae Excidium, I

always quote the Latin text. The English version is, I am convinced, merely a translation from the Latin, and

FN 624 Louvois writes to Avaux, Dec 26/Jan 5 1689/90. "Comme le Roy a veu par vos lettres que le Roy

d'Angleterre craignoit de manquer de cuivre pour faire de la monnoye, Sa Majeste a donne ordre, que l'on

mist sur le bastiment qui portera cette lettre une piece de canon du calibre de deux qui est eventee, de laquelle

ceux qui travaillent a la monnoye du Roy d'Angleterre pourront se servir pour continuer a faire de la

FN 625 Louvois to Avaux, Nov. 1/11. 1689. The force sent by Lewis to Ireland appears by the lists at the

French War Office to have amounted to seven thousand two hundred and ninetyone men of all ranks. At the

French War Office is a letter from Marshal d'Estrees who saw the four Irish regiments soon after they had

landed at Brest. He describes them as "mal chausses, mal vetus, et n'ayant point d'uniforme dans leurs habits,

si ce n'est qu'ils sont tous fort mauvais." A very exact account of Macarthy's breach of parole will be found in

Mr. O'Callaghan's History of the Irish Brigades. I am sorry that a writer to whom I owe so much should try to

vindicate conduct which, as described by himself, was in the highest degree dishonourable.

FN 626 Lauzun to Louvois. May 28/June 7 and June 1 1690, at the French War Office.

FN 631 Lauzun to Louvois, April 2/12 May 10/20. 1690. La Hoguette, who held the rank of Marechal de

FN 632 "La Politique des Anglois a ete de tenir ces peuples cy comme des esclaves, et si bas qu'il ne leur

estoit pas permis d'apprendre a lire et a �crire. Cela les a rendu si bestes qu'ils n'ont presque point d'humanite.

Rien de les esmeut. Ils sont peu sensibles a l'honneur; et les menaces ne les estonnent point. L'interest meme

ne les peut engager au travail. Ce sont pourtant les gens du monde les mieux faits,"Desgrigny to Louvois,

FN 633 See Melfort's Letters to James, written in October 1689. They are among the Nairne Papers, and were

FN 635 Avaux wrote thus to Lewis on the 5th of June 1689: "Il nous est venu des nouvelles assez

considerables d'Angleterre et d'Escosse. Je me donne l'honneur d'en envoyer des memoires a vostre Majeste,

tels que je les ay receus du Roy de la Grande Bretagne. Le commencement des nouvelles dattees d'Angleterre

est la copie d'une lettre de M. Pen, que j'ay veue en original." The Memoire des Nouvelles d'Angleterre et

d'Escosse, which was sent with this despatch, begins with the following sentences, which must have been part

of Penn's letter: "Le Prince d'Orange commence d'estre fort d�goutte de l'humeur des Anglois et la face des

choses change bien viste, selon la nature des insulaires et sa sante est fort mauvaise. Il y a un nuage qui

commence a se former au nord des deux royaumes, ou le Roy a beaucoup d'amis, ce qui donne beaucoup

d'inquietude aux principaux amis du Prince d'Orange, qui, estant riches, commencent a estre persuadez que ce

sera l'esp�e qui decidera de leur sort, ce qu'ils ont tant tach� d'eviter. Ils apprehendent une invasion d'Irlande

FN 636 "Le bon effet, Sire, que ces lettres d'Escosse et d'Angleterre ont produit, est qu'elles ont enfin

persuade le Roy d'Angleterre qu'il ne recouvrera ses estats que les armes a la main; et ce n'est pas peu de l'en

FN 637 Van Citters to the States General, March 1/11 1689. Van Citters calls Penn "den bekenden

FN 638 See his trial in the Collection of State Trials, and the Lords' Journals of Nov. 11, 12. and 27. 1689.

FN 639 One remittance of two thousand pistoles is mentioned in a letter of Croissy to Avaux, Feb. 16/26

1689. James, in a letter dated Jan. 26. 1689, directs Preston to consider himself as still Secretary,

FN 640 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Commons' Journals, May 14. 15. 20. 1690; Kingston's True History, 1697.

FN 641 The Whole Life of Mr. William Fuller, being an Impartial Account of his Birth, Education, Relations

and Introduction into the Service of the late King James and his Queen, together with a True Discovery of the

Intrigues for which he lies now confined; as also of the Persons that employed and assisted him therein, with

his Hearty Repentance for the Misdemeanours he did in the late Reign, and all others whom he hath injured;

impartially writ by Himself during his Confinement in the Queen's Bench, 1703. Of course I shall use this

FN 645 He wrote to Portland, "Je plains la povre reine, qui est en des terribles afflictions."

FN 647 That Lady Shrewsbury was a Jacobite, and did her best to make her son so, is certain from Lloyd's

Paper of May 1694, which is among the Nairne MSS., and was printed by Macpherson.

FN 648 This is proved by a few words in a paper which James, in November 1692, laid before the French

government. "Il y a" says he, "le Comte de Shrusbery, qui, etant Secretaire d'Etat du Prince d'Orange, s'est

defait de sa charge par mon ordre." One copy of this most valuable paper is in the Archives of the French

Foreign Office. Another is among the Nairne MSS. in the Bodleian Library. A translation into English will be

FN 651 Among the State Poems (vol. ii. p. 211.) will be found a piece which some ignorant editor has

entitled, "A Satyr written when the K went to Flanders and left nine Lords justices." I have a manuscript

copy of this satire, evidently contemporary, and bearing the date 1690. It is indeed evident at a glance that the

nine persons satirised are the nine members of the interior council which William appointed to assist Mary

FN 658 London Gazettes, June 5. 12. 16. 1690; Hop to the States General from Chester, June 9/19. Hop

FN 659 Clarendon's Diary, June 7. and 12. 1690; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Baden, the Dutch Secretary of

Legation, to Van Citters, June 10/20; Fuller's Life of himself; Welwood's Mercurius Reformatus, June 11

FN 662 Baden to Van Citters, June 20/30 1690.; Clarendon's Diary, June 19. Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 667 Mary to William, June 26. 1690; Clarendon's Diary of the same date; Narcissus Luttrell's. Diary.

FN 669 Report of the Commissioners of the Admiralty to the Queen, dated Sheerness, July 18. 1690;

Evidence of Captains Cornwall, Jones, Martin and Hubbard, and of Vice Admiral Delaval; Burnet, ii. 52., and

Speaker Onslow's Note; Memoires du Marechal de Tourville; Memoirs of Transactions at Sea by Josiah

Burchett, Esq., Secretary to the Admiralty, 1703; London Gazette, July 3.; Historical and Political Mercury

for July 1690; Mary to William, July 2.; Torrington to Caermarthen, July I. The account of the battle in the

Paris Gazette of July 15. 1690 is not to be read without shame: "On a sceu que les Hollandois s'estoient tres

bien battus, et qu'ils s'estoient comportez en cette occasion en braves gens, mais que les Anglois n'en avoient

pas agi de meme." In the French official relation of le battle off Cape Bevezier, an odd corruption of

Pevensey,are some passages to the same effect: "Les Hollandois combattirent avec beaucoup de courage et

de fermete; mais ils ne furent pas bien secondez par les Anglois." "Les Anglois se distinguerent des vaisseax

FN 671 London Gazette, June 30. 1690; Historical and Political Mercury for July 1690.

FN 673 Burnet, ii. 53, 54.; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, July 7. 11. 1690 London Gazette, July 14. 1690.

FN 675 Mary to the States General, July 12.; Burchett's Memoirs; An important Account of some remarkable

FN 676 London Gazette, June 19 1690; History of the Wars in Ireland by an Officer in the Royal Army,

1690,; Villare Hibernicum, 1690;. Story's Impartial History, 1691; Historical Collections relating to the town

of Belfast, 1817. This work contains curious extracts from MSS. of the seventeenth century. In the British

Museum is a map of Belfast made in 1685 so exact that the houses may be counted.

FN 677 Lauzun to Louvois, June 16/26. The messenger who brought the news to Lauzun had heard the guns

and seen the bonfires. History of the Wars in Ireland by an Officer of the Royal Army, 1690; Lire of James,

ii. 392., Orig. Mem.; Burnet, ii. 47. Burnet is strangely mistaken when he says that William had been six days

FN 678 A True and Perfect Journal of the Affairs of Ireland by a Person of Quality, 1690; King, iii. 18.

FN 680 The order addressed to the Collector of Customs will be found in Dr. Reid's History of the

FN 681 "La gayete peinte sur son visage," says Dumont, who saw him at Belfast, "nous fit tout esperer pour

FN 682 Story's Impartial Account; MS. Journal of Colonel Bellingham; The Royal Diary.

FN 684 Lauzun to Louvois, June 23/July 3 1690; Life of James, ii. 393, Orig. Mem.

FN 686 Much interesting information respecting the field of battle and the surrounding country will be found

in Mr. Wilde's pleasing volume entitled "The Beauties of the Boyne and Blackwater."

FN 687 Memorandum in the handwriting of Alexander, Earl of Marchmont. He derived his information from

FN 688 James says (Life, ii 393. Orig. Mem.) that the country afforded no better position. King, in a

thanksgiving sermon which he preached at Dublin after the close of the campaign, told his hearers that "the

advantage of the post of the Irish was, by all intelligent men, reckoned above three to one." See King's

Thanksgiving Sermon, preached on Nov 16. 1690, before Lords Justices. This is, no doubt, an absurd

exaggeration. But M. de la Hoguette, one of the principal French officers who was present at the battle of the

Boyne, informed Louvois that the Irish army occupied a good defensive position, Letter of La Hoguette from

FN 690 See the Historical records of the Regiments of the British army, and Story's list of the army of

FN 691 See his Funeral Sermon preached at the church of Saint Mary Aldermary on the 24th of June 1690.

FN 692 Story's Impartial History; History of the Wars in Ireland by an Officer of the Royal Army; Hop to the

FN 693 London Gazette, July 7. 1690; Story's Impartial History; History of the Wars in Ireland by an Officer

of the Royal Army; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Lord Marchmont's Memorandum; Burnet, ii. 50. and

FN 695 That I have done no injustice to the Irish infantry will appear from the accounts which the French

officers who were at the Boyne sent to their government and their families. La Hoguette, writing hastily to

Louvois on the 4/14th of July, says: "je vous diray seulement, Monseigneur, que nous n'avons pas este battus,

mais que les ennemys ont chasses devant eux les trouppes Irlandoises comme des moutons, sans avoir essaye

Writing some weeks later more fully from Limerick, he says, "J'en meurs de honte." He admits that it would

have been no easy matter to win the battle, at best. "Mais il est vray aussi," he adds, "que les Irlandois ne

firent pas la moindre resistance, et plierent sans tirer un seul coup." Zurlauben, Colonel of one of the finest

regiments in the French service, wrote to the same effect, but did justice to the courage of the Irish horse,

There is at the French War Office a letter hastily scrawled by Boisseleau, Lauzun's second in command, to

his wife after the battle. He wrote thus: "Je me porte bien, ma chere feme. Ne t'inquieste pas de moy. Nos

Desgrigny writing on the 10/20th of July, assigns several reasons for the defeat. "La premi�re et la plus forte

est la fuite des Irlandois qui sont en verite des gens sur lesquels il ne faut pas compter du tout." In the same

letter he says: "Il n'est pas naturel de croire qu'une armee de vingt cinq mille hommes qui paroissoit de la

meilleure volonte du monde, et qui a la veue des ennemis faisoit des cris de joye, dut etre entierement defaite

sans avoir tire l'epee et un seul coup de mousquet. Il y a en tel regiment tout entier qui a laisse ses habits, ses

armes, et ses drapeaux sur le champ de bataille, et a gagne les montagnes avec ses officiers."

I looked in vain for the despatch in which Lauzun must have given Louvois a detailed account of the battle.

FN 696 Lauzun wrote to Seignelay, July 16/26 1690, "Richard Amilton a ete fait prisonnier, faisant fort bien

FN 697 My chief materials for the history of this battle are Story's Impartial Account and Continuation; the

History of the War in Ireland by an Officer of the Royal Army; the despatches in the French War Office; The

Life of James, Orig. Mem. Burnet, ii. 50. 60; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; the London Gazette of July 10. 1690;

the Despatches of Hop and Baden; a narrative probably drawn up by Portland, which William sent to the

States General; Portland's private letter to Melville; Captain Richardson's Narrative and map of the battle; the

Dumont MS., and the Bellingham MS. I have also seen an account of the battle in a Diary kept in bad Latin

and in an almost undecipherable hand by one of the beaten army who seems to have been a hedge

schoolmaster turned Captain. This Diary was kindly lent to me by Mr. Walker, to whom it belongs. The

writer relates the misfortunes of his country in a style of which a short specimen may suffice: "1 July, 1690.

O diem illum infandum, cum inimici potiti sunt pass apud Oldbridge et nos circumdederunt et fregerunt

prope Plottin. Hinc omnes fugimus Dublin versus. Ego mecum tuli Cap Moore et Georgium Ogle, et venimus

FN 698 See Pepys's Diary, June 4. 1664. "He tells me above all of the Duke of York, that he is more himself,

and more of judgment is at hand in him, in the middle of a desperate service than at other times." Clarendon

repeatedly says the same. Swift wrote on the margin of his copy of Clarendon, in one place, "How old was he

(James) when he turned Papist and a coward?"in another, "He proved a cowardly Popish king."

FN 699 Pere Orleans mentions that Sarsfield accompanied James. The battle of the Boyne had scarcely been

fought when it was made the subject of a drama, the Royal Flight, or the Conquest of Ireland, a Farce, 1690.

Nothing more execrable was ever written. But it deserves to be remarked that, in this wretched piece, though

the Irish generally are represented as poltroons, an exception is made in favour of Sarsfield. "This fellow,"

says James, aside, "I will make me valiant, I think, in spite of my teeth." "Curse of my stars!" says Sarsfield,

after the battle. "That I must be detached! I would have wrested victory out of heretic Fortune's hands."

FN 700 Both La Hoguette and Zurlauben informed their government that it had been necessary to fire on the

Irish fugitives, who would otherwise have thrown the French ranks into confusion.

FN 705 Story; True and Perfect journal; London Gazette, July 10 1690 Burnet, ii. 51.; Leslie's Answer to

FN 707 True and Perfect journal. London Gazette, July 10 and 14. 1690; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. In the

Life of James Bonnell, Accountant General of Ireland, (1703) is a remarkable religious meditation, from

which I will quote a short passage. "How did we see the Protestants on the great day of our Revolution,

Thursday the third of July, a day ever to be remembered by us with the greatest thankfulness, congratulate

and embrace one another as they met, like persons alive from the dead, like brothers and sisters meeting after

a long absence, and going about from house to house to give each other joy of God's great mercy, enquiring

of one another how they past the late days of distress and terror, what apprehensions they had, what fears or

dangers they were under; those that were prisoners, how they got their liberty, how they were treated, and

FN 708 London Gazette, July 14. 1690; Story; True and Perfect Journal; Dumont MS. Dumont is the only

person who mentions the crown. As he was present, he could not be mistaken. It was probably the crown

which James had been in the habit of wearing when he appeared on the throne at the King's Inns.

FN 709 Monthly Mercury for August 1690; Burnet, ii. 50; Dangeau, Aug. 2. 1690, and Saint Simon's note;

The Follies of France, or a true Relation of the extravagant Rejoicings, dated Paris, Aug. 8. 1690.

FN 710 "Me tiene," the Marquis of Cogolludo, Spanish minister at Rome, says of this report, "en sumo

cuidado y desconsuelo, pues esta seria la ultima ruina de la causa comun."Cogolludo to Ronquillo, Rome,

FN 712 "Del sucesso de Irlanda doy a v. Exca la enorabuena, y le aseguro no ha bastado casi la gente que

tengo en la Secretaria para repartir copias dello, pues le he enbiado a todo el lugar, y la primera al

Papa."Cogolludo to Ronquillo, postscript to the letter of Aug. 2. Cogolludo, of course, uses the new style.

FN 717 See two letters annexed to the Memoirs of the Intendant Foucault, and printed in the work of M. de

Sirtema des Grovestins in the archives of the War Office at Paris is a letter written from Brest by the Count of

Bouridal on July 11/21 1690. The Count says: "Par la relation du combat que j'ay entendu faire au Roy

d'Angleterre et a plusieurs de sa suite en particulier, il ne me paroit pas qu'il soit bien informe de tout ce qui

s'est passe dans cette action, et qu'il ne scait que la deroute de ses troupes."

FN 718 It was not only on this occasion that James held this language. From one of the letters quoted in the

last note it appears that on his road front Brest to Paris he told every body that the English were impatiently

FN 720 See the articles Galere and Galerien, in the Encyclopedie, with the plates; A True Relation of the

Cruelties and Barbarities of the French upon the English Prisoners of War, by R. Hutton, licensed June 27.

FN 722 This anecdote, true or false, was current at the time, or soon after. In 1745 it was mentioned as a story

which old people had heard in their youth. It is quoted in the Gentleman's Magazine of that year from another

FN 725 I give this interesting passage in Van Citters's own words. "Door geheel het ryk alles te voet en te

paarde in de wapenen op was; en' t gene een seer groote gerustheyt gaf was dat alle en een yder even seer

tegen de Franse door de laatste voorgevallen bataille verbittert en geanimeert waren. Gelyk door de troupes,

dewelke ik op de weg alomme gepasseert ben, niet anders heb konnen hooren als een eenpaarig en gener al

FN 726 As to this expedition I have consulted the London Gazettes of July 24. 28. 31. Aug. 4. 1690

Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Welwood's Mercurius Reformatus, Sept. 5. the Gazette de Paris; a letter from My.

Duke, a Deputy Lieutenant of Devonshire, to Hampden, dated July 25. a letter from Mr. Fulford of Fulford to

Lord Nottingham, dated July 26. a letter of the same date from the Deputy Lieutenants of Devonshire to the

Earl of Bath; a letter of the same date from Lord Lansdowne to the Earl of Bath. These four letters are among

the MSS. of the Royal Irish Academy. Extracts from the brief are given in Lyson's Britannia. Dangeau

inserted in his journal, August 16., a series of extravagant lies. Tourville had routed the militia, taken their

cannon and colours burned men of war, captured richly laden merchantships, and was going to destroy

Plymouth. This is a fair specimen of Dangeau's English news. Indeed he complains that it was hardly possible

FN 728 See the accounts of Anderton's Trial, 1693; the Postman of March 12. 1695/6; the Flying Post of

March 7. 1700; Some Discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, by Hickes, 1695. The appendix to these

Discourses contains a curious account of the inquisition into printing offices tinder the Licensing Act.

FN 729 This was the ordinary cant of the Jacobites. A Whig writer had justly said in the preceding year,

"They scurrilously call our David a man of blood, though, to this day, he has not suffered a drop to be

FN 730 "Restore unto us again the publick worship of thy name, the reverent administration of thy

sacraments. Raise up the former government both in church and state, that we may be no longer without

FN 731 A Form of Prayer and Humiliation for God's Blessing upon His Majesty and his Dominions, and for

FN 734 A Modest Inquiry into the Causes of the present Disasters in England, and who they are that brought

the French into the English Channel described, 1690; Reflections upon a Form of Prayer lately set out for the

Jacobites, 1690; A Midnight Touch at an Unlicensed Pamphlet, 1690. The paper signed by the nonjuring

FN 739 Macariae Excidium; Mac Geoghegan; Life of James, ii. 420.; London Gazette, Aug. 14. 1690.

FN 740 The impatience of Lauzun and his countrymen to get away from Ireland is mentioned in a letter of

Oct. 21. 1690, quoted in the Memoirs of James, ii. 421. "Asimo," says Colonel Kelly, the author of the

Macariae Excidium, "diuturnam absentiam tam aegre molesteque ferebat ut bellum in Cypro protrahi

continuarique ipso ei auditu acerbissimum esset. Nec incredibile est ducum in illius exercitu nonnullos,

potissimum qui patrii coeli dulcedinem impatientius suspirabant, sibi persuasisse desperatas Cypri res nulla

FN 741 "Pauci illi ex Cilicibus aulicis, qui cum regina in Syria commorante remanserant, . . . . non cessabant

universam nationem foede traducere, et ingestis insuper convitiis lacerare, pavidos et malefidos proditores ac

Ortalium consceleratissimos publice appellando."Macariae Excidium. The Cilicians are the English. Syria

FN 742 "Tanta infamia tam operoso artificio et subtili commento in vulgus sparsa, tam constantibus de

Cypriorum perfidia atque opprobrio rumoribus, totam, qua lata est, Syriam ita pervasit, ut mercatores Cyprii,

. . . . propter inustum genti dedecus, intra domorum septa clausi nunquam prodire auderent; tanto eorum odio

FN 743 I have seen this assertion in a contemporary pamphlet of which I cannot recollect the title.

FN 745 Macariae Excidium. Boisseleau remarked the ebb and flow of courage among the Irish. I have quoted

one of his letters to his wife. It is but just to quote another. "Nos Irlandois n'avoient jamais vu le feu; et cela

les a surpris. Presentement, ils sont si faches de n'avoir pas fait leur devoir que je suis bien persuad� qu'ils

FN 746 La Hoguette, writing to Louvois from Limerick, July 31/Aug 10 1690, says of Tyrconnel: "Il a

d'ailleurs trop peu de connoissance e des choses de notre metier. Il a perdu absolument la confiance des

officiers du pays, surtout depuis le jour de notre deroute; et, en effet, Monseigneur, je me crois oblige de vous

dire que des le moment ou les ennemis parurent sur le bord de la riviere le premier jour, et dans toute la

journee du lendemain, il parut a tout le monde dans une si grande lethargie qu'il etoit incapable de prendre

FN 747 Desgrigny says of the Irish: "Ils sont toujours prets de nous egorger par l'antipathie qu'ils ont pour

nous. C'est la nation du monde la plus brutale, et qui a le moins d'humanite." Aug. 1690.

FN 748 Story; Account of the Cities in Ireland that are still possessed by the Forces of King James, 1690.

FN 752 See the account of the O'Donnels in Sir William Betham's Irish Antiquarian Researches. It is strange

that he makes no mention of Baldearg, whose appearance in Ireland is the most extraordinary event in the

whole history of the race. See also Story's impartial History; Macariae Excidium, and Mr. O'Callaghan's note;

Life of James, ii. 434.; the Letter of O'Donnel to Avaux, and the Memorial entitled, "Memoire donnee par un

FN 753 The reader will remember Corporal Trim's explanation of radical heat and radical moisture. Sterne is

an authority not to be despised on these subjects. His boyhood was passed in barracks; he was constantly

listening to the talk of old soldiers who had served under King William used their stories like a man of true

FN 754 Story; William to Waldeck, Sept. 22. 1690; London Gazette, Sept. 4, Berwick asserts that when the

siege was raised not a drop of rain had fallen during a month, that none fell during the following three weeks,

and that William pretended that the weather was wet merely to hide the shame of his defeat. Story, who was

on the spot say, "It was cloudy all about, and rained very fast, so that every body began to dread the

consequences of it;" and again "The rain which had already falled had soften the ways... This was one reason

for raising the siege; for, if we had not, granting the weather to continue bad, we must either have taken the

town, or of necessity have lost our cannon." Dumont, another eyewitness, says that before the siege was

raised the rains had been most violent; that the Shannon was swollen; that the earth was soaked; that the

FN 755 London Gazette, September 11 1690; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. I have seen a contemporary

FN 757 As to Marlborough's expedition, see Story's Impartial History; the Life of James, ii. 419, 420.;

London Gazette, Oct. 6. 13. 16. 27. 30. 1690; Monthly Mercury for Nov. 1690; History of King, William,

FN 758 Balcarras; Annandale's Confession in the Leven and Melville Papers; Burnet, ii. 35. As to Payne, see

FN 759 Balcarras; Mackay's Memoirs; History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690; Livingstone's

FN 761 Mackay's Memoirs and Letters to Hamilton of June 20. and 24. 1690 Colonel Hill to Melville, July

10 26.; London Gazette, July 17. 21. As to Inverlochy, see among the Culloden papers, a plan for preserving

the peace of the Highlands, drawn up, at this time, by the father of President Forbes.

FN 763 See the instructions to the Lord High Commissioner in the Leven and Melville Papers.

FN 767 Faithful Contendings Displayed; Case of the present Afflicted Episcopal Clergy in Scotland, 1690.

FN 769 See the Humble Address of the Presbyterian Ministers and Professors of the Church of Scotland to

His Grace His Majesty's High Commissioner and to the Right Honourable the Estates of Parliament.

FN 770 See the Account of the late Establishment of Presbyterian Government by the Parliament of Scotland,

FN 772 An Historical Relation of the late Presbyterian General Assembly in a Letter from a Person in

FN 773 Account of the late Establishment of the Presbyterian Government by the Parliament of Scotland,

FN 778 Balcarras; Mary's account of her interview with Montgomery, printed among the Leven and Melville

FN 779 Compare Balcarras with Burnett, ii. 62. The pamphlet entitled Great Britain's Just Complaint is a

FN 781 Burnett, ii. 62, Lockhart to Melville, Aug. 30. 1690 and Crawford to Melville, Dec. 11. 1690 in the

Leven and Melville Papers; Neville Payne's letter of Dec 3 1692, printed in 1693.

FN 782 Historical Relation of the late Presbyterian General Assembly, 1691; The Presbyterian Inquisition as

it was lately practised against the Professors of the College of Edinburgh, 1691.

FN 783 One of the most curious of the many curious papers written by the Covenanters of that generation is

entitled, "Nathaniel, or the Dying Testimony of John Matthieson in Closeburn." Matthieson did not die till

1709, but his Testimony was written some years earlier, when he was in expectation of death. "And now," he

says, "I as a dying man, would in a few words tell you that are to live behind my thoughts as to the times.

When I saw, or rather heard, the Prince and Princess of Orange being set up as they were, and his pardoning

all the murderers of the saints and receiving all the bloody beasts, soldiers, and others, all these officers of

their state and army, and all the bloody counsellors, civil and ecclesiastic; and his letting slip that son of

Belial, his father in law, who, both by all the laws of God and man, ought to have died, I knew he would do

FN 784 See the Dying Testimony of Mr. Robert Smith, Student of Divinity, who lived in Douglas Town, in

the Shire of Clydesdale, who died about two o'clock in the Sabbath morning, Dec. 13. 1724, aged 58 years;

and the Dying Testimony of William Wilson, sometime Schoolmaster of Park in the Parish of Douglas, aged

FN 785 See the Dying Testimony of William Wilson, mentioned in the last note. It ought to be remarked that,

on the subject of witchcraft, the Divines of the Associate Presbytery were as absurd as this poor crazy

Dominie. See their Act, Declaration, and Testimony, published in 1773 by Adam Gib.

FN 786 In the year 1791, Thomas Henderson of Paisley wrote, in defence of some separatists who called

themselves the Reformed Presbytery, against a writer who had charged them with "disowning the present

excellent sovereign as the lawful King of Great Britain." "The Reformed Presbytery and their connections,"

says Mr. Henderson, "have not been much accustomed to give flattering titles to princes." . . . . . "However,

they entertain no resentment against the person of the present occupant, nor any of the good qualities which

he possesses. They sincerely wish that he were more excellent than external royalty can make him, that he

were adorned with the image of Christ," "But they can by no means acknowledge him, nor any of the

FN 787 An enthusiast, named George Calderwood, in his preface to a Collection of Dying Testimonies,

published in 1806, accuses even the Reformed Presbytery of scandalous compliances. "As for the Reformed

Presbytery," he says, "though they profess to own the martyr's testimony in hairs and hoofs, yet they have

now adopted so many new distinctions, and given up their old ones, that they have made it so evident that it

is neither the martyr's testimony nor yet the one that that Presbytery adopted at first that they are now

maintaining. When the Reformed Presbytery was in its infancy, and had some appearance of honesty and

faithfulness among them, they were blamed by all the other parties for using of distinctions that no man could

justify, i.e. they would not admit into their communion those that paid the land tax or subscribed tacks to do

so; but now they can admit into their communions both rulers and members who voluntarily pay all taxes and

subscribe tacks." . . . . "It shall be only referred to government's books, since the commencement of the

French war, how many of their own members have accepted of places of trust, to be at government's call,

such as bearers of arms, driving of cattle, stopping of ways, and what is all their license for trading by sea or

FN 790 Carmichael's good qualities are fully admitted by the Episcopalians. See the Historical Relation of

FN 791 See, in the Leven and Melville Papers, Melville's Letters written from London at this time to

Crawford, Rule, Williamson, and other vehement Presbyterians. He says: "The clergy that were put out, and

come up, make a great clamour: many here encourage and rejoyce at it . . . . There is nothing now but the

greatest sobrietie and moderation imaginable to be used, unless we will hazard the overturning of all; and

FN 792 Principal Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held in and begun at Edinburgh

FN 796 I am not aware that this lampoon has ever been printed. I have seen it only in two contemporary

FN 798 Commons' Journals of December, 1690, particularly of Dec. 26. Stat. 2 W. M. sess 2. C. 11.

FN 800 Burnet, ii. 67. See the journals of both Houses, particularly the Commons' Journals of the 10th of

December and the Lords' Journals of the 30th of December and the 1st of January. The bill itself will be

FN 801 Lords' Journals, Oct. 30. 1690. The numbers are never given in the Lords' Journals. That the majority

was only two is asserted by Ralph, who had, I suppose, some authority which I have not been able to find.

FN 802 Van Citters to the States General, Nov. 14/24 1690. The Earl of Torrington's speech to the House of

FN 803 Burnet, ii. 67, 68.; Van Citters to the States General, Nov. 22/Dec 1 1690; An impartial Account of

some remarkable Passages in the Life of Arthur, Earl of Torrington, together with some modest Remarks on

the Trial and Acquitment, 1691; Reasons for the Trial of the Earl of Torrington by Impeachment, 1690; The

Parable of the Bearbaiting, 1690; The Earl of Torrington's Speech to the House of Commons, 1710. That

Torrington was coldly received by the peers I learned from an article in the Noticias Ordinarias of February 6

"David, we thought, succeeded Saul, When William rose on James's fall; But now King Thomas governs all."

"Yorkshire Tom was rais'd to honour, For what cause no creature knew; He was false to the royal donor And

FN 805 A Whig poet compares the two Marquesses, as they were often called, and gives George the

"If a Marquess needs must steer us, Take a better in his stead, Who will in your absence cheer us, And has far

FN 807 "Let him with his blue riband be Tied close up to the gallows tree For my lady a cart; and I'd contrive

FN 808 As to the designs of the Whigs against Caermarthen, see Burnet, ii. 68, 69, and a very significant

protest in the Lords' journals, October 30. 1690. As to the relations between Caermarthen and Godolphin, see

FN 809 My account of this conspiracy is chiefly taken from the evidence, oral and documentary, which was

produced on the trial of the conspirators. See also Burnet, ii. 69, 70., and the Life of James, ii. 441. Narcissus

Luttrell remarks that no Roman Catholic appeared to have been admitted to the consultations of the

FN 810 The genuineness of these letters was once contested on very frivolous grounds. But the letter of

Turner to Sancroft, which is among the Tanner papers in the Bodleian Library, and which will be found in the

FN 811 The words are these: "The Modest inquiryThe Bishops' AnswerNot the chilling of themBut

the satisfying of friends." The Modest Inquiry was the pamphlet which hinted at Dewitting.

William's Voyage to HollandWilliam's Entrance into the Hague Congress at the HagueWilliam his

own Minister for Foreign AffairsWilliam obtains a Toleration for the Waldenses; Vices inherent in the

Nature of CoalitionsSiege and Fall of Mons William returns to England; Trials of Preston and

Ashton Execution of AshtonPreston's Irresolution and Confessions Lenity shown to the

ConspiratorsDartmouthTurner; PennDeath of George Fox; his CharacterInterview between Penn

and Sidney Preston pardonedJoy of the Jacobites at the Fall of MonsThe vacant Sees

filledTillotson Archbishop of CanterburyConduct of SancroftDifference between Sancroft and

KenHatred of Sancroft to the Established Church; he provides for the episcopal Succession among the

NonjurorsThe new BishopsSherlock Dean of Saint Paul'sTreachery of some of William's

ServantsRussell GodolphinMarlboroughWilliam returns to the ContinentThe Campaign of

1691 in FlandersThe War in Ireland; State of the English Part of IrelandState of the Part of Ireland

which was subject to JamesDissensions among the Irish at LimerickReturn of Tyrconnel to

IrelandArrival of a French Fleet at Limerick; Saint RuthThe English take the FieldFall of Ballymore;

Siege and Fall of AthloneRetreat of the Irish ArmySaint Ruth determines to fightBattle of

AghrimFall of GalwayDeath of TyrconnelSecond Siege of LimerickThe Irish desirous to

capitulateNegotiations between the Irish Chiefs and the BesiegersThe Capitulation of LimerickThe

Irish Troops required to make their Election between their Country and France Most of the Irish Troops

volunteer for FranceMany of the Irish who had volunteered for France desertThe last Division of the

ON the eighteenth of January 1691, the King, having been detained some days by adverse winds, went on

board at Gravesend. Four yachts had been fitted up for him and for his retinue. Among his attendants were

Norfolk, Ormond, Devonshire, Dorset, Portland, Monmouth, Zulestein, and the Bishop of London. Two

distinguished admirals, Cloudesley Shovel and George Rooke, commanded the men of war which formed the

convoy. The passage was tedious and disagreeable. During many hours the fleet was becalmed off the

Godwin Sands; and it was not till the fifth day that the soundings proved the coast of Holland to be near. The

sea fog was so thick that no land could be seen; and it was not thought safe for the ships to proceed further in

the darkness. William, tired out by the voyage, and impatient to be once more in his beloved country,

determined to land in an open boat. The noblemen who were in his train tried to dissuade him from risking so

valuable a life; but, when they found that his mind was made up, they insisted on sharing the danger. That

danger proved more serious than they had expected. It had been supposed that in an hour the party would be

on shore. But great masses of floating ice impeded the progress of the skiff; the night came on; the fog grew

thicker; the waves broke over the King and the courtiers. Once the keel struck on a sand bank, and was with

great difficulty got off. The hardiest mariners showed some signs of uneasiness. But William, through the

whole night, was as composed as if he had been in the drawingroom at Kensington. "For shame," he said to

one of the dismayed sailors "are you afraid to die in my company?" A bold Dutch seaman ventured to spring

out, and, with great difficulty, swam and scrambled through breakers, ice and mud, to firm ground. Here he

discharged a musket and lighted a fire as a signal that he was safe. None of his fellow passengers, however,

thought it prudent to follow his example. They lay tossing in sight of the flame which he had kindled, till the

first pale light of a January morning showed them that they were close to the island of Goree. The King and

his Lords, stiff with cold and covered with icicles, gladly landed to warm and rest themselves.1

After reposing some hours in the hut of a peasant, William proceeded to the Hague. He was impatiently

expected there for, though the fleet which brought him was not visible from the shore, the royal salutes had

been heard through the mist, and had apprised the whole coast of his arrival. Thousands had assembled at

Honslaerdyk to welcome him with applause which came from their hearts and which went to his heart. That

was one of the few white days of a life, beneficent indeed and glorious, but far from happy. After more than

two years passed in a strange land, the exile had again set foot on his native soil. He heard again the language

of his nursery. He saw again the scenery and the architecture which were inseparably associated in his mind

with the recollections of childhood and the sacred feeling of home; the dreary mounds of sand, shells and

weeds, on which the waves of the German Ocean broke; the interminable meadows intersected by trenches;

the straight canals; the villas bright with paint and adorned with quaint images and inscriptions. He had lived

during many weary months among a people who did not love him, who did not understand him, who could

never forget that he was a foreigner. Those Englishmen who served him most faithfully served him without

enthusiasm, without personal attachment, and merely from a sense of public duty. In their hearts they were

sorry that they had no choice but between an English tyrant and a Dutch deliverer. All was now changed.

William was among a population by which he was adored, as Elizabeth had been adored when she rode

through her army at Tilbury, as Charles the Second had been adored when he landed at Dover. It is true that

the old enemies of the House of Orange had not been inactive during the absence of the Stadtholder. There

had been, not indeed clamours, but mutterings against him. He had, it was said, neglected his native land for

his new kingdom. Whenever the dignity of the English flag, whenever the prosperity of the English trade was

concerned, he forgot that he was a Hollander. But, as soon as his well remembered face was again seen, all

jealousy, all coldness, was at an end. There was not a boor, not a fisherman, not an artisan, in the crowds

which lined the road from Honslaerdyk to the Hague, whose heart did not swell with pride at the thought that

the first minister of Holland had become a great King, had freed the English, and had conquered the Irish. It

would have been madness in William to travel from Hampton Court to Westminster without a guard; but in

his own land he needed no swords or carbines to defend him. "Do not keep the people off;" he cried: "let

them come close to me; they are all my good friends." He soon learned that sumptuous preparations were

making for his entrance into the Hague. At first he murmured and objected. He detested, he said, noise and

display. The necessary cost of the war was quite heavy enough. He hoped that his kind fellow townsmen

would consider him as a neighbour, born and bred among them, and would not pay him so bad a compliment

as to treat him ceremoniously. But all his expostulations were vain. The Hollanders, simple and parsimonious

as their ordinary habits were, had set their hearts on giving their illustrious countryman a reception suited to

his dignity and to his merit; and he found it necessary to yield. On the day of his triumph the concourse was

immense. All the wheeled carriages and horses of the province were too few for the multitude of those who

flocked to the show. Many thousands came sliding or skating along the frozen canals from Amsterdam,

Rotterdam, Leyden, Haarlem, Delft. At ten in the morning of the twentysixth of January, the great bell of

the Town House gave the signal. Sixteen hundred substantial burghers, well armed, and clad in the finest

dresses which were to be found in the recesses of their wardrobes, kept order in the crowded streets.

Balconies and scaffolds, embowered in evergreens and hung with tapestry, hid the windows. The royal coach,

escorted by an army of halberdiers and running footmen, and followed by a long train of splendid equipages,

passed under numerous arches rich with carving and painting, amidst incessant shouts of "Long live the King

our Stadtholder." The front of the Town House and the whole circuit of the marketplace were in a blaze with

brilliant colours. Civic crowns, trophies, emblems of arts, of sciences, of commerce and of agriculture,

appeared every where. In one place William saw portrayed the glorious actions of his ancestors. There was

the silent prince, the founder of the Batavian commonwealth, passing the Meuse with his warriors. There was

the more impetuous Maurice leading the charge at Nieuport. A little further on, the hero might retrace the

eventful story of his own life. He was a child at his widowed mother's knee. He was at the altar with Diary's

hand in his. He was landing at Torbay. He was swimming through the Boyne. There, too, was a boat amidst

the ice and the breakers; and above it was most appropriately inscribed, in the majestic language of Rome, the

saying of the great Roman, "What dost thou fear? Thou hast Caesar on board." The task of furnishing the

Latin mottoes had been intrusted to two men, who, till Bentley appeared, held the highest place among the

classical scholars of that age. Spanheim, whose knowledge of the Roman medals was unrivalled, imitated, not

unsuccessfully, the noble conciseness of those ancient legends which he had assiduously studied; and he was

assisted by Graevius, who then filled a chair at Utrecht, and whose just reputation had drawn to that

University multitudes of students from every part of Protestant Europe.2 When the night came, fireworks

were exhibited on the great tank which washes the walls of the Palace of the Federation. That tank was now

as hard as marble; and the Dutch boasted that nothing had ever been seen, even on the terrace of Versailles,

more brilliant than the effect produced by the innumerable cascades of flame which were reflected in the

smooth mirror of ice.3 The English Lords congratulated their master on his immense popularity. "Yes," said

he; "but I am not the favourite. The shouting was nothing to what it would have been if Mary had been with

A few hours after the triumphal entry, the King attended a sitting of the States General. His last appearance

among them had been on the day on which he embarked for England. He had then, amidst the broken words

and loud weeping of those grave Senators, thanked them for the kindness with which they had watched over

his childhood, trained his young mind, and supported his authority in his riper years; and he had solemnly

commended his beloved wife to their care. He now came back among them the King of three kingdoms, the

head of the greatest coalition that Europe had seen during a hundred and eighty years; and nothing was heard

But this time the streets of the Hague were overflowing with the equipages and retinues of princes and

ambassadors who came flocking to the great Congress. First appeared the ambitious and ostentatious

Frederic, Elector of Brandenburg, who, a few years later, took the title of King of Prussia. Then arrived the

young Elector of Bavaria, the Regent of Wirtemberg, the Landgraves of Hesse Cassel and Hesse Darmstadt,

and a long train of sovereign princes, sprung from the illustrious houses of Brunswick, of Saxony, of

Holstein, and of Nassau. The Marquess of Gastanaga, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, repaired to the

assembly from the viceregal Court of Brussels. Extraordinary ministers had been sent by the Emperor, by the

Kings of Spain, Poland, Denmark, and Sweden, and by the Duke of Savoy. There was scarcely room in the

town and the neighbourhood for the English Lords and gentlemen and the German Counts and Barons whom

curiosity or official duty had brought to the place of meeting. The grave capital of the most thrifty and

industrious of nations was as gay as Venice in the Carnival. The walks cut among those noble limes and elms

in which the villa of the Princes of Orange is embosomed were gay with the plumes, the stars, the flowing

wigs, the embroidered coats and the gold hilted swords of gallants from London, Berlin and Vienna. With the

nobles were mingled sharpers not less gorgeously attired than they. At night the hazard tables were thronged;

and the theatre was filled to the roof. Princely banquets followed one another in rapid succession. The meats

were served in gold; and, according to that old Teutonic fashion with which Shakspeare had made his

countrymen familiar, as often as any of the great princes proposed a health, the kettle drums and trumpets

sounded. Some English lords, particularly Devonshire, gave entertainments which vied with those of

Sovereigns. It was remarked that the German potentates, though generally disposed to be litigious and

punctilious about etiquette, associated, on this occasion, in an unceremonious manner, and seemed to have

forgotten their passion for genealogical and heraldic controversy. The taste for wine, which was then

characteristic of their nation, they had not forgotten. At the table of the Elector of Brandenburg much mirth

was caused by the gravity of the statesmen of Holland, who, sober themselves, confuted out of Grotius and

Puffendorf the nonsense stuttered by the tipsy nobles of the Empire. One of those nobles swallowed so many

bumpers that he tumbled into the turf fire, and was not pulled out till his fine velvet suit had been burned.5

In the midst of all this revelry, business was not neglected. A formal meeting of the Congress was held at

which William presided. In a short and dignified speech, which was speedily circulated throughout Europe,

he set forth the necessity of firm union and strenuous exertion. The profound respect with which he was heard

by that splendid assembly caused bitter mortification to his enemies both in England and in France. The

German potentates were bitterly reviled for yielding precedence to an upstart. Indeed the most illustrious

among them paid to him such marks of deference as they would scarcely have deigned to pay to the Imperial

Majesty, mingled with the crowd in his antechamber, and at his table behaved as respectfully as any English

lord in waiting. In one caricature the allied princes were represented as muzzled bears, some with crowns,

some with caps of state. William had them all in a chain, and was teaching them to dance. In another

caricature, he appeared taking his ease in an arm chair, with his feet on a cushion, and his hat on his head,

while the Electors of Brandenburg and Bavaria, uncovered, occupied small stools on the right and left; the

crowd of Landgraves and Sovereign dukes stood at humble distance; and Gastanaga, the unworthy successor

It was soon announced by authority that, before the beginning of summer, two hundred and twenty thousand

men would be in the field against France.7 The contingent which each of the allied powers was to furnish was

made known. Matters about which it would have been inexpedient to put forth any declaration were privately

discussed by the King of England with his allies. On this occasion, as on every other important occasion

during his reign, he was his own minister for foreign affairs. It was necessary for the sake of form that he

should be attended by a Secretary of State; and Nottingham had therefore followed him to Holland. But

Nottingham, though, in matters concerning the internal government of England, he enjoyed a large share of

his master's confidence, knew little more about the business of the Congress than what he saw in the

This mode of transacting business would now be thought most unconstitutional; and many writers, applying

the standard of their own age to the transactions of a former age, have severely blamed William for acting

without the advice of his ministers, and his ministers for submitting to be kept in ignorance of transactions

which deeply concerned the honour of the Crown and the welfare of the nation. Yet surely the presumption is

that what the most honest and honourable men of both parties, Nottingham, for example, among the Tories,

and Somers among the Whigs, not only did, but avowed, cannot have been altogether inexcusable; and a very

The doctrine that the Sovereign is not responsible is doubtless as old as any part of our constitution. The

doctrine that his ministers are responsible is also of immemorial antiquity. That where there is no

responsibility there can be no trustworthy security against maladministration, is a doctrine which, in our age

and country, few people will be inclined to dispute. From these three propositions it plainly follows that the

administration is likely to be best conducted when the Sovereign performs no public act without the

concurrence and instrumentality of a minister. This argument is perfectly sound. But we must remember that

arguments are constructed in one way, and governments in another. In logic, none but an idiot admits the

premises and denies the legitimate conclusion. But in practice, we see that great and enlightened communities

often persist, generation after generation, in asserting principles, and refusing to act upon those principles. It

may be doubted whether any real polity that ever existed has exactly corresponded to the pure idea of that

polity. According to the pure idea of constitutional royalty, the prince reigns and does not govern; and

constitutional royalty, as it now exists in England, comes nearer than in any other country to the pure idea.

Yet it would be a great error to imagine that our princes merely reign and never govern. In the seventeenth

century, both Whigs and Tories thought it, not only the right, but the duty, of the first magistrate to govern.

All parties agreed in blaming Charles the Second for not being his own Prime Minister; all parties agreed in

praising James for being his own Lord High Admiral; and all parties thought it natural and reasonable that

It may be observed that the ablest and best informed of those who have censured the manner in which the

negotiations of that time were conducted are scarcely consistent with themselves. For, while they blame

William for being his own Ambassador Plenipotentiary at the Hague, they praise him for being his own

Commander in Chief in Ireland. Yet where is the distinction in principle between the two cases? Surely every

reason which can be brought to prove that he violated the constitution, when, by his own sole authority, he

made compacts with the Emperor and the Elector of Brandenburg, will equally prove that he violated the

constitution, when, by his own sole authority, he ordered one column to plunge into the water at Oldbridge

and another to cross the bridge of Slane. If the constitution gave him the command of the forces of the State,

the constitution gave him also the direction of the foreign relations of the State. On what principle then can it

be maintained that he was at liberty to exercise the former power without consulting any body, but that he

was bound to exercise the latter power in conformity with the advice of a minister? Will it be said that an

error in diplomacy is likely to be more injurious to the country than an error in strategy? Surely not. It is

hardly conceivable that any blunder which William might have made at the Hague could have been more

injurious to the public interests than a defeat at the Boyne. Or will it be said that there was greater reason for

placing confidence in his military than in his diplomatic skill? Surely not. In war he showed some great moral

and intellectual qualities; but, as a tactician, he did not rank high; and of his many campaigns only two were

decidedly successful. In the talents of a negotiator, on the other hand, he has never been surpassed. Of the

interests and the tempers of the continental courts he knew more than all his Privy Council together. Some of

his ministers were doubtless men of great ability, excellent orators in the House of Lords, and versed in our

insular politics. But, in the deliberations of the Congress, Caermarthen and Nottingham would have been

found as far inferior to him as he would have been found inferior to them in a parliamentary debate on a

question purely English. The coalition against France was his work. He alone had joined together the parts of

that great whole; and he alone could keep them together. If he had trusted that vast and complicated machine

Some things indeed were to be done which none of his subjects would have ventured to do. Pope Alexander

was really, though not in name, one of the allies; it was of the highest importance to have him for a friend;

and yet such was the temper of the English nation that an English minister might well shrink from having any

dealings, direct or indirect, with the Vatican. The Secretaries of State were glad to leave a matter so delicate

and so full of risk to their master, and to be able to protest with truth that not a line to which the most

It must not be supposed however that William ever forgot that his especial, his hereditary, mission was to

protect the Reformed Faith. His influence with Roman Catholic princes was constantly and strenuously

exerted for the benefit of their Protestant subjects. In the spring of 1691, the Waldensian shepherds, long and

cruelly persecuted, and weary of their lives, were surprised by glad tidings. Those who had been in prison for

heresy returned to their homes. Children, who had been taken from their parents to be educated by priests,

were sent back. Congregations, which had hitherto met only by stealth and with extreme peril, now

worshipped God without molestation in the face of day. Those simple mountaineers probably never knew that

their fate had been a subject of discussion at the Hague, and that they owed the happiness of their firesides,

and the security of their humble temples to the ascendency which William exercised over the Duke of

No coalition of which history has preserved the memory has had an abler chief than William. But even

William often contended in vain against those vices which are inherent in the nature of all coalitions. No

undertaking which requires the hearty and long continued cooperation of many independent states is likely to

prosper. Jealousies inevitably spring up. Disputes engender disputes. Every confederate is tempted to throw

on others some part of the burden which he ought himself to bear. Scarcely one honestly furnishes the

promised contingent. Scarcely one exactly observes the appointed day. But perhaps no coalition that ever

existed was in such constant danger of dissolution as the coalition which William had with infinite difficulty

formed. The long list of potentates, who met in person or by their representatives at the Hague, looked well in

the Gazettes. The crowd of princely equipages, attended by manycoloured guards and lacqueys, looked well

among the lime trees of the Voorhout. But the very circumstances which made the Congress more splendid

than other congresses made the league weaker than other leagues. The more numerous the allies, the more

numerous were the dangers which threatened the alliance. It was impossible that twenty governments,

divided by quarrels about precedence, quarrels about territory, quarrels about trade, quarrels about religion,

could long act together in perfect harmony. That they acted together during several years in imperfect

The situation of his great enemy was very different. The resources of the French monarchy, though certainly

not equal to those of England, Holland, the House of Austria, and the Empire of Germany united, were yet

very formidable; they were all collected in a central position; they were all under the absolute direction of a

single mind. Lewis could do with two words what William could hardly bring about by two months of

negotiation at Berlin, Munich, Brussels, Turin and Vienna. Thus France was found equal in effective strength

to all the states which were combined against her. For in the political, as in the natural world, there may be an

equality of momentum between unequal bodies, when the body which is inferior in weight is superior in

This was soon signally proved. In March the princes and ambassadors who had been assembled at the Hague

separated and scarcely had they separated when all their plans were disconcerted by a bold and skilful move

Lewis was sensible that the meeting of the Congress was likely to produce a great effect on the public mind

of Europe. That effect he determined to counteract by striking a sudden and terrible blow. While his enemies

were settling how many troops each of them should furnish, he ordered numerous divisions of his army to

march from widely distant points towards Mons, one of the most important, if not the most important, of the

fortresses which protected the Spanish Netherlands. His purpose was discovered only when it was all but

accomplished. William, who had retired for a few days to Loo, learned, with surprise and extreme vexation,

that cavalry, infantry, artillery, bridges of boats, were fast approaching the fated city by many converging

routes. A hundred thousand men had been brought together. All the implements of war had been largely

provided by Louvois, the first of living administrators. The command was entrusted to Luxemburg, the first

of living generals. The scientific operations were directed by Vauban, the first of living engineers. That

nothing might be wanting which could kindle emulation through all the ranks of a gallant and loyal army, the

magnificent King himself had set out from Versailles for the camp. Yet William had still some faint hope that

it might be possible to raise the siege. He flew to the Hague, put all the forces of the States General in motion,

and sent pressing messages to the German Princes. Within three weeks after he had received the first hint of

the danger, he was in the neighbourhood of the besieged city, at the head of near fifty thousand troops of

different nations. To attack a superior force commanded by such a captain as Luxemburg was a bold, almost

a desperate, enterprise. Yet William was so sensible that the loss of Mons would be an almost irreparable

disaster and disgrace that he made up his mind to run the hazard. He was convinced that the event of the siege

would determine the policy of the Courts of Stockholm and Copenhagen. Those Courts had lately seemed

inclined to join the coalition. If Mons fell, they would certainly remain neutral; they might possibly become

hostile. "The risk," he wrote to Heinsius, "is great; yet I am not without hope. I will do what can be done. The

issue is in the hands of God." On the very day on which this letter was written Mons fell. The siege had been

vigorously pressed. Lewis himself, though suffering from the gout, had set the example of strenuous exertion.

His household troops, the finest body of soldiers in Europe, had, under his eye, surpassed themselves. The

young nobles of his court had tried to attract his notice by exposing themselves to the hottest fire with the

same gay alacrity with which they were wont to exhibit their graceful figures at his balls. His wounded

soldiers were charmed by the benignant courtesy with which he walked among their pallets, assisted while

wounds were dressed by the hospital surgeons, and breakfasted on a porringer of the hospital broth. While all

was obedience and enthusiasm among the besiegers, all was disunion and dismay among the besieged. The

duty of the French lines was so well performed that no messenger sent by William was able to cross them.

The garrison did not know that relief was close at hand. The burghers were appalled by the prospect of those

horrible calamities which befall cities taken by storm. Showers of shells and redhot bullets were falling in the

streets. The town was on fire in ten places at once. The peaceful inhabitants derived an unwonted courage

from the excess of their fear, and rose on the soldiers. Thenceforth resistance was impossible; and a

capitulation was concluded. The armies then retired into quarters. Military operations were suspended during

some weeks; Lewis returned in triumph to Versailles; and William paid a short visit to England, where his

He found the ministers still employed in tracing out the ramifications of the plot which had been discovered

just before his departure. Early in January, Preston, Ashton and Elliot had been arraigned at the Old Bailey.

They claimed the right of severing in their challenges. It was therefore necessary to try them separately. The

audience was numerous and splendid. Many peers were present. The Lord President and the two Secretaries

of State attended in order to prove that the papers produced in Court were the same which Billop had brought

to Whitehall. A considerable number of judges appeared on the bench; and Holt presided. A full report of the

proceedings has come down to us, and well deserves to be attentively studied, and to be compared with the

reports of other trials which had not long before taken place under the same roof. The whole spirit of the

tribunal had undergone in a few months a change so complete that it might seem to have been the work of

ages. Twelve years earlier, unhappy Roman Catholics, accused of wickedness which had never entered into

their thoughts, had stood in that dock. The witnesses for the Crown had repeated their hideous fictions amidst

the applauding hums of the audience. The judges had shared, or had pretended to share, the stupid credulity

and the savage passions of the populace, had exchanged smiles and compliments with the perjured informers,

had roared down the arguments feebly stammered forth by the prisoners, and had not been ashamed, in

passing the sentence of death, to make ribald jests on purgatory and the mass. As soon as the butchery of

Papists was over, the butchery of Whigs had commenced; and the judges had applied themselves to their new

work with even more than their old barbarity. To these scandals the Revolution had put an end. Whoever,

after perusing the trials of Ireland and Pickering, of Grove and Berry, of Sidney, Cornish and Alice Lisle,

turns to the trials of Preston and Ashton, will be astonished by the contrast. The Solicitor General, Somers,

conducted the prosecutions with a moderation and humanity of which his predecessors had left him no

example. "I did never think," he said, "that it was the part of any who were of counsel for the King in cases of

this nature to aggravate the crime of the prisoners, or to put false colours on the evidence."10 Holt's conduct

was faultless. Pollexfen, an older man than Holt or Somers, retained a little,and a little was too much,of

the tone of that bad school in which he had been bred. But, though he once or twice forgot the austere

decorum of his place, he cannot be accused of any violation of substantial justice. The prisoners themselves

seem to have been surprised by the fairness and gentleness with which they were treated. "I would not

mislead the jury, I'll assure you," said Holt to Preston, "nor do Your Lordship any manner of injury in the

world." "No, my Lord;" said Preston; "I see it well enough that Your Lordship would not." "Whatever my

fate may be," said Ashton, "I cannot but own that I have had a fair trial for my life."

The culprits gained nothing by the moderation of the Solicitor General or by the impartiality of the Court; for

the evidence was irresistible. The meaning of the papers seized by Billop was so plain that the dullest

juryman could not misunderstand it. Of those papers part was fully proved to be in Preston's handwriting.

Part was in Ashton's handwriting but this the counsel for the prosecution had not the means of proving. They

therefore rested the case against Ashton on the indisputable facts that the treasonable packet had been found

in his bosom, and that he had used language which was quite unintelligible except on the supposition that he

Both Preston and Ashton were convicted and sentenced to death. Ashton was speedily executed. He might

have saved his life by making disclosures. But though he declared that, if he were spared, he would always be

a faithful subject of Their Majesties, he was fully resolved not to give up the names of his accomplices. In

this resolution he was encouraged by the nonjuring divines who attended him in his cell. It was probably by

their influence that he was induced to deliver to the Sheriffs on the scaffold a declaration which he had

transcribed and signed, but had not, it is to be hoped, composed or attentively considered. In this paper he

was made to complain of the unfairness of a trial which he had himself in public acknowledged to have been

eminently fair. He was also made to aver, on the word of a dying man, that he knew nothing of the papers

which had been found upon him. Unfortunately his declaration, when inspected, proved to be in the same

handwriting with one of the most important of those papers. He died with manly fortitude.12

Elliot was not brought to trial. The evidence against him was not quite so clear as that on which his associates

had been convicted; and he was not worth the anger of the government. The fate of Preston was long in

suspense. The Jacobites affected to be confident that the government would not dare to shed his blood. He

was, they said, a favourite at Versailles, and his death would be followed by a terrible retaliation. They

scattered about the streets of London papers in which it was asserted that, if any harm befell him, Mountjoy,

and all the other Englishmen of quality who were prisoners in France, would be broken on the wheel.13

These absurd threats would not have deferred the execution one day. But those who had Preston in their

power were not unwilling to spare him on certain conditions. He was privy to all the counsels of the

disaffected party, and could furnish information of the highest value. He was informed that his fate depended

on himself. The struggle was long and severe. Pride, conscience, party spirit, were on one side; the intense

love of life on the other. He went during a time irresolutely to and fro. He listened to his brother Jacobites;

and his courage rose. He listened to the agents of the government; and his heart sank within him. In an

evening when he had dined and drunk his claret, he feared nothing. He would die like a man, rather than save

his neck by an act of baseness. But his temper was very different when he woke the next morning, when the

courage which he had drawn from wine and company had evaporated, when he was alone with the iron grates

and stone walls, and when the thought of the block, the axe and the sawdust rose in his mind. During some

time he regularly wrote a confession every forenoon when he was sober, and burned it every night when he

was merry.14 His nonjuring friends formed a plan for bringing Sancroft to visit the Tower, in the hope,

doubtless, that the exhortations of so great a prelate and so great a saint would confirm the wavering virtue of

the prisoner.15 Whether this plan would have been successful may be doubted; it was not carried into effect;

the fatal hour drew near; and the fortitude of Preston gave way. He confessed his guilt, and named Clarendon,

Dartmouth, the Bishop of Ely and William Penn, as his accomplices. He added a long list of persons against

whom he could not himself give evidence, but who, if he could trust to Penn's assurances, were friendly to

King James. Among these persons were Devonshire and Dorset.16 There is not the slightest reason to believe

that either of these great noblemen ever had any dealings, direct or indirect, with Saint Germains. It is not,

however, necessary to accuse Penn of deliberate falsehood. He was credulous and garrulous. The Lord

Steward and the Lord Chamberlain had shared in the vexation with which their party had observed the

leaning of William towards the Tories; and they had probably expressed that vexation unguardedly. So weak

a man as Penn, wishing to find Jacobites every where, and prone to believe whatever he wished, might easily

put an erroneous construction on invectives such as the haughty and irritable Devonshire was but too ready to

utter, and on sarcasms such as, in moments of spleen, dropped but too easily from the lips of the keenwitted

Dorset. Caermarthen, a Tory, and a Tory who had been mercilessly persecuted by the Whigs, was disposed to

make the most of this idle hearsay. But he received no encouragement from his master, who, of all the great

politicians mentioned in history, was the least prone to suspicion. When William returned to England, Preston

was brought before him, and was commanded to repeat the confession which had already been made to the

ministers. The King stood behind the Lord President's chair and listened gravely while Clarendon,

Dartmouth, Turner and Penn were named. But as soon as the prisoner, passing from what he could himself

testify, began to repeat the stories which Penn had told him, William touched Caermarthen on the shoulder

and said, "My Lord, we have had too much of this."17 This judicious magnanimity had its proper reward.

Devonshire and Dorset became from that day more zealous than ever in the cause of the master who, in spite

of calumny for which their own indiscretion had perhaps furnished some ground, had continued to repose

Even those who were undoubtedly criminal were generally treated with great lenity. Clarendon lay in the

Tower about six months. His guilt was fully established; and a party among the Whigs called loudly and

importunately for his head. But he was saved by the pathetic entreaties of his brother Rochester, by the good

offices of the humane and generous Burnet, and by Mary's respect for the memory of her mother. The

prisoner's confinement was not strict. He was allowed to entertain his friends at dinner. When at length his

health began to suffer from restraint, he was permitted to go into the country under the care of a warder; the

warder was soon removed; and Clarendon was informed that, while he led a quiet rural life, he should not be

The treason of Dartmouth was of no common dye. He was an English seaman; and he had laid a plan for

betraying Portsmouth to the French, and had offered to take the command of a French squadron against his

country. It was a serious aggravation of his guilt that he had been one of the very first persons who took the

oaths to William and Mary. He was arrested and brought to the Council Chamber. A narrative of what passed

there, written by himself, has been preserved. In that narrative he admits that he was treated with great

courtesy and delicacy. He vehemently asserted his innocence. He declared that he had never corresponded

with Saint Germains, that he was no favourite there, and that Mary of Modena in particular owed him a

grudge. "My Lords," he said, "I am an Englishman. I always, when the interest of the House of Bourbon was

strongest here, shunned the French, both men and women. I would lose the last drop of my blood rather than

see Portsmouth in the power of foreigners. I am not such a fool as to think that King Lewis will conquer us

merely for the benefit of King James. I am certain that nothing can be truly imputed to me beyond some

foolish talk over a bottle." His protestations seem to have produced some effect; for he was at first permitted

to remain in the gentle custody of the Black Rod. On further inquiry, however, it was determined to send him

to the Tower. After a confinement of a few weeks he died of apoplexy; but he lived long enough to complete

his disgrace by offering his sword to the new government, and by expressing in fervent language his hope

that he might, by the goodness of God and of Their Majesties, have an opportunity of showing how much he

Turner ran no serious risk; for the government was most unwilling to send to the scaffold one of the Seven

who had signed the memorable petition. A warrant was however issued for his apprehension; and his friends

had little hope that he would escape; for his nose was such as none who had seen it could forget; and it was to

little purpose that he put on a flowing wig and that he suffered his beard to grow. The pursuit was probably

not very hot; for, after skulking a few weeks in England, he succeeded in crossing the Channel, and remained

A warrant was issued against Penn; and he narrowly escaped the messengers. It chanced that, on the day on

which they were sent in search of him, he was attending a remarkable ceremony at some distance from his

home. An event had taken place which a historian, whose object is to record the real life of a nation, ought

not to pass unnoticed. While London was agitated by the news that a plot had been discovered, George Fox,

More than forty years had elapsed since Fox had begun to see visions and to cast out devils.22 He was then a

youth of pure morals and grave deportment, with a perverse temper, with the education of a labouring man,

and with an intellect in the most unhappy of all states, that is to say, too much disordered for liberty, and not

sufficiently disordered for Bedlam. The circumstances in which he was placed were such as could scarcely

fail to bring out in the strongest form the constitutional diseases of his mind. At the time when his faculties

were ripening, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, were striving for mastery, and were, in

every corner of the realm, refuting and reviling each other. He wandered from congregation to congregation;

he heard priests harangue against Puritans; he heard Puritans harangue against priests; and he in vain applied

for spiritual direction and consolation to doctors of both parties. One jolly old clergyman of the Anglican

communion told him to smoke tobacco and sing psalms; another advised him to go and lose some blood.23

The young inquirer turned in disgust from these advisers to the Dissenters, and found them also blind

guides.24 After some time he came to the conclusion that no human being was competent to instruct him in

divine things, and that the truth had been communicated to him by direct inspiration from heaven. He argued

that, as the division of languages began at Babel, and as the persecutors of Christ put on the cross an

inscription in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, the knowledge of languages, and more especially of Latin, Greek and

Hebrew, must be useless to a Christian minister.25 Indeed, he was so far from knowing many languages, that

he knew none; nor can the most corrupt passage in Hebrew be more unintelligible to the unlearned than his

English often is to the most acute and attentive reader.26 One of the precious truths which were divinely

revealed to this new apostle was, that it was falsehood and adulation to use the second person plural instead

of the second person singular. Another was, that to talk of the month of March was to worship the

bloodthirsty god Mars, and that to talk of Monday was to pay idolatrous homage to the moon. To say Good

morning or Good evening was highly reprehensible, for those phrases evidently imported that God had made

bad days and bad nights.27 A Christian was bound to face death itself rather than touch his hat to the greatest

of mankind. When Fox was challenged to produce any Scriptural authority for this dogma, he cited the

passage in which it is written that Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace with

their hats on; and, if his own narrative may be trusted, the Chief Justice of England was altogether unable to

answer this argument except by crying out, "Take him away, gaoler."28 Fox insisted much on the not less

weighty argument that the Turks never show their bare heads to their superiors; and he asked, with great

animation, whether those who bore the noble name of Christians ought not to surpass Turks in virtue.29

Bowing he strictly prohibited, and, indeed, seemed to consider it as the effect of Satanical influence; for, as

he observed, the woman in the Gospel, while she had a spirit of infirmity, was bowed together, and ceased to

bow as soon as Divine power had liberated her from the tyranny of the Evil One.30 His expositions of the

sacred writings were of a very peculiar kind. Passages, which had been, in the apprehension of all the readers

of the Gospels during sixteen centuries, figurative, he construed literally. Passages, which no human being

before him had ever understood in any other than a literal sense, he construed figuratively. Thus, from those

rhetorical expressions in which the duty of patience under injuries is enjoined he deduced the doctrine that

selfdefence against pirates and assassins is unlawful. On the other hand, the plain commands to baptize with

water, and to partake of bread and wine in commemoration of the redemption of mankind, he pronounced to

be allegorical. He long wandered from place to place, teaching this strange theology, shaking like an aspen

leaf in his paroxysms of fanatical excitement, forcing his way into churches, which he nicknamed steeple

houses interrupting prayers and sermons with clamour and scurrility,31 and pestering rectors and justices

with epistles much resembling burlesques of those sublime odes in which the Hebrew prophets foretold the

calamities of Babylon and Tyre.32 He soon acquired great notoriety by these feats. His strange face, his

strange chant, his immovable hat and his leather breeches were known all over the country; and he boasts

that, as soon as the rumour was heard, "The Man in Leather Breeches is coming," terror seized hypocritical

professors, and hireling priests made haste to get out of his way.33 He was repeatedly imprisoned and set in

the stocks, sometimes justly, for disturbing the public worship of congregations, and sometimes unjustly, for

merely talking nonsense. He soon gathered round him a body of disciples, some of whom went beyond

himself in absurdity. He has told us that one of his friends walked naked through Skipton declaring the

truth.34 and that another was divinely moved to go naked during several years to marketplaces, and to the

houses of gentlemen and clergymen.35 Fox complains bitterly that these pious acts, prompted by the Holy

Spirit, were requited by an untoward generation with hooting, pelting, coachwhipping and horsewhipping.

But, though he applauded the zeal of the sufferers, he did not go quite to their lengths. He sometimes, indeed,

was impelled to strip himself partially. Thus he pulled off his shoes and walked barefoot through Lichfield,

crying, "Woe to the bloody city."36 But it does not appear that he ever thought it his duty to appear before the

public without that decent garment from which his popular appellation was derived.

If we form our judgment of George Fox simply by looking at his own actions and writings, we shall see no

reason for placing him, morally or intellectually, above Ludowick Muggleton or Joanna Southcote. But it

would be most unjust to rank the sect which regards him as its founder with the Muggletonians or the

Southcotians. It chanced that among the thousands whom his enthusiasm infected were a few persons whose

abilities and attainments were of a very different order from his own. Robert Barclay was a man of

considerable parts and learning. William Penn, though inferior to Barclay in both natural and acquired

abilities, was a gentleman and a scholar. That such men should have become the followers of George Fox

ought not to astonish any person who remembers what quick, vigorous and highly cultivated intellects were

in our own times duped by the unknown tongues. The truth is that no powers of mind constitute a security

against errors of this description. Touching God and His ways with man, the highest human faculties can

discover little more than the meanest. In theology the interval is small indeed between Aristotle and a child,

between Archimedes and a naked savage. It is not strange, therefore, that wise men, weary of investigation,

tormented by uncertainty, longing to believe something, and yet seeing objections to every thing, should

submit themselves absolutely to teachers who, with firm and undoubting faith, lay claim to a supernatural

commission. Thus we frequently see inquisitive and restless spirits take refuge from their own scepticism in

the bosom of a church which pretends to infallibility, and, after questioning the existence of a Deity, bring

themselves to worship a wafer. And thus it was that Fox made some converts to whom he was immeasurably

inferior in every thing except the energy of his convictions. By these converts his rude doctrines were

polished into a form somewhat less shocking to good sense and good taste. No proposition which he had laid

down was retracted. No indecent or ridiculous act which he had done or approved was condemned; but what

was most grossly absurd in his theories and practices was softened down, or at least not obtruded on the

public; whatever could be made to appear specious was set in the fairest light; his gibberish was translated

into English; meanings which he would have been quite unable to comprehend were put on his phrases; and

his system, so much improved that he would not have known it again, was defended by numerous citations

from Pagan philosophers and Christian fathers whose names he had never heard.37 Still, however, those who

had remodelled his theology continued to profess, and doubtless to feel, profound reverence for him; and his

crazy epistles were to the last received and read with respect in Quaker meetings all over the country. His

death produced a sensation which was not confined to his own disciples. On the morning of the funeral a

great multitude assembled round the meeting house in Gracechurch Street. Thence the corpse was borne to

the burial ground of the sect near Bunhill Fields. Several orators addressed the crowd which filled the

cemetery. Penn was conspicuous among those disciples who committed the venerable corpse to the earth. The

ceremony had scarcely been finished when he learned that warrants were out against him. He instantly took

A short time after his disappearance, Sidney received from him a strange communication. Penn begged for an

interview, but insisted on a promise that he should be suffered to return unmolested to his hiding place.

Sidney obtained the royal permission to make an appointment on these terms. Penn came to the rendezvous,

and spoke at length in his own defence. He declared that he was a faithful subject of King William and Queen

Mary, and that, if he knew of any design against them, he would discover it. Departing from his Yea and Nay,

he protested, as in the presence of God, that he knew of no plot, and that he did not believe that there was any

plot, unless the ambitious projects of the French government might be called plots. Sidney, amazed probably

by hearing a person, who had such an abhorrence of lies that he would not use the common forms of civility,

and such an abhorrence of oaths that he would not kiss the book in a court of justice, tell something very like

a lie, and confirm it by something very like an oath, asked how, if there were really no plot, the letters and

minutes which had been found on Ashton were to be explained. This question Penn evaded. "If," he said, "I

could only see the King, I would confess every thing to him freely. I would tell him much that it would be

important for him to know. It is only in that way that I can be of service to him. A witness for the Crown I

cannot be for my conscience will not suffer me to be sworn." He assured Sidney that the most formidable

enemies of the government were the discontented Whigs. "The Jacobites are not dangerous. There is not a

man among them who has common understanding. Some persons who came over from Holland with the

King are much more to be dreaded." It does not appear that Penn mentioned any names. He was suffered to

depart in safety. No active search was made for him. He lay hid in London during some months, and then

stole down to the coast of Sussex and made his escape to France. After about three years of wandering and

lurking he, by the mediation of some eminent men, who overlooked his faults for the sake of his good

qualities, made his peace with the government, and again ventured to resume his ministrations. The return

which he made for the lenity with which he had been treated does not much raise his character. Scarcely had

he again begun to harangue in public about the unlawfulness of war, when he sent a message earnestly

exhorting James to make an immediate descent on England with thirty thousand men.39

Some months passed before the fate of Preston was decided. After several respites, the government,

convinced that, though he had told much, he could tell more, fixed a day for his execution, and ordered the

sheriffs to have the machinery of death in readiness.40 But he was again respited, and, after a delay of some

weeks, obtained a pardon, which, however, extended only to his life, and left his property subject to all the

consequences of his attainder. As soon as he was set at liberty he gave new cause of offence and suspicion,

and was again arrested, examined and sent to prison.41 At length he was permitted to retire, pursued by the

hisses and curses of both parties, to a lonely manor house in the North Riding of Yorkshire. There, at least, he

had not to endure the scornful looks of old associates who had once thought him a man of dauntless courage

and spotless honour, but who now pronounced that he was at best a meanspirited coward, and hinted their

suspicions that he had been from the beginning a spy and a trepan.42 He employed the short and sad remains

of his life in turning the Consolation of Boethius into English. The translation was published after the

translator's death. It is remarkable chiefly on account of some very unsuccessful attempts to enrich our

versification with new metres, and on account of the allusions with which the preface is filled. Under a thin

veil of figurative language, Preston exhibited to the public compassion or contempt his own blighted fame

and broken heart. He complained that the tribunal which had sentenced him to death had dealt with him more

leniently than his former friends, and that many, who had never been tried by temptations like his, had very

cheaply earned a reputation for courage by sneering at his poltroonery, and by bidding defiance at a distance

The spirit of the Jacobites, which had been quelled for a time by the detection of Preston's plot, was revived

by the fall of Mons. The joy of the whole party was boundless. The nonjuring priests ran backwards and

forwards between Sam's Coffee House and Westminster Hall, spreading the praises of Lewis, and laughing at

the miserable issue of the deliberations of the great Congress. In the Park the malecontents wore their biggest

looks, and talked sedition in their loudest tones. The most conspicuous among these swaggerers was Sir John

Fenwick, who had, in the late reign, been high in favour and in military command, and was now an

indefatigable agitator and conspirator. In his exultation he forgot the courtesy which man owes to woman. He

had more than once made himself conspicuous by his impertinence to the Queen. He now ostentatiously put

himself in her way when she took her airing; and, while all around him uncovered and bowed low, gave her a

rude stare and cocked his hat in her face. The affront was not only brutal, but cowardly. For the law had

provided no punishment for mere impertinence, however gross; and the King was the only gentleman and

soldier in the kingdom who could not protect his wife from contumely with his sword. All that the Queen

could do was to order the parkkeepers not to admit Sir John again within the gates. But, long after her death,

a day came when he had reason to wish that he had restrained his insolence. He found, by terrible proof, that

of all the Jacobites, the most desperate assassins not excepted, he was the only one for whom William felt an

A few days after this event the rage of the malecontents began to flame more fiercely than ever. The detection

of the conspiracy of which Preston was the chief had brought on a crisis in ecclesiastical affairs. The

nonjuring bishops had, during the year which followed their deprivation, continued to reside in the official

mansions which had once been their own. Burnet had, at Mary's request, laboured to effect a compromise.

His direct interference would probably have done more harm than good. He therefore judiciously employed

the agency of Rochester, who stood higher in the estimation of the nonjurors than any statesman who was not

a nonjuror, and of Trevor, who, worthless as he was, had considerable influence with the High Church party.

Sancroft and his brethren were informed that, if they would consent to perform their spiritual duty, to ordain,

to institute, to confirm, and to watch over the faith and the morality of the priesthood, a bill should be brought

into Parliament to excuse them from taking the oaths.44 This offer was imprudently liberal; but those to

whom it was made could not consistently accept it. For in the ordination service, and indeed in almost every

service of the Church, William and Mary were designated as King and Queen. The only promise that could

be obtained from the deprived prelates was that they would live quietly; and even this promise they had not

all kept. One of them at least had been guilty of treason aggravated by impiety. He had, under the strong fear

of being butchered by the populace, declared that he abhorred the thought of calling in the aid of France, and

had invoked God to attest the sincerity of this declaration. Yet, a short time after, he bad been detected in

plotting to bring a French army into England; and he had written to assure the Court of Saint Germains that

he was acting in concert with his brethren, and especially with Sancroft. The Whigs called loudly for severity.

Even the Tory counsellors of William owned that indulgence had been carried to the extreme point. They

made, however, a last attempt to mediate. "Will you and your brethren," said Trevor to Lloyd, the nonjuring

Bishop of Norwich, "disown all connection with Doctor Turner, and declare that what he has in his letters

imputed to you is false?" Lloyd evaded the question. It was now evident that William's forbearance had only

emboldened the adversaries whom he had hoped to conciliate. Even Caermarthen, even Nottingham, declared

Tillotson was nominated to the Archbishopric, and was consecrated on Whitsunday, in the church of St. Mary

Le Bow. Compton, cruelly mortified, refused to bear any part in the ceremony. His place was supplied by

Mew, Bishop of Winchester, who was assisted by Burnet, Stillingfleet and Hough. The congregation was the

most splendid that had been seen in any place of worship since the coronation. The Queen's drawingroom

was, on that day, deserted. Most of the peers who were in town met in the morning at Bedford House, and

went thence in procession to Cheapside. Norfolk, Caermarthen and Dorset were conspicuous in the throng.

Devonshire, who was impatient to see his woods at Chatsworth in their summer beauty, had deferred his

departure in order to mark his respect for Tillotson. The crowd which lined the streets greeted the new

Primate warmly. For he had, during many years, preached in the City; and his eloquence, his probity and the

singular gentleness of his temper and manners, had made him the favourite of the Londoners.46 But the

congratulations and applauses of his friends could not drown the roar of execration which the Jacobites set

up. According to them, he was a thief who had not entered by the door, but had climbed over the fences. He

was a hireling whose own the sheep were not, who had usurped the crook of the good shepherd, and who

might well be expected to leave the flock at the mercy of every wolf. He was an Arian, a Socinian, a Deist, an

Atheist. He had cozened the world by fine phrases, and by a show of moral goodness: but he was in truth a

far more dangerous enemy of the Church than he could have been if he had openly proclaimed himself a

disciple of Hobbes, and had lived as loosely as Wilmot. He had taught the fine gentlemen and ladies who

admired his style, and who were constantly seen round his pulpit, that they might be very good Christians,

and yet might believe the account of the Fall in the book of Genesis to be allegorical. Indeed they might

easily be as good Christians as he; for he had never been christened; his parents were Anabaptists; he had lost

their religion when he was a boy; and he had never found another. In ribald lampoons he was nicknamed

Undipped John. The parish register of his baptism was produced in vain. His enemies still continued to

complain that they had lived to see fathers of the Church who never were her children. They made up a story

that the Queen had felt bitter remorse for the great crime by which she had obtained a throne, that in her

agony she had applied to Tillotson, and that he had comforted her by assuring her that the punishment of the

wicked in a future state would not be eternal.47 The Archbishop's mind was naturally of almost feminine

delicacy, and had been rather softened than braced by the habits of along life, during which contending sects

and factions had agreed in speaking of his abilities with admiration and of his character with esteem. The

storm of obloquy which he had to face for the first time at more than sixty years of age was too much for him.

His spirits declined; his health gave way; yet he neither flinched from his duty nor attempted to revenge

himself on his persecutors. A few days after his consecration, some persons were seized while dispersing

libels in which he was reviled. The law officers of the Crown proposed to institute prosecutions; but he

insisted that nobody should be punished on his account.48 Once, when he had company with him, a sealed

packet was put into his hands; he opened it; and out fell a mask. His friends were shocked and incensed by

this cowardly insult; but the Archbishop, trying to conceal his anguish by a smile, pointed to the pamphlets

which covered his table, and said that the reproach which the emblem of the mask was intended to convey

might be called gentle when compared with other reproaches which he daily had to endure. After his death a

bundle of the savage lampoons which the nonjurors had circulated against him was found among his papers

The temper of the deposed primate was very different. He seems to have been under a complete delusion as

to his own importance. The immense popularity which he had enjoyed three years before, the prayers and

tears of the multitudes who had plunged into the Thames to implore his blessing, the enthusiasm with which

the sentinels of the Tower had drunk his health under the windows of his prison, the mighty roar of joy which

had risen from Palace Yard on the morning of his acquittal, the triumphant night when every window from

Hyde Park to Mile End had exhibited seven candles, the midmost and tallest emblematical of him, were still

fresh in his recollection; nor had he the wisdom to perceive that all this homage had been paid, not to his

person, but to that religion and to those liberties of which he was, for a moment, the representative. The

extreme tenderness with which the new government had long persisted in treating him seems to have

confirmed him in his error. That a succession of conciliatory messages was sent to him from Kensington, that

he was offered terms so liberal as to be scarcely consistent with the dignity of the Crown and the welfare of

the State, that his cold and uncourteous answers could not tire out the royal indulgence, that, in spite of the

loud clamours of the Whigs, and of the provocations daily given by the Jacobites, he was residing, fifteen

months after deprivation, in the metropolitan palace, these things seemed to him to indicate not the lenity but

the timidity of the ruling powers. He appears to have flattered himself that they would not dare to eject him.

The news, therefore, that his see had been filled threw him into a passion which lasted as long as his life, and

which hurried him into many foolish and unseemly actions. Tillotson, as soon as he was appointed, went to

Lambeth in the hope that he might be able, by courtesy and kindness, to soothe the irritation of which he was

the innocent cause. He stayed long in the antechamber, and sent in his name by several servants; but Sancroft

would not even return an answer.50 Three weeks passed; and still the deprived Archbishop showed no

disposition to move. At length he received an order intimating to him the royal pleasure that he should quit

the dwelling which had long ceased to be his own, and in which he was only a guest. He resented this order

bitterly, and declared that he would not obey it. He would stay till he was pulled out by the Sheriff's officers.

He would defend himself at law as long as he could do so without putting in any plea acknowledging the

authority of the usurpers.51 The case was so clear that he could not, by any artifice of chicanery, obtain more

than a short delay. When judgment had been given against him, he left the palace, but directed his steward to

retain possession. The consequence was that the steward was taken into custody and heavily fined. Tillotson

sent a kind message to assure his predecessor that the fine should not be exacted. But Sancroft was

From that time the great object of the narrowminded and peevish old man was to tear in pieces the Church of

which he had been the chief minister. It was in vain that some of those nonjurors, whose virtue, ability and

learning were the glory of their party, remonstrated against his design. "Our deprivation,"such was the

reasoning of Ken,"is, in the sight of God, a nullity. We are, and shall be, till we die or resign, the true

Bishops of our sees. Those who assume our titles and functions will incur the guilt of schism. But with us, if

we act as becomes us, the schism will die; and in the next generation the unity of the Church will be restored.

On the other hand, if we consecrate Bishops to succeed us, the breach may last through ages, and we shall be

justly held accountable, not indeed for its origin, but for its continuance." These considerations ought, on

Sancroft's own principles, to have had decisive weight with him; but his angry passions prevailed. Ken

quietly retired from the venerable palace of Wells. He had done, he said, with strife, and should henceforth

vent his feelings not in disputes but in hymns. His charities to the unhappy of all persuasions, especially to

the followers of Monmouth and to the persecuted Huguenots, had been so large that his whole private fortune

consisted of seven hundred pounds, and of a library which he could not bear to sell. But Thomas Thynne,

Viscount Weymouth, though not a nonjuror, did himself honour by offering to the most virtuous of the

nonjurors a tranquil and dignified asylum in the princely mansion of Longleat. There Ken passed a happy and

honoured old age, during which he never regretted the sacrifice which he had made to what he thought his

duty, and yet constantly became more and more indulgent to those whose views of duty differed from his.53

Sancroft was of a very different temper. He had, indeed, as little to complain of as any man whom a

revolution has ever hurled down from an exalted station. He had at Fressingfield, in Suffolk, a patrimonial

estate, which, together with what he had saved during a primacy of twelve years, enabled him to live, not

indeed as he had lived when he was the first peer of Parliament, but in the style of an opulent country

gentleman. He retired to his hereditary abode; and there he passed the rest of his life in brooding over his

wrongs. Aversion to the Established Church became as strong a feeling in him as it had been in Martin

Marprelate. He considered all who remained in communion with her as heathens and publicans. He

nicknamed Tillotson the Mufti. In the room which was used as a chapel at Fressingfield no person who had

taken the oaths, or who attended the ministry of any divine who had taken the oaths, was suffered to partake

of the sacred bread and wine. A distinction, however, was made between two classes of offenders. A layman

who remained in communion with the Church was permitted to be present while prayers were read, and was

excluded only from the highest of Christian mysteries. But with clergymen who had sworn allegiance to the

Sovereigns in possession Sancroft would not even pray. He took care that the rule which he had laid down

should be widely known, and, both by precept and by example, taught his followers to look on the most

orthodox, the most devout, the most virtuous of those who acknowledged William's authority with a feeling

similar to that with which the Jew regarded the Samaritan.54 Such intolerance would have been

reprehensible, even in a man contending for a great principle. But Sancroft was contending merely for a

name. He was the author of the scheme of Regency. He was perfectly willing to transfer the whole kingly

power from James to William. The question which, to this smallest and sourest of minds, seemed important

enough to justify the excommunicating of ten thousand priests and of five millions of laymen was, whether

the magistrate to whom the whole kingly power was transferred should assume the kingly title. Nor could

Sancroft bear to think that the animosity which he had excited would die with himself. Having done all that

he could to make the feud bitter, he determined to make it eternal. A list of the divines who had been ejected

from their benefices was sent by him to Saint Germains with a request that James would nominate two who

might keep up the episcopal succession. James, well pleased, doubtless, to see another sect added to that

multitude of sects which he had been taught to consider as the reproach of Protestantism, named two fierce

and uncompromising nonjurors, Hickes and Wagstaffe, the former recommended by Sancroft, the latter

recommended by Lloyd, the ejected Bishop of Norwich.55 Such was the origin of a schismatical hierarchy,

which, having, during a short time, excited alarm, soon sank into obscurity and contempt, but which, in

obscurity and contempt, continued to drag on a languid existence during several generations. The little

Church, without temples, revenues or dignities, was even more distracted by internal disputes than the great

Church, which retained possession of cathedrals, tithes and peerages. Some nonjurors leaned towards the

ceremonial of Rome; others would not tolerate the slightest departure from the Book of Common Prayer.

Altar was set up against altar. One phantom prelate pronounced the consecration of another phantom prelate

uncanonical. At length the pastors were left absolutely without flocks. One of these Lords spiritual very

wisely turned surgeon; another left what he had called his see, and settled in Ireland; and at length, in 1805,

the last Bishop of that society which had proudly claimed to be the only true Church of England dropped

The places of the bishops who had been ejected with Sancroft were filled in a manner creditable to the

government. Patrick succeeded the traitor Turner. Fowler went to Gloucester. Richard Cumberland, an aged

divine, who had no interest at Court, and whose only recommendations were his piety and erudition, was

astonished by learning from a newsletter which he found on the table of a coffeehouse that he had been

nominated to the See of Peterborough.57 Beveridge was selected to succeed Ken; he consented; and the

appointment was actually announced in the London Gazette. But Beveridge, though an honest, was not a

strongminded man. Some Jacobites expostulated with him; some reviled him; his heart failed him; and he

retracted. While the nonjurors were rejoicing in this victory, he changed his mind again; but too late. He had

by his irresolution forfeited the favour of William, and never obtained a mitre till Anne was on the throne.58

The bishopric of Bath and Wells was bestowed on Richard Kidder, a man of considerable attainments and

blameless character, but suspected of a leaning towards Presbyterianism. About the same time Sharp, the

highest churchman that had been zealous for the Comprehension, and the lowest churchman that felt a scruple

about succeeding a deprived prelate, accepted the Archbishopric of York, vacant by the death of

In consequence of the elevation of Tillotson to the See of Canterbury, the Deanery of Saint Paul's became

vacant. As soon as the name of the new Dean was known, a clamour broke forth such as perhaps no

ecclesiastical appointment has ever produced, a clamour made up of yells of hatred, of hisses of contempt,

and of shouts of triumphant and half insulting welcome; for the new Dean was William Sherlock.

The story of his conversion deserves to be fully told; for it throws great light on the character of the parties

which then divided the Church and the State. Sherlock was, in influence and reputation, though not in rank,

the foremost man among the nonjurors. His authority and example had induced some of his brethren, who

had at first wavered, to resign their benefices. The day of suspension came; the day of deprivation came; and

still he was firm. He seemed to have found, in the consciousness of rectitude, and in meditation on the

invisible world, ample compensation for all his losses. While excluded from the pulpit where his eloquence

had once delighted the learned and polite inmates of the Temple, he wrote that celebrated Treatise on Death

which, during many years, stood next to the Whole Duty of Man in the bookcases of serious Arminians.

Soon, however, it began to be suspected that his resolution was giving way. He declared that he would be no

party to a schism; he advised those who sought his counsel not to leave their parish churches; nay, finding

that the law which had ejected him from his cure did not interdict him from performing divine service, he

officiated at Saint Dunstan's, and there prayed for King William and Queen Mary. The apostolical injunction,

he said, was that prayers should be made for all in authority, and William and Mary were visibly in authority.

His Jacobite friends loudly blamed his inconsistency. How, they asked, if you admit that the Apostle speaks

in this passage of actual authority, can you maintain that, in other passages of a similar kind, he speaks only

of legitimate authority? Or how can you, without sin, designate as King, in a solemn address to God, one

whom you cannot, without sin, promise to obey as King? These reasonings were unanswerable; and Sherlock

soon began to think them so; but the conclusion to which they led him was diametrically opposed to the

conclusion to which they were meant to lead him. He hesitated, however, till a new light flashed on his mind

from a quarter from which there was little reason to expect any thing but tenfold darkness. In the reign of

James the First, Doctor John Overall, Bishop of Exeter, had written an elaborate treatise on the rights of civil

and ecclesiastical governors. This treatise had been solemnly approved by the Convocations of Canterbury

and York, and might therefore be considered as an authoritative exposition of the doctrine of the Church of

England. A copy of the manuscript was in Sancroft's possession; and he, soon after the Revolution, sent it to

the press. He hoped, doubtless, that the publication would injure the new government; but he was lamentably

disappointed. The book indeed condemned all resistance in terms as strong as he could himself have used; but

one passage which had escaped his notice was decisive against himself and his fellow schismatics. Overall,

and the two Convocations which had given their sanction to Overall's teaching, pronounced that a

government, which had originated in rebellion, ought, when thoroughly settled, to be considered as ordained

by God and to be obeyed by Christian men.60 Sherlock read, and was convinced. His venerable mother the

Church had spoken; and he, with the docility of a child, accepted her decree. The government which had

sprung from the Revolution might, at least since the battle of the Boyne and the flight of James from Ireland,

be fairly called a settled government, and ought therefore to be passively obeyed till it should be subverted by

Sherlock took the oaths, and speedily published, in justification of his conduct, a pamphlet entitled The Case

of Allegiance to Sovereign Powers stated. The sensation produced by this work was immense. Dryden's Hind

and Panther had not raised so great an uproar. Halifax's Letter to a Dissenter had not called forth so many

answers. The replies to the Doctor, the vindications of the Doctor, the pasquinades on the Doctor, would fill a

library. The clamour redoubled when it was known that the convert had not only been reappointed Master of

the Temple, but had accepted the Deanery of Saint Paul's, which had become vacant in consequence of the

deprivation of Sancroft and the promotion of Tillotson. The rage of the nonjurors amounted almost to frenzy.

Was it not enough, they asked, to desert the true and pure Church, in this her hour of sorrow and peril,

without also slandering her? It was easy to understand why a greedy, cowardly hypocrite should refuse to

take the oaths to the usurper as long as it seemed probable that the rightful King would be restored, and

should make haste to swear after the battle of the Boyne. Such tergiversation in times of civil discord was

nothing new. What was new was that the turncoat should try to throw his own guilt and shame on the Church

of England, and should proclaim that she had taught him to turn against the weak who were in the right, and

to cringe to the powerful who were in the wrong. Had such indeed been her doctrine or her practice in evil

days? Had she abandoned her Royal Martyr in the prison or on the scaffold? Had she enjoined her children to

pay obedience to the Rump or to the Protector? Yet was the government of the Rump or of the Protector less

entitled to be called a settled government than the government of William and Mary? Had not the battle of

Worcester been as great a blow to the hopes of the House of Stuart as the battle of the Boyne? Had not the

chances of a Restoration seemed as small in 1657 as they could seem to any judicious man in 1691? In spite

of invectives and sarcasms, however, there was Overall's treatise; there were the approving votes of the two

Convocations; and it was much easier to rail at Sherlock than to explain away either the treatise or the votes.

One writer maintained that by a thoroughly settled government must have been meant a government of which

the title was uncontested. Thus, he said, the government of the United Provinces became a settled government

when it was recognised by Spain, and, but for that recognition, would never have been a settled government

to the end of time. Another casuist, somewhat less austere, pronounced that a government, wrongful in its

origin, might become a settled government after the lapse of a century. On the thirteenth of February 1789,

therefore, and not a day earlier, Englishmen would be at liberty to swear allegiance to a government sprung

from the Revolution. The history of the chosen people was ransacked for precedents. Was Eglon's a settled

government when Ehud stabbed him? Was Joram's a settled government when Jehe shot him? But the leading

case was that of Athaliah. It was indeed a case which furnished the malecontents with many happy and

pungent allusions; a kingdom treacherously seized by an usurper near in blood to the throne; the rightful

prince long dispossessed; a part of the sacerdotal order true, through many disastrous years, to the Royal

House; a counterrevolution at length effected by the High Priest at the head of the Levites. Who, it was asked,

would dare to blame the heroic pontiff who had restored the heir of David? Yet was not the government of

Hundreds of pages written at this time about the rights of Joash and the bold enterprise of Jehoiada are

mouldering in the ancient bookcases of Oxford and Cambridge. While Sherlock was thus fiercely attacked by

his old friends, he was not left unmolested by his old enemies. Some vehement Whigs, among whom Julian

Johnson was conspicuous, declared that Jacobitism itself was respectable when compared with the vile

doctrine which had been discovered in the Convocation Book. That passive obedience was due to Kings was

doubtless an absurd and pernicious notion. Yet it was impossible not to respect the consistency and fortitude

of men who thought themselves bound to bear true allegiance, at all hazards, to an unfortunate, a deposed, an

exiled oppressor. But the theory which Sherlock had learned from Overall was unmixed baseness and

wickedness. A cause was to be abandoned, not because it was unjust, but because it was unprosperous.

Whether James had been a tyrant or had been the father of his people was quite immaterial. If he had won the

battle of the Boyne we should have been bound as Christians to be his slaves. He had lost it; and we were

bound as Christians to be his foes. Other Whigs congratulated the proselyte on having come, by whatever

road, to a right practical conclusion, but could not refrain from sneering at the history which he gave of his

conversion. He was, they said, a man of eminent learning and abilities. He had studied the question of

allegiance long and deeply. He had written much about it. Several months had been allowed him for reading,

prayer and reflection before he incurred suspension, several months more before he incurred deprivation. He

had formed an opinion for which he had declared himself ready to suffer martyrdom; he had taught that

opinion to others; and he had then changed that opinion solely because he had discovered that it had been, not

refuted, but dogmatically pronounced erroneous by the two Convocations more than eighty years before.

Surely, this was to renounce all liberty of private judgment, and to ascribe to the Synods of Canterbury and

York an infallibility which the Church of England had declared that even Oecumenical Councils could not

justly claim. If, it was sarcastically said, all our notions of right and wrong, in matters of vital importance to

the well being of society, are to be suddenly altered by a few lines of manuscript found in a corner of the

library at Lambeth, it is surely much to be wished, for the peace of mind of humble Christians, that all the

documents to which this sort of authority belongs should be rummaged out and sent to the press as soon as

possible; for, unless this be done, we may all, like the Doctor when he refused the oaths last year, be

committing sins in the full persuasion that we are discharging duties. In truth, it is not easy to believe that the

Convocation Book furnished Sherlock with any thing more than a pretext for doing what he had made up his

mind to do. The united force of reason and interest had doubtless convinced him that his passions and

prejudices had led him into a great error. That error he determined to recant; and it cost him less to say that

his opinion had been changed by newly discovered evidence, than that he had formed a wrong judgment with

all the materials for the forming of a right judgment before him. The popular belief was that his retractation

was the effect of the tears, expostulations and reproaches of his wife. The lady's spirit was high; her authority

in the family was great; and she cared much more about her house and her carriage, the plenty of her table

and the prospects of her children, than about the patriarchal origin of government or the meaning of the word

Abdication. She had, it was asserted, given her husband no peace by day or by night till he had got over his

scruples. In letters, fables, songs, dialogues without number, her powers of seduction and intimidation were

malignantly extolled. She was Xanthippe pouring water on the head of Socrates. She was Dalilah shearing

Samson. She was Eve forcing the forbidden fruit into Adam's mouth. She was Job's wife, imploring her

ruined lord, who sate scraping himself among the ashes, not to curse and die, but to swear and live. While the

ballad makers celebrated the victory of Mrs. Sherlock, another class of assailants fell on the theological

reputation of her spouse. Till he took the oaths, he had always been considered as the most orthodox of

divines. But the captious and malignant criticism to which his writings were now subjected would have found

heresy in the Sermon on the Mount; and he, unfortunately, was rash enough to publish, at the very moment

when the outcry against his political tergiversation was loudest, his thoughts on the mystery of the Trinity. It

is probable that, at another time, his work would have been hailed by good Churchmen as a triumphant

answer to the Socinians and Sabellians. But, unhappily, in his zeal against Socinians and Sabellians, he used

expressions which might be construed into Tritheism. Candid judges would have remembered that the true

path was closely pressed on the right and on the left by error, and that it was scarcely possible to keep far

enough from danger on one side without going very close to danger on the other. But candid judges Sherlock

was not likely to find among the Jacobites. His old allies affirmed that he had incurred all the fearful penalties

denounced in the Athanasian Creed against those who divide the substance. Bulky quartos were written to

prove that he held the existence of three distinct Deities; and some facetious malecontents, who troubled

themselves very little about the Catholic verity, amused the town by lampoons in English and Latin on his

heterodoxy. "We," said one of these jesters, "plight our faith to one King, and call one God to attest our

promise. We cannot think it strange that there should be more than one King to whom the Doctor has sworn

allegiance, when we consider that the Doctor has more Gods than one to swear by."61

Sherlock would, perhaps, have doubted whether the government to which he had submitted was entitled to be

called a settled government, if he had known all the dangers by which it was threatened. Scarcely had

Preston's plot been detected; when a new plot of a very different kind was formed in the camp, in the navy, in

the treasury, in the very bedchamber of the King. This mystery of iniquity has, through five generations, been

gradually unveiling, but is not yet entirely unveiled. Some parts which are still obscure may possibly, by the

discovery of letters or diaries now reposing under the dust of a century and a half, be made clear to our

posterity. The materials, however, which are at present accessible, are sufficient for the construction of a

We have seen that, in the spring of 1690, Shrewsbury, irritated by finding his counsels rejected, and those of

his Tory rivals followed, suffered himself, in a fatal hour, to be drawn into a correspondence with the

banished family. We have seen also by what cruel sufferings of body and mind he expiated his fault. Tortured

by remorse, and by disease the effect of remorse, he had quitted the Court; but he had left behind him men

whose principles were not less lax than his, and whose hearts were far harder and colder.

Early in 1691, some of these men began to hold secret communication with Saint Germains. Wicked and base

as their conduct was, there was in it nothing surprising. They did after their kind. The times were troubled. A

thick cloud was upon the future. The most sagacious and experienced politician could not see with any

clearness three months before him. To a man of virtue and honour, indeed, this mattered little. His uncertainty

as to what the morrow might bring forth might make him anxious, but could not make him perfidious.

Though left in utter darkness as to what concerned his interests, he had the sure guidance of his principles.

But, unhappily, men of virtue and honour were not numerous among the courtiers of that age. Whitehall had

been, during thirty years, a seminary of every public and private vice, and swarmed with lowminded,

doubledealing, selfseeking politicians. These politicians now acted as it was natural that men profoundly

immoral should act at a crisis of which none could predict the issue. Some of them might have a slight

predilection for William; others a slight predilection for James; but it was not by any such predilection that

the conduct of any of the breed was guided. If it had seemed certain that William would stand, they would all

have been for William. If it had seemed certain that James would be restored, they would all have been for

James. But what was to be done when the chances appeared to be almost exactly balanced? There were

honest men of one party who would have answered, To stand by the true King and the true Church, and, if

necessary, to die for them like Laud. There were honest men of the other party who would have answered, To

stand by the liberties of England and the Protestant religion, and, if necessary, to die for them like Sidney.

But such consistency was unintelligible to many of the noble and the powerful. Their object was to be safe in

every event. They therefore openly took the oath of allegiance to one King, and secretly plighted their word

to the other. They were indefatigable in obtaining commissions, patents of peerage, pensions, grants of crown

land, under the great seal of William; and they had in their secret drawers promises of pardon in the

Among those who were guilty of this wickedness three men stand preeminent, Russell, Godolphin and

Marlborough. No three men could be, in head and heart, more unlike to one another; and the peculiar

qualities of each gave a peculiar character to his villany. The treason of Russell is to be attributed partly to

fractiousness; the treason of Godolphin is to be attributed altogether to timidity; the treason of Marlborough

It may be thought strange that Russell should have been out of humour. He had just accepted the command of

the united naval forces of England and Holland with the rank of Admiral of the Fleet. He was Treasurer of the

Navy. He had a pension of three thousand pounds a year. Crown property near Charing Cross, to the value of

eighteen thousand pounds, had been bestowed on him. His indirect gains must have been immense. But he

was still dissatisfed. In truth, with undaunted courage, with considerable talents both for war and for

administration, and with a certain public spirit, which showed itself by glimpses even in the very worst parts

of his life, he was emphatically a bad man, insolent, malignant, greedy, faithless. He conceived that the great

services which he had performed at the time of the Revolution had not been adequately rewarded. Every

thing that was given to others seemed to him to be pillaged from himself. A letter is still extant which he

wrote to William about this time. It is made up of boasts, reproaches and sneers. The Admiral, with ironical

professions of humility and loyalty, begins by asking permission to put his wrongs on paper, because his

bashfulness would not suffer him to explain himself by word of mouth. His grievances were intolerable.

Other people got grants of royal domains; but he could get scarcely any thing. Other people could provide for

their dependants; but his recommendations were uniformly disregarded. The income which he derived from

the royal favour might seem large; but he had poor relations; and the government, instead of doing its duty by

them, had most unhandsomely left them to his care. He had a sister who ought to have a pension; for, without

one, she could not give portions to her daughters. He had a brother who, for want of a place, had been

reduced to the melancholy necessity of marrying an old woman for her money. Russell proceeded to

complain bitterly that the Whigs were neglected, that the Revolution had aggrandised and enriched men who

had made the greatest efforts to avert it. And there is reason to believe that this complaint came from his

heart. For, next to his own interests, those of his party were dear to him; and, even when he was most inclined

to become a Jacobite, he never had the smallest disposition to become a Tory. In the temper which this letter

indicates, he readily listened to the suggestions of David Lloyd, one of the ablest and most active emissaries

who at this time were constantly plying between France and England. Lloyd conveyed to James assurances

that Russell would, when a favourable opportunity should present itself, try to effect by means of the fleet

what Monk had effected in the preceding generation by means of the army.63 To what extent these

assurances were sincere was a question about which men who knew Russell well, and who were minutely

informed as to his conduct, were in doubt. It seems probable that, during many months, he did not know his

own mind. His interest was to stand well, as long as possible, with both Kings. His irritable and imperious

nature was constantly impelling him to quarrel with both. His spleen was excited one week by a dry answer

from William, and the next week by an absurd proclamation from James. Fortunately the most important day

of his life, the day from which all his subsequent years took their colour, found him out of temper with the

Godolphin had not, and did not pretend to have, any cause of complaint against the government which he

served. He was First Commissioner of the Treasury. He had been protected, trusted, caressed. Indeed the

favour shown to him had excited many murmurs. Was it fitting, the Whigs had indignantly asked, that a man

who had been high in office through the whole of the late reign, who had promised to vote for the Indulgence,

who had sate in the Privy Council with a Jesuit, who had sate at the Board of Treasury with two Papists, who

had attended an idolatress to her altar, should be among the chief ministers of a Prince whose title to the

throne was derived from the Declaration of Rights? But on William this clamour had produced no effect; and

none of his English servants seems to have had at this time a larger share of his confidence than Godolphin.

Nevertheless, the Jacobites did not despair. One of the most zealous among them, a gentleman named

Bulkeley, who had formerly been on terms of intimacy with Godolphin, undertook to see what could be done.

He called at the Treasury, and tried to draw the First Lord into political talk. This was no easy matter; for

Godolphin was not a man to put himself lightly into the power of others. His reserve was proverbial; and he

was especially renowned for the dexterity with which he, through life, turned conversation away from matters

of state to a main of cocks or the pedigree of a racehorse. The visit ended without his uttering a word

Bulkeley, however, was not to be so repulsed. He came again, and introduced the subject which was nearest

his heart. Godolphin then asked after his old master and mistress in the mournful tone of a man who

despaired of ever being reconciled to them. Bulkeley assured him that King James was ready to forgive all

the past. "May I tell His Majesty that you will try to deserve his favour?" At this Godolphin rose, said

something about the trammels of office and his wish to be released from them, and put an end to the

Bulkeley soon made a third attempt. By this time Godolphin had learned some things which shook his

confidence in the stability of the government which he served. He began to think, as he would himself have

expressed it, that he had betted too deep on the Revolution, and that it was time to hedge. Evasions would no

longer serve his turn. It was necessary to speak out. He spoke out, and declared himself a devoted servant of

King James. "I shall take an early opportunity of resigning my place. But, till then, I am under a tie. I must

not betray my trust." To enhance the value of the sacrifice which he proposed to make, he produced a most

friendly and confidential letter which he had lately received from William. "You see how entirely the Prince

of Orange trusts me. He tells me that he cannot do without me, and that there is no Englishman for whom he

has so great a kindness; but all this weighs nothing with me in comparison of my duty to my lawful King."

If the First Lord of the Treasury really had scruples about betraying his trust, those scruples were soon so

effectually removed that he very complacently continued, during six years, to eat the bread of one master,

while secretly sending professions of attachment and promises of service to another.

The truth is that Godolphin was under the influence of a mind far more powerful and far more depraved than

his own. His perplexities had been imparted to Marlborough, to whom he had long been bound by such

friendship as two very unprincipled men are capable of feeling for each other, and to whom he was

Marlborough was in a very different situation from that of William's other servants. Lloyd might make

overtures to Russell, and Bulkeley to Godolphin. But all the agents of the banished Court stood aloof from

the traitor of Salisbury. That shameful night seemed to have for ever separated the perjured deserter from the

Prince whom he had ruined. James had, even in the last extremity, when his army was in full retreat, when his

whole kingdom had risen against him, declared that he would never pardon Churchill, never, never. By all the

Jacobites the name of Churchill was held in peculiar abhorrence; and, in the prose and verse which came

forth daily from their secret presses, a precedence in infamy, among all the many traitors of the age, was

assigned to him. In the order of things which had sprung from the Revolution, he was one of the great men of

England, high in the state, high in the army. He had been created an Earl. He had a large share in the military

administration. The emoluments, direct and indirect, of the places and commands which he held under the

Crown were believed at the Dutch Embassy to amount to twelve thousand pounds a year. In the event of a

counterrevolution it seemed that he had nothing in prospect but a garret in Holland, or a scaffold on Tower

Hill. It might therefore have been expected that he would serve his new master with fidelity, not indeed with

the fidelity of Nottingham, which was the fidelity of conscientiousness, not with the fidelity of Portland,

which was the fidelity of affection, but with the not less stubborn fidelity of despair.

Those who thought thus knew but little of Marlborough. Confident in his own powers of deception, he

resolved, since the Jacobite agents would not seek him, to seek them. He therefore sent to beg an interview

Sackville was astonished and not much pleased by the message. He was a sturdy Cavalier of the old school.

He had been persecuted in the days of the Popish plot for manfully saying what he thought, and what every

body now thinks, about Oates and Bedloe.64 Since the Revolution he had put his neck in peril for King

James, had been chased by officers with warrants, and had been designated as a traitor in a proclamation to

which Marlborough himself had been a party.65 It was not without reluctance that the stanch royalist crossed

the hated threshold of the deserter. He was repaid for his effort by the edifying spectacle of such an agony of

repentance as he had never before seen. "Will you," said Marlborough, "be my intercessor with the King?

Will you tell him what I suffer? My crimes now appear to me in their true light; and I shrink with horror from

the contemplation. The thought of them is with me day and night. I sit down to table; but I cannot eat. I throw

myself on my bed; but I cannot sleep. I am ready to sacrifice every thing, to brave every thing, to bring utter

ruin on my fortunes, if only I may be free from the misery of a wounded spirit." If appearances could be

trusted, this great offender was as true a penitent as David or as Peter. Sackville reported to his friends what

had passed. They could not but acknowledge that, if the arch traitor, who had hitherto opposed to conscience

and to public opinion the same cool and placid hardihood which distinguished him on fields of battle, had

really begun to feel remorse, it would be absurd to reject, on account of his unworthiness, the inestimable

services which it was in his power to render to the good cause. He sate in the interior council; he held high

command in the army; he had been recently entrusted, and would doubtless again be entrusted, with the

direction of important military operations. It was true that no man had incurred equal guilt; but it was true

also that no man had it in his power to make equal reparation. If he was sincere, he might doubtless earn the

pardon which he so much desired. But was he sincere? Had he not been just as loud in professions of loyalty

on the very eve of his crime? It was necessary to put him to the test. Several tests were applied by Sackville

and Lloyd. Marlborough was required to furnish full information touching the strength and the distribution of

all the divisions of the English army; and he complied. He was required to disclose the whole plan of the

approaching campaign; and he did so. The Jacobite leaders watched carefully for inaccuracies in his reports,

but could find none. It was thought a still stronger proof of his fidelity that he gave valuable intelligence

about what was doing in the office of the Secretary of State. A deposition had been sworn against one zealous

royalist. A warrant was preparing against another. These intimations saved several of the malecontents from

imprisonment, if not from the gallows; and it was impossible for them not to feel some relenting towards the

He however, in his secret conversations with his new allies, laid no claim to merit. He did not, he said, ask for

confidence. How could he, after the villanies which he had committed against the best of Kings, hope ever to

be trusted again? It was enough for a wretch like him to be permitted to make, at the cost of his life, some

poor atonement to the gracious master, whom he had indeed basely injured, but whom he had never ceased to

love. It was not improbable that, in the summer, he might command the English forces in Flanders. Was it

wished that he should bring them over in a body to the French camp? If such were the royal pleasure, he

would undertake that the thing should be done. But on the whole he thought that it would be better to wait till

the next session of Parliament. And then he hinted at a plan which he afterwards more fully matured, for

expelling the usurper by means of the English legislature and the English army. In the meantime he hoped

that James would command Godolphin not to quit the Treasury. A private man could do little for the good

cause. One who was the director of the national finances, and the depository of the gravest secrets of state,

Marlborough's pretended repentance imposed so completely on those who managed the affairs of James in

London that they sent Lloyd to France, with the cheering intelligence that the most depraved of all rebels had

been wonderfully transformed into a loyal subject. The tidings filled James with delight and hope. Had he

been wise, they would have excited in him only aversion and distrust. It was absurd to imagine that a man

really heartbroken by remorse and shame for one act of perfidy would determine to lighten his conscience by

committing a second act of perfidy as odious and as disgraceful as the first. The promised atonement was so

wicked and base that it never could be made by any man sincerely desirous to atone for past wickedness and

baseness. The truth was that, when Marlborough told the Jacobites that his sense of guilt prevented him from

swallowing his food by day and taking his rest at night, he was laughing at them. The loss of half a guinea

would have done more to spoil his appetite and to disturb his slumbers than all the terrors of an evil

conscience. What his offers really proved was that his former crime had sprung, not from an ill regulated zeal

for the interests of his country and his religion, but from a deep and incurable moral disease which had

infected the whole man. James, however, partly from dulness and partly from selfishness, could never see any

immorality in any action by which he was benefited. To conspire against him, to betray him, to break an oath

of allegiance sworn to him, were crimes for which no punishment here or hereafter could be too severe. But

to murder his enemies, to break faith with his enemies was not only innocent but laudable. The desertion at

Salisbury had been the worst of crimes; for it had ruined him. A similar desertion in Flanders would be an

The penitent was informed by his Jacobite friends that he was forgiven. The news was most welcome; but

something more was necessary to restore his lost peace of mind. Might he hope to have, in the royal

handwriting, two lines containing a promise of pardon? It was not, of course, for his own sake that he asked

this. But he was confident that, with such a document in his hands, he could bring back to the right path some

persons of great note who adhered to the usurper, only because they imagined that they had no mercy to

expect from the legitimate King. They would return to their duty as soon as they saw that even the worst of

all criminals had, on his repentance, been generously forgiven. The promise was written, sent, and carefully

treasured up. Marlborough had now attained one object, an object which was common to him with Russell

and Godolphin. But he had other objects which neither Russell nor Godolphin had ever contemplated. There

is, as we shall hereafter see, strong reason to believe that this wise, brave, wicked man, was meditating a plan

worthy of his fertile intellect and daring spirit, and not less worthy of his deeply corrupted heart, a plan

which, if it had not been frustrated by strange means, would have ruined William without benefiting James,

and would have made the successful traitor master of England and arbiter of Europe.

Thus things stood, when, in May 1691, William, after a short and busy sojourn in England, set out again for

the Continent, where the regular campaign was about to open. He took with him Marlborough, whose

abilities he justly appreciated, and of whose recent negotiations with Saint Germains he had not the faintest

suspicion. At the Hague several important military and political consultations were held; and, on every

occasion, the superiority of the accomplished Englishman was felt by the most distinguished soldiers and

statesmen of the United Provinces. Heinsius, long after, used to relate a conversation which took place at this

time between William and the Prince of Vaudemont, one of the ablest commanders in the Dutch service.

Vaudemont spoke well of several English officers, and among them of Talmash and Mackay, but pronounced

Marlborough superior beyond comparison to the rest. "He has every quality of a general. His very look shows

it. He cannot fail to achieve something great." "I really believe, cousin," answered the King, "that my Lord

There was still a short interval before the commencement of military operations. William passed that interval

in his beloved park at Loo. Marlborough spent two or three days there, and was then despatched to Flanders

with orders to collect all the English forces, to form a camp in the neighbourhood of Brussels, and to have

And now Marlborough had an opportunity of proving the sincerity of those professions by which he had

obtained from a heart, well described by himself as harder than a marble chimneypiece, the pardon of an

offence such as might have moved even a gentle nature to deadly resentment. He received from Saint

Germains a message claiming the instant performance of his promise to desert at the head of his troops. He

was told that this was the greatest service which he could render to the Crown. His word was pledged; and the

gracious master who had forgiven all past errors confidently expected that it would be redeemed. The

hypocrite evaded the demand with characteristic dexterity. In the most respectful and affectionate language

he excused himself for not immediately obeying the royal commands. The promise which he was required to

fulfil had not been quite correctly understood. There had been some misapprehension on the part of the

messengers. To carry over a regiment or two would do more harm than good. To carry over a whole army

was a business which would require much time and management.66 While James was murmuring over these

apologies, and wishing that he had not been quite so placable, William arrived at the head quarters of the

The military operations in Flanders recommenced early in June and terminated at the close of September. No

important action took place. The two armies marched and countermarched, drew near and receded. During

some time they confronted each other with less than a league between them. But neither William nor

Luxemburg would fight except at an advantage; and neither gave the other any advantage. Languid as the

campaign was, it is on one account remarkable. During more than a century our country had sent no great

force to make war by land out of the British isles. Our aristocracy had therefore long ceased to be a military

class. The nobles of France, of Germany, of Holland, were generally soldiers. It would probably have been

difficult to find in the brilliant circle which surrounded Lewis at Versailles a single Marquess or Viscount of

forty who had not been at some battle or siege. But the immense majority of our peers, baronets and opulent

esquires had never served except in the trainbands, and had never borne a part in any military exploit more

serious than that of putting down a riot or of keeping a street clear for a procession. The generation which had

fought at Edgehill and Lansdowne had nearly passed away. The wars of Charles the Second had been almost

entirely maritime. During his reign therefore the sea service had been decidedly more the mode than the land

service; and, repeatedly, when our fleet sailed to encounter the Dutch, such multitudes of men of fashion had

gone on board that the parks and the theatres had been left desolate. In 1691 at length, for the first time since

Henry the Eighth laid siege to Boulogne, an English army appeared on the Continent under the command of

an English king. A camp, which was also a court, was irresistibly attractive to many young patricians full of

natural intrepidity, and ambitious of the favour which men of distinguished bravery have always found in the

eyes of women. To volunteer for Flanders became the rage among the fine gentlemen who combed their

flowing wigs and exchanged their richly perfumed snuffs at the Saint James's Coffeehouse. William's

headquarters were enlivened by a crowd of splendid equipages and by a rapid succession of sumptuous

banquets. For among the high born and high spirited youths who repaired to his standard were some who,

though quite willing to face a battery, were not at all disposed to deny themselves the luxuries with which

they had been surrounded in Soho Square. In a few months Shadwell brought these valiant fops and epicures

on the stage. The town was made merry with the character of a courageous but prodigal and effeminate

coxcomb, who is impatient to cross swords with the best men in the French household troops, but who is

much dejected by learning that he may find it difficult to have his champagne iced daily during the summer.

He carries with him cooks, confectioners and laundresses, a waggonload of plate, a wardrobe of laced and

embroidered suits, and much rich tent furniture, of which the patterns have been chosen by a committee of

While the hostile armies watched each other in Flanders, hostilities were carried on with somewhat more

vigour in other parts of Europe. The French gained some advantages in Catalonia and in Piedmont. Their

Turkish allies, who in the east menaced the dominions of the Emperor, were defeated by Lewis of Baden in a

great battle. But nowhere were the events of the summer so important as in Ireland.

From October 1690 till May 1691, no military operation on a large scale was attempted in that kingdom. The

area of the island was, during the winter and spring, not unequally divided between the contending races. The

whole of Ulster, the greater part of Leinster and about one third of Munster had submitted to the English. The

whole of Connaught, the greater part of Munster, and two or three counties of Leinster were held by the Irish.

The tortuous boundary formed by William's garrisons ran in a north eastern direction from the bay of

Castlehaven to Mallow, and then, inclining still further eastward, proceeded to Cashel. From Cashel the line

went to Mullingar, from Mullingar to Longford, and from Longford to Cavan, skirted Lough Erne on the

On the English side of this pale there was a rude and imperfect order. Two Lords Justices, Coningsby and

Porter, assisted by a Privy Council, represented King William at Dublin Castle. Judges, Sheriffs and Justices

of the Peace had been appointed; and assizes were, after a long interval, held in several county towns. The

colonists had meanwhile been formed into a strong militia, under the command of officers who had

commissions from the Crown. The trainbands of the capital consisted of two thousand five hundred foot, two

troops of horse and two troops of dragoons, all Protestants and all well armed and clad.69 On the fourth of

November, the anniversary of William's birth, and on the fifth, the anniversary of his landing at Torbay, the

whole of this force appeared in all the pomp of war. The vanquished and disarmed natives assisted, with

suppressed grief and anger, at the triumph of the caste which they had, five months before, oppressed and

plundered with impunity. The Lords Justices went in state to Saint Patrick's Cathedral; bells were rung;

bonfires were lighted; hogsheads of ale and claret were set abroach in the streets; fireworks were exhibited on

College Green; a great company of nobles and public functionaries feasted at the Castle; and, as the second

course came up, the trumpets sounded, and Ulster King at Arms proclaimed, in Latin, French and English,

William and Mary, by the grace of God, King and Queen of Great Britain, France, and Ireland.70

Within the territory where the Saxon race was dominant, trade and industry had already begun to revive. The

brazen counters which bore the image and superscription of James gave place to silver. The fugitives who

had taken refuge in England came back in multitudes; and, by their intelligence, diligence and thrift, the

devastation caused by two years of confusion and robbery was soon in part repaired. Merchantmen heavily

laden were constantly passing and repassing Saint George's Channel. The receipts of the custom houses on

the eastern coast, from Cork to Londonderry, amounted in six months to sixtyseven thousand five hundred

pounds, a sum such as would have been thought extraordinary even in the most prosperous times.71

The Irish who remained within the English pale were, one and all, hostile to the English domination. They

were therefore subjected to a rigorous system of police, the natural though lamentable effect of extreme

danger and extreme provocation. A Papist was not permitted to have a sword or a gun. He was not permitted

to go more than three miles out of his parish except to the market town on the market day. Lest he should

give information or assistance to his brethren who occupied the western half of the island, he was forbidden

to live within ten miles of the frontier. Lest he should turn his house into a place of resort for malecontents,

he was forbidden to sell liquor by retail. One proclamation announced that, if the property of any Protestant

should be injured by marauders, his loss should be made good at the expense of his Popish neighbours.

Another gave notice that, if any Papist who had not been at least three months domiciled in Dublin should be

found there, he should be treated as a spy. Not more than five Papists were to assemble in the capital or its

neighbourhood on any pretext. Without a protection from the government no member of the Church of Rome

was safe; and the government would not grant a protection to any member of the Church of Rome who had a

In spite of all precautions and severities, however, the Celt found many opportunities of taking a sly revenge.

Houses and barns were frequently burned; soldiers were frequently murdered; and it was scarcely possible to

obtain evidence against the malefactors, who had with them the sympathies of the whole population. On such

occasions the government sometimes ventured on acts which seemed better suited to a Turkish than to an

English administration. One of these acts became a favourite theme of Jacobite pamphleteers, and was the

subject of a serious parliamentary inquiry at Westminster. Six musketeers were found butchered only a few

miles from Dublin. The inhabitants of the village where the crime had been committed, men, women, and

children, were driven like sheep into the Castle, where the Privy Council was sitting. The heart of one of the

assassins, named Gafney, failed him. He consented to be a witness, was examined by the Board,

acknowledged his guilt, and named some of his accomplices. He was then removed in custody; but a priest

obtained access to him during a few minutes. What passed during those few minutes appeared when he was a

second time brought before the Council. He had the effrontery to deny that he had owned any thing or

accused any body. His hearers, several of whom had taken down his confession in writing, were enraged at

his impudence. The Lords justices broke out; "You are a rogue; You are a villain; You shall be hanged;

Where is the Provost Marshal?" The Provost Marshal came. "Take that man," said Coningsby, pointing to

Gafney; "take that man, and hang him." There was no gallows ready; but the carriage of a gun served the

purpose; and the prisoner was instantly tied up without a trial, without even a written order for the execution;

and this though the courts of law were sitting at the distance of only a few hundred yards. The English House

of Commons, some years later, after a long discussion, resolved, without a division, that the order for the

execution of Gafney was arbitrary and illegal, but that Coningsby's fault was so much extenuated by the

circumstances in which he was placed that it was not a proper subject for impeachment.73

It was not only by the implacable hostility of the Irish that the Saxon of the pale was at this time harassed.

His allies caused him almost as much annoyance as his helots. The help of troops from abroad was indeed

necessary to him; but it was dearly bought. Even William, in whom the whole civil and military authority was

concentrated, had found it difficult to maintain discipline in an army collected from many lands, and

composed in great part of mercenaries accustomed to live at free quarters. The powers which had been united

in him were now divided and subdivided. The two Lords justices considered the civil administration as their

province, and left the army to the management of Ginkell, who was General in Chief. Ginkell kept excellent

order among the auxiliaries from Holland, who were under his more immediate command. But his authority

over the English and the Danes was less entire; and unfortunately their pay was, during part of the winter, in

arrear. They indemnified themselves by excesses and exactions for the want of that which was their due; and

it was hardly possible to punish men with severity for not choosing to starve with arms in their hands. At

length in the spring large supplies of money and stores arrived; arrears were paid up; rations were plentiful;

and a more rigid discipline was enforced. But too many traces of the bad habits which the soldiers had

In that part of Ireland, meanwhile, which still acknowledged James as King, there could hardly be said to be

any law, any property, or any government. The Roman Catholics of Ulster and Leinster had fled westward by

tens of thousands, driving before them a large part of the cattle which had escaped the havoc of two terrible

years. The influx of food into the Celtic region, however, was far from keeping pace with the influx of

consumers. The necessaries of life were scarce. Conveniences to which every plain farmer and burgess in

England was accustomed could hardly be procured by nobles and generals. No coin was to be seen except

lumps of base metal which were called crowns and shillings. Nominal prices were enormously high. A quart

of ale cost two and sixpence, a quart of brandy three pounds. The only towns of any note on the western coast

were Limerick and Galway; and the oppression which the shopkeepers of those towns underwent was such

that many of them stole away with the remains of their stocks to the English territory, where a Papist, though

he had to endure much restraint and much humiliation, was allowed to put his own price on his goods, and

received that price in silver. Those traders who remained within the unhappy region were ruined. Every

warehouse that contained any valuable property was broken open by ruffians who pretended that they were

commissioned to procure stores for the public service; and the owner received, in return for bales of cloth and

hogsheads of sugar, some fragments of old kettles and saucepans, which would not in London or Paris have

As soon as a merchant ship arrived in the bay of Galway or in the Shannon, she was boarded by these

robbers. The cargo was carried away; and the proprietor was forced to content himself with such a quantity of

cowhides, of wool and of tallow as the gang which had plundered him chose to give him. The consequence

was that, while foreign commodities were pouring fast into the harbours of Londonderry, Carrickfergus,

Dublin, Waterford and Cork, every mariner avoided Limerick and Galway as nests of pirates.75

The distinction between the Irish foot soldier and the Irish Rapparee had never been very strongly marked. It

now disappeared. Great part of the army was turned loose to live by marauding. An incessant predatory war

raged along the line which separated the domain of William from that of James. Every day companies of

freebooters, sometimes wrapped in twisted straw which served the purpose of armour, stole into the English

territory, burned, sacked, pillaged, and hastened back to their own ground. To guard against these incursions

was not easy; for the peasantry of the plundered country had a strong fellow feeling with the plunderers. To

empty the granary, to set fire to the dwelling, to drive away the cows, of a heretic was regarded by every

squalid inhabitant of a mud cabin as a good work. A troop engaged in such a work might confidently expect

to fall in, notwithstanding all the proclamations of the Lords justices, with some friend who would indicate

the richest booty, the shortest road, and the safest hiding place. The English complained that it was no easy

matter to catch a Rapparee. Sometimes, when he saw danger approaching, he lay down in the long grass of

the bog; and then it was as difficult to find him as to find a hare sitting. Sometimes he sprang into a stream,

and lay there, like an otter, with only his mouth and nostrils above the water. Nay, a whole gang of banditti

would, in the twinkling of an eye, transform itself into a crowd of harmless labourers. Every man took his

gun to pieces, hid the lock in his clothes, stuck a cork in the muzzle, stopped the touch hole with a quill, and

threw the weapon into the next pond. Nothing was to be seen but a train of poor rustics who had not so much

as a cudgel among them, and whose humble look and crouching walk seemed to show that their spirit was

thoroughly broken to slavery. When the peril was over, when the signal was given, every man flew to the

place where he had hid his arms; and soon the robbers were in full march towards some Protestant mansion.

One band penetrated to Clonmel, another to the vicinity of Maryborough; a third made its den in a woody

islet of firm ground, surrounded by the vast bog of Allen, harried the county of Wicklow, and alarmed even

the suburbs of Dublin. Such expeditions indeed were not always successful. Sometimes the plunderers fell in

with parties of militia or with detachments from the English garrisons, in situations in which disguise, flight

and resistance were alike impossible. When this happened every kerne who was taken was hanged, without

At the head quarters of the Irish army there was, during the winter, no authority capable of exacting

obedience even within a circle of a mile. Tyrconnel was absent at the Court of France. He had left the

supreme government in the hands of a Council of Regency composed of twelve persons. The nominal

command of the army he had confided to Berwick; but Berwick, though, as was afterwards proved, a man of

no common courage and capacity, was young and inexperienced. His powers were unsuspected by the world

and by himself;77 and he submitted without reluctance to the tutelage of a Council of War nominated by the

Lord Lieutenant. Neither the Council of Regency nor the Council of War was popular at Limerick. The Irish

complained that men who were not Irish had been entrusted with a large share in the administration. The cry

was loudest against an officer named Thomas Maxwell. For it was certain that he was a Scotchman; it was

doubtful whether he was a Roman Catholic; and he had not concealed the dislike which he felt for that Celtic

Parliament which had repealed the Act of Settlement and passed the Act of Attainder.78 The discontent,

fomented by the arts of intriguers, among whom the cunning and unprincipled Henry Luttrell seems to have

been the most active, soon broke forth into open rebellion. A great meeting was held. Many officers of the

army, some peers, some lawyers of high note and some prelates of the Roman Catholic Church were present.

It was resolved that the government set up by the Lord Lieutenant was unknown to the constitution. Ireland, it

was said, could be legally governed, in the absence of the King, only by a Lord Lieutenant, by a Lord Deputy

or by Lords Justices. The King was absent. The Lord Lieutenant was absent. There was no Lord Deputy.

There were no Lords Justices. The Act by which Tyrconnel had delegated his authority to a junto composed

of his creatures was a mere nullity. The nation was therefore left without any legitimate chief, and might,

without violating the allegiance due to the Crown, make temporary provision for its own safety. A deputation

was sent to inform Berwick that he had assumed a power to which he had no right, but that nevertheless the

army and people of Ireland would willingly acknowledge him as their head if he would consent to govern by

the advice of a council truly Irish. Berwick indignantly expressed his wonder that military men should

presume to meet and deliberate without the permission of their general. They answered that there was no

general, and that, if His Grace did not choose to undertake the administration on the terms proposed, another

leader would easily be found. Berwick very reluctantly yielded, and continued to be a puppet in a new set of

Those who had effected this revolution thought it prudent to send a deputation to France for the purpose of

vindicating their proceedings. Of the deputation the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork and the two Luttrells

were members. In the ship which conveyed them from Limerick to Brest they found a fellow passenger

whose presence was by no means agreeable to them, their enemy, Maxwell. They suspected, and not without

reason, that he was going, like them, to Saint Germains, but on a very different errand. The truth was that

Berwick had sent Maxwell to watch their motions and to traverse their designs. Henry Luttrell, the least

scrupulous of men, proposed to settle the matter at once by tossing the Scotchman into the sea. But the

Bishop, who was a man of conscience, and Simon Luttrell, who was a man of honour, objected to this

Meanwhile at Limerick the supreme power was in abeyance. Berwick, finding that he had no real authority,

altogether neglected business, and gave himself up to such pleasures as that dreary place of banishment

afforded. There was among the Irish chiefs no man of sufficient weight and ability to control the rest.

Sarsfield for a time took the lead. But Sarsfield, though eminently brave and active in the field, was little

skilled in the administration of war, and still less skilled in civil business. Those who were most desirous to

support his authority were forced to own that his nature was too unsuspicious and indulgent for a post in

which it was hardly possible to be too distrustful or too severe. He believed whatever was told him. He signed

whatever was set before him. The commissaries, encouraged by his lenity, robbed and embezzled more

shamelessly than ever. They sallied forth daily, guarded by pikes and firelocks, to seize, nominally for the

public service, but really for themselves, wool, linen, leather, tallow, domestic utensils, instruments of

husbandry, searched every pantry, every wardrobe, every cellar, and even laid sacrilegious hands on the

Early in the spring the government, if it is to be so called, of which Berwick was the ostensible head, was

dissolved by the return of Tyrconnel. The Luttrells had, in the name of their countrymen, implored James not

to subject so loyal a people to so odious and incapable a viceroy. Tyrconnel, they said, was old; he was

infirm; he needed much steep; he knew nothing of war; he was dilatory; he was partial; he was rapacious; he

was distrusted and hated by the whole nation. The Irish, deserted by him, had made a gallant stand, and had

compelled the victorious army of the Prince of Orange to retreat. They hoped soon to take the field again,

thirty thousand strong; and they adjured their King to send them some captain worthy to command such a

force. Tyrconnel and Maxwell, on the other hand, represented the delegates as mutineers, demagogues,

traitors, and pressed James to send Henry Luttrell to keep Mountjoy company in the Bastille. James,

bewildered by these criminations and recriminations, hesitated long, and at last, with characteristic wisdom,

relieved himself from trouble by giving all the quarrellers fair words and by sending them all back to have

Tyrconnel was received at Limerick, even by his enemies, with decent respect. Much as they hated him, they

could not question the validity of his commission; and, though they still maintained that they had been

perfectly justified in annulling, during his absence, the unconstitutional arrangements which he had made,

they acknowledged that, when he was present, he was their lawful governor. He was not altogether

unprovided with the means of conciliating them. He brought many gracious messages and promises, a patent

of peerage for Sarsfield, some money which was not of brass, and some clothing, which was even more

acceptable than money. The new garments were not indeed very fine. But even the generals had long been

out at elbows; and there were few of the common men whose habiliments would have been thought sufficient

to dress a scarecrow in a more prosperous country. Now, at length, for the first time in many months, every

private soldier could boast of a pair of breeches and a pair of brogues. The Lord Lieutenant had also been

authorised to announce that he should soon be followed by several ships, laden with provisions and military

stores. This announcement was most welcome to the troops, who had long been without bread, and who had

During some weeks the supplies were impatiently expected. At last, Tyrconnel was forced to shut himself up;

for, whenever he appeared in public, the soldiers ran after him clamouring for food. Even the beef and

mutton, which, half raw, half burned, without vegetables, without salt, had hitherto supported the army, had

become scarce; and the common men were on rations of horseflesh when the promised sails were seen in the

A distinguished French general, named Saint Ruth, was on board with his staff. He brought a commission

which appointed him commander in chief of the Irish army. The commission did not expressly declare that he

was to be independent of the viceregal authority; but he had been assured by James that Tyrconnel should

have secret instructions not to intermeddle in the conduct of the war. Saint Ruth was assisted by another

general officer named D'Usson. The French ships brought some arms, some ammunition, and a plentiful

supply of corn and flour. The spirits of the Irish rose; and the Te Deum was chaunted with fervent devotion in

Tyrconnel had made no preparations for the approaching campaign. But Saint Ruth, as soon as he had landed,

exerted himself strenuously to redeem the time which had been lost. He was a man of courage, activity and

resolution, but of a harsh and imperious nature. In his own country he was celebrated as the most merciless

persecutor that had ever dragooned the Huguenots to mass. It was asserted by English Whigs that he was

known in France by the nickname of the Hangman; that, at Rome, the very cardinals had shown their

abhorrence of his cruelty; and that even Queen Christina, who had little right to be squeamish about

bloodshed, had turned away from him with loathing. He had recently held a command in Savoy. The Irish

regiments in the French service had formed part of his army, and had behaved extremely well. It was

therefore supposed that he had a peculiar talent for managing Irish troops. But there was a wide difference

between the well clad, well armed and well drilled Irish, with whom he was familiar, and the ragged

marauders whom be found swarming in the alleys of Limerick. Accustomed to the splendour and the

discipline of French camps and garrisons, he was disgusted by finding that, in the country to which he had

been sent, a regiment of infantry meant a mob of people as naked, as dirty and as disorderly as the beggars,

whom he had been accustomed to see on the Continent besieging the door of a monastery or pursuing a

diligence up him. With ill concealed contempt, however, he addressed himself vigorously to the task of

disciplining these strange soldiers, and was day and night in the saddle, galloping from post to post, from

Limerick to Athlone, from Athlone to the northern extremity of Lough Rea, and from Lough Rea back to

It was indeed necessary that he should bestir himself; for, a few days after his arrival, he learned that, on the

other side of the Pale, all was ready for action. The greater part of the English force was collected, before the

close of May, in the neighbourhood of Mullingar. Ginkell commanded in chief. He had under him the two

best officers, after Marlborough, of whom our island could then boast, Talmash and Mackay. The Marquess

of Ruvigny, the hereditary chief of the refugees, and elder brother of the brave Caillemot, who had fallen at

the Boyne, had joined the army with the rank of major general. The Lord Justice Coningsby, though not by

profession a soldier, came down from Dublin, to animate the zeal of the troops. The appearance of the camp

showed that the money voted by the English Parliament had not been spared. The uniforms were new; the

ranks were one blaze of scarlet; and the train of artillery was such as had never before been seen in Ireland.87

On the sixth of June Ginkell moved his head quarters from Mullingar. On the seventh he reached Ballymore.

At Ballymore, on a peninsula almost surrounded by something between a swamp and a lake, stood an ancient

fortress, which had recently been fortified under Sarsfield's direction, and which was defended by above a

thousand men. The English guns were instantly planted. In a few hours the besiegers had the satisfaction of

seeing the besieged running like rabbits from one shelter to another. The governor, who had at first held high

language, begged piteously for quarter, and obtained it. The whole garrison were marched off to Dublin. Only

Ginkell passed some days in reconstructing the defences of Ballymore. This work had scarcely been

performed when he was joined by the Danish auxiliaries under the command of the Duke of Wirtemberg. The

whole army then moved westward, and, on the nineteenth of June, appeared before the walls of Athlone.89

Athlone was perhaps, in a military point of view, the most important place in the island. Rosen, who

understood war well, had always maintained that it was there that the Irishry would, with most advantage,

make a stand against the Englishry.90 The town, which was surrounded by ramparts of earth, lay partly in

Leinster and partly in Connaught. The English quarter, which was in Leinster, had once consisted of new and

handsome houses, but had been burned by the Irish some months before, and now lay in heaps of ruin. The

Celtic quarter, which was in Connaught, was old and meanly built.91 The Shannon, which is the boundary of

the two provinces, rushed through Athlone in a deep and rapid stream, and turned two large mills which rose

on the arches of a stone bridge. Above the bridge, on the Connaught side, a castle, built, it was said, by King

John, towered to the height of seventy feet, and extended two hundred feet along the river. Fifty or sixty

During the night of the nineteenth the English placed their cannon. On the morning of the twentieth the firing

began. At five in the afternoon an assault was made. A brave French refugee with a grenade in his hand was

the first to climb the breach, and fell, cheering his countrymen to the onset with his latest breath. Such were

the gallant spirits which the bigotry of Lewis had sent to recruit, in the time of his utmost need, the armies of

his deadliest enemies. The example was not lost. The grenades fell thick. The assailants mounted by

hundreds. The Irish gave way and ran towards the bridge. There the press was so great that some of the

fugitives were crushed to death in the narrow passage, and others were forced over the parapets into the

waters which roared among the mill wheels below. In a few hours Ginkell had made himself master of the

English quarter of Athlone; and this success had cost him only twenty men killed and forty wounded.93

But his work was only begun. Between him and the Irish town the Shannon ran fiercely. The bridge was so

narrow that a few resolute men might keep it against an army. The mills which stood on it were strongly

guarded; and it was commanded by the guns of the castle. That part of the Connaught shore where the river

was fordable was defended by works, which the Lord Lieutenant had, in spite of the murmurs of a powerful

party, forced Saint Ruth to entrust to the care of Maxwell. Maxwell had come back from France a more

unpopular man than he had been when he went thither. It was rumoured that he had, at Versailles, spoken

opprobriously of the Irish nation; and he had, on this account, been, only a few days before, publicly

affronted by Sarsfield.94 On the twenty first of June the English were busied in flinging up batteries along

the Leinster bank. On the twentysecond, soon after dawn, the cannonade began. The firing continued all that

day and all the following night. When morning broke again, one whole side of the castle had been beaten

down; the thatched lanes of the Celtic town lay in ashes; and one of the mills had been burned with sixty

Still however the Irish defended the bridge resolutely. During several days there was sharp fighting hand to

hand in the strait passage. The assailants gained ground, but gained it inch by inch. The courage of the

garrison was sustained by the hope of speedy succour. Saint Ruth had at length completed his preparations;

and the tidings that Athlone was in danger had induced him to take the field in haste at the head of an army,

superior in number, though inferior in more important elements of military strength, to the army of Ginkell.

The French general seems to have thought that the bridge and the ford might easily be defended, till the

autumnal rains and the pestilence which ordinarily accompanied them should compel the enemy to retire. He

therefore contented himself with sending successive detachments to reinforce the garrison. The immediate

conduct of the defence he entrusted to his second in command, D'Usson, and fixed his own head quarters two

or three miles from the town. He expressed his astonishment that so experienced a commander as Ginkell

should persist in a hopeless enterprise. "His master ought to hang him for trying to take Athlone; and mine

Saint Ruth, however, was by no means at ease. He had found, to his great mortification, that he had not the

full authority which the promises made to him at Saint Germains had entitled him to expect. The Lord

Lieutenant was in the camp. His bodily and mental infirmities had perceptibly increased within the last few

weeks. The slow and uncertain step with which he, who had once been renowned for vigour and agility, now

tottered from his easy chair to his couch, was no unapt type of the sluggish and wavering movement of that

mind which had once pursued its objects with a vehemence restrained neither by fear nor by pity, neither by

conscience nor by shame. Yet, with impaired strength, both physical and intellectual, the broken old man

clung pertinaciously to power. If he had received private orders not to meddle with the conduct of the war, he

disregarded them. He assumed all the authority of a sovereign, showed himself ostentatiously to the troops as

their supreme chief, and affected to treat Saint Ruth as a lieutenant. Soon the interference of the Viceroy

excited the vehement indignation of that powerful party in the army which had long hated him. Many officers

signed an instrument by which they declared that they did not consider him as entitled to their obedience in

the field. Some of them offered him gross personal insults. He was told to his face that, if he persisted in

remaining where he was not wanted, the ropes of his pavilion should be cut. He, on the other hand, sent his

emissaries to all the camp fires, and tried to make a party among the common soldiers against the French

The only thing in which Tyrconnel and Saint Ruth agreed was in dreading and disliking Sarsfield. Not only

was he popular with the great body of his countrymen; he was also surrounded by a knot of retainers whose

devotion to him resembled the devotion of the Ismailite murderers to the Old Man of the Mountain. It was

known that one of these fanatics, a colonel, had used language which, in the mouth of an officer so high in

rank, might well cause uneasiness. "The King," this man had said, "is nothing to me. I obey Sarsfield. Let

Sarsfield tell me to kill any man in the whole army; and I will do it." Sarsfield was, indeed, too honourable a

gentleman to abuse his immense power over the minds of his worshippers. But the Viceroy and the

Commander in Chief might not unnaturally be disturbed by the thought that Sarsfield's honour was their only

guarantee against mutiny and assassination. The consequence was that, at the crisis of the fate of Ireland, the

services of the first of Irish soldiers were not used, or were used with jealous caution, and that, if he ventured

A great and unexpected disaster put an end to these disputes. On the thirtieth of June Ginkell called a council

of war. Forage began to be scarce; and it was absolutely necessary that the besiegers should either force their

way across the river or retreat. The difficulty of effecting a passage over the shattered remains of the bridge

seemed almost insuperable. It was proposed to try the ford. The Duke of Wirtemberg, Talmash, and Ruvigny

gave their voices in favour of this plan; and Ginkell, with some misgivings, consented.99

It was determined that the attempt should be made that very afternoon. The Irish, fancying that the English

were about to retreat, kept guard carelessly. Part of the garrison was idling, part dosing. D'Usson was at table.

Saint Ruth was in his tent, writing a letter to his master filled with charges against Tyrconnel. Meanwhile,

fifteen hundred grenadiers; each wearing in his hat a green bough, were mustered on the Leinster bank of the

Shannon. Many of them doubtless remembered that on that day year they had, at the command of King

William, put green boughs in their hats on the banks of the Boyne. Guineas had been liberally scattered

among these picked men; but their alacrity was such as gold cannot purchase. Six battalions were in readiness

to support the attack. Mackay commanded. He did not approve of the plan; but he executed it as zealously

and energetically as if he had himself been the author of it. The Duke of Wirtemberg, Talmash, and several

other gallant officers, to whom no part in the enterprise had been assigned, insisted on serving that day as

private volunteers; and their appearance in the ranks excited the fiercest enthusiasm among the soldiers.

It was six o'clock. A peal from the steeple of the church gave the signal. Prince George of Hesse Darmstadt,

and Gustavus Hamilton, the brave chief of the Enniskilleners, descended first into the Shannon. Then the

grenadiers lifted the Duke of Wirtemberg on their shoulders, and, with a great shout, plunged twenty abreast

up to their cravats in water. The stream ran deep and strong; but in a few minutes the head of the column

reached dry land. Talmash was the fifth man that set foot on the Connaught shore. The Irish, taken

unprepared, fired one confused volley and fled, leaving their commander, Maxwell, a prisoner. The

conquerors clambered up the bank over the remains of walls shattered by a cannonade of ten days. Mackay

heard his men cursing and swearing as they stumbled among the rubbish. "My lads," cried the stout old

Puritan in the midst of the uproar, "you are brave fellows; but do not swear. We have more reason to thank

God for the goodness which He has shown us this day than to take His name in vain." The victory was

complete. Planks were placed on the broken arches of the bridge and pontoons laid on the river, without any

opposition on the part of the terrified garrison. With the loss of twelve men killed and about thirty wounded

At the first alarm D'Usson hastened towards the river; but he was met, swept away, trampled down, and

almost killed by the torrent of fugitives. He was carried to the camp in such a state that it was necessary to

bleed him. "Taken!" cried Saint Ruth, in dismay. "It cannot be. A town taken, and I close by with an army to

relieve it!" Cruelly mortified, he struck his tents under cover of the night, and retreated in the direction of

Galway. At dawn the English saw far off, from the top of King John's ruined castle, the Irish army moving

through the dreary region which separates the Shannon from the Suck. Before noon the rearguard had

Even before the loss of Athlone the Celtic camp had been distracted by factions. It may easily be supposed,

therefore, that, after so great a disaster, nothing was to be heard but crimination and recrimination. The

enemies of the Lord Lieutenant were more clamorous than ever. He and his creatures had brought the

kingdom to the verge of perdition. He would meddle with what he did not understand. He would overrule the

plans of men who were real soldiers. He would entrust the most important of all posts to his tool, his spy, the

wretched Maxwell, not a born Irishman, not a sincere Catholic, at best a blunderer, and too probably a traitor.

Maxwell, it was affirmed, had left his men unprovided with ammunition. When they had applied to him for

powder and ball, he had asked whether they wanted to shoot larks. Just before the attack he had told them to

go to their supper and to take their rest, for that nothing more would be done that day. When he had delivered

himself up a prisoner, he had uttered some words which seemed to indicate a previous understanding with the

conquerors. The Lord Lieutenant's few friends told a very different story. According to them, Tyrconnel and

Maxwell had suggested precautions which would have made a surprise impossible. The French General,

impatient of all interference, had omitted to take those precautions. Maxwell had been rudely told that, if he

was afraid, he had better resign his command. He had done his duty bravely. He had stood while his men

fled. He had consequently fallen into the hands of the enemy; and he was now, in his absence, slandered by

those to whom his captivity was justly imputable.102 On which side the truth lay it is not easy, at this

distance of time, to pronounce. The cry against Tyrconnel was, at the moment, so loud, that he gave way and

sullenly retired to Limerick. D'Usson, who had not yet recovered from the hurts inflicted by his own runaway

Saint Ruth, now left in undisputed possession of the supreme command, was bent on trying the chances of a

battle. Most of the Irish officers, with Sarsfield at their head, were of a very different mind. It was, they said,

not to be dissembled that, in discipline, the army of Ginkell was far superior to theirs. The wise course,

therefore, evidently was to carry on the war in such a manner that the difference between the disciplined and

the undisciplined soldier might be as small as possible. It was well known that raw recruits often played their

part well in a foray, in a street fight or in the defence of a rampart; but that, on a pitched field, they had little

chance against veterans. "Let most of our foot be collected behind the walls of Limerick and Galway. Let the

rest, together with our horse, get in the rear of the enemy, and cut off his supplies. If he advances into

Connaught, let us overrun Leinster. If he sits down before Galway, which may well be defended, let us make

a push for Dublin, which is altogether defenceless."104 Saint Ruth might, perhaps, have thought this advice

good, if his judgment had not been biassed by his passions. But he was smarting from the pain of a

humiliating defeat. In sight of his tent, the English had passed a rapid river, and had stormed a strong town.

He could not but feel that, though others might have been to blame, he was not himself blameless. He had, to

say the least, taken things too easily. Lewis, accustomed to be served during many years by commanders who

were not in the habit of leaving to chance any thing which could he made secure by wisdom, would hardly

think it a sufficient excuse that his general had not expected the enemy to make so bold and sudden an attack.

The Lord Lieutenant would, of course, represent what had passed in the most unfavourable manner; and

whatever the Lord Lieutenant said James would echo. A sharp reprimand, a letter of recall, might be

expected. To return to Versailles a culprit; to approach the great King in an agony of distress; to see him

shrug his shoulders, knit his brow and turn his back; to be sent, far from courts and camps, to languish at

some dull country seat; this was too much to be borne; and yet this might well be apprehended. There was

In such a temper Saint Ruth pitched his camp about thirty miles from Athlone on the road to Galway, near the

ruined castle of Aghrim, and determined to await the approach of the English army.

His whole deportment was changed. He had hitherto treated the Irish soldiers with contemptuous severity.

But now that he had resolved to stake life and fame on the valour of the despised race, he became another

man. During the few days which remained to him he exerted himself to win by indulgence and caresses the

hearts of all who were under his command.105 He, at the same time, administered to his troops moral

stimulants of the most potent kind. He was a zealous Roman Catholic; and it is probable that the severity with

which he had treated the Protestants of his own country ought to be partly ascribed to the hatred which he felt

for their doctrines. He now tried to give to the war the character of a crusade. The clergy were the agents

whom he employed to sustain the courage of his soldiers. The whole camp was in a ferment with religious

excitement. In every regiment priests were praying, preaching, shriving, holding up the host and the cup.

While the soldiers swore on the sacramental bread not to abandon their colours, the General addressed to the

officers an appeal which might have moved the most languid and effeminate natures to heroic exertion. They

were fighting, he said, for their religion, their liberty and their honour. Unhappy events, too widely

celebrated, had brought a reproach on the national character. Irish soldiership was every where mentioned

with a sneer. If they wished to retrieve the fame of their country, this was the time and this the place.106

The spot on which he had determined to bring the fate of Ireland to issue seems to have been chosen with

great judgment. His army was drawn up on the slope of a hill, which was almost surrounded by red bog. In

front, near the edge of the morass, were some fences out of which a breastwork was without difficulty

On the eleventh of July, Ginkell, having repaired the fortifications of Athlone and left a garrison there, fixed

his headquarters at Ballinasloe, about four miles from Aghrim, and rode forward to take a view of the Irish

position. On his return he gave orders that ammunition should be served out, that every musket and bayonet

should be got ready for action, and that early on the morrow every man should be under arms without beat of

drum. Two regiments were to remain in charge of the camp; the rest, unincumbered by baggage, were to

Soon after six, the next morning, the English were on the way to Aghrim. But some delay was occasioned by

a thick fog which hung till noon over the moist valley of the Suck; a further delay was caused by the

necessity of dislodging the Irish from some outposts; and the afternoon was far advanced when the two

armies at length confronted each other with nothing but the bog and the breastwork between them. The

English and their allies were under twenty thousand; the Irish above twentyfive thousand.

Ginkell held a short consultation with his principal officers. Should he attack instantly, or wait till the next

morning? Mackay was for attacking instantly; and his opinion prevailed. At five the battle began. The

English foot, in such order as they could keep on treacherous and uneven ground, made their way, sinking

deep in mud at every step, to the Irish works. But those works were defended with a resolution such as

extorted some words of ungracious eulogy even from men who entertained the strongest prejudices against

the Celtic race.107 Again and again the assailants were driven back. Again and again they returned to the

struggle. Once they were broken, and chased across the morass; but Talmash rallied them, and forced the

pursuers to retire. The fight had lasted two hours; the evening was closing in; and still the advantage was on

the side of the Irish. Ginkell began to meditate a retreat. The hopes of Saint Ruth rose high. "The day is ours,

my boys," he cried, waving his hat in the air. "We will drive them before us to the walls of Dublin." But

fortune was already on the turn. Mackay and Ruvigny, with the English and Huguenot cavalry, had succeeded

in passing the bog at a place where two horsemen could scarcely ride abreast. Saint Ruth at first laughed

when he saw the Blues, in single file, struggling through the morass under a fire which every moment laid

some gallant hat and feather on the earth. "What do they mean?" he asked; and then he swore that it was pity

to see such fine fellows rushing to certain destruction. "Let them cross, however;" he said. "The more they

are, the more we shall kill." But soon he saw them laying hurdles on the quagmire. A broader and safer path

was formed; squadron after squadron reached firm ground: the flank of the Irish army was speedily turned.

The French general was hastening to the rescue when a cannon ball carried off his head. Those who were

about him thought that it would be dangerous to make his fate known. His corpse was wrapped in a cloak,

carried from the field, and laid, with all secresy, in the sacred ground among the ruins of the ancient

monastery of Loughrea. Till the fight was over neither army was aware that he was no more. To conceal his

death from the private soldiers might perhaps have been prudent. To conceal it from his lieutenants was

madness. The crisis of the battle had arrived; and there was none to give direction. Sarsfield was in command

of the reserve. But he had been strictly enjoined by Saint Ruth not to stir without orders; and no orders came.

Mackay and Ruvigny with their horse charged the Irish in flank. Talmash and his foot returned to the attack

in front with dogged determination. The breastwork was carried. The Irish, still fighting, retreated from

inclosure to inclosure. But, as inclosure after inclosure was forced, their efforts became fainter and fainter. At

length they broke and fled. Then followed a horrible carnage. The conquerors were in a savage mood. For a

report had been spread among them that, during the early part of the battle, some English captives who had

been admitted to quarter had been put to the sword. Only four hundred prisoners were taken. The number of

the slain was, in proportion to the number engaged, greater than in any other battle of that age. But for the

coming on of a moonless night, made darker by a misty rain, scarcely a man would have escaped. The

obscurity enabled Sarsfield, with a few squadrons which still remained unbroken, to cover the retreat. Of the

The English slept that night on the field of battle. On the following day they buried their companions in arms,

and then marched westward. The vanquished were left unburied, a strange and ghastly spectacle. Four

thousand Irish corpses were counted on the field of battle. A hundred and fifty lay in one small inclosure, a

hundred and twenty in another. But the slaughter had not been confined to the field of battle. One who was

there tells us that, from the top of the hill on which the Celtic camp had been pitched, he saw the country, to

the distance of near four miles, white with the naked bodies of the slain. The plain looked, he said, like an

immense pasture covered by flocks of sheep. As usual, different estimates were formed even by

eyewitnesses. But it seems probable that the number of the Irish who fell was not less than seven thousand.

Soon a multitude of dogs came to feast on the carnage. These beasts became so fierce, and acquired such a

taste for human flesh, that it was long dangerous for men to travel this road otherwise than in companies.108

The beaten army had now lost all the appearance of an army, and resembled a rabble crowding home from a

fair after a faction fight. One great stream of fugitives ran towards Galway, another towards Limerick. The

roads to both cities were covered with weapons which had been flung away. Ginkell offered sixpence for

every musket. In a short time so many waggon loads were collected that he reduced the price to twopence;

The conquerors marched first against Galway. D'Usson was there, and had under him seven regiments,

thinned by the slaughter of Aghrim and utterly disorganized and disheartened. The last hope of the garrison

and of the Roman Catholic inhabitants was that Baldearg O'Donnel, the promised deliverer of their race,

would come to the rescue. But Baldearg O'Donnel was not duped by the superstitious veneration of which he

was the object. While there remained any doubt about the issue of the conflict between the Englishry and the

Irishry, he had stood aloof. On the day of the battle he had remained at a safe distance with his tumultuary

army; and, as soon as he had learned that his countrymen had been put to rout, he fled, plundering and

burning all the way, to the mountains of Mayo. Thence he sent to Ginkell offers of submission and service.

Ginkell gladly seized the opportunity of breaking up a formidable band of marauders, and of turning to good

account the influence which the name of a Celtic dynasty still exercised over the Celtic race. The negotiation

however was not without difficulties. The wandering adventurer at first demanded nothing less than an

earldom. After some haggling he consented to sell the love of a whole people, and his pretensions to regal

dignity, for a pension of five hundred pounds a year. Yet the spell which bound his followers to hire was not

altogether broken. Some enthusiasts from Ulster were willing to fight under the O'Donnel against their own

language and their own religion. With a small body of these devoted adherents, he joined a division of the

When it was known that no succour was to be expected from the hero whose advent had been foretold by so

many seers, the Irish who were shut up in Galway lost all heart. D'Usson had returned a stout answer to the

first summons of the besiegers; but he soon saw that resistance was impossible, and made haste to capitulate.

The garrison was suffered to retire to Limerick with the honours of war. A full amnesty for past offences was

granted to the citizens; and it was stipulated that, within the walls, the Roman Catholic priests should be

allowed to perform in private the rites of their religion. On these terms the gates were thrown open. Ginkell

was received with profound respect by the Mayor and Aldermen, and was complimented in a set speech by

the Recorder. D'Usson, with about two thousand three hundred men, marched unmolested to Limerick.111

At Limerick, the last asylum of the vanquished race, the authority of Tyrconnel was supreme. There was now

no general who could pretend that his commission made him independent of the Lord Lieutenant; nor was the

Lord Lieutenant now so unpopular as he had been a fortnight earlier. Since the battle there had been a reflux

of public feeling. No part of that great disaster could be imputed to the Viceroy. His opinion indeed had been

against trying the chances of a pitched field, and he could with some plausibility assert that the neglect of his

He made some preparations for defending Limerick, repaired the fortifications, and sent out parties to bring

in provisions. The country, many miles round, was swept bare by these detachments, and a considerable

quantity of cattle and fodder was collected within the walls. There was also a large stock of biscuit imported

from France. The infantry assembled at Limerick were about fifteen thousand men. The Irish horse and

dragoons, three or four thousand in number, were encamped on the Clare side of the Shannon. The

communication between their camp and the city was maintained by means of a bridge called the Thomond

Bridge, which was protected by a fort. These means of defence were not contemptible. But the fall of Athlone

and the slaughter of Aghrim had broken the spirit of the army. A small party, at the head of which were

Sarsfield and a brave Scotch officer named Wauchop, cherished a hope that the triumphant progress of

Ginkell might be stopped by those walls from which William had, in the preceding year, been forced to

retreat. But many of the Irish chiefs loudly declared that it was time to think of capitulating. Henry Luttrell,

always fond of dark and crooked politics, opened a secret negotiation with the English. One of his letters was

intercepted; and he was put under arrest; but many who blamed his perfidy agreed with him in thinking that it

was idle to prolong the contest. Tyrconnel himself was convinced that all was lost. His only hope was that he

might be able to prolong the struggle till he could receive from Saint Germains permission to treat. He wrote

to request that permission, and prevailed, with some difficulty, on his desponding countrymen to bind

themselves by an oath not to capitulate till an answer from James should arrive.113

A few days after the oath had been administered, Tyrconnel was no more. On the eleventh of August he dined

with D'Usson. The party was gay. The Lord Lieutenant seemed to have thrown off the load which had bowed

down his body and mind; he drank; he jested; he was again the Dick Talbot who had diced and revelled with

Grammont. Soon after he had risen from table, an apoplectic stroke deprived him of speech and sensation. On

the fourteenth he breathed his last. The wasted remains of that form which had once been a model for

statuaries were laid under the pavement of the Cathedral; but no inscription, no tradition, preserves the

As soon as the Lord Lieutenant was no more, Plowden, who had superintended the Irish finances while there

were any Irish finances to superintend, produced a commission under the great seal of James. This

commission appointed Plowden himself, Fitton and Nagle, Lords justices in the event of Tyrconnel's death.

There was much murmuring when the names were made known. For both Plowden and Fitton were Saxons.

The commission, however, proved to be a mere nullity. For it was accompanied by instructions which

forbade the Lords justices to interfere in the conduct of the war; and, within the narrow space to which the

dominions of James were now reduced, war was the only business. The government was, therefore, really in

On the day on which Tyrconnel died, the advanced guard of the English army came within sight of Limerick.

Ginkell encamped on the same ground which William had occupied twelve months before. The batteries, on

which were planted guns and bombs, very different from those which William had been forced to use, played

day and night; and soon roofs were blazing and walls crashing in every corner of the city. Whole streets were

reduced to ashes. Meanwhile several English ships of war came up the Shannon and anchored about a mile

Still the place held out; the garrison was, in numerical strength, little inferior to the besieging army; and it

seemed not impossible that the defence might be prolonged till the equinoctial rains should a second time

compel the English to retire. Ginkell determined on striking a bold stroke. No point in the whole circle of the

fortifications was more important, and no point seemed to be more secure, than the Thomond Bridge, which

joined the city to the camp of the Irish horse on the Clare bank of the Shannon. The Dutch General's plan was

to separate the infantry within the ramparts from the cavalry without; and this plan he executed with great

skill, vigour and success. He laid a bridge of tin boats on the river, crossed it with a strong body of troops,

drove before him in confusion fifteen hundred dragoons who made a faint show of resistance, and marched

towards the quarters of the Irish horse. The Irish horse sustained but ill on this day the reputation which they

had gained at the Boyne. Indeed, that reputation had been purchased by the almost entire destruction of the

best regiments. Recruits had been without much difficulty found. But the loss of fifteen hundred excellent

soldiers was not to be repaired. The camp was abandoned without a blow. Some of the cavalry fled into the

city. The rest, driving before them as many cattle as could be collected in that moment of panic, retired to the

hills. Much beef, brandy and harness was found in the magazines; and the marshy plain of the Shannon was

The conquerors returned in triumph to their camp. But Ginkell was not content with the advantage which he

had gained. He was bent on cutting off all communication between Limerick and the county of Clare. In a

few days, therefore, he again crossed the river at the head of several regiments, and attacked the fort which

protected the Thomond Bridge. In a short time the fort was stormed. The soldiers who had garrisoned it fled

in confusion to the city. The Town Major, a French officer, who commanded at the Thomond Gate, afraid

that the pursuers would enter with the fugitives, ordered that part of the bridge which was nearest to the city

to be drawn up. Many of the Irish went headlong into the stream and perished there. Others cried for quarter,

and held up handkerchiefs in token of submission. But the conquerors were mad with rage; their cruelty could

not be immediately restrained; and no prisoners were made till the heaps of corpses rose above the parapets.

The garrison of the fort had consisted of about eight hundred men. Of these only a hundred and twenty

This disaster seemed likely to produce a general mutiny in the besieged city. The Irish clamoured for the

blood of the Town Major who had ordered the bridge to be drawn up in the face of their flying countrymen.

His superiors were forced to promise that he should be brought before a court martial. Happily for him, he

had received a mortal wound, in the act of closing the Thomond Gate, and was saved by a soldier's death

from the fury of the multitude.119 The cry for capitulation became so loud and importunate that the generals

could not resist it. D'Usson informed his government that the fight at the bridge had so effectually cowed the

spirit of the garrison that it was impossible to continue the struggle.120 Some exception may perhaps be

taken to the evidence of D'Usson; for undoubtedly he, like every Frenchman who had held any command in

the Irish army, was weary of his banishment, and impatient to see Paris again. But it is certain that even

Sarsfield had lost heart. Up to this time his voice had been for stubborn resistance. He was now not only

willing, but impatient to treat.121 It seemed to him that the city was doomed. There was no hope of succour,

domestic or foreign. In every part of Ireland the Saxons had set their feet on the necks of the natives. Sligo

had fallen. Even those wild islands which intercept the huge waves of the Atlantic from the bay of Galway

had acknowledged the authority of William. The men of Kerry, reputed the fiercest and most ungovernable

part of the aboriginal population, had held out long, but had at length been routed, and chased to their woods

and mountains.122 A French fleet, if a French fleet were now to arrive on the coast of Munster, would find

the mouth of the Shannon guarded by English men of war. The stock of provisions within Limerick was

already running low. If the siege were prolonged, the town would, in all human probability, be reduced either

by force or by blockade. And, if Ginkell should enter through the breach, or should be implored by a

multitude perishing with hunger to dictate his own terms, what could be expected but a tyranny more

inexorably severe than that of Cromwell? Would it not then be wise to try what conditions could be obtained

while the victors had still something to fear from the rage and despair of the vanquished; while the last Irish

army could still make some show of resistance behind the walls of the last Irish fortress?

On the evening of the day which followed the fight at the Thomond Gate, the drums of Limerick beat a

parley; and Wauchop, from one of the towers, hailed the besiegers, and requested Ruvigny to grant Sarsfield

an interview. The brave Frenchman who was an exile on account of his attachment to one religion, and the

brave Irishman who was about to become an exile on account of his attachment to another, met and

conferred, doubtless with mutual sympathy and respect.123 Ginkell, to whom Ruvigny reported what had

passed, willingly consented to an armistice. For, constant as his success had been, it had not made him secure.

The chances were greatly on his side. Yet it was possible that an attempt to storm the city might fail, as a

similar attempt had failed twelve months before. If the siege should be turned into a blockade, it was probable

that the pestilence which had been fatal to the army of Schomberg, which had compelled William to retreat,

and which had all but prevailed even against the genius and energy of Marlborough, might soon avenge the

carnage of Aghrim. The rains had lately been heavy. The whole plain might shortly be an immense pool of

stagnant water. It might be necessary to move the troops to a healthier situation than the bank of the Shannon,

and to provide for them a warmer shelter than that of tents. The enemy would be safe till the spring. In the

spring a French army might land in Ireland; the natives might again rise in arms from Donegal to Kerry; and

the war, which was now all but extinguished, might blaze forth fiercer than ever.

A negotiation was therefore opened with a sincere desire on both sides to put an end to the contest. The chiefs

of the Irish army held several consultations at which some Roman Catholic prelates and some eminent

lawyers were invited to assist. A preliminary question, which perplexed tender consciences, was submitted by

the Bishops. The late Lord Lieutenant had persuaded the officers of the garrison to swear that they would not

surrender Limerick till they should receive an answer to the letter in which their situation had been explained

to James. The Bishops thought that the oath was no longer binding. It had been taken at a time when the

communications with France were open, and in the full belief that the answer of James would arrive within

three weeks. More than twice that time had elapsed. Every avenue leading to the city was strictly guarded by

the enemy. His Majesty's faithful subjects, by holding out till it had become impossible for him to signify his

The next question was what terms should be demanded. A paper, containing propositions which statesmen of

our age will think reasonable, but which to the most humane and liberal English Protestants of the

seventeenth century appeared extravagant, was sent to the camp of the besiegers. What was asked was that all

offences should be covered with oblivion, that perfect freedom of worship should be allowed to the native

population, that every parish should have its priest, and that Irish Roman Catholics should be capable of

holding all offices, civil and military, and of enjoying all municipal privileges.125

Ginkell knew little of the laws and feelings of the English; but he had about him persons who were competent

to direct him. They had a week before prevented him from breaking a Rapparee on the wheel; and they now

suggested an answer to the propositions of the enemy. "I am a stranger here," said Ginkell; "I am ignorant of

the constitution of these kingdoms; but I am assured that what you ask is inconsistent with that constitution;

and therefore I cannot with honour consent." He immediately ordered a new battery to be thrown up, and

guns and mortars to be planted on it. But his preparations were speedily interrupted by another message from

the city. The Irish begged that, since he could not grant what they had demanded, he would tell them what he

was willing to grant. He called his advisers round him, and, after some consultation, sent back a paper

containing the heads of a treaty, such as he had reason to believe that the government which he served would

approve. What he offered was indeed much less than what the Irish desired, but was quite as much as, when

they considered their situation and the temper of the English nation, they could expect. They speedily notified

their assent. It was agreed that there should be a cessation of arms, not only by land, but in the ports and bays

of Munster, and that a fleet of French transports should be suffered to come up the Shannon in peace and to

depart in peace. The signing of the treaty was deferred till the Lords justices, who represented William at

Dublin, should arrive at Ginkell's quarters. But there was during some days a relaxation of military vigilance

on both sides. Prisoners were set at liberty. The outposts of the two armies chatted and messed together. The

English officers rambled into the town. The Irish officers dined in the camp. Anecdotes of what passed at the

friendly meetings of these men, who had so lately been mortal enemies, were widely circulated. One story, in

particular, was repeated in every part of Europe. "Has not this last campaign," said Sarsfield to some English

officers, "raised your opinion of Irish soldiers?" "To tell you the truth," answered an Englishman, we think of

them much as we always did." "However meanly you may think of us," replied Sarsfield, "change Kings with

us, and we will willingly try our luck with you again." He was doubtless thinking of the day on which he had

seen the two Sovereigns at the head of two great armies, William foremost in the charge, and James foremost

On the first of October, Coningsby and Porter arrived at the English headquarters. On the second the articles

of capitulation were discussed at great length and definitely settled. On the third they were signed. They were

divided into two parts, a military treaty and a civil treaty. The former was subscribed only by the generals on

By the military treaty it was agreed that such Irish officers and soldiers as should declare that they wished to

go to France should be conveyed thither, and should, in the meantime, remain under the command of their

own generals. Ginkell undertook to furnish a considerable number of transports. French vessels were also to

be permitted to pass and repass freely between Britanny and Munster. Part of Limerick was to be

immediately delivered up to the English. But the island on which the Cathedral and the Castle stand was to

The terms of the civil treaty were very different from those which Ginkell had sternly refused to grant. It was

not stipulated that the Roman Catholics of Ireland should be competent to hold any political or military

office, or that they should be admitted into any corporation. But they obtained a promise that they should

enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as were consistent with the law, or as they had enjoyed

To all inhabitants of Limerick, and to all officers and soldiers in the Jacobite army, who should submit to the

government and notify their submission by taking the oath of allegiance, an entire amnesty was promised.

They were to retain their property; they were to be allowed to exercise any profession which they had

exercised before the troubles; they were not to be punished for any treason, felony, or misdemeanour

committed since the accession of the late King; nay, they were not to be sued for damages on account of any

act of spoliation or outrage which they might have committed during the three years of confusion. This was

more than the Lords justices were constitutionally competent to grant. It was therefore added that the

government would use its utmost endeavours to obtain a Parliamentary ratification of the treaty.128

As soon as the two instruments had been signed, the English entered the city, and occupied one quarter of it.

A narrow, but deep branch of the Shannon separated them from the quarter which was still in the possession

In a few hours a dispute arose which seemed likely to produce a renewal of hostilities. Sarsfield had resolved

to seek his fortune in the service of France, and was naturally desirous to carry with him to the Continent

such a body of troops as would be an important addition to the army of Lewis. Ginkell was as naturally

unwilling to send thousands of men to swell the forces of the enemy. Both generals appealed to the treaty.

Each construed it as suited his purpose, and each complained that the other had violated it. Sarsfield was

accused of putting one of his officers under arrest for refusing to go to the Continent. Ginkell, greatly excited,

declared that he would teach the Irish to play tricks with him, and began to make preparations for a

cannonade. Sarsfield came to the English camp, and tried to justify what he had done. The altercation was

sharp. "I submit," said Sarsfield, at last: "I am in your power." "Not at all in my power," said Ginkell, "go

back and do your worst." The imprisoned officer was liberated; a sanguinary contest was averted; and the two

commanders contented themselves with a war of words.130 Ginkell put forth proclamations assuring the Irish

that, if they would live quietly in their own land, they should be protected and favoured, and that if they

preferred a military life, they should be admitted into the service of King William. It was added that no man,

who chose to reject this gracious invitation and to become a soldier of Lewis, must expect ever again to set

foot on the island. Sarsfield and Wauchop exerted their eloquence on the other side. The present aspect of

affairs, they said, was doubtless gloomy; but there was bright sky beyond the cloud. The banishment would

be short. The return would be triumphant. Within a year the French would invade England. In such an

invasion the Irish troops, if only they remained unbroken, would assuredly bear a chief part. In the meantime

it was far better for them to live in a neighbouring and friendly country, under the parental care of their own

rightful King, than to trust the Prince of Orange, who would probably send them to the other end of the world

The help of the Roman Catholic clergy was called in. On the day on which those who had made up their

minds to go to France were required to announce their determination, the priests were indefatigable in

exhorting. At the head of every regiment a sermon was preached on the duty of adhering to the cause of the

Church, and on the sin and danger of consorting with unbelievers.131 Whoever, it was said, should enter the

service of the usurpers would do so at the peril of his soul. The heretics affirmed that, after the peroration, a

plentiful allowance of brandy was served out to the audience, and that, when the brandy had been swallowed,

a Bishop pronounced a benediction. Thus duly prepared by physical and moral stimulants, the garrison,

consisting of about fourteen thousand infantry, was drawn up in the vast meadow which lay on the Clare bank

of the Shannon. Here copies of Ginkell's proclamation were profusely scattered about; and English officers

went through the ranks imploring the men not to ruin themselves, and explaining to them the advantages

which the soldiers of King William enjoyed. At length the decisive moment came. The troops were ordered to

pass in review. Those who wished to remain in Ireland were directed to file off at a particular spot. All who

passed that spot were to be considered as having made their choice for France. Sarsfield and Wauchop on one

side, Porter, Coningsby and Ginkell on the other, looked on with painful anxiety. D'Usson and his

countrymen, though not uninterested in the spectacle, found it hard to preserve their gravity. The confusion,

the clamour, the grotesque appearance of an army in which there could scarcely be seen a shirt or a pair of

pantaloons, a shoe or a stocking, presented so ludicrous a contrast to the orderly and brilliant appearance of

their master's troops, that they amused themselves by wondering what the Parisians would say to see such a

First marched what was called the Royal regiment, fourteen hundred strong. All but seven went beyond the

fatal point. Ginkell's countenance showed that he was deeply mortified. He was consoled, however, by seeing

the next regiment, which consisted of natives of Ulster, turn off to a man. There had arisen, notwithstanding

the community of blood, language and religion, an antipathy between the Celts of Ulster and those of the

other three provinces; nor is it improbable that the example and influence of Baldearg O'Donnel may have

had some effect on the people of the land which his forefathers had ruled.133 In most of the regiments there

was a division of opinion; but a great majority declared for France. Henry Luttrell was one of those who

turned off. He was rewarded for his desertion, and perhaps for other services, with a grant of the large estate

of his elder brother Simon, who firmly adhered to the cause of James, with a pension of five hundred pounds

a year from the Crown, and with the abhorrence of the Roman Catholic population. After living in wealth,

luxury and infamy, during a quarter of a century, Henry Luttrell was murdered while going through Dublin in

his sedan chair; and the Irish House of Commons declared that there was reason to suspect that he had fallen

by the revenge of the Papists.134 Eighty years after his death his grave near Luttrellstown was violated by the

descendants of those whom he had betrayed, and his skull was broken to pieces with a pickaxe.135 The

deadly hatred of which he was the object descended to his son and to his grandson; and, unhappily, nothing in

the character either of his son or of his grandson tended to mitigate the feeling which the name of Luttrell

When the long procession had closed, it was found that about a thousand men had agreed to enter into

William's service. About two thousand accepted passes from Ginkell, and went quietly home. About eleven

thousand returned with Sarsfield to the city. A few hours after the garrison had passed in review, the horse,

who were encamped some miles from the town, were required to make their choice; and most of them

Sarsfield considered the troops who remained with him as under an irrevocable obligation to go abroad; and,

lest they should be tempted to retract their consent, he confined them within the ramparts, and ordered the

gates to be shut and strongly guarded. Ginkell, though in his vexation he muttered some threats, seems to

have felt that he could not justifiably interfere. But the precautions of the Irish general were far from being

completely successful. It was by no means strange that a superstitious and excitable kerne, with a sermon and

a dram in his head, should be ready to promise whatever his priests required; neither was it strange that, when

he had slept off his liquor, and when anathemas were no longer ringing in his ears, he should feel painful

misgivings. He had bound himself to go into exile, perhaps for life, beyond that dreary expanse of waters

which impressed his rude mind with mysterious terror. His thoughts ran on all that he was to leave, on the

well known peat stack and potatoe ground, and on the mud cabin, which, humble as it was, was still his

home. He was never again to see the familiar faces round the turf fire, or to hear the familiar notes of the old

Celtic songs. The ocean was to roll between him and the dwelling of his greyheaded parents and his blooming

sweetheart. Here were some who, unable to bear the misery of such a separation, and, finding it impossible to

pass the sentinels who watched the gates, sprang into the river and gained the opposite bank. The number of

these daring swimmers, however, was not great; and the army would probably have been transported almost

entire if it had remained at Limerick till the day of embarkation. But many of the vessels in which the voyage

was to be performed lay at Cork; and it was necessary that Sarsfield should proceed thither with some of his

best regiments. It was a march of not less than four days through a wild country. To prevent agile youths,

familiar with all the shifts of a vagrant and predatory life, from stealing off to the bogs, and woods under

Indeed, many soldiers had the audacity to run away by broad daylight before they were out of sight of

Limerick Cathedral. The Royal regiment, which had, on the day of the review, set so striking an example of

fidelity to the cause of James, dwindled from fourteen hundred men to five hundred. Before the last ships

departed, news came that those who had sailed by the first ships had been ungraciously received at Brest.

They had been scantily fed; they had been able to obtain neither pay nor clothing; though winter was setting

in, they slept in the fields with no covering but the hedges. Many had been heard to say that it would have

been far better to die in old Ireland than to live in the inhospitable country to which they had been banished.

The effect of those reports was that hundreds, who had long persisted in their intention of emigrating, refused

at the last moment to go on board, threw down their arms, and returned to their native villages.138

Sarsfield perceived that one chief cause of the desertion which was thinning his army was the natural

unwillingness of the men to leave their families in a state of destitution. Cork and its neighbourhood were

filled with the kindred of those who were going abroad. Great numbers of women, many of them leading,

carrying, suckling their infants, covered all the roads which led to the place of embarkation. The Irish general,

apprehensive of the effect which the entreaties and lamentations of these poor creatures could not fail to

produce, put forth a proclamation, in which he assured his soldiers that they should be permitted to carry their

wives and families to France. It would be injurious to the memory of so brave and loyal a gentleman to

suppose that when he made this promise he meant to break it. It is much more probable that he had formed an

erroneous estimate of the number of those who would demand a passage, and that he found himself, when it

was too late to alter his arrangements, unable to keep his word. After the soldiers had embarked, room was

found for the families of many. But still there remained on the water side a great multitude clamouring

piteously to be taken on board. As the last boats put off there was a rush into the surf. Some women caught

hold of the ropes, were dragged out of their depth, clung till their fingers were cut through, and perished in

the waves. The ships began to move. A wild and terrible wail rose from the shore, and excited unwonted

compassion in hearts steeled by hatred of the Irish race and of the Romish faith. Even the stern Cromwellian,

now at length, after a desperate struggle of three years, left the undisputed lord of the bloodstained and

devastated island, could not hear unmoved that bitter cry, in which was poured forth all the rage and all the

The sails disappeared. The emaciated and brokenhearted crowd of those whom a stroke more cruel than that

of death had made widows and orphans dispersed, to beg their way home through a wasted land, or to lie

down and die by the roadside of grief and hunger. The exiles departed, to learn in foreign camps that

discipline without which natural courage is of small avail, and to retrieve on distant fields of battle the honour

which had been lost by a long series of defeats at home. In Ireland there was peace. The domination of the

colonists was absolute. The native population was tranquil with the ghastly tranquillity of exhaustion and of

despair. There were indeed outrages, robberies, fireraisings, assassinations. But more than a century passed

away without one general insurrection. During that century, two rebellions were raised in Great Britain by the

adherents of the House of Stuart. But neither when the elder Pretender was crowned at Scone, nor when the

younger held his court at Holyrood, was the standard of that House set up in Connaught or Munster. In 1745,

indeed, when the Highlanders were marching towards London, the Roman Catholics of Ireland were so quiet

that the Lord Lieutenant could, without the smallest risk, send several regiments across Saint George's

Channel to recruit the army of the Duke of Cumberland. Nor was this submission the effect of content, but of

mere stupefaction and brokenness of heart. The iron had entered into the soul. The memory of past defeats,

the habit of daily enduring insult and oppression, had cowed the spirit of the unhappy nation. There were

indeed Irish Roman Catholics of great ability, energy and ambition; but they were to be found every where

except in Ireland, at Versailles and at Saint Ildefonso, in the armies of Frederic and in the armies of Maria

Theresa. One exile became a Marshal of France. Another became Prime Minister of Spain. If he had staid in

his native land he would have been regarded as an inferior by all the ignorant and worthless squireens who

drank the glorious and immortal memory. In his palace at Madrid he had the pleasure of being assiduously

courted by the ambassador of George the Second, and of bidding defiance in high terms to the ambassador of

George the Third.140 Scattered over all Europe were to be found brave Irish generals, dexterous Irish

diplomatists, Irish Counts, Irish Barons, Irish Knights of Saint Lewis and of Saint Leopold, of the White

Eagle and of the Golden Fleece, who, if they had remained in the house of bondage, could not have been

ensigns of marching regiments or freemen of petty corporations. These men, the natural chiefs of their race,

having been withdrawn, what remained was utterly helpless and passive. A rising of the Irishry against the

Englishry was no more to be apprehended than a rising of the women and children against the men.141

There were indeed, in those days, fierce disputes between the mother country and the colony; but in those

disputes the aboriginal population had no more interest than the Red Indians in the dispute between Old

England and New England about the Stamp Act. The ruling few, even when in mutiny against the

government, had no mercy for any thing that looked like mutiny on the part of the subject many. None of

those Roman patriots, who poniarded Julius Caesar for aspiring to be a king, would have had the smallest

scruple about crucifying a whole school of gladiators for attempting to escape from the most odious and

degrading of all kinds of servitude. None of those Virginian patriots, who vindicated their separation from the

British empire by proclaiming it to be a selfevident truth that all men were endowed by the Creator with an

unalienable right to liberty, would have had the smallest scruple about shooting any negro slave who had laid

And, in the same manner, the Protestant masters of Ireland, while ostentatiously professing the political

doctrines of Locke and Sidney, held that a people who spoke the Celtic tongue and heard mass could have no

concern in those doctrines. Molyneux questioned the supremacy of the English legislature. Swift assailed,

with the keenest ridicule and invective, every part of the system of government. Lucas disquieted the

administration of Lord Harrington. Boyle overthrew the administration of the Duke of Dorset. But neither

Molyneux nor Swift, neither Lucas nor Boyle, ever thought of appealing to the native population. They

would as soon have thought of appealing to the swine.142 At a later period Henry Flood excited the dominant

class to demand a Parliamentary reform, and to use even revolutionary means for the purpose of obtaining

that reform. But neither he, nor those who looked up to him as their chief, and who went close to the verge of

treason at his bidding, would consent to admit the subject class to the smallest share of political power. The

virtuous and accomplished Charlemont, a Whig of the Whigs, passed a long life in contending for what he

called the freedom of his country. But he voted against the law which gave the elective franchise to Roman

Catholic freeholders; and he died fixed in the opinion that the Parliament House ought to be kept pure from

Roman Catholic members. Indeed, during the century which followed the Revolution, the inclination of an

English Protestant to trample on the Irishry was generally proportioned to the zeal which he professed for

political liberty in the abstract. If he uttered any expression of compassion for the majority oppressed by the

All this time hatred, kept down by fear, festered in the hearts of the children of the soil. They were still the

same people that had sprung to arms in 1641 at the call of O'Neill, and in 1689 at the call of Tyrconnel. To

them every festival instituted by the State was a day of mourning, and every public trophy set up by the State

was a memorial of shame. We have never known, and can but faintly conceive, the feelings of a nation

doomed to see constantly in all its public places the monuments of its subjugation. Such monuments every

where met the eye of the Irish Roman Catholics. In front of the Senate House of their country, they saw the

statue of their conqueror. If they entered, they saw the walls tapestried with the defeats of their fathers. At

length, after a hundred years of servitude, endured without one vigorous or combined struggle for

emancipation, the French revolution awakened a wild hope in the bosoms of the oppressed. Men who had

inherited all the pretensions and all the passions of the Parliament which James had held at the Kings Inns

could not hear unmoved of the downfall of a wealthy established Church, of the flight of a splendid

aristocracy, of the confiscation of an immense territory. Old antipathies, which had never slumbered, were

excited to new and terrible energy by the combination of stimulants which, in any other society, would have

counteracted each other. The spirit of Popery and the spirit of Jacobinism, irreconcilable antagonists every

where else, were for once mingled in an unnatural and portentous union. Their joint influence produced the

third and last rising up of the aboriginal population against the colony. The greatgrandsons of the soldiers of

Galmoy and Sarsfield were opposed to the greatgrandsons of the soldiers of Wolseley and Mitchelburn. The

Celt again looked impatiently for the sails which were to bring succour from Brest; and the Saxon was again

backed by the whole power of England. Again the victory remained with the well educated and well

organized minority. But, happily, the vanquished people found protection in a quarter from which they would

once have had to expect nothing but implacable severity. By this time the philosophy of the eighteenth

century had purifed English Whiggism from that deep taint of intolerance which had been contracted during a

long and close alliance with the Puritanism of the seventeenth century. Enlightened men had begun to feel

that the arguments by which Milton and Locke, Tillotson and Burnet, had vindicated the rights of conscience

might be urged with not less force in favour of the Roman Catholic than in favour of the Independent or the

Baptist. The great party which traces its descent through the Exclusionists up to the Roundheads continued

during thirty years, in spite of royal frowns and popular clamours, to demand a share in all the benefits of our

free constitution for those Irish Papists whom the Roundheads and the Exclusionists had considered merely

as beasts of chase or as beasts of burden. But it will be for some other historian to relate the vicissitudes of

that great conflict, and the late triumph of reason and humanity. Unhappily such a historian will have to relate

that the triumph won by such exertions and by such sacrifices was immediately followed by disappointment;

that it proved far less easy to eradicate evil passions than to repeal evil laws; and that, long after every trace

of national and religious animosity had been obliterated from the Statute Book, national and religious

animosities continued to rankle in the bosoms of millions. May he be able also to relate that wisdom, justice

and time gradually did in Ireland what they had done in Scotland, and that all the races which inhabit the

Opening of the ParliamentDebates on the Salaries and Fees of Official MenAct excluding Papists from

Public Trust in Ireland Debates on the East India TradeDebates on the Bill for regulating Trials in Cases

of High TreasonPlot formed by Marlborough against the Government of WilliamMarlborough's Plot

disclosed by the JacobitesDisgrace of Marlborough; Various Reports touching the Cause of Marlborough's

Disgrace.Rupture between Mary and AnneFuller's PlotClose of the Session; Bill for ascertaining the

Salaries of the Judges rejectedMisterial Changes in EnglandMinisterial Changes in ScotlandState of

the HighlandsBreadalbane employed to negotiate with the Rebel ClansGlencoeWilliam goes to the

Continent; Death of Louvois The French Government determines to send an Expedition against

EnglandJames believes that the English Fleet is friendly to himConduct of RussellA Daughter born

to JamesPreparations made in England to repel InvasionJames goes down to his Army at La

HogueJames's DeclarationEffect produced by James's DeclarationThe English and Dutch Fleets join;

ON the nineteenth of October 1691, William arrived at Kensington from the Netherlands.144 Three days later

he opened the Parliament. The aspect of affairs was, on the whole, cheering. By land there had been gains and

losses; but the balance was in favour of England. Against the fall of Mons might well be set off the taking of

Athlone, the victory of Aghrim, the surrender of Limerick and the pacification of Ireland. At sea there had

been no great victory; but there had been a great display of power and of activity; and, though many were

dissatisfied because more had not been done, none could deny that there had been a change for the better. The

ruin caused by the foibles and vices of Torrington had been repaired; the fleet had been well equipped; the

rations had been abundant and wholesome; and the health of the crews had consequently been, for that age,

wonderfully good. Russell, who commanded the naval forces of the allies, had in vain offered battle to the

French. The white flag, which, in the preceding year, had ranged the Channel unresisted from the Land's End

to the Straits of Dover, now, as soon as our topmasts were descried twenty leagues off, abandoned the open

sea, and retired into the depths of the harbour of Brest. The appearance of an English squadron in the estuary

of the Shannon had decided the fate of the last fortress which had held out for King James; and a fleet of

merchantmen from the Levant, valued at four millions sterling, had, through dangers which had caused many

sleepless nights to the underwriters of Lombard Street, been convoyed safe into the Thames.145 The Lords

and Commons listened with signs of satisfaction to a speech in which the King congratulated them on the

event of the war in Ireland, and expressed his confidence that they would continue to support him in the war

with France. He told them that a great naval armament would be necessary, and that, in his opinion, the

conflict by land could not be effectually maintained with less than sixtyfive thousand men.146

He was thanked in affectionate terms; the force which he asked was voted; and large supplies were granted

with little difficulty. But when the Ways and Means were taken into consideration, symptoms of discontent

began to appear. Eighteen months before, when the Commons had been employed in settling the Civil List,

many members had shown a very natural disposition to complain of the amount of the salaries and fees

received by official men. Keen speeches had been made, and, what was much less usual, had been printed;

there had been much excitement out of doors; but nothing had been done. The subject was now revived. A

report made by the Commissioners who had been appointed in the preceding year to examine the public

accounts disclosed some facts which excited indignation, and others which raised grave suspicion. The House

seemed fully determined to make an extensive reform; and, in truth, nothing could have averted such a reform

except the folly and violence of the reformers. That they should have been angry is indeed not strange. The

enormous gains, direct and indirect, of the servants of the public went on increasing, while the gains of every

body else were diminishing. Rents were falling; trade was languishing; every man who lived either on what

his ancestors had left him or on the fruits of his own industry was forced to retrench. The placeman alone

throve amidst the general distress. "Look," cried the incensed squires, "at the Comptroller of the Customs.

Ten years ago, he walked, and we rode. Our incomes have been curtailed; his salary has been doubled; we

have sold our horses; he has bought them; and now we go on foot, and are splashed by his coach and six."

Lowther vainly endeavoured to stand up against the storm. He was heard with little favour by the country

gentlemen who had not long before looked up to him as one of their leaders. He had left them; he had become

a courtier; he had two good places, one in the Treasury, the other in the household. He had recently received

from the King's own hand a gratuity of two thousand guineas.147 It seemed perfectly natural that he should

defend abuses by which he profited. The taunts and reproaches with which he was assailed were

insupportable to his sensitive nature. He lost his head, almost fainted away on the floor of the House, and

talked about righting himself in another place.148 Unfortunately no member rose at this conjuncture to

propose that the civil establishment of the kingdom should be carefully revised, that sinecures should be

abolished, that exorbitant official incomes should be reduced, and that no servant of the State should be

allowed to exact, under any pretence, any thing beyond his known and lawful remuneration. In this way it

would have been possible to diminish the public burdens, and at the same time to increase the efficiency of

every public department. But unfortunately those who were loudest in clamouring against the prevailing

abuses were utterly destitute of the qualities necessary for the work of reform. On the twelfth of December,

some foolish man, whose name has not come down to us, moved that no person employed in any civil office,

the Speaker, Judges and Ambassadors excepted, should receive more than five hundred pounds a year; and

Those who were most interested in opposing it doubtless saw that opposition would, at that moment, only

irritate the majority, and reserved themselves for a more favourable time. The more favourable time soon

came. No man of common sense could, when his blood had cooled, remember without shame that he had

voted for a resolution which made no distinction between sinecurists and laborious public servants, between

clerks employed in copying letters and ministers on whose wisdom and integrity the fate of the nation might

depend. The salary of the Doorkeeper of the Excise Office had been, by a scandalous job, raised to five

hundred a year. It ought to have been reduced to fifty. On the other hand, the services of a Secretary of State

who was well qualified for his post would have been cheap at five thousand. If the resolution of the

Commons bad been carried into effect, both the salary which ought not to have exceeded fifty pounds, and

the salary which might without impropriety have amounted to five thousand, would have been fixed at five

hundred. Such absurdity must have shocked even the roughest and plainest foxhunter in the House. A

reaction took place; and when, after an interval of a few weeks, it was proposed to insert in a bill of supply a

clause in conformity with the resolution of the twelfth of December, the Noes were loud; the Speaker was of

opinion that they had it; the Ayes did not venture to dispute his opinion; the senseless plan which had been

approved without a division was rejected without a division; and the subject was not again mentioned. Thus a

grievance so scandalous that none of those who profited by it dared to defend it was perpetuated merely by

Early in the Session the Treaty of Limerick became the subject of a grave and earnest discussion. The

Commons, in the exercise of that supreme power which the English legislature possessed over all the

dependencies of England, sent up to the Lords a bill providing that no person should sit in the Irish

Parliament, should hold any Irish office, civil, military or ecclesiastical, or should practise law or medicine in

Ireland, till he had taken the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and subscribed the Declaration against

Transubstantiation. The Lords were not more inclined than the Commons to favour the Irish. No peer was

disposed to entrust Roman Catholics with political power. Nay, it seems that no peer objected to the principle

of the absurd and cruel rule which excluded Roman Catholics from the liberal professions. But it was thought

that this rule, though unobjectionable in principle, would, if adopted without some exceptions, be a breach of

a positive compact. Their Lordships called for the Treaty of Limerick, ordered it to be read at the table, and

proceeded to consider whether the law framed by the Lower House was consistent with the engagements into

which the government had entered. One discrepancy was noticed. It was stipulated by the second civil article,

that every person actually residing in any fortress occupied by an Irish garrison, should be permitted, on

taking the Oath of Allegiance, to resume any calling which he had exercised before the Revolution. It would,

beyond all doubt, have been a violation of this covenant to require that a lawyer or a physician, who had been

within the walls of Limerick during the siege, should take the Oath of Supremacy and subscribe the

Declaration against Transubstantiation, before he could receive fees. Holt was consulted, and was directed to

The bill, as amended by Holt, was sent back to the Commons. They at first rejected the amendment, and

demanded a conference. The conference was granted. Rochester, in the Painted Chamber, delivered to the

managers of the Lower House a copy of the Treaty of Limerick, and earnestly represented the importance of

preserving the public faith inviolate. This appeal was one which no honest man, though inflamed by national

and religious animosity, could resist. The Commons reconsidered the subject, and, after hearing the Treaty

read, agreed, with some slight modifications, to what the Lords had proposed.151

The bill became a law. It attracted, at the time, little notice, but was, after the lapse of several generations, the

subject of a very acrimonious controversy. Many of us can well remember how strongly the public mind was

stirred, in the days of George the Third and George the Fourth, by the question whether Roman Catholics

should be permitted to sit in Parliament. It may be doubted whether any dispute has produced stranger

perversions of history. The whole past was falsified for the sake of the present. All the great events of three

centuries long appeared to us distorted and discoloured by a mist sprung from our own theories and our own

passions. Some friends of religious liberty, not content with the advantage which they possessed in the fair

conflict of reason with reason, weakened their case by maintaining that the law which excluded Irish Roman

Catholics from Parliament was inconsistent with the civil Treaty of Limerick. The First article of that Treaty,

it was said, guaranteed to the Irish Roman Catholic such privileges in the exercise of his religion as he had

enjoyed in the time of Charles the Second. In the time of Charles the Second no test excluded Roman

Catholics from the Irish Parliament. Such a test could not therefore, it was argued, be imposed without a

breach of public faith. In the year 1828, especially, this argument was put forward in the House of Commons

as if it had been the main strength of a cause which stood in need of no such support. The champions of

Protestant ascendency were well pleased to see the debate diverted from a political question about which they

were in the wrong, to a historical question about which they were in the right. They had no difficulty in

proving that the first article, as understood by all the contracting parties, meant only that the Roman Catholic

worship should be tolerated as in time past. That article was drawn up by Ginkell; and, just before he drew it

up, he had declared that he would rather try the chance of arms than consent that Irish Papists should be

capable of holding civil and military offices, of exercising liberal professions, and of becoming members of

municipal corporations. How is it possible to believe that he would, of his own accord, have promised that

the House of Lords and the House of Commons should be open to men to whom he would not open a guild of

skinners or a guild of cordwainers? How, again, is it possible to believe that the English Peers would, while

professing the most punctilious respect for public faith, while lecturing the Commons on the duty of

observing public faith, while taking counsel with the most learned and upright jurist of the age as to the best

mode of maintaining public faith, have committed a flagrant violation of public faith and that not a single

lord should have been so honest or so factious as to protest against an act of monstrous perfidy aggravated by

hypocrisy? Or, if we could believe this, how can we believe that no voice would have been raised in any part

of the world against such wickedness; that the Court of Saint Germains and the Court of Versailles would

have remained profoundly silent; that no Irish exile, no English malecontent, would have uttered a murmur;

that not a word of invective or sarcasm on so inviting a subject would have been found in the whole compass

of the Jacobite literature; and that it would have been reserved for politicians of the nineteenth century to

discover that a treaty made in the seventeenth century had, a few weeks after it had been signed, been

On the same day on which the Commons read for the first time the bill which subjected Ireland to the

absolute dominion of the Protestant minority, they took into consideration another matter of high importance.

Throughout the country, but especially in the capital, in the seaports and in the manufacturing towns, the

minds of men were greatly excited on the subject of the trade with the East Indies; a fierce paper war had

during some time been raging; and several grave questions, both constitutional and commercial, had been

It has often been repeated, and ought never to be forgotten, that our polity differs widely from those politics

which have, during the last eighty years, been methodically constructed, digested into articles, and ratified by

constituent assemblies. It grew up in a rude age. It is not to be found entire in any formal instrument. All

along the line which separates the functions of the prince from those of the legislator there was long a

disputed territory. Encroachments were perpetually committed, and, if not very outrageous, were often

tolerated. Trespass, merely as trespass, was commonly suffered to pass unresented. It was only when the

trespass produced some positive damage that the aggrieved party stood on his right, and demanded that the

frontier should be set out by metes and bounds, and that the landmarks should thenceforward be punctiliously

Many of those points which had occasioned the most violent disputes between our Sovereigns and their

Parliaments had been finally decided by the Bill of Rights. But one question, scarcely less important than any

of the questions which had been set at rest for ever, was still undetermined. Indeed, that question was never,

as far as can now be ascertained, even mentioned in the Convention. The King had undoubtedly, by the

ancient laws of the realm, large powers for the regulation of trade; but the ablest judge would have found it

difficult to say what was the precise extent of those powers. It was universally acknowledged that it belonged

to the King to prescribe weights and measures, and to coin money; that no fair or market could be held

without authority from him; that no ship could unload in any bay or estuary which he had not declared to be a

port. In addition to his undoubted right to grant special commercial privileges to particular places, he long

claimed a right to grant special commercial privileges to particular societies and to particular individuals; and

our ancestors, as usual, did not think it worth their while to dispute this claim, till it produced serious

inconvenience. At length, in the reign of Elizabeth, the power of creating monopolies began to be grossly

abused; and, as soon as it began to be grossly abused, it began to be questioned. The Queen wisely declined a

conflict with a House of Commons backed by the whole nation. She frankly acknowledged that there was

reason for complaint; she cancelled the patents which had excited the public clamours; and her people,

delighted by this concession, and by the gracious manner in which it had been made, did not require from her

The discontents which her wisdom had appeased were revived by the dishonest and pusillanimous policy

which her successor called Kingcraft. He readily granted oppressive patents of monopoly. When he needed

the help of his Parliament, he as readily annulled them. As soon as the Parliament had ceased to sit, his Great

Seal was put to instruments more odious than those which he had recently cancelled. At length that excellent

House of Commons which met in 1623 determined to apply a strong remedy to the evil. The King was forced

to give his assent to a law which declared monopolies established by royal authority to be null and void.

Some exceptions, however, were made, and, unfortunately, were not very clearly defined. It was especially

provided that every Society of Merchants which had been instituted for the purpose of carrying on any trade

should retain all its legal privileges.153 The question whether a monopoly granted by the Crown to such a

company were or were not a legal privilege was left unsettled, and continued to exercise, during many years,

the ingenuity of lawyers.154 The nation, however, relieved at once from a multitude of impositions and

vexations which were painfully felt every day at every fireside, was in no humour to dispute the validity of

the charters under which a few companies to London traded with distant parts of the world.

Of these companies by far the most important was that which had been, on the last day of the sixteenth

century, incorporated by Queen Elizabeth under the name of the Governor and Company of Merchants of

London trading to the East Indies. When this celebrated body began to exist, the Mogul monarchy was at the

zenith of power and glory. Akbar, the ablest and best of the princes of the House of Tamerlane, had just been

borne, full of years and honours, to a mausoleum surpassing in magnificence any that Europe could show. He

had bequeathed to his posterity an empire containing more than twenty times the population and yielding

more than twenty times the revenue of the England which, under our great Queen, held a foremost place

among European powers. It is curious and interesting to consider how little the two countries, destined to be

one day so closely connected, were then known to each other. The most enlightened Englishmen looked on

India with ignorant admiration. The most enlightened natives of India were scarcely aware that England

existed. Our ancestors had a dim notion of endless bazaars, swarming with buyers and sellers, and blazing

with cloth of gold, with variegated silks and with precious stones; of treasuries where diamonds were piled in

heaps and sequins in mountains; of palaces, compared with which Whitehall and Hampton Court were

hovels; of armies ten times as numerous as that which they had seen assembled at Tilbury to repel the

Armada. On the other hand, it was probably not known to one of the statesmen in the Durbar of Agra that

there was near the setting sun a great city of infidels, called London, where a woman reigned, and that she

had given to an association of Frank merchants the exclusive privilege of freighting ships from her dominions

to the Indian seas. That this association would one day rule all India, from the ocean to the everlasting snow,

would reduce to profound obedience great provinces which had never submitted to Akbar's authority, would

send Lieutenant Governors to preside in his capital, and would dole out a monthly pension to his heir, would

have seemed to the wisest of European or of Oriental politicians as impossible as that inhabitants of our globe

Three generations passed away; and still nothing indicated that the East India Company would ever become a

great Asiatic potentate. The Mogul empire, though undermined by internal causes of decay, and tottering to

its fall, still presented to distant nations the appearance of undiminished prosperity and vigour. Aurengzebe,

who, in the same month in which Oliver Cromwell died, assumed the magnificent title of Conqueror of the

World, continued to reign till Anne had been long on the English throne. He was the sovereign of a larger

territory than had obeyed any of his predecessors. His name was great in the farthest regions of the West.

Here he had been made by Dryden the hero of a tragedy which would alone suffice to show how little the

English of that age knew about the vast empire which their grandchildren were to conquer and to govern. The

poet's Mussulman princes make love in the style of Amadis, preach about the death of Socrates, and

embellish their discourse with allusions to the mythological stories of Ovid. The Brahminical

metempyschosis is represented as an article of the Mussulman creed; and the Mussulman Sultanas burn

themselves with their husbands after the Brahminical fashion. This drama, once rapturously applauded by

crowded theatres, and known by heart to fine gentlemen and fine ladies, is now forgotten. But one noble

passage still lives, and is repeated by thousands who know not whence it comes.155

Though nothing yet indicated the high political destiny of the East India Company, that body had a great

sway in the City of London. The offices, which stood on a very small part of the ground which the present

offices cover, had escaped the ravages of the fire. The India House of those days was a building of timber and

plaster, rich with the quaint carving and latticework of the Elizabethan age. Above the windows was a

painting which represented a fleet of merchantmen tossing on the waves. The whole edifice was surmounted

by a colossal wooden seaman, who, from between two dolphins, looked down on the crowds of Leadenhall

Street.156 In this abode, narrow and humble indeed when compared with the vast labyrinth of passages and

chambers which now bears the same name, the Company enjoyed, during the greater part of the reign of

Charles the Second, a prosperity to which the history of trade scarcely furnishes any parallel, and which

excited the wonder, the cupidity and the envious animosity of the whole capital. Wealth and luxury were then

rapidly increasing. The taste for the spices, the tissues and the jewels of the East became stronger day by day.

Tea, which, at the time when Monk brought the army of Scotland to London, had been handed round to be

stared at and just touched with the lips, as a great rarity from China, was, eight years later, a regular article of

import, and was soon consumed in such quantities that financiers began to consider it as a fit subject for

taxation. The progress which was making in the art of war had created an unprecedented demand for the

ingredients of which gunpowder is compounded. It was calculated that all Europe would hardly produce in a

year saltpetre enough for the siege of one town fortified on the principles of Vauban.157 But for the supplies

from India, it was said, the English government would be unable to equip a fleet without digging up the

cellars of London in order to collect the nitrous particles from the walls.158 Before the Restoration scarcely

one ship from the Thames had ever visited the Delta of the Ganges. But, during the twentythree years which

followed the Restoration, the value of the annual imports from that rich and populous district increased from

The gains of the body which had the exclusive possession of this fast growing trade were almost incredible.

The capital which had been actually paid up did not exceed three hundred and seventy thousand pounds; but

the Company could, without difficulty, borrow money at six per cent., and the borrowed money, thrown into

the trade, produced, it was rumoured, thirty per cent. The profits were such that, in 1676, every proprietor

received as a bonus a quantity of stock equal to that which he held. On the capital, thus doubled, were paid,

during five years, dividends amounting on an average to twenty per cent. annually. There had been a time

when a hundred pounds of the stock could be purchased for sixty. Even in 1664 the price in the market was

only seventy. But in 1677 the price had risen to two hundred and fortyfive; in 1681 it was three hundred; it

subsequently rose to three hundred and sixty; and it is said that some sales were effected at five hundred.159

The enormous gains of the Indian trade might perhaps have excited little murmuring if they had been

distributed among numerous proprietors. But while the value of the stock went on increasing, the number of

stockholders went on diminishing. At the tithe when the prosperity of the Company reached the highest point,

the management was entirely in the hands of a few merchants of enormous wealth. A proprietor then had a

vote for every five hundred pounds of stock that stood in his name. It is asserted in the pamphlets of that age

that five persons had a sixth part, and fourteen persons a third part of the votes.160 More than one fortunate

speculator was said to derive an annual income of ten thousand pounds from the monopoly; and one great

man was pointed out on the Royal Exchange as having, by judicious or lucky purchases of stock, created in

no long time an estate of twenty thousand a year. This commercial grandee, who in wealth and in the

influence which attends wealth vied with the greatest nobles of his time, was Sir Josiah Child. There were

those who still remembered him an apprentice, sweeping one of the counting houses of the City. But from a

humble position his abilities had raised him rapidly to opulence, power and fame. At the time of the

Restoration he was highly considered in the mercantile world. Soon after that event he published his thoughts

on the philosophy of trade. His speculations were not always sound; but they were the speculations of an

ingenious and reflecting man. Into whatever errors he may occasionally have fallen as a theorist, it is certain

that, as a practical man of business, he had few equals. Almost as soon as he became a member of the

committee which directed the affairs of the Company, his ascendency was felt. Soon many of the most

important posts, both in Leadenhall Street and in the factories of Bombay and Bengal, were filled by his

kinsmen and creatures. His riches, though expended with ostentatious profusion, continued to increase and

multiply. He obtained a baronetcy; he purchased a stately seat at Wanstead; and there he laid out immense

sums in excavating fishponds, and in planting whole square miles of barren land with walnut trees. He

married his daughter to the eldest son of the Duke of Beaufort, and paid down with her a portion of fifty

But this wonderful prosperity was not uninterrupted. Towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second the

Company began to be fiercely attacked from without, and to be at the same time distracted by internal

dissensions. The profits of the Indian trade were so tempting, that private adventurers had often, in defiance

of the royal charter, fitted out ships for the Eastern seas. But the competition of these interlopers did not

become really formidable till the year 1680. The nation was then violently agitated by the dispute about the

Exclusion Bill. Timid men were anticipating another civil war. The two great parties, newly named Whigs

and Tories, were fiercely contending in every county and town of England; and the feud soon spread to every

The Company was popularly considered as a Whig body. Among the members of the directing committee

were some of the most vehement Exclusionists in the City. Indeed two of them, Sir Samuel Barnardistone

and Thomas Papillon, drew on themselves a severe persecution by their zeal against Popery and arbitrary

power.162 Child had been originally brought into the direction by these men; he had long acted in concert

with them; and he was supposed to hold their political opinions. He had, during many years, stood high in the

esteem of the chiefs of the parliamentary opposition, and had been especially obnoxious to the Duke of

York.163 The interlopers therefore determined to affect the character of loyal men, who were determined to

stand by the throne against the insolent tribunes of the City. They spread, at all the factories in the East,

reports that England was in confusion, that the sword had been drawn or would immediately be drawn, and

that the Company was forward in the rebellion against the Crown. These rumours, which, in truth, were not

improbable, easily found credit among people separated from London by what was then a voyage of twelve

months. Some servants of the Company who were in ill humour with their employers, and others who were

zealous royalists, joined the private traders. At Bombay, the garrison and the great body of the English

inhabitants declared that they would no longer obey any body who did not obey the King; they imprisoned

the Deputy Governor; and they proclaimed that they held the island for the Crown. At Saint Helena there was

a rising. The insurgents took the name of King's men, and displayed the royal standard. They were, not

If the Company had still been a Whig Company when the news of these commotions reached England, it is

probable that the government would have approved of the conduct of the mutineers, and that the charter on

which the monopoly depended would have had the fate which about the same time befell so many other

charters. But while the interlopers were, at a distance of many thousands of miles, making war on the

Company in the name of the King, the Company and the King had been reconciled. When the Oxford

Parliament had been dissolved, when many signs indicated that a strong reaction in favour of prerogative was

at hand, when all the corporations which had incurred the royal displeasure were beginning to tremble for

their franchises, a rapid and complete revolution took place at the India House. Child, who was then

Governor, or, in the modern phrase, Chairman, separated himself from his old friends, excluded them from

the direction, and negotiated a treaty of peace and of close alliance with the Court.165 It is not improbable

that the near connection into which he had just entered with the great Tory house of Beaufort may have had

something to do with this change in his politics. Papillon, Barnardistone, and their adherents, sold their stock;

their places in the committee were supplied by persons devoted to Child; and he was thenceforth the autocrat

of the Company. The treasures of the Company were absolutely at his disposal. The most important papers of

the Company were kept, not in the muniment room of the office in Leadenhall Street, but in his desk at

Wanstead. The boundless power which he exercised at the India House enabled him to become a favourite at

Whitehall; and the favour which he enjoyed at Whitehall confirmed his power at the India House. A present

of ten thousand guineas was graciously received from him by Charles. Ten thousand more were accepted by

James, who readily consented to become a holder of stock. All who could help or hurt at Court, ministers,

mistresses, priests, were kept in good humour by presents of shawls and silks, birds' nests and atar of roses,

bulses of diamonds and bags of guineas.166 Of what the Dictator expended no account was asked by his

colleagues; and in truth he seems to have deserved the confidence which they reposed in him. His bribes,

distributed with judicious prodigality, speedily produced a large return. Just when the Court became all

powerful in the State, he became all powerful at the Court. Jeffreys pronounced a decision in favour of the

monopoly, and of the strongest acts which had been done in defence of the monopoly. James ordered his seal

to be put to a new charter which confirmed and extended all the privileges bestowed on the Company by his

predecessors. All captains of Indiamen received commissions from the Crown, and were permitted to hoist

the royal ensigns.167 John Child, brother of Sir Josiah, and Governor of Bombay, was created a baronet by

the style of Sir John Child of Surat: he was declared General of all the English forces in the East; and he was

authorised to assume the title of Excellency. The Company, on the other hand, distinguished itself among

many servile corporations by obsequious homage to the throne, and set to all the merchants of the kingdom

the example of readily and even eagerly paying those customs which James, at the commencement of his

It seemed that the private trade would now be utterly crushed, and that the monopoly, protected by the whole

strength of the royal prerogative, would be more profitable than ever. But unfortunately just at this moment a

quarrel arose between the agents of the Company in India and the Mogul Government. Where the fault lay is

a question which was vehemently disputed at the time, and which it is now impossible to decide. The

interlopers threw all the blame on the Company. The Governor of Bombay, they affirmed, had always been

grasping and violent; but his baronetcy and his military commission had completely turned his head. The

very natives who were employed about the factory had noticed the change, and had muttered, in their broken

English, that there must be some strange curse attending the word Excellency; for that, ever since the chief of

the strangers was called Excellency, every thing had gone to ruin. Meanwhile, it was said, the brother in

England had sanctioned all the unjust and impolitic acts of the brother in India, till at length insolence and

rapine, disgraceful to the English nation and to the Christian religion, had roused the just resentment of the

native authorities. The Company warmly recriminated. The story told at the India House was that the quarrel

was entirely the work of the interlopers, who were now designated not only as interlopers but as traitors.

They had, it was alleged, by flattery, by presents, and by false accusations, induced the viceroys of the Mogul

to oppress and persecute the body which in Asia represented the English Crown. And indeed this charge

seems not to have been altogether without foundation. It is certain that one of the most pertinacious enemies

of the Childs went up to the Court of Aurengzebe, took his station at the palace gate, stopped the Great King

who was in the act of mounting on horseback, and, lifting a petition high in the air, demanded justice in the

name of the common God of Christians and Mussulmans.169 Whether Aurengzebe paid much attention to

the charges brought by infidel Franks against each other may be doubted. But it is certain that a complete

rupture took place between his deputies and the servants of the Company. On the sea the ships of his subjects

were seized by the English. On land the English settlements were taken and plundered. The trade was

suspended; and, though great annual dividends were still paid in London, they were no longer paid out of

Just at this conjuncture, while every Indiaman that arrived in the Thames was bringing unwelcome news from

the East, all the politics of Sir Josiah were utterly confounded by the Revolution. He had flattered himself that

he had secured the body of which he was the chief against the machinations of interlopers, by uniting it

closely with the strongest government that had existed within his memory. That government had fallen; and

whatever had leaned on the ruined fabric began to totter. The bribes had been thrown away. The connections

which had been the strength and boast of the corporation were now its weakness and its shame. The King

who had been one of its members was an exile. The judge by whom all its most exorbitant pretensions had

been pronounced legitimate was a prisoner. All the old enemies of the Company, reinforced by those great

Whig merchants whom Child had expelled from the direction, demanded justice and vengeance from the

Whig House of Commons, which had just placed William and Mary on the throne. No voice was louder in

accusation than that of Papillon, who had, some years before, been more zealous for the charter than any man

in London.170 The Commons censured in severe terms the persons who had inflicted death by martial law at

Saint Helena, and even resolved that some of those offenders should be excluded from the Act of

Indemnity.171 The great question, how the trade with the East should for the future be carried on, was

referred to a Committee. The report was to have been made on the twentyseventh of January 1690; but on

The first two sessions of the succeeding Parliament were so short and so busy that little was said about India

in either House. But, out of Parliament, all the arts both of controversy and of intrigue were employed on

both sides. Almost as many pamphlets were published about the India trade as about the oaths. The despot of

Leadenhall Street was libelled in prose and verse. Wretched puns were made on his name. He was compared

to Cromwell, to the King of France, to Goliath of Gath, to the Devil. It was vehemently declared to be

necessary that, in any Act which might be passed for the regulation of our traffic with the Eastern seas, Sir

There were, however, great differences of opinion among those who agreed in hating Child and the body of

which he was the head. The manufacturers of Spitalfields, of Norwich, of Yorkshire, and of the Western

counties, considered the trade with the Eastern seas as rather injurious than beneficial to the kingdom. The

importation of Indian spices, indeed, was admitted to be harmless, and the importation of Indian saltpetre to

be necessary. But the importation of silks and of Bengals, as shawls were then called, was pronounced to be a

curse to the country. The effect of the growing taste for such frippery was that our gold and silver went

abroad, and that much excellent English drapery lay in our warehouses till it was devoured by the moths.

Those, it was said, were happy days for the inhabitants both of our pasture lands and of our manufacturing

towns, when every gown, every hanging, every bed, was made of materials which our own flocks had

furnished to our own looms. Where were now the brave old hangings of arras which had adorned the walls of

lordly mansions in the days of Elizabeth? And was it not a shame to see a gentleman, whose ancestors had

worn nothing but stuffs made by English workmen out of English fleeces, flaunting in a calico shirt and a pair

of silk stockings? Clamours such as these had, a few years before, extorted from Parliament the Act which

required that the dead should be wrapped in woollen; and some sanguine clothiers hoped that the legislature

would, by excluding all Indian textures from our ports, impose the same necessity on the living.173

But this feeling was confined to a minority. The public was, indeed, inclined rather to overrate than to

underrate the benefits which might be derived by England from the Indian trade. What was the most effectual

mode of extending that trade was a question which excited general interest, and which was answered in very

A small party, consisting chiefly of merchants resident at Bristol and other provincial seaports, maintained

that the best way to extend trade was to leave it free. They urged the well known arguments which prove that

monopoly is injurious to commerce; and, having fully established the general law, they asked why the

commerce between England and India was to be considered as an exception to that law. Any trader ought,

they said, to be permitted to send from any port a cargo to Surat or Canton as freely as he now sent a cargo to

Hamburg or Lisbon.174 In our time these doctrines may probably be considered, not only as sound, but as

trite and obvious. In the seventeenth century, however, they were thought paradoxical. It was then generally

held to be a certain, and indeed an almost selfevident truth, that our trade with the countries lying beyond the

Cape of Good Hope could be advantageously carried on only by means of a great Joint Stock Company.

There was no analogy, it was said, between our European trade and our Indian trade. Our government had

diplomatic relations with the European States. If necessary, a maritime force could easily be sent from hence

to the mouth of the Elbe or of the Tagus. But the English Kings had no envoy at the Court of Agra or Pekin.

There was seldom a single English man of war within ten thousand miles of the Bay of Bengal or of the Gulf

of Siam. As our merchants could not, in those remote seas, be protected by their Sovereign, they must protect

themselves, and must, for that end, exercise some of the rights of sovereignty. They must have forts,

garrisons and armed ships. They must have power to send and receive embassies, to make a treaty of alliance

with one Asiatic prince, to wage war on another. It was evidently impossible that every merchant should have

this power independently of the rest. The merchants trading to India must therefore be joined together in a

corporation which could act as one man. In support of these arguments the example of the Dutch was cited,

and was generally considered as decisive. For in that age the immense prosperity of Holland was every where

regarded with admiration, not the less earnest because it was largely mingled with envy and hatred. In all that

related to trade, her statesmen were considered as oracles, and her institutions as models.

The great majority, therefore, of those who assailed the Company assailed it, not because it traded on joint

funds and possessed exclusive privileges, but because it was ruled by one man, and because his rule had been

mischievous to the public, and beneficial only to himself and his creatures. The obvious remedy, it was said,

for the evils which his maladministration had produced was to transfer the monopoly to a new corporation so

constituted as to be in no danger of falling under the dominion either of a despot or of a narrow oligarchy.

Many persons who were desirous to be members of such a corporation, formed themselves into a society,

signed an engagement, and entrusted the care of their interests to a committee which contained some of the

chief traders of the City. This society, though it had, in the eye of the law, no personality, was early

designated, in popular speech, as the New Company; and the hostilities between the New Company and the

Old Company soon caused almost as much excitement and anxiety, at least in that busy hive of which the

Royal Exchange was the centre, as the hostilities between the Allies and the French King. The headquarters

of the younger association were in Dowgate; the Skinners lent their stately hall; and the meetings were held

in a parlour renowned for the fragrance which exhaled from a magnificent wainscot of cedar.175

While the contention was hottest, important news arrived from India, and was announced in the London

Gazette as in the highest degree satisfactory. Peace had been concluded between the great Mogul and the

English. That mighty potentate had not only withdrawn his troops from the factories, but had bestowed on the

Company privileges such as it had never before enjoyed. Soon, however, appeared a very different version of

the story. The enemies of Child had, before this time, accused him of systematically publishing false

intelligence. He had now, they said, outlied himself. They had obtained a true copy of the Firman which had

put an end to the war; and they printed a translation of it. It appeared that Aurengzebe had contemptuously

granted to the English, in consideration of their penitence and of a large tribute, his forgiveness for their past

delinquency, had charged them to behave themselves better for the future, and had, in the tone of a master,

laid on them his commands to remove the principal offender, Sir John Child, from power and trust. The death

of Sir John occurred so seasonably that these commands could not be obeyed. But it was only too evident that

the pacification which the rulers of the India House had represented as advantageous and honourable had

During the summer of 1691, the controversy which raged on this subject between the Leadenhall Street

Company and the Dowgate Company kept the City in constant agitation. In the autumn, the Parliament had

no sooner met than both the contending parties presented petitions to the House of Commons.177 The

petitions were immediately taken into serious consideration, and resolutions of grave importance were

passed. The first resolution was that the trade with the East Indies was beneficial to the kingdom; the second

was that the trade with the East Indies would be best carried on by a joint stock company possessed of

exclusive privileges.178 It was plain, therefore, that neither those manufacturers who wished to prohibit the

trade, nor those merchants at the outports who wished to throw it open, had the smallest chance of attaining

their objects. The only question left was the question between the Old and the New Company. Seventeen

years elapsed before that question ceased to disturb both political and commercial circles. It was fatal to the

honour and power of one great minister, and to the peace and prosperity of many private families. The tracts

which the rival bodies put forth against each other were innumerable. If the drama of that age may be trusted,

the feud between the India House and Skinners' Hall was sometimes as serious an impediment to the course

of true love in London as the feud of the Capulets and Montagues had been at Verona.179 Which of the two

contending parties was the stronger it is not easy to say. The New Company was supported by the Whigs, the

Old Company by the Tories. The New Company was popular; for it promised largely, and could not be

accused of having broken its promises; it made no dividends, and therefore was not envied; it had no power

to oppress, and had therefore been guilty of no oppression. The Old Company, though generally regarded

with little favour by the public, had the immense advantage of being in possession, and of having only to

stand on the defensive. The burden of framing a plan for the regulation of the India trade, and of proving that

plan to be better than the plan hitherto followed, lay on the New Company. The Old Company had merely to

find objections to every change that was proposed; and such objections there was little difficulty in finding.

The members of the New Company were ill provided with the means of purchasing support at Court and in

Parliament. They had no corporate existence, no common treasury. If any of them gave a bribe, he gave it out

of his own pocket, with little chance of being reimbursed. But the Old Company, though surrounded by

dangers, still held its exclusive privileges, and still made its enormous profits. Its stock had indeed gone down

greatly in value since the golden days of Charles the Second; but a hundred pounds still sold for a hundred

and twentytwo.180 After a large dividend had been paid to the proprietors, a surplus remained amply

sufficient, in those days, to corrupt half a cabinet; and this surplus was absolutely at the disposal of one able,

determined and unscrupulous man, who maintained the fight with wonderful art and pertinacity.

The majority of the Commons wished to effect a compromise, to retain the Old Company, but to remodel it,

to impose on it new conditions, and to incorporate with it the members of the New Company. With this view

it was, after long and vehement debates and close divisions, resolved that the capital should be increased to a

million and a half. In order to prevent a single person or a small junto from domineering over the whole

society, it was determined that five thousand pounds of stock should be the largest quantity that any single

proprietor could hold, and that those who held more should be required to sell the overplus at any price not

below par. In return for the exclusive privilege of trading to the Eastern seas, the Company was to be required

to furnish annually five hundred tons of saltpetre to the Crown at a low price, and to export annually English

A bill founded on these resolutions was brought in, read twice, and committed, but was suffered to drop in

consequence of the positive refusal of Child and his associates to accept the offered terms. He objected to

every part of the plan; and his objections are highly curious and amusing. The great monopolist took his stand

on the principles of free trade. In a luminous and powerfully written paper he exposed the absurdity of the

expedients which the House of Commons had devised. To limit the amount of stock which might stand in a

single name would, he said, be most unreasonable. Surely a proprietor whose whole fortune was staked on

the success of the Indian trade was far more likely to exert all his faculties vigorously for the promotion of

that trade than a proprietor who had risked only what it would be no great disaster to lose. The demand that

saltpetre should be furnished to the Crown for a fixed sum Child met by those arguments, familiar to our

generation, which prove that prices should be left to settle themselves. To the demand that the Company

should bind itself to export annually two hundred thousand pounds' worth of English manufactures he very

properly replied that the Company would most gladly export two millions' worth if the market required such

a supply, and that, if the market were overstocked, it would be mere folly to send good cloth half round the

world to be eaten by white ants. It was never, he declared with much spirit, found politic to put trade into

straitlaced bodices, which, instead of making it grow upright and thrive, must either kill it or force it awry.

The Commons, irritated by Child's obstinacy, presented an address requesting the King to dissolve the Old

Company, and to grant a charter to a new Company on such terms as to His Majesty's wisdom might seem

fit.182 It is plainly implied in the terms of this address that the Commons thought the King constitutionally

The King replied that the subject was most important, that he would consider it maturely, and that he would,

at a future time, give the House a more precise answer.183 In Parliament nothing more was said on the

subject during that session; but out of Parliament the war was fiercer than ever; and the belligerents were by

no means scrupulous about the means which they employed. The chief weapons of the New Company were

In the same week in which the bill for the regulation of the Indian trade was suffered to drop, another bill

which had produced great excitement and had called forth an almost unprecedented display of parliamentary

During the eight years which preceded the Revolution, the Whigs had complained bitterly, and not more

bitterly than justly, of the hard measure dealt out to persons accused of political offences. Was it not

monstrous, they asked, that a culprit should be denied a sight of his indictment? Often an unhappy prisoner

had not known of what he was accused till he had held up his hand at the bar. The crime imputed to him

might be plotting to shoot the King; it might be plotting to poison the King. The more innocent the defendant

was, the less likely he was to guess the nature of the charge on which he was to be tried; and how could he

have evidence ready to rebut a charge the nature of which he could not guess? The Crown had power to

compel the attendance of witnesses. The prisoner had no such power. If witnesses voluntarily came forward

to speak in his favour, they could not be sworn. Their testimony therefore made less impression on a jury than

the testimony of the witnesses for the prosecution, whose veracity was guaranteed by the most solemn

sanctions of law and of religion. The juries, carefully selected by Sheriffs whom the Crown had named, were

men animated by the fiercest party spirit, men who had as little tenderness for an Exclusionist of a Dissenter

as for a mad dog. The government was served by a band of able, experienced and unprincipled lawyers, who

could, by merely glancing over a brief, distinguish every weak and every strong point of a case, whose

presence of mind never failed them, whose flow of speech was inexhaustible, and who had passed their lives

in dressing up the worse reason so as to make it appear the better. Was it not horrible to see three or four of

these shrewd, learned and callous orators arrayed against one poor wretch who had never in his life uttered a

word in public, who was ignorant of the legal definition of treason and of the first principles of the law of

evidence, and whose intellect, unequal at best to a fencing match with professional gladiators, was confused

by the near prospect of a cruel and ignominious death? Such however was the rule; and even for a man so

much stupefied by sickness that he could not hold up his hand or make his voice heard, even for a poor old

woman who understood nothing of what was passing except that she was going to be roasted alive for doing

an act of charity, no advocate was suffered to utter a word. That a state trial so conducted was little better

than a judicial murder had been, during the proscription of the Whig party, a fundamental article of the Whig

creed. The Tories, on the other hand, though they could not deny that there had been some hard cases,

maintained that, on the whole, substantial justice had been done. Perhaps a few seditious persons who had

gone very near to the frontier of treason, but had not actually passed that frontier, might have suffered as

traitors. But was that a sufficient reason for enabling the chiefs of the Rye House Plot and of the Western

Insurrection to elude, by mere chicanery, the punishment of their guilt? On what principle was the traitor to

have chances of escape which were not allowed to the felon? The culprit who was accused of larceny was

subject to all the same disadvantages which, in the case of regicides and rebels, were thought so unjust; ye

nobody pitied him. Nobody thought it monstrous that he should not have time to study a copy of his

indictment, that his witnesses should be examined without being sworn, that he should be left to defend

himself, without the help of counsel against the best abilities which the Inns of Court could furnish. The

Whigs, it seemed, reserved all their compassion for those crimes which subvert government and dissolve the

whole frame of human society. Guy Faux was to be treated with an indulgence which was not to be extended

to a shoplifter. Bradshaw was to have privileges which were refused to a boy who had robbed a henroost.

The Revolution produced, as was natural, some change in the sentiments of both the great parties. In the days

when none but Roundheads and Nonconformists were accused of treason, even the most humane and upright

Cavaliers were disposed to think that the laws which were the safeguard of the throne could hardly be too

severe. But, as soon as loyal Tory gentlemen and venerable fathers of the Church were in danger of being

called in question for corresponding with Saint Germains, a new light flashed on many understandings which

had been unable to discover the smallest injustice in the proceedings against Algernon Sidney and Alice

Lisle. It was no longer thought utterly absurd to maintain that some advantages which were withheld from a

man accused of felony might reasonably be allowed to a man accused of treason. What probability was there

that any sheriff would pack a jury, that any barrister would employ all the arts of sophistry and rhetoric, that

any judge would strain law and misrepresent evidence, in order to convict an innocent person of burglary or

sheep stealing? But on a trial for high treason a verdict of acquittal must always be considered as a defeat of

the government; and there was but too much reason to fear that many sheriffs, barristers and judges might be

impelled by party spirit, or by some baser motive, to do any thing which might save the government from the

inconvenience and shame of a defeat. The cry of the whole body of Tories was that the lives of good

Englishmen who happened to be obnoxious to the ruling powers were not sufficiently protected; and this cry

was swelled by the voices of some lawyers who had distinguished themselves by the malignant zeal and

dishonest ingenuity with which they had conducted State prosecutions in the days of Charles and James.

The feeling of the Whigs, though it had not, like the feeling of the Tories, undergone a complete change, was

yet not quite what it had been. Some, who had thought it most unjust that Russell should have no counsel and

that Cornish should have no copy of his indictment, now began to mutter that the times had changed; that the

dangers of the State were extreme; that liberty, property, religion, national independence, were all at stake;

that many Englishmen were engaged in schemes of which the object was to make England the slave of

France and of Rome; and that it would be most unwise to relax, at such a moment, the laws against political

offences. It was true that the injustice with which, in the late reigns, State trials had been conducted, had

given great scandal. But this injustice was to be ascribed to the bad kings and bad judges with whom the

nation had been cursed. William was now on the throne; Holt was seated for life on the bench; and William

would never exact, nor would Holt ever perform, services so shameful and wicked as those for which the

banished tyrant had rewarded Jeffreys with riches and titles. This language however was at first held but by

few. The Whigs, as a party, seem to have felt that they could not honourably defend, in the season of their

prosperity, what, in the time of their adversity, they had always designated as a crying grievance. A bill for

regulating trials in cases of high treason was brought into the House of Commons, and was received with

general applause. Treby had the courage to make some objections; but no division took place. The chief

enactments were that no person should be convicted of high treason committed more than three years before

the indictment was found; that every person indicted for high treason should be allowed to avail himself of

the assistance of counsel, and should be furnished, ten days before the trial, with a copy of the indictment,

and with a list of the freeholders from among whom the jury was to be taken; that his witnesses should be

sworn, and that they should be cited by the same process by which the attendance of the witnesses against

The Bill went to the Upper House, and came back with an important amendment. The Lords had long

complained of the anomalous and iniquitous constitution of that tribunal which had jurisdiction over them in

cases of life and death. When a grand jury has found a bill of indictment against a temporal peer for any

offence higher than a misdemeanour, the Crown appoints a Lord High Steward; and in the Lord High

Steward's Court the case is tried. This Court was anciently composed in two very different ways. It consisted,

if Parliament happened to be sitting, of all the members of the Upper House. When Parliament was not

sitting, the Lord High Steward summoned any twelve or more peers at his discretion to form a jury. The

consequence was that a peer accused of high treason during a recess was tried by a jury which his prosecutors

had packed. The Lords now demanded that, during a recess as well as during a session, every peer accused of

The demand was resisted by the House of Commons with a vehemence and obstinacy which men of the

present generation may find it difficult to understand. The truth is that some invidious privileges of peerage

which have since been abolished, and others which have since fallen into entire desuetude, were then in full

force, and were daily used. No gentleman who had had a dispute with a nobleman could think, without

indignation, of the advantages enjoyed by the favoured caste. If His Lordship were sued at law, his privilege

enabled him to impede the course of justice. If a rude word were spoken of him, such a word as he might

himself utter with perfect impunity, he might vindicate his insulted dignity both by civil and criminal

proceedings. If a barrister, in the discharge of his duty to a client, spoke with severity of the conduct of a

noble seducer, if an honest squire on the racecourse applied the proper epithets to the tricks of a noble

swindler, the affronted patrician had only to complain to the proud and powerful body of which he was a

member. His brethren made his cause their own. The offender was taken into custody by Black Rod, brought

to the bar, flung into prison, and kept there till he was glad to obtain forgiveness by the most degrading

submissions. Nothing could therefore be more natural than that an attempt of the Peers to obtain any new

advantage for their order should be regarded by the Commons with extreme jealousy. There is strong reason

to suspect that some able Whig politicians, who thought it dangerous to relax, at that moment, the laws

against political offences, but who could not, without incurring the charge of inconsistency, declare

themselves adverse to any relaxation, had conceived a hope that they might, by fomenting the dispute about

the Court of the Lord High Steward, defer for at least a year the passing of a bill which they disliked, and yet

could not decently oppose. If this really was their plan, it succeeded perfectly. The Lower House rejected the

amendment; the Upper House persisted; a free conference was held; and the question was argued with great

The reasons in favour of the amendment are obvious, and indeed at first sight seem unanswerable. It was

surely difficult to defend a system under which the Sovereign nominated a conclave of his own creatures to

decide the fate of men whom he regarded as his mortal enemies. And could any thing be more absurd than

that a nobleman accused of high treason should be entitled to be tried by the whole body of his peers if his

indictment happened to be brought into the House of Lords the minute before a prorogation, but that, if the

indictment arrived a minute after the prorogation, he should be at the mercy of a small junto named by the

very authority which prosecuted him? That any thing could have been said on the other side seems strange;

but those who managed the conference for the Commons were not ordinary men, and seem on this occasion

to have put forth all their powers. Conspicuous among them was Charles Montague, who was rapidly

attaining a foremost rank among the orators of that age. To him the lead seems on this occasion to have been

left; and to his pen we owe an account of the discussion, which gives a very high notion of his talents for

debate. "We have framed"such was in substance his reasoning,"we have framed a law which has in it

nothing exclusive, a law which will be a blessing to every class, from the highest to the lowest. The new

securities, which we propose to give to innocence oppressed by power, are common between the premier peer

and the humblest day labourer. The clause which establishes a time of limitation for prosecutions protects us

all alike. To every Englishman accused of the highest crime against the state, whatever be his rank, we give

the privilege of seeing his indictment, the privilege of being defended by counsel, the privilege of having his

witnesses summoned by writ of subpoena and sworn on the Holy Gospels. Such is the bill which we sent up

to your Lordships; and you return it to us with a clause of which the effect is to give certain advantages to

your noble order at the expense of the ancient prerogatives of the Crown. Surely before we consent to take

away from the King any power which his predecessors have possessed for ages, and to give it to your

Lordships, we ought to be satisfied that you are more likely to use it well than he. Something we must risk;

somebody we must trust; and; since we are forced, much against our will, to institute what is necessarily an

invidious comparison, we must own ourselves unable to discover any reason for believing that a prince is less

Is it reasonable, you ask, that you should be tried for your lives before a few members of your House,

selected by the Crown? Is it reasonable, we ask in our turn, that you should have the privilege of being tried

by all the members of your House, that is to say, by your brothers, your uncles, your first cousins, your

second cousins, your fathers in law, your brothers in law, your most intimate friends? You marry so much

into each other's families, you live so much in each other's society, that there is scarcely a nobleman who is

not connected by consanguinity or affinity with several others, and who is not on terms of friendship with

several more. There have been great men whose death put a third or fourth part of the baronage of England

into mourning. Nor is there much danger that even those peers who may be unconnected with an accused lord

will be disposed to send him to the block if they can with decency say 'Not Guilty, upon my honour.' For the

ignominious death of a single member of a small aristocratical body necessarily leaves a stain on the

reputation of his fellows. If, indeed, your Lordships proposed that every one of your body should be

compelled to attend and vote, the Crown might have some chance of obtaining justice against a guilty peer,

however strongly connected. But you propose that attendance shall be voluntary. Is it possible to doubt what

the consequence will be? All the prisoner's relations and friends will be in their places to vote for him. Good

nature and the fear of making powerful enemies will keep away many who, if they voted at all, would be

forced by conscience and honour to vote against him. The new system which you propose would therefore

evidently be unfair to the Crown; and you do not show any reason for believing that the old system has been

found in practice unfair to yourselves. We may confidently affirm that, even under a government less just and

merciful than that under which we have the happiness to live, an innocent peer has little to fear from any set

of peers that can be brought together in Westminster Hall to try him. How stands the fact? In what single case

has a guiltless head fallen by the verdict of this packed jury? It would be easy to make out a long list of

squires, merchants, lawyers, surgeons, yeomen, artisans, ploughmen, whose blood, barbarously shed during

the late evil times, cries for vengeance to heaven. But what single member of your House, in our days, or in

the days of our fathers, or in the days of our grandfathers, suffered death unjustly by sentence of the Court of

the Lord High Steward? Hundreds of the common people were sent to the gallows by common juries for the

Rye House Plot and the Western Insurrection. One peer, and one alone, my Lord Delamere, was brought at

that time before the Court of the Lord High Steward; and he was acquitted. But, it is said, the evidence

against him was legally insufficient. Be it so. So was the evidence against Sidney, against Cornish, against

Alice Lisle; yet it sufficed to destroy them. But, it is said, the peers before whom my Lord Delamere was

brought were selected with shameless unfairness by King James and by Jeffreys. Be it so. But this only

proves that, under the worst possible King, and under the worst possible High Steward, a lord tried by lords

has a better chance for life than a commoner who puts himself on his country. We cannot, therefore, under

the mild government which we now possess, feel much apprehension for the safety of any innocent peer.

Would that we felt as little apprehension for the safety of that government! But it is notorious that the

settlement with which our liberties are inseparably bound up is attacked at once by foreign and by domestic

enemies. We cannot consent at such a crisis to relax the restraints which have, it may well be feared, already

proved too feeble to prevent some men of high rank from plotting the ruin of their country. To sum up the

whole, what is asked of us is that we will consent to transfer a certain power from their Majesties to your

Lordships. Our answer is that, at this time, in our opinion, their Majesties have not too much power, and your

These arguments, though eminently ingenious, and not without real force, failed to convince the Upper

House. The Lords insisted that every peer should be entitled to be a Trier. The Commons were with difficulty

induced to consent that the number of Triers should never be less than thirtysix, and positively refused to

It is certain that those who in the conference on this bill represented the Commons, did not exaggerate the

dangers to which the government was exposed. While the constitution of the Court which was to try peers for

treason was under discussion, a treason planned with rare skill by a peer was all but carried into execution.

Marlborough had never ceased to assure the Court of Saint Germains that the great crime which he had

committed was constantly present to his thoughts, and that he lived only for the purpose of repentance and

reparation. Not only had he been himself converted; he had also converted the Princess Anne. In 1688, the

Churchills had, with little difficulty, induced her to fly from her father's palace. In 1691, they, with as little

difficulty, induced her to copy out and sign a letter expressing her deep concern for his misfortunes and her

earnest wish to atone for her breach of duty.185 At the same time Marlborough held out hopes that it might

be in his power to effect the restoration of his old master in the best possible way, without the help of a single

foreign soldier or sailor, by the votes of the English Lords and Commons, and by the support of the English

army. We are not fully informed as to all the details of his plan. But the outline is known to us from a most

interesting paper written by James, of which one copy is in the Bodleian Library, and another among the

The jealousy with which the English regarded the Dutch was at this time intense. There had never been a

hearty friendship between the nations. They were indeed near of kin to each other. They spoke two dialects of

one widespread language. Both boasted of their political freedom. Both were attached to the reformed faith.

Both were threatened by the same enemy, and would be safe only while they were united. Yet there was no

cordial feeling between them. They would probably have loved each other more, if they had, in some

respects, resembled each other less. They were the two great commercial nations, the two great maritime

nations. In every sea their flags were found together, in the Baltic and in the Mediterranean, in the Gulf of

Mexico and in the Straits of Malacca. Every where the merchant of London and the merchant of Amsterdam

were trying to forestall each other and to undersell each other. In Europe the contest was not sanguinary. But

too often, in barbarous countries, where there was no law but force, the competitors had met, burning with

cupidity, burning with animosity, armed for battle, each suspecting the other of hostile designs and each

resolved to give the other no advantage. In such circumstances it is not strange that many violent and cruel

acts should have been perpetrated. What had been done in those distant regions could seldom be exactly

known in Europe. Every thing was exaggerated and distorted by vague report and by national prejudice. Here

it was the popular belief that the English were always blameless, and that every quarrel was to be ascribed to

the avarice and inhumanity of the Dutch. Lamentable events which had taken place in the Spice Islands were

repeatedly brought on our stage. The Englishmen were all saints and heroes; the Dutchmen all fiends in

human shape, lying, robbing, ravishing, murdering, torturing. The angry passions which these pieces

indicated had more than once found vent in war. Thrice in the lifetime of one generation the two nations had

contended, with equal courage and with various fortune, for the sovereignty of the German Ocean. The

tyranny of James, as it had reconciled Tories to Whigs and Churchmen to Nonconformists, had also

reconciled the English to the Dutch. While our ancestors were looking to the Hague for deliverance, the

massacre of Amboyna and the great humiliation of Chatham had seemed to be forgotten. But since the

Revolution the old feeling had revived. Though England and Holland were now closely bound together by

treaty, they were as far as ever from being bound together by affection. Once, just after the battle of Beachy

Head, our countrymen had seemed disposed to be just; but a violent reaction speedily followed. Torrington,

who deserved to be shot, became a popular favourite; and the allies whom he had shamefully abandoned were

accused of persecuting him without a cause. The partiality shown by the King to the companions of his youth

was the favourite theme of the sewers of sedition. The most lucrative posts in his household, it was said, were

held by Dutchmen; the House of Lords was fast filling with Dutchmen; the finest manors of the Crown were

given to Dutchmen; the army was commanded by Dutchmen. That it would have been wise in William to

exhibit somewhat less obtrusively his laudable fondness for his native country, and to remunerate his early

friends somewhat more sparingly, is perfectly true. But it will not be easy to prove that, on any important

occasion during his whole reign, he sacrificed the interests of our island to the interests of the United

Provinces. The English, however, were on this subject prone to fits of jealousy which made them quite

incapable of listening to reason. One of the sharpest of those fits came on in the autumn of 1691. The

antipathy to the Dutch was at that time strong in all classes, and nowhere stronger than in the Parliament and

Of that antipathy Marlborough determined to avail himself for the purpose, as he assured James and James's

adherents, of effecting a restoration. The temper of both Houses was such that they might not improbably be

induced by skilful management to present a joint address requesting that all foreigners might be dismissed

from the service of their Majesties. Marlborough undertook to move such an address in the Lords; and there

would have been no difficulty in finding some gentleman of great weight to make a similar motion in the

If the address should be carried, what could William do? Would he yield? Would he discard all his dearest,

his oldest, his most trusty friends? It was hardly possible to believe that he would make so painful, so

humiliating a concession. If he did not yield, there would be a rupture between him and the Parliament; and

the Parliament would be backed by the people. Even a King reigning by a hereditary title might well shrink

from such a contest with the Estates of the Realm. But to a King whose title rested on a resolution of the

Estates of the Realm such a contest must almost necessarily be fatal. The last hope of William would be in

the army. The army Marlborough undertook to manage; and it is highly probable that what he undertook he

could have performed. His courage, his abilities, his noble and winning manners, the splendid success which

had attended him on every occasion on which he had been in command, had made him, in spite of his sordid

vices, a favourite with his brethren in arms. They were proud of having one countryman who had shown that

he wanted nothing but opportunity to vie with the ablest Marshal of France. The Dutch were even more

disliked by the English troops than by the English nation generally. Had Marlborough therefore, after

securing the cooperation of some distinguished officers, presented himself at the critical moment to those

regiments which he had led to victory in Flanders and in Ireland, had he called on them to rally round him, to

protect the Parliament, and to drive out the aliens, there is strong reason to think that the call would have been

obeyed. He would then have had it in his power to fulfil the promises which he had so solemnly made to his

Of all the schemes ever formed for the restoration of James or of his descendants, this scheme promised the

fairest. That national pride, that hatred of arbitrary power, which had hitherto been on William's side, would

now be turned against him. Hundreds of thousands who would have put their lives in jeopardy to prevent a

French army from imposing a government on the English, would have felt no disposition to prevent an

English army from driving out the Dutch. Even the Whigs could scarcely, without renouncing their old

doctrines, support a prince who obstinately refused to comply with the general wish of his people signified to

him by his Parliament. The plot looked well. An active canvass was made. Many members of the House of

Commons, who did not at all suspect that there was any ulterior design, promised to vote against the

foreigners. Marlborough was indefatigable in inflaming the discontents of the army. His house was constantly

filled with officers who heated each other into fury by talking against the Dutch. But, before the preparations

were complete, a strange suspicion rose in the minds of some of the Jacobites. That the author of this bold

and artful scheme wished to pull down the existing government there could be little doubt. But was it quite

certain what government he meant to set up? Might he not depose William without restoring James? Was it

not possible that a man so wise, so aspiring, and so wicked, might be meditating a double treason, such as

would have been thought a masterpiece of statecraft by the great Italian politicians of the fifteenth century,

such as Borgia would have envied, such as Machiavel would have extolled to the skies?

What if this consummate dissembler should cheat both the rival kings? What if, when he found himself

commander of the army and protector of the Parliament, he should proclaim Queen Anne? Was it not

possible that the weary and harassed nation might gladly acquiesce in such a settlement? James was

unpopular because he was a Papist, influenced by Popish priests. William was unpopular because he was a

foreigner, attached to foreign favourites. Anne was at once a Protestant and an Englishwoman. Under her

government the country would be in no danger of being overrun either by Jesuits or by Dutchmen. That

Marlborough had the strongest motives for placing her on the throne was evident. He could never, in the

court of her father, be more than a repentant criminal, whose services were overpaid by a pardon. In her court

the husband of her adored friend would be what Pepin Heristal and Charles Martel had been to the Chilperics

and Childeberts. He would be the chief director of the civil and military government. He would wield the

whole power of England. He would hold the balance of Europe. Great kings and commonwealths would bid

against each other for his favour, and exhaust their treasuries in the vain hope of satiating his avarice. The

presumption was, therefore, that, if he had the English crown in his hands, he would put in on the head of the

Princess. What evidence there was to confirm this presumption is not known; but it is certain that something

took place which convinced some of the most devoted friends of the exiled family that he was meditating a

second perfidy, surpassing even the feat which he had performed at Salisbury. They were afraid that if, at that

moment, they succeeded in getting rid of William, the situation of James would be more hopeless than ever.

So fully were they persuaded of the duplicity of their accomplice, that they not only refused to proceed

further in the execution of the plan which he had formed, but disclosed his whole scheme to Portland.

William seems to have been alarmed and provoked by this intelligence to a degree very unusual with him. In

general he was indulgent, nay, wilfully blind to the baseness of the English statesmen whom he employed. He

suspected, indeed he knew, that some of his servants were in correspondence with his competitor; and yet he

did not punish them, did not disgrace them, did not even frown on them. He thought meanly, and he had but

too good reason for thinking meanly, of the whole of that breed of public men which the Restoration had

formed and had bequeathed to the Revolution. He knew them too well to complain because he did not find in

them veracity, fidelity, consistency, disinterestedness. The very utmost that he expected from them was that

they would serve him as far as they could serve him without serious danger to themselves. If he learned that,

while sitting in his council and enriched by his bounty, they were trying to make for themselves at Saint

Germains an interest which might be of use to them in the event of a counterrevolution he was more inclined

to bestow on them the contemptuous commendation which was bestowed of old on the worldly wisdom of

the unjust steward than to call them to a severe account. But the crime of Marlborough was of a very different

kind. His treason was not that of a fainthearted man desirous to keep a retreat open for himself in every event,

but that of a man of dauntless courage, profound policy and measureless ambition. William was not prone to

fear; but, if there was anything on earth that he feared, it was Marlborough. To treat the criminal as he

deserved was indeed impossible; for those by whom his designs had been made known to the government

would never have consented to appear against him in the witness box. But to permit him to retain high

command in that army which he was then engaged in seducing would have been madness.

Late in the evening of the ninth of January the Queen had a painful explanation with the Princess Anne. Early

the next morning Marlborough was informed that their Majesties had no further occasion for his services, and

that he must not presume to appear in the royal presence. He had been loaded with honours, and with what he

The real history of these events was known to very few. Evelyn, who had in general excellent sources of

information, believed that the corruption and extortion of which Marlborough was notoriously guilty had

roused the royal indignation. The Dutch ministers could only tell the States General that six different stories

were spread abroad by Marlborough's enemies. Some said that he had indiscreetly suffered an important

military secret to escape him; some that he had spoken disrespectfully of their Majesties; some that he had

done ill offices between the Queen and the Princess; some that he had been forming cabals in the army; some

that he had carried on an unauthorised correspondence with the Danish government about the general politics

of Europe; and some that he had been trafficking with the agents of the Court of Saint Germains.187 His

friends contradicted every one of these stories, and affirmed that his only crime was his dislike of the

foreigners who were lording it over his countrymen, and that he had fallen a victim to the machinations of

Portland, whom he was known to dislike, and whom he had not very politely described as a wooden fellow.

The mystery, which from the first overhung the story of Marlborough's disgrace, was darkened, after the

lapse of fifty years, by the shameless mendacity of his widow. The concise narrative of James dispels the

mystery, and makes it clear, not only why Marlborough was disgraced, but also how several of the reports

Though William assigned to the public no reason for exercising his undoubted prerogative by dismissing his

servant, Anne had been informed of the truth; and it had been left to her to judge whether an officer who had

been guilty of a foul treason was a fit inmate of the palace. Three weeks passed. Lady Marlborough still

retained her post and her apartments at Whitehall. Her husband still resided with her; and still the King and

Queen gave no sign of displeasure. At length the haughty and vindictive Countess, emboldened by their

patience, determined to brave them face to face, and accompanied her mistress one evening to the

drawingroom at Kensington. This was too much even for the gentle Mary. She would indeed have expressed

her indignation before the crowd which surrounded the card tables, had she not remembered that her sister

was in a state which entitles women to peculiar indulgence. Nothing was said that night; but on the following

day a letter from the Queen was delivered to the Princess. Mary declared that she was unwilling to give pain

to a sister whom she loved, and in whom she could easily pass over any ordinary fault; but this was a serious

matter. Lady Marlborough must be dismissed. While she lived at Whitehall her lord would live there. Was it

proper that a man in his situation should be suffered to make the palace of his injured master his home? Yet

so unwilling was His Majesty to deal severely with the worst offenders, that even this had been borne, and

might have been borne longer, had not Anne brought the Countess to defy the King and Queen in their own

presence chamber. "It was unkind," Mary wrote, "in a sister; it would have been uncivil in an equal; and I

need not say that I have more to claim." The Princess, in her answer, did not attempt to exculpate or excuse

Marlborough, but expressed a firm conviction that his wife was innocent, and implored the Queen not to

insist on so heartrending a separation. "There is no misery," Anne wrote, "that I cannot resolve to suffer

The Princess sent for her uncle Rochester, and implored him to carry her letter to Kensington, and to be her

advocate there. Rochester declined the office of messenger, and, though he tried to restore harmony between

his kinswomen, was by no means disposed to plead the cause of the Churchills. He had indeed long seen with

extreme uneasiness the absolute dominion exercised over his younger niece by that unprincipled pair. Anne's

expostulation was sent to the Queen by a servant. The only reply was a message from the Lord Chamberlain,

Dorset, commanding Lady Marlborough to leave the palace. Mrs. Morley would not be separated from Mrs.

Freeman. As to Mr. Morley, all places where he could have his three courses and his three bottles were alike

to him. The Princess and her whole family therefore retired to Sion House, a villa belonging to the Duke of

Somerset, and situated on the margin of the Thames. In London she occupied Berkeley House, which stood in

Piccadilly, on the site now covered by Devonshire House.189 Her income was secured by Act of Parliament;

but no punishment which it was in the power of the Crown to inflict on her was spared. Her guard of honour

was taken away. The foreign ministers ceased to wait upon her. When she went to Bath the Secretary of State

wrote to request the Mayor of that city not to receive her with the ceremonial with which royal visitors were

usually welcomed. When she attended divine service at Saint James's Church she found that the rector had

been forbidden to show her the customary marks of respect, to bow to her from his pulpit, and to send a copy

of his text to be laid on her cushion. Even the bellman of Piccadilly, it was said, perhaps falsely, was ordered

not to chaunt her praises in his doggrel verse under the windows of Berkeley House.190

That Anne was in the wrong is clear; but it is not equally clear that the King and Queen were in the right.

They should have either dissembled their displeasure, or openly declared the true reasons for it.

Unfortunately, they let every body see the punishment, and they let scarcely any body know the provocation.

They should have remembered that, in the absence of information about the cause of a quarrel, the public is

naturally inclined to side with the weaker party, and that this inclination is likely to be peculiarly strong when

a sister is, without any apparent reason, harshly treated by a sister. They should have remembered, too, that

they were exposing to attack what was unfortunately the one vulnerable part of Mary's character. A cruel fate

had put enmity between her and her father. Her detractors pronounced her utterly destitute of natural

affection; and even her eulogists, when they spoke of the way in which she had discharged the duties of the

filial relation, were forced to speak in a subdued and apologetic tone. Nothing therefore could be more

unfortunate than that she should a second time appear unmindful of the ties of consanguinity. She was now at

open war with both the two persons who were nearest to her in blood. Many who thought that her conduct

towards her parent was justified by the extreme danger which had threatened her country and her religion,

were unable to defend her conduct towards her sister. While Mary, who was really guilty in this matter of

nothing more than imprudence, was regarded by the world as an oppressor, Anne, who was as culpable as her

small faculties enabled her to be, assumed the interesting character of a meek, resigned sufferer. In those

private letters, indeed, to which the name of Morley was subscribed, the Princess expressed the sentiments of

a fury in the style of a fishwoman, railed savagely at the whole Dutch nation, and called her brother in law

sometimes the abortion, sometimes the monster, sometimes Caliban.191 But the nation heard nothing of her

language and saw nothing of her deportment but what was decorous and submissive. The truth seems to have

been that the rancorous and coarseminded Countess gave the tone to Her Highness's confidential

correspondence, while the graceful, serene and politic Earl was suffered to prescribe the course which was to

be taken before the public eye. During a short time the Queen was generally blamed. But the charm of her

temper and manners was irresistible; and in a few months she regained the popularity which she had lost.192

It was a most fortunate circumstance for Marlborough that, just at the very time when all London was talking

about his disgrace, and trying to guess at the cause of the King's sudden anger against one who had always

seemed to be a favourite, an accusation of treason was brought by William Fuller against many persons of

high consideration, was strictly investigated, and was proved to be false and malicious. The consequence was

that the public, which rarely discriminates nicely, could not, at that moment, be easily brought to believe in

That Fuller's plot is less celebrated than the Popish plot is rather the fault of the historians than of Fuller, who

did all that man could do to secure an eminent place among villains. Every person well read in history must

have observed that depravity has its temporary modes, which come in and go out like modes of dress and

upholstery. It may be doubted whether, in our country, any man ever before the year 1678 invented and

related on oath a circumstantial history, altogether fictitious, of a treasonable plot, for the purpose of making

himself important by destroying men who had given him no provocation. But in the year 1678 this execrable

crime became the fashion, and continued to be so during the twenty years which followed. Preachers

designated it as our peculiar national sin, and prophesied that it would draw on us some awful national

judgment. Legislators proposed new punishments of terrible severity for this new atrocity.193 It was not

however found necessary to resort to those punishments. The fashion changed; and during the last century

and a half there has perhaps not been a single instance of this particular kind of wickedness.

The explanation is simple. Oates was the founder of a school. His success proved that no romance is too wild

to be received with faith by understandings which fear and hatred have disordered. His slanders were

monstrous; but they were well timed; he spoke to a people made credulous by their passions; and thus, by

impudent and cruel lying, he raised himself in a week from beggary and obscurity to luxury, renown and

power. He had once eked out the small tithes of a miserable vicarage by stealing the pigs and fowls of his

parishioners.194 He was now lodged in a palace; he was followed by admiring crowds; he had at his mercy

the estates and lives of Howards and Herberts. A crowd of imitators instantly appeared. It seemed that much

more might be got, and that much less was risked, by testifying to an imaginary conspiracy than by robbing

on the highway or clipping the coin. Accordingly the Bedloes, Dangerfields, Dugdales, Turberviles, made

haste to transfer their industry to an employment at once more profitable and less perilous than any to which

they were accustomed. Till the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament Popish plots were the chief manufacture.

Then, during seven years, Whig plots were the only plots which paid. After the Revolution Jacobite plots

came in; but the public had become cautious; and though the new false witnesses were in no respect less

artful than their predecessors, they found much less encouragement. The history of the first great check given

to the practices of this abandoned race of men well deserves to be circumstantially related.

In 1689, and in the beginning of 1690, William Fuller had rendered to the government service such as the

best governments sometimes require, and such as none but the worst men ever perform. His useful treachery

had been rewarded by his employers, as was meet, with money and with contempt. Their liberality enabled

him to live during some months like a fine gentleman. He called himself a Colonel, hired servants, clothed

them in gorgeous liveries, bought fine horses, lodged in Pall Mall, and showed his brazen forehead,

overtopped by a wig worth fifty guineas, in the antechambers of the palace and in the stage box at the theatre.

He even gave himself the airs of a favourite of royalty, and, as if he thought that William could not live

without him, followed His Majesty first to Ireland, and then to the Congress of Princes at the Hague. Fuller

afterwards boasted that, at the Hague, he appeared with a retinue fit for an ambassador, that he gave ten

guineas a week for an apartment, and that the worst waistcoat which he condescended to wear was of silver

stuff at forty shillings a yard. Such profusion, of course, brought him to poverty. Soon after his return to

England he took refuge from the bailiffs in Axe Yard, a place lying within the verge of Whitehall. His

fortunes were desperate; he owed great sums; on the government he had no claim; his past services had been

overpaid; no future service was to be expected from him having appeared in the witness box as evidence for

the Crown, he could no longer be of any use as a spy on the Jacobites; and by all men of virtue and honour, to

Just at this time, when he was in the frame of mind in which men are open to the worst temptations, he fell in

with the worst of tempters, in truth, with the Devil in human shape. Oates had obtained his liberty, his

pardon, and a pension which made him a much richer man than nineteen twentieths of the members of that

profession of which he was the disgrace. But he was still unsatisfied. He complained that he had now less

than three hundred a year. In the golden days of the Plot he had been allowed three times as much, had been

sumptuously lodged in the palace, had dined on plate and had been clothed in silk. He clamoured for an

increase of his stipend. Nay, he was even impudent enough to aspire to ecclesiastical preferment, and thought

it hard that, while so many mitres were distributed, he could not get a deanery, a prebend, or even a living. He

missed no opportunity of urging his pretensions. He haunted the public offices and the lobbies of the Houses

of Parliament. He might be seen and heard every day, hurrying, as fast as his uneven legs would carry him,

between Charing Cross and Westminster Hall, puffing with haste and self importance, chattering about what

he had done for the good cause, and reviling, in the style of the boatmen on the river, all the statesmen and

divines whom he suspected of doing him ill offices at Court, and keeping him back from a bishopric. When

he found that there was no hope for him in the Established Church, he turned to the Baptists. They, at first,

received him very coldly; but he gave such touching accounts of the wonderful work of grace which had been

wrought in his soul, and vowed so solemnly, before Jehovah and the holy angels, to be thenceforth a burning

and shining light, that it was difficult for simple and well meaning people to think him altogether insincere.

He mourned, he said, like a turtle. On one Lord's day he thought he should have died of grief at being shut

out from fellowship with the saints. He was at length admitted to communion; but before he had been a year

among his new friends they discovered his true character, and solemnly cast him out as a hypocrite.

Thenceforth he became the mortal enemy of the leading Baptists, and persecuted them with the same

treachery, the same mendacity, the same effrontery, the same black malice which had many years before

wrought the destruction of more celebrated victims. Those who had lately been edified by his account of his

blessed experiences stood aghast to hear him crying out that he would be revenged, that revenge was God's

own sweet morsel, that the wretches who had excommunicated him should be ruined, that they should be

forced to fly their country, that they should be stripped to the last shilling. His designs were at length

frustrated by a righteous decree of the Court of Chancery, a decree which would have left a deep stain on the

character of an ordinary man, but which makes no perceptible addition to the infamy of Titus Oates.195

Through all changes, however, he was surrounded by a small knot of hotheaded and foulmouthed agitators,

who, abhorred and despised by every respectable Whig, yet called themselves Whigs, and thought themselves

injured because they were not rewarded for scurrility and slander with the best places under the Crown.

In 1691, Titus, in order to be near the focal point of political intrigue and faction, had taken a house within

the precinct of Whitehall. To this house Fuller, who lived hard by, found admission. The evil work which had

been begun in him, when he was still a child, by the memoirs of Dangerfield, was now completed by the

conversation of Oates. The Salamanca Doctor was, as a witness, no longer formidable; but he was impelled,

partly by the savage malignity which he felt towards all whom he considered as his enemies, and partly by

mere monkeylike restlessness and love of mischief, to do, through the instrumentality of others, what he

could no longer do in person. In Fuller he had found the corrupt heart, the ready tongue and the unabashed

front which are the first qualifications for the office of a false accuser. A friendship, if that word may be so

used, sprang up between the pair. Oates opened his house and even his purse to Fuller. The veteran sinner,

both directly and through the agency of his dependents, intimated to the novice that nothing made a man so

important as the discovering of a plot, and that these were times when a young fellow who would stick at

nothing and fear nobody might do wonders. The Revolution,such was the language constantly held by

Titus and his parasites,had produced little good. The brisk boys of Shaftesbury had not been recompensed

according to their merits. Even the Doctor, such was the ingratitude of men, was looked on coldly at the new

Court. Tory rogues sate at the council board, and were admitted to the royal closet. It would be a noble feat to

bring their necks to the block. Above all, it would be delightful to see Nottingham's long solemn face on

Tower Hill. For the hatred with which these bad men regarded Nottingham had no bounds, and was probably

excited less by his political opinions, in which there was doubtless much to condemn, than by his moral

character, in which the closest scrutiny will detect little that is not deserving of approbation. Oates, with the

authority which experience and success entitle a preceptor to assume, read his pupil a lecture on the art of

bearing false witness. "You ought," he said, with many oaths and curses, "to have made more, much more,

out of what you heard and saw at Saint Germains. Never was there a finer foundation for a plot. But you are a

fool; you are a coxcomb; I could beat you; I would not have done so. I used to go to Charles and tell him his

own. I called Lauderdale rogue to his face. I made King, Ministers, Lords, Commons, afraid of me. But you

young men have no spirit." Fuller was greatly edified by these exhortations. It was, however, hinted to him by

some of his associates that, if he meant to take up the trade of swearing away lives, he would do well not to

show himself so often at coffeehouses in the company of Titus. "The Doctor," said one of the gang, "is an

excellent person, and has done great things in his time; but many people are prejudiced against him; and, if

you are really going to discover a plot, the less you are seen with him the better." Fuller accordingly ceased to

frequent Oates's house, but still continued to receive his great master's instructions in private.

To do Fuller justice, he seems not to have taken up the trade of a false witness till he could no longer support

himself by begging or swindling. He lived for a time on the charity of the Queen. He then levied

contributions by pretending to be one of the noble family of Sidney. He wheedled Tillotson out of some

money, and requited the good Archbishop's kindness by passing himself off as His Grace's favourite nephew.

But in the autumn of 1691 all these shifts were exhausted. After lying in several spunging houses, Fuller was

at length lodged in the King's Bench prison, and he now thought it time to announce that he had discovered a

He addressed himself first to Tillotson and Portland; but both Tillotson and Portland soon perceived that he

was lying. What he said was, however, reported to the King, who, as might have been expected, treated the

information and the informant with cold contempt. All that remained was to try whether a flame could be

Soon after the Houses met, Fuller petitioned the Commons to hear what he had to say, and promised to make

wonderful disclosures. He was brought from his prison to the bar of the House; and he there repeated a long

romance. James, he said, had delegated the regal authority to six commissioners, of whom Halifax was first.

More than fifty lords and gentlemen had signed an address to the French King, imploring him to make a great

effort for the restoration of the House of Stuart. Fuller declared that he had seen this address, and recounted

many of the names appended to it. Some members made severe remarks on the improbability of the story and

on the character of the witness. He was, they said, one of the greatest rogues on the face of the earth; and he

told such things as could scarcely be credited if he were an angel from heaven. Fuller audaciously pledged

himself to bring proofs which would satisfy the most incredulous. He was, he averred, in communication

with some agents of James. Those persons were ready to make reparation to their country. Their testimony

would be decisive; for they were in possession of documentary evidence which would confound the guilty.

They held back only because they saw some of the traitors high in office and near the royal person, and were

afraid of incurring the enmity of men so powerful and so wicked. Fuller ended by asking for a sum of money,

and by assuring the Commons that he would lay it out to good account.197 Had his impudent request been

granted, he would probably have paid his debts, obtained his liberty, and absconded; but the House very

wisely insisted on seeing his witnesses first. He then began to shuffle. The gentlemen were on the Continent,

and could not come over without passports. Passports were delivered to him; but he complained that they

were insufficient. At length the Commons, fully determined to get at the truth, presented an address

requesting the King to send Fuller a blank safe conduct in the largest terms.198 The safe conduct was sent.

Six weeks passed, and nothing was heard of the witnesses. The friends of the lords and gentlemen who had

been accused represented strongly that the House ought not to separate for the summer without coming to

some decision on charges so grave. Fuller was ordered to attend. He pleaded sickness, and asserted, not for

the first time, that the Jacobites had poisoned him. But all his plans were confounded by the laudable

promptitude and vigour with which the Commons acted. A Committee was sent to his bedside, with orders to

ascertain whether he really had any witnesses, and where those witnesses resided. The members who were

deputed for this purpose went to the King's Bench prison, and found him suffering under a disorder,

produced, in all probability, by some emetic which he had swallowed for the purpose of deceiving them. In

answer to their questions he said that two of his witnesses, Delaval and Hayes, were in England, and were

lodged at the house of a Roman Catholic apothecary in Holborn. The Commons, as soon as the Committee

had reported, sent some members to the house which he had indicated. That house and all the neighbouring

houses were searched. Delaval and Hayes were not to be found, nor had any body in the vicinity ever seen

such men or heard of them. The House, therefore, on the last day of the session, just before Black Rod

knocked at the door, unanimously resolved that William Fuller was a cheat and a false accuser; that he had

insulted the Government and the Parliament; that he had calumniated honourable men, and that an address

should be carried up to the throne, requesting that he might be prosecuted for his villany.199 He was

consequently tried, convicted, and sentenced to fine, imprisonment and the pillory. The exposure, more

terrible than death to a mind not lost to all sense of shame, he underwent with a hardihood worthy of his two

favourite models, Dangerfield and Oates. He had the impudence to persist, year after year, in affirming that

he had fallen a victim to the machinations of the late King, who had spent six thousand pounds in order to

ruin him. Delaval and Hayesso this fable ranhad been instructed by James in person. They had, in

obedience to his orders, induced Fuller to pledge his word for their appearance, and had then absented

themselves, and left him exposed to the resentment of the House of Commons.200 The story had the

reception which it deserved, and Fuller sank into an obscurity from which he twice or thrice, at long intervals,

On the twentyfourth of February 1692, about an hour after the Commons had voted Fuller an impostor, they

were summoned to the chamber of the Lords. The King thanked the Houses for their loyalty and liberality,

informed them that he must soon set out for the Continent, and commanded them to adjourn themselves. He

gave his assent on that day to many bills, public and private; but when the title of one bill, which had passed

the Lower House without a single division and the Upper House without a single protest, had been read by

the Clerk of the Crown, the Clerk of the Parliaments declared, according to the ancient form, that the King

and the Queen would consider of the matter. Those words had very rarely been pronounced before the

accession of William. They have been pronounced only once since his death. But by him the power of putting

a Veto on laws which had been passed by the Estates of the Realm was used on several important occasions.

His detractors truly asserted that he rejected a greater number of important bills than all the Kings of the

House of Stuart put together, and most absurdly inferred that the sense of the Estates of the Realm was much

less respected by him than by his uncles and his grandfather. A judicious student of history will have no

difficulty in discovering why William repeatedly exercised a prerogative to which his predecessors very

seldom had recourse, and which his successors have suffered to fall into utter desuetude.

His predecessors passed laws easily because they broke laws easily. Charles the First gave his assent to the

Petition of Right, and immediately violated every clause of that great statute. Charles the Second gave his

assent to an Act which provided that a Parliament should be held at least once in three years; but when he

died the country had been near four years without a Parliament. The laws which abolished the Court of High

Commission, the laws which instituted the Sacramental Test, were passed without the smallest difficulty; but

they did not prevent James the Second from reestablishing the Court of High Commission, and from filling

the Privy Council, the public offices, the courts of justice, and the municipal corporations with persons who

had never taken the Test. Nothing could be more natural than that a King should not think it worth while to

withhold his assent from a statute with which he could dispense whenever he thought fit.

The situation of William was very different. He could not, like those who had ruled before him, pass an Act

in the spring and violate it in the summer. He had, by assenting to the Bill of Rights, solemnly renounced the

dispensing power; and he was restrained, by prudence as well as by conscience and honour, from breaking

the compact under which he held his crown. A law might be personally offensive to him; it might appear to

him to be pernicious to his people; but, as soon as he had passed it, it was, in his eyes, a sacred thing. He had

therefore a motive, which preceding Kings had not, for pausing before he passed such a law. They gave their

word readily, because they had no scruple about breaking it. He gave his word slowly, because he never

But his situation, though it differed widely from that of the princes of the House of Stuart, was not precisely

that of the princes of the House of Brunswick. A prince of the House of Brunswick is guided, as to the use of

every royal prerogative, by the advice of a responsible ministry; and this ministry must be taken from the

party which predominates in the two Houses, or, at least, in the Lower House. It is hardly possible to

conceive circumstances in which a Sovereign so situated can refuse to assent to a bill which has been

approved by both branches of the legislature. Such a refusal would necessarily imply one of two things, that

the Sovereign acted in opposition to the advice of the ministry, or that the ministry was at issue, on a question

of vital importance, with a majority both of the Commons and of the Lords. On either supposition the country

would be in a most critical state, in a state which, if long continued, must end in a revolution. But in the

earlier part of the reign of William there was no ministry. The heads of the executive departments had not

been appointed exclusively from either party. Some were zealous Whigs, others zealous Tories. The most

enlightened statesmen did not hold it to be unconstitutional that the King should exercise his highest

prerogatives on the most important occasions without any other guidance than that of his own judgment. His

refusal, therefore, to assent to a bill which had passed both Houses indicated, not, as a similar refusal would

now indicate, that the whole machinery of government was in a state of fearful disorder, but merely that there

was a difference of opinion between him and the two other branches of the legislature as to the expediency of

a particular law. Such a difference of opinion might exist, and, as we shall hereafter see, actually did exist, at

a time when he was, not merely on friendly, but on most affectionate terms with the Estates of the Realm.

The circumstances under which he used his Veto for the first time have never yet been correctly stated. A

well meant but unskilful attempt had been made to complete a reform which the Bill of Rights had left

imperfect. That great law had deprived the Crown of the power of arbitrarily removing the judges, but had

not made them entirely independent. They were remunerated partly by fees and partly by salaries. Over the

fees the King had no control; but the salaries he had full power to reduce or to withhold. That William had

ever abused this power was not pretended; but it was undoubtedly a power which no prince ought to possess;

and this was the sense of both Houses. A bill was therefore brought in by which a salary of a thousand a year

was strictly secured to each of the twelve judges. Thus far all was well. But unfortunately the salaries were

made a charge on the hereditary revenue. No such proposition would now be entertained by the House of

Commons, without the royal consent previously signified by a Privy Councillor. But this wholesome rule had

not then been established; and William could defend the proprietary rights of the Crown only by putting his

negative on the bill. At the time there was, as far as can now be ascertained, no outcry. Even the Jacobite

libellers were almost silent. It was not till the provisions of the bill had been forgotten, and till nothing but its

title was remembered, that William was accused of having been influenced by a wish to keep the judges in a

The Houses broke up; and the King prepared to set out for the Continent. Before his departure he made some

changes in his household and in several departments of the government; changes, however, which did not

indicate a very decided preference for either of the great political parties. Rochester was sworn of the

Council. It is probable that he had earned this mark of royal favour by taking the Queen's side in the unhappy

dispute between her and her sister. Pembroke took charge of the Privy Seal, and was succeeded at the Board

of Admiralty by Charles Lord Cornwallis, a moderate Tory; Lowther accepted a seat at the same board, and

was succeeded at the Treasury by Sir Edward Seymour. Many Tory country gentlemen, who had looked on

Seymour as their leader in the war against placemen and Dutchmen, were moved to indignation by learning

that he had become a courtier. They remembered that he had voted for a Regency, that he had taken the oaths

with no good grace, that he had spoken with little respect of the Sovereign whom he was now ready to serve

for the sake of emoluments hardly worthy of the acceptance of a man of his wealth and parliamentary

interest. It was strange that the haughtiest of human beings should be the meanest, that one who seethed to

reverence nothing on earth but himself should abase himself for the sake of quarter day. About such

reflections he troubled himself very little. He found, however, that there was one disagreeable circumstance

connected with his new office. At the Board of Treasury he must sit below the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The First Lord, Godolphin, was a peer of the realm; and his right to precedence, according to the rules of the

heralds, could not be questioned. But every body knew who was the first of English commoners. What was

Richard Hampden that he should take the place of a Seymour, of the head of the Seymours? With much

difficulty, the dispute was compromised. Many concessions were made to Sir Edward's punctilious pride. He

was sworn of the Council. He was appointed one of the Cabinet. The King took him by the hand and

presented him to the Queen. "I bring you," said William, "a gentleman who will in my absence be a valuable

friend." In this way Sir Edward was so much soothed and flattered that he ceased to insist on his right to

In the same Commission of Treasury in which the name of Seymour appeared, appeared also the name of a

much younger politician, who had during the late session raised himself to high distinction in the House of

Commons, Charles Montague. This appointment gave great satisfaction to the Whigs, in whose esteem

Montague now stood higher than their veteran chiefs Sacheverell and Littleton, and was indeed second to

Sidney delivered up the seals which he had held during more than a year, and was appointed Lord Lieutenant

of Ireland. Some months clasped before the place which he had quitted was filled up; and during this interval

the whole business which had ordinarily been divided between two Secretaries of State was transacted by

While these arrangements were in progress, events had taken place in a distant part of the island which were

not, till after the lapse of many months, known in the best informed circles of London, but which gradually

obtained a fearful notoriety, and which, after the lapse of more than a hundred and sixty years, are never

Soon after the Estates of Scotland had separated in the autumn of 1690, a change was made in the

administration of that kingdom. William was not satisfied with the way in which he had been represented in

the Parliament House. He thought that the rabbled curates had been hardly treated. He had very reluctantly

suffered the law which abolished patronage to be touched with his sceptre. But what especially displeased

him was that the Acts which established a new ecclesiastical polity had not been accompanied by an Act

granting liberty of conscience to those who were attached to the old ecclesiastical polity. He had directed his

Commissioner Melville to obtain for the Episcopalians of Scotland an indulgence similar to that which

Dissenters enjoyed in England.203 But the Presbyterian preachers were loud and vehement against lenity to

Amalekites. Melville, with useful talents, and perhaps with fair intentions, had neither large views nor an

intrepid spirit. He shrank from uttering a word so hateful to the theological demagogues of his country as

Toleration. By obsequiously humouring their prejudices he quelled the clamour which was rising at

Edinburgh; but the effect of his timid caution was that a far more formidable clamour soon rose in the south

of the island against the bigotry of the schismatics who domineered in the north, and against the pusillanimity

of the government which had not dared to withstand that bigotry. On this subject the High Churchman and

the Low Churchman were of one mind, or rather the Low Churchman was the more angry of the two. A man

like South, who had during many years been predicting that, if ever the Puritans ceased to be oppressed, they

would become oppressors, was at heart not ill pleased to see his prophecy fulfilled. But in a man like Burnet,

the great object of whose life had been to mitigate the animosity which the ministers of the Anglican Church

felt towards the Presbyterians, the intolerant conduct of the Presbyterians could awaken no feeling but

indignation, shame and grief. There was, therefore, at the English Court nobody to speak a good word for

Melville. It was impossible that in such circumstances he should remain at the head of the Scottish

administration. He was, however, gently let down from his high position. He continued during more than a

year to be Secretary of State; but another Secretary was appointed, who was to reside near the King, and to

have the chief direction of affairs. The new Prime Minister for Scotland was the able, eloquent and

accomplished Sir John Dalrymple. His father, the Lord President of the Court of Session, had lately been

raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Stair; and Sir John Dalrymple was consequently, according to

the ancient usage of Scotland, designated as the Master of Stair. In a few months Melville resigned his

secretaryship, and accepted an office of some dignity and emolument, but of no political importance.204

The Lowlands of Scotland were, during the year which followed the parliamentary session of 1690, as quiet

as they had ever been within the memory of man; but the state of the Highlands caused much anxiety to the

government. The civil war in that wild region, after it had ceased to flame, had continued during some time to

smoulder. At length, early in the year 1691, the rebel chiefs informed the Court of Saint Germains that,

pressed as they were on every side, they could hold out no longer without succour from France. James had

sent them a small quantity of meal, brandy and tobacco, and had frankly told them that he could do nothing

more. Money was so scarce among them that six hundred pounds sterling would have been a most acceptable

addition to their funds, but even such a sum he was unable to spare. He could scarcely, in such circumstances,

expect them to defend his cause against a government which had a regular army and a large revenue. He

therefore informed them that he should not take it ill of them if they made their peace with the new dynasty,

provided always that they were prepared to rise in insurrection as soon as he should call on them to do so.205

Meanwhile it had been determined at Kensington, in spite of the opposition of the Master of Stair, to try the

plan which Tarbet had recommended two years before, and which, if it had been tried when he recommended

it, would probably have prevented much bloodshed and confusion. It was resolved that twelve or fifteen

thousand pounds should be laid out in quieting the Highlands. This was a mass of treasure which to an

inhabitant of Appin or Lochaber seemed almost fabulous, and which indeed bore a greater proportion to the

income of Keppoch or Glengarry than fifteen hundred thousand pounds bore to the income of Lord Bedford

or Lord Devonshire. The sum was ample; but the King was not fortunate in the choice of an agent.206

John Earl of Breadalbane, the head of a younger branch of the great House of Campbell, ranked high among

the petty princes of the mountains. He could bring seventeen hundred claymores into the field; and, ten years

before the Revolution, he had actually marched into the Lowlands with this great force for the purpose of

supporting the prelatical tyranny.207 In those days he had affected zeal for monarchy and episcopacy; but in

truth he cared for no government and no religion. He seems to have united two different sets of vices, the

growth of two different regions, and of two different stages in the progress of society. In his castle among the

hills he had learned the barbarian pride and ferocity of a Highland chief. In the Council Chamber at

Edinburgh he had contracted the deep taint of treachery and corruption. After the Revolution he had, like too

many of his fellow nobles, joined and betrayed every party in turn, had sworn fealty to William and Mary,

and had plotted against them. To trace all the turns and doublings of his course, during the year 1689 and the

earlier part of 1690, would be wearisome.208 That course became somewhat less tortuous when the battle of

the Boyne had cowed the spirit of the Jacobites. It now seemed probable that the Earl would be a loyal

subject of their Majesties, till some great disaster should befall them. Nobody who knew him could trust him;

but few Scottish statesmen could then be trusted; and yet Scottish statesmen must be employed. His position

and connections marked him out as a man who might, if he would, do much towards the work of quieting the

Highlands; and his interest seemed to be a guarantee for his zeal. He had, as he declared with every

appearance of truth, strong personal reasons for wishing to see tranquillity restored. His domains were so

situated that, while the civil war lasted, his vassals could not tend their herds or sow their oats in peace. His

lands were daily ravaged; his cattle were daily driven away; one of his houses had been burned down. It was

He was accordingly commissioned to treat with the Jacobite chiefs, and was entrusted with the money which

was to be distributed among them. He invited them to a conference at his residence in Glenorchy. They came;

but the treaty went on very slowly. Every head of a tribe asked for a larger share of the English gold than was

to be obtained. Breadalbane was suspected of intending to cheat both the clans and the King. The dispute

between the rebels and the government was complicated with another dispute still more embarrassing. The

Camerons and Macdonalds were really at war, not with William, but with Mac Callum More; and no

arrangement to which Mac Callum More was not a party could really produce tranquillity. A grave question

therefore arose, whether the money entrusted to Breadalbane should be paid directly to the discontented

chiefs, or should be employed to satisfy the claims which Argyle had upon them. The shrewdness of Lochiel

and the arrogant pretensions of Glengarry contributed to protract the discussions. But no Celtic potentate was

so impracticable as Macdonald of Glencoe, known among the mountains by the hereditary appellation of Mac

Mac Ian dwelt in the mouth of a ravine situated not far from the southern shore of Lochleven, an arm of the

sea which deeply indents the western coast of Scotland, and separates Argyleshire from Invernesshire. Near

his house were two or three small hamlets inhabited by his tribe. The whole population which he governed

was not supposed to exceed two hundred souls. In the neighbourhood of the little cluster of villages was some

copsewood and some pasture land; but a little further up the defile no sign of population or of fruitfulness was

to be seen. In the Gaelic tongue Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping; and in truth that pass is the most

dreary and melancholy of all the Scottish passes, the very Valley of the Shadow of Death. Mists and storms

brood over it through the greater part of the finest summer; and even on those rare days when the sun is

bright, and when there is no cloud in the sky, the impression made by the landscape is sad and awful. The

path lies along a stream which issues from the most sullen and gloomy of mountain pools. Huge precipices of

naked stone frown on both sides. Even in July the streaks of snow may often be discerned in the rifts near the

summits. All down the sides of the crags heaps of ruin mark the headlong paths of the torrents. Mile after

mile the traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one but, for one human form wrapped in plaid, and listens in

vain for the bark of a shepherd's dog or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile the only sound that indicates life

is the faint cry of a bird of prey from some stormbeaten pinnacle of rock. The progress of civilisation, which

has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with Harvests or gay with apple blossoms, has only made

Glencoe more desolate. All the science and industry of a peaceful age can extract nothing valuable from that

wilderness; but, in an age of violence and rapine, the wilderness itself was valued on account of the shelter

which it afforded to the plunderer and his plunder. Nothing could be more natural than that the clan to which

this rugged desert belonged should have been noted for predatory habits. For, among the Highlanders

generally, to rob was thought at least as honourable an employment as to cultivate the soil; and, of all the

Highlanders, The Macdonalds of Glencoe had the least productive soil, and the most convenient and secure

den of robbers. Successive governments had tried to punish this wild race; but no large force had ever been

employed for that purpose; and a small force was easily resisted or eluded by men familiar with every recess

and every outlet of the natural fortress in which they had been born and bred. The people of Glencoe would

probably have been less troublesome neighbours if they had lived among their own kindred. But they were an

outpost of the Clan Donald, separated from every other branch of their own family, and almost surrounded by

the domains of the hostile race of Diarmid.211 They were impelled by hereditary enmity, as well as by want,

to live at the expense of the tribe of Campbell. Breadalbane's property had suffered greatly from their

depredations; and he was not of a temper to forgive such injuries. When, therefore, the Chief of Glencoe

made his appearance at the congress in Glenorchy, he was ungraciously received. The Earl, who ordinarily

bore himself with the solemn dignity of a Castilian grandee, forgot, in his resentment, his wonted gravity,

forgot his public character, forgot the laws of hospitality, and, with angry reproaches and menaces, demanded

reparation for the herds which had been driven from his lands by Mac Ian's followers. Mac Ian was seriously

apprehensive of some personal outrage, and was glad to get safe back to his own glen.212 His pride had been

wounded; and the promptings of interest concurred with those of pride. As the head of a people who lived by

pillage, he had strong reasons for wishing that the country might continue to be in a perturbed state. He had

little chance of receiving one guinea of the money which was to be distributed among the malecontents. For

his share of that money would scarcely meet Breadalbane's demands for compensation; and there could be

little doubt that, whoever might be unpaid, Breadalbane would take care to pay himself. Mac Ian therefore

did his best to dissuade his allies from accepting terms from which he could himself expect no benefit; and

his influence was not small. His own vassals, indeed, were few in number; but he came of the best blood of

the Highlands; he had kept up a close connection with his more powerful kinsmen; nor did they like him the

less because he was a robber; for he never robbed them; and that robbery, merely as robbery, was a wicked

and disgraceful act, had never entered into the mind of any Celtic chief. Mac Ian was therefore held in high

esteem by the confederates. His age was venerable; his aspect was majestic; and he possessed in large

measure those intellectual qualities which, in rude societies, give men an ascendency over their fellows.

Breadalbane found himself, at every step of the negotiation, thwarted by the arts of his old enemy, and

But the government did not trust solely to Breadalbane's diplomatic skill. The authorities at Edinburgh put

forth a proclamation exhorting the clans to submit to King William and Queen Mary, and offering pardon to

every rebel who, on or before the thirtyfirst of December 1691, should swear to live peaceably under the

government of their Majesties. It was announced that those who should hold out after that day would be

treated as enemies and traitors.214 Warlike preparations were made, which showed that the threat was meant

in earnest. The Highlanders were alarmed, and, though the pecuniary terms had not been satisfactorily settled,

thought it prudent to give the pledge which was demanded of them. No chief, indeed, was willing to set the

example of submission. Glengarry blustered, and pretended to fortify his house.215 "I will not," said Lochiel,

"break the ice. That is a point of honour with me. But my tacksmen and people may use their freedom."216

His tacksmen and people understood him, and repaired by hundreds to the Sheriff to take the oaths. The

Macdonalds of Sleat, Clanronald, Keppoch, and even Glengarry, imitated the Camerons; and the chiefs, after

The thirtyfirst of December arrived; and still the Macdonalds of Glencoe had not come in. The punctilious

pride of Mac Ian was doubtless gratified by the thought that he had continued to defy the government after

the boastful Glengarry, the ferocious Keppoch, the magnanimous Lochiel had yielded: but he bought his

At length, on the thirtyfirst of December, he repaired to Fort William, accompanied by his principal vassals,

and offered to take the oaths. To his dismay he found that there was in the fort no person competent to

administer them. Colonel Hill, the Governor, was not a magistrate; nor was there any magistrate nearer than

Inverary. Mac Ian, now fully sensible of the folly of which he had been guilty in postponing to the very last

moment an act on which his life and his estate depended, set off for Inverary in great distress. He carried with

him a letter from Hill to the Sheriff of Argyleshire, Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinglass, a respectable

gentleman, who, in the late reign, had suffered severely for his Whig principles. In this letter the Colonel

expressed a goodnatured hope that, even out of season, a lost sheep, and so fine a lost sheep, would be gladly

received. Mac Ian made all the haste in his power, and did not stop even at his own house, though it lay nigh

to the road. But at that time a journey through Argyleshire in the depth of winter was necessarily slow. The

old man's progress up steep mountains and along boggy valleys was obstructed by snow storms; and it was

not till the sixth of January that he presented himself before the Sheriff at Inverary. The Sheriff hesitated. His

power, he said, was limited by the terms of the proclamation, and he did not see how he could swear a rebel

who had not submitted within the prescribed time. Mac Ian begged earnestly and with tears that he might be

sworn. His people, he said, would follow his example. If any of them proved refractory, he would himself

send the recusant to prison, or ship him off for Islanders. His entreaties and Hill's letter overcame Sir Colin's

scruples. The oath was administered; and a certificate was transmitted to the Council at Edinburgh, setting

forth the special circumstances which had induced the Sheriff to do what he knew not to be strictly

The news that Mac Ian had not submitted within the prescribed time was received with cruel joy by three

powerful Scotchmen who were then at the English Court. Breadalbane had gone up to London at Christmas

in order to give an account of his stewardship. There he met his kinsman Argyle. Argyle was, in personal

qualities, one of the most insignificant of the long line of nobles who have borne that great name. He was the

descendant of eminent men, and the parent of eminent men. He was the grandson of one of the ablest of

Scottish politicians; the son of one of the bravest and most truehearted of Scottish patriots; the father of one

Mac Callum More renowned as a warrior and as an orator, as the model of every courtly grace, and as the

judicious patron of arts and letters, and of another Mac Callum More distinguished by talents for business and

command, and by skill in the exact sciences. Both of such an ancestry and of such a progeny Argyle was

unworthy. He had even been guilty of the crime, common enough among Scottish politicians, but in him

singularly disgraceful, of tampering with the agents of James while professing loyalty to William. Still

Argyle had the importance inseparable from high rank, vast domains, extensive feudal rights, and almost

boundless patriarchal authority. To him, as to his cousin Breadalbane, the intelligence that the tribe of

Glencoe was out of the protection of the law was most gratifying; and the Master of Stair more than

The feeling of Argyle and Breadalbane is perfectly intelligible. They were the heads of a great clan; and they

had an opportunity of destroying a neighbouring clan with which they were at deadly feud. Breadalbane had

received peculiar provocation. His estate had been repeatedly devastated; and he had just been thwarted in a

negotiation of high moment. Unhappily there was scarcely any excess of ferocity for which a precedent could

not be found in Celtic tradition. Among all warlike barbarians revenge is esteemed the most sacred of duties

and the most exquisite of pleasures; and so it had long been esteemed among the Highlanders. The history of

the clans abounds with frightful tales, some perhaps fabulous or exaggerated, some certainly true, of

vindictive massacres and assassinations. The Macdonalds of Glengarry, for example, having been affronted

by the people of Culloden, surrounded Culloden church on a Sunday, shut the doors, and burned the whole

congregation alive. While the flames were raging, the hereditary musician of the murderers mocked the

shrieks of the perishing crowd with the notes of his bagpipe.218 A band of Macgregors, having cut off the

head of an enemy, laid it, the mouth filled with bread and cheese, on his sister's table, and had the satisfaction

of seeing her go mad with horror at the sight. They then carried the ghastly trophy in triumph to their chief.

The whole clan met under the roof of an ancient church. Every one in turn laid his hand on the dead man's

scalp, and vowed to defend the slayers.219 The inhabitants of Eigg seized some Macleods, bound them hand

and foot, and turned them adrift in a boat to be swallowed up by the waves or to perish of hunger. The

Macleods retaliated by driving the population of Eigg into a cavern, lighting a fire at the entrance, and

suffocating the whole race, men, women and children.220 It is much less strange that the two great Earls of

the house of Campbell, animated by the passions of Highland chieftains, should have planned a Highland

revenge, than that they should have found an accomplice, and something more than an accomplice, in the

The Master of Stair was one of the first men of his time, a jurist, a statesman, a fine scholar, an eloquent

orator. His polished manners and lively conversation were the delight of aristocratical societies; and none

who met him in such societies would have thought it possible that he could bear the chief part in any

atrocious crime. His political principles were lax, yet not more lax than those of most Scotch politicians of

that age. Cruelty had never been imputed to him. Those who most disliked him did him the justice to own

that, where his schemes of policy were not concerned, he was a very goodnatured man.221 There is not the

slightest reason to believe that he gained a single pound Scots by the act which has covered his name with

infamy. He had no personal reason to wish the Glencoe men ill. There had been no feud between them and

his family. His property lay in a district where their tartan was never seen. Yet he hated them with a hatred as

fierce and implacable as if they had laid waste his fields, burned his mansion, murdered his child in the

To what cause are we to ascribe so strange an antipathy? This question perplexed the Master's

contemporaries; and any answer which may now be offered ought to be offered with diffidence.222 The most

probable conjecture is that he was actuated by an inordinate, an unscrupulous, a remorseless zeal for what

seemed to him to be the interest of the state. This explanation may startle those who have not considered how

large a proportion of the blackest crimes recorded in history is to be ascribed to ill regulated public spirit. We

daily see men do for their party, for their sect, for their country, for their favourite schemes of political and

social reform, what they would not do to enrich or to avenge themselves. At a temptation directly addressed

to our private cupidity or to our private animosity, whatever virtue we have takes the alarm. But, virtue itself

may contribute to the fall of him who imagines that it is in his power, by violating some general rule of

morality, to confer an important benefit on a church, on a commonwealth, on mankind. He silences the

remonstrances of conscience, and hardens his heart against the most touching spectacles of misery, by

repeating to himself that his intentions are pure, that his objects are noble, that he is doing a little evil for the

sake of a great good. By degrees he comes altogether to forget the turpitude of the means in the excellence of

the end, and at length perpetrates without one internal twinge acts which would shock a buccaneer. There is

no reason to believe that Dominic would, for the best archbishopric in christendom, have incited ferocious

marauders to plunder and slaughter a peaceful and industrious population, that Everard Digby would for a

dukedom have blown a large assembly of people into the air, or that Robespierre would have murdered for

The Master of Stair seems to have proposed to himself a truly great and good end, the pacification and

civilisation of the Highlands. He was, by the acknowledgment of those who most hated him, a man of large

views. He justly thought it monstrous that a third part of Scotland should be in a state scarcely less savage

than New Guinea, that letters of fire and sword should, through a third part of Scotland, be, century after

century, a species of legal process, and that no attempt should be made to apply a radical remedy to such

evils. The independence affected by a crowd of petty sovereigns, the contumacious resistance which they

were in the habit of offering to the authority of the Crown and of the Court of Session, their wars, their

robberies, their fireraisings, their practice of exacting black mail from people more peaceable and more useful

than themselves, naturally excited the disgust and indignation of an enlightened and politic gownsman, who

was, both by the constitution of his mind and by the habits of his profession, a lover of law and order. His

object was no less than a complete dissolution and reconstruction of society in the Highlands, such a

dissolution and reconstruction as, two generations later, followed the battle of Culloden. In his view the clans,

as they existed, were the plagues of the kingdom; and of all the clans, the worst was that which inhabited

Glencoe. He had, it is said, been particularly struck by a frightful instance of the lawlessness and ferocity of

those marauders. One of them, who had been concerned in some act of violence or rapine, had given

information against his companions. He had been bound to a tree and murdered. The old chief had given the

first stab; and scores of dirks had then been plunged into the wretch's body.223 By the mountaineers such an

act was probably regarded as a legitimate exercise of patriarchal jurisdiction. To the Master of Stair it seemed

that people among whom such things were done and were approved ought to be treated like a pack of wolves,

snared by any device, and slaughtered without mercy. He was well read in history, and doubtless knew how

great rulers had, in his own and other countries, dealt with such banditti. He doubtless knew with what energy

and what severity James the Fifth had put down the mosstroopers of the border, how the chief of Henderland

had been hung over the gate of the castle in which he had prepared a banquet for the King; how John

Armstrong and his thirtysix horsemen, when they came forth to welcome their sovereign, had scarcely been

allowed time to say a single prayer before they were all tied up and turned off. Nor probably was the

Secretary ignorant of the means by which Sixtus the Fifth had cleared the ecclesiastical state of outlaws. The

eulogists of that great pontiff tell us that there was one formidable gang which could not be dislodged from a

stronghold among the Apennines. Beasts of burden were therefore loaded with poisoned food and wine, and

sent by a road which ran close to the fastness. The robbers sallied forth, seized the prey, feasted and died; and

the pious old Pope exulted greatly when he heard that the corpses of thirty ruffians, who had been the terror

of many peaceful villages, had been found lying among the mules and packages. The plans of the Master of

Stair were conceived in the spirit of James and of Sixtus; and the rebellion of the mountaineers furnished

what seemed to be an excellent opportunity for carrying those plans into effect. Mere rebellion, indeed, he

could have easily pardoned. On Jacobites, as Jacobites, he never showed any inclination to bear hard. He

hated the Highlanders, not as enemies of this or that dynasty, but as enemies of law, of industry and of trade.

In his private correspondence he applied to them the short and terrible form of words in which the implacable

Roman pronounced the doom of Carthage. His project was no less than this, that the whole hill country from

sea to sea, and the neighbouring islands, should be wasted with fire and sword, that the Camerons, the

Macleans, and all the branches of the race of Macdonald, should be rooted out. He therefore looked with no

friendly eye on schemes of reconciliation, and, while others were hoping that a little money would set

everything right, hinted very intelligibly his opinion that whatever money was to be laid out on the clans

would be best laid out in the form of bullets and bayonets. To the last moment he continued to flatter himself

that the rebels would be obstinate, and would thus furnish him with a plea for accomplishing that great social

revolution on which his heart was set.224 The letter is still extant in which he directed the commander of the

forces in Scotland how to act if the Jacobite chiefs should not come in before the end of December. There is

something strangely terrible in the calmness and conciseness with which the instructions are given. "Your

troops will destroy entirely the country of Lochaber, Lochiel's lands, Keppoch's, Glengarry's and Glencoe's.

Your power shall be large enough. I hope the soldiers will not trouble the government with prisoners."225

This despatch had scarcely been sent off when news arrived in London that the rebel chiefs, after holding out

long, had at last appeared before the Sheriffs and taken the oaths. Lochiel, the most eminent man among

them, had not only declared that he would live and die a true subject to King William, but had announced his

intention of visiting England, in the hope of being permitted to kiss His Majesty's hand. In London it was

announced exultingly that every clan, without exception, had submitted in time; and the announcement was

generally thought most satisfactory.226 But the Master of Stair was bitterly disappointed. The Highlands

were then to continue to be what they had been, the shame and curse of Scotland. A golden opportunity of

subjecting them to the law had been suffered to escape, and might never return. If only the Macdonalds

would have stood out, nay, if an example could but have been made of the two worst Macdonalds, Keppoch

and Glencoe, it would have been something. But it seemed that even Keppoch and Glencoe, marauders who

in any well governed country would have been hanged thirty years before, were safe.227 While the Master

was brooding over thoughts like these, Argyle brought him some comfort. The report that Mac Ian had taken

the oaths within the prescribed time was erroneous. The Secretary was consoled. One clan, then, was at the

mercy of the government, and that clan the most lawless of all. One great act of justice, nay of charity, might

Yet there was a difficulty. Mac Ian had taken the oaths. He had taken them, indeed, too late to be entitled to

plead the letter of the royal promise; but the fact that he had taken them was one which evidently ought not to

have been concealed from those who were to decide his fate. By a dark intrigue, of which the history is but

imperfectly known, but which was, in all probability, directed by the Master of Stair, the evidence of Mac

Ian's tardy submission was suppressed. The certificate which the Sheriff of Argyleshire had transmitted to the

Council at Edinburgh, was never laid before the board, but was privately submitted to some persons high in

office, and particularly to Lord President Stair, the father of the Secretary. These persons pronounced the

Meanwhile the Master of Stair was forming, in concert with Breadalbane and Argyle, a plan for the

destruction of the people of Glencoe. It was necessary to take the King's pleasure, not, indeed, as to the

details of what was to be done, but as to the question whether Mac Ian and his people should or should not be

treated as rebels out of the pale of the ordinary law. The Master of Stair found no difficulty in the royal

closet. William had, in all probability, never heard the Glencoe men mentioned except as banditti. He knew

that they had not come in by the prescribed day. That they had come in after that day he did not know. If he

paid any attention to the matter, he must have thought that so fair an opportunity of putting an end to the

devastations and depredations from which a quiet and industrious population had suffered so much ought not

An order was laid before him for signature. He signed it, but, if Burnet may be trusted, did not read it.

Whoever has seen anything of public business knows that princes and ministers daily sign, and indeed must

sign, documents which they have not read; and of all documents a document relating to a small tribe of

mountaineers, living in a wilderness not set down in any map, was least likely to interest a Sovereign whose

mind was full of schemes on which the fate of Europe might depend.229 But, even on the supposition that he

read the order to which he affixed his name, there seems to be no reason for blaming him. That order,

directed to the Commander of the Forces in Scotland, runs thus: "As for Mac Ian of Glencoe and that tribe, if

they can be well distinguished from the other Highlanders, it will be proper, for the vindication of public

justice, to extirpate that set of thieves." These words naturally bear a sense perfectly innocent, and would, but

for the horrible event which followed, have been universally understood in that sense. It is undoubtedly one

of the first duties of every government to extirpate gangs of thieves. This does not mean that every thief

ought to be treacherously assassinated in his sleep, or even that every thief ought to be publicly executed after

a fair trial, but that every gang, as a gang, ought to be completely broken up, and that whatever severity is

indispensably necessary for that end ought to be used. If William had read and weighed the words which

were submitted to him by his Secretary, he would probably have understood them to mean that Glencoe was

to be occupied by troops, that resistance, if resistance were attempted, was to be put down with a strong hand,

that severe punishment was to be inflicted on those leading members of the clan who could be proved to have

been guilty of great crimes, that some active young freebooters, who were more used to handle the broad

sword than the plough, and who did not seem likely to settle down into quiet labourers, were to be sent to the

army in the Low Countries, that others were to be transported to the American plantations, and that those

Macdonalds who were suffered to remain in their native valley were to be disarmed and required to give

hostages for good behaviour. A plan very nearly resembling this had, we know, actually been the subject of

much discussion in the political circles of Edinburgh.230 There can be little doubt that William would have

deserved well of his people if he had, in this manner, extirpated not only the tribe of Mac Ian, but every

The extirpation planned by the Master of Stair was of a different kind. His design was to butcher the whole

race of thieves, the whole damnable race. Such was the language in which his hatred vented itself. He studied

the geography of the wild country which surrounded Glencoe, and made his arrangements with infernal skill.

If possible, the blow must be quick, and crushing, and altogether unexpected. But if Mac Ian should

apprehend danger and should attempt to take refuge in the territories of his neighbours, he must find every

road barred. The pass of Rannoch must be secured. The Laird of Weems, who was powerful in Strath Tay,

must be told that, if he harbours the outlaws, he does so at his peril. Breadalbane promised to cut off the

retreat of the fugitives on one side, Mac Callum More on another. It was fortunate, the Secretary wrote, that it

was winter. This was the time to maul the wretches. The nights were so long, the mountain tops so cold and

stormy, that even the hardiest men could not long bear exposure to the open air without a roof or a spark of

fire. That the women and the children could find shelter in the desert was quite impossible. While he wrote

thus, no thought that he was committing a great wickedness crossed his mind. He was happy in the

approbation of his own conscience. Duty, justice, nay charity and mercy, were the names under which he

disguised his cruelty; nor is it by any means improbable that the disguise imposed upon himself.231

Hill, who commanded the forces assembled at Fort William, was not entrusted with the execution of the

design. He seems to have been a humane man; he was much distressed when he learned that the government

was determined on severity; and it was probably thought that his heart might fail him in the most critical

moment. He was directed to put a strong detachment under the orders of his second in command, Lieutenant

Colonel Hamilton. To Hamilton a significant hint was conveyed that he had now an excellent opportunity of

establishing his character in the estimation of those who were at the head of affairs. Of the troops entrusted to

him a large proportion were Campbells, and belonged to a regiment lately raised by Argyle, and called by

Argyle's name, It was probably thought that, on such an occasion, humanity might prove too strong for the

mere habit of military obedience, and that little reliance could be placed on hearts which had not been

ulcerated by a feud such as had long raged between the people of Mac Ian and the people of Mac Callum

Had Hamilton marched openly against the Glencoe men and put them to the edge of the sword, the act would

probably not have wanted apologists, and most certainly would not have wanted precedents. But the Master

of Stair had strongly recommended a different mode of proceeding. If the least alarm were given, the nest of

robbers would be found empty; and to hunt them down in so wild a region would, even with all the help that

Breadalbane and Argyle could give, be a long and difficult business. "Better," he wrote, "not meddle with

them than meddle to no purpose. When the thing is resolved, let it be secret and sudden."232 He was obeyed;

and it was determined that the Glencoe men should perish, not by military execution, but by the most

On the first of February a hundred and twenty soldiers of Argyle's regiment, commanded by a captain named

Campbell and a lieutenant named Lindsay, marched to Glencoe. Captain Campbell was commonly called in

Scotland Glenlyon, from the pass in which his property lay. He had every qualification for he service on

which he was employed, an unblushing forehead, a smooth lying tongue, and a heart of adamant. He was also

one of the few Campbells who were likely to be trusted and welcomed by the Macdonalds; for his niece was

The sight of the red coats approaching caused some anxiety among the population of the valley. John, the

eldest son of the Chief, came, accompanied by twenty clansmen, to meet the strangers, and asked what this

visit meant. Lieutenant Lindsay answered that the soldiers came as friends, and wanted nothing but quarters.

They were kindly received, and were lodged under the thatched roofs of the little community. Glenlyon and

several of his men were taken into the house of a tacksman who was named, from the cluster of cabins over

which he exercised authority, Inverriggen. Lindsay was accommodated nearer to the abode of the old chief.

Auchintriater, one of the principal men of the clan, who governed the small hamlet of Auchnaion, found

room there for a party commanded by a serjeant named Barbour. Provisions were liberally supplied. There

was no want of beef, which had probably fattened in distant pastures; nor was any payment demanded; for in

hospitality, as in thievery, the Gaelic marauders rivalled the Bedouins. During twelve days the soldiers lived

familiarly with the people of the glen. Old Mac Ian, who had before felt many misgivings as to the relation in

which he stood to the government, seems to have been pleased with the visit. The officers passed much of

their time with him and his family. The long evenings were cheerfully spent by the peat fire with the help of

some packs of cards which had found their way to that remote corner of the world, and of some French

brandy which was probably part of James's farewell gift to his Highland supporters. Glenlyon appeared to be

warmly attached to his niece and her husband Alexander. Every day he came to their house to take his

morning draught. Meanwhile he observed with minute attention all the avenues by which, when the signal for

the slaughter should be given, the Macdonalds might attempt to escape to the hills; and he reported the result

Hamilton fixed five o'clock in the morning of the thirteenth of February for the deed. He hoped that, before

that time, he should reach Glencoe with four hundred men, and should have stopped all the earths in which

the old fox and his two cubs,so Mac Ian and his sons were nicknamed by the murderers,could take

refuge. But, at five precisely, whether Hamilton had arrived or not, Glenlyon was to fall on, and to slay every

The night was rough. Hamilton and his troops made slow progress, and were long after their time. While they

were contending with the wind and snow, Glenlyon was supping and playing at cards with those whom he

meant to butcher before daybreak. He and Lieutenant Lindsay had engaged themselves to dine with the old

Late in the evening a vague suspicion that some evil was intended crossed the mind of the Chief's eldest son.

The soldiers were evidently in a restless state; and some of them uttered strange cries. Two men, it is said,

were overheard whispering. "I do not like this job;" one of them muttered, "I should be glad to fight the

Macdonalds. But to kill men in their beds" "We must do as we are bid," answered another voice. "If there

is any thing wrong, our officers must answer for it." John Macdonald was so uneasy that, soon after midnight,

he went to Glenlyon's quarters. Glenlyon and his men were all up, and seemed to be getting their arms ready

for action. John, much alarmed, asked what these preparations meant. Glenlyon was profuse of friendly

assurances. "Some of Glengarry's people have been harrying the country. We are getting ready to march

against them. You are quite safe. Do you think that, if you were in any danger, I should not have given a hint

to your brother Sandy and his wife?" John's suspicions were quieted. He returned to his house, and lay down

It was five in the morning. Hamilton and his men were still some miles off; and the avenues which they were

to have secured were open. But the orders which Glenlyon bad received were precise; and he began to

execute them at the little village where he was himself quartered. His host Inverriggen and nine other

Macdonalds were dragged out of their beds, bound hand and foot, and murdered. A boy twelve years old

clung round the Captain's legs, and begged hard for life. He would do any thing; he would go any where; he

would follow Glenlyon round the world. Even Glenlyon, it is said, showed signs of relenting; but a ruffian

At Auchnaion the tacksman Auchintriater was up early that morning, and was sitting with eight of his family

round the fire, when a volley of musketry laid him and seven of his companions dead or dying on the floor.

His brother, who alone had escaped unhurt, called to Serjeant Barbour, who commanded the slayers, and

asked as a favour to be allowed to die in the open air. "Well," said the Serjeant, "I will do you that favour for

the sake of your meat which I have eaten." The mountaineer, bold, athletic, and favoured by the darkness,

came forth, rushed on the soldiers who were about to level their pieces at him, flung his plaid over their faces,

Meanwhile Lindsay had knocked at the door of the old Chief and had asked for admission in friendly

language. The door was opened. Mac Ian, while putting on his clothes and calling to his servants to bring

some refreshment for his visitors, was shot through the head. Two of his attendants were slain with him. His

wife was already up and dressed in such finery as the princesses of the rude Highland glens were accustomed

to wear. The assassins pulled off her clothes and trinkets. The rings were not easily taken from her fingers but

The statesman, to whom chiefly this great crime is to be ascribed, had planned it with consummate ability:

but the execution was complete in nothing but in guilt and infamy. A succession of blunders saved three

fourths of the Glencoe men from the fate of their chief. All the moral qualities which fit men to bear a part in

a massacre Hamilton and Glenlyon possessed in perfection. But neither seems to have had much professional

skill; Hamilton had arranged his plan without making allowance for bad weather, and this in a country and at

a season when the weather was very likely to be bad. The consequence was that the fox earths, as he called

them, were not stopped in time. Glenlyon and his men committed the error of despatching their hosts with

firearms instead of using the cold steel. The peal and flash of gun after gun gave notice, from three different

parts of the valley at once; that murder was doing. From fifty cottages the half naked peasantry fled under

cover of the night to the recesses of their pathless glen. Even the sons of Mac Ian, who had been especially

marked out for destruction, contrived to escape. They were roused from sleep by faithful servants. John, who,

by the death of his father, had become the patriarch of the tribe, quitted his dwelling just as twenty soldiers

with fixed bayonets marched up to it. It was broad day long before Hamilton arrived. He found the work not

even half performed. About thirty corpses lay wallowing in blood on the dunghills before the doors. One or

two women were seen among the number, and, a yet more fearful and piteous sight, a little hand, which had

been lopped in the tumult of the butchery from some infant. One aged Macdonald was found alive. He was

probably too infirm to fly, and, as he was above seventy, was not included in the orders under which

Glenlyon had acted. Hamilton murdered the old man in cold blood. The deserted hamlets were then set on

fire; and the troops departed, driving away with them many sheep and goats, nine hundred kine, and two

It is said, and may but too easily be believed, that the sufferings of the fugitives were terrible. How many old

men, how many women with babes in their arms, sank down and slept their last sleep in the snow; how many,

having crawled, spent with toil and hunger, into nooks among the precipices, died in those dark holes, and

were picked to the bone by the mountain ravens, can never be known. But it is probable that those who

perished by cold, weariness and want were not less numerous than those who were slain by the assassins.

When the troops had retired, the Macdonalds crept out of the caverns of Glencoe, ventured back to the spot

where the huts had formerly stood, collected the scorched corpses from among the smoking ruins, and

performed some rude rites of sepulture. The tradition runs that the hereditary bard of the tribe took his seat on

a rock which overhung the place of slaughter, and poured forth a long lament over his murdered brethren, and

his desolate home. Eighty years later that sad dirge was still repeated by the population of the valley.233

The survivors might well apprehend that they had escaped the shot and the sword only to perish by famine.

The whole domain was a waste. Houses, barns, furniture, implements of husbandry, herds, flocks, horses,

were gone. Many months must elapse before the clan would be able to raise on its own ground the means of

It may be thought strange that these events should not have been instantly followed by a burst of execration

from every part of the civilised world. The fact, however, is that years elapsed before the public indignation

was thoroughly awakened, and that months elapsed before the blackest part of the story found credit even

among the enemies of the government. That the massacre should not have been mentioned in the London

Gazettes, in the Monthly Mercuries which were scarcely less courtly than the Gazettes, or in pamphlets

licensed by official censors, is perfectly intelligible. But that no allusion to it should be found in private

journals and letters, written by persons free from all restraint, may seem extraordinary. There is not a word on

the subject in Evelyn's Diary. In Narcissus Luttrell's Diary is a remarkable entry made five weeks after the

butchery. The letters from Scotland, he says, described that kingdom as perfectly tranquil, except that there

was still some grumbling about ecclesiastical questions. The Dutch ministers regularly reported all the Scotch

news to their government. They thought it worth while, about this time, to mention that a collier had been

taken by a privateer near Berwick, that the Edinburgh mail had been robbed, that a whale, with a tongue

seventeen feet long and seven feet broad, had been stranded near Aberdeen. But it is not hinted in any of their

despatches that there was any rumour of any extraordinary occurrence in the Highlands. Reports that some of

the Macdonalds had been slain did indeed, in about three weeks, travel through Edinburgh up to London. But

these reports were vague and contradictory; and the very worst of them was far from coming up to the

horrible truth. The Whig version of the story was that the old robber Mac Ian had laid an ambuscade for the

soldiers, that he had been caught in his own snare, and that he and some of his clan had fallen sword in hand.

The Jacobite version, written at Edinburgh on the twentythird of March, appeared in the Paris Gazette of the

seventh of April. Glenlyon, it was said, had been sent with a detachment from Argyle's regiment, under cover

of darkness, to surprise the inhabitants of Glencoe, and had killed thirtysix men and boys and four

women.235 In this there was nothing very strange or shocking. A night attack on a gang of freebooters

occupying a strong natural fortress may be a perfectly legitimate military operation; and, in the obscurity and

confusion of such an attack, the most humane man may be so unfortunate as to shoot a woman or a child. The

circumstances which give a peculiar character to the slaughter of Glencoe, the breach of faith, the breach of

hospitality, the twelve days of feigned friendship and conviviality, of morning calls, of social meals, of

healthdrinking, of cardplaying, were not mentioned by the Edinburgh correspondent of the Paris Gazette; and

we may therefore confidently infer that those circumstances were as yet unknown even to inquisitive and

busy malecontents residing in the Scottish capital within a hundred miles of the spot where the deed had been

done. In the south of the island the matter produced, as far as can now be judged, scarcely any sensation. To

the Londoner of those days Appin was what Caffraria or Borneo is to us. He was not more moved by hearing

that some Highland thieves had been surprised and killed than we are by hearing that a band of Amakosah

cattle stealers has been cut off, or that a bark full of Malay pirates has been sunk. He took it for granted that

nothing had been done in Glencoe beyond what was doing in many other glens. There had been a night brawl,

one of a hundred night brawls, between the Macdonalds and the Campbells; and the Campbells had knocked

By slow degrees the whole truth came out. From a letter written at Edinburgh about two months after the

crime had been committed, it appears that the horrible story was already current among the Jacobites of that

city. In the summer Argyle's regiment was quartered in the south of England, and some of the men made

strange confessions, over their ale, about what they had been forced to do in the preceding winter. The

nonjurors soon got hold of the clue, and followed it resolutely; their secret presses went to work; and at

length, near a year after the crime had been committed, it was published to the world.236 But the world was

long incredulous. The habitual mendacity of the Jacobite libellers had brought on them an appropriate

punishment. Now, when, for the first time, they told the truth, they were supposed to be romancing. They

complained bitterly that the story, though perfectly authentic, was regarded by the public as a factious lie.237

So late as the year 1695, Hickes, in a tract in which he endeavoured to defend his darling tale of the Theban

legion against the unanswerable argument drawn from the silence of historians, remarked that it might well

be doubted whether any historian would make mention of the massacre of Glencoe. There were in England,

he said, many thousands of well educated men who had never heard of that massacre, or who regarded it as a

Nevertheless the punishment of some of the guilty began very early. Hill, who indeed can hardly be called

guilty, was much disturbed. Breadalbane, hardened as he was, felt the stings of conscience or the dread of

retribution. A few days after the Macdonalds had returned to their old dwellingplace, his steward visited the

ruins of the house of Glencoe, and endeavoured to persuade the sons of the murdered chief to sign a paper

declaring that they held the Earl guiltless of the blood which had been shed. They were assured that, if they

would do this, all His Lordship's great influence should be employed to obtain for them from the Crown a

free pardon and a remission of all forfeitures.239 Glenlyon did his best to assume an air of unconcern. He

made his appearance in the most fashionable coffeehouse at Edinburgh, and talked loudly and

selfcomplacently about the important service in which he had been engaged among the mountains. Some of

his soldiers, however, who observed him closely, whispered that all this bravery was put on. He was not the

man that he had been before that night. The form of his countenance was changed. In all places, at all hours,

But, whatever apprehensions might disturb Breadalbane, whatever spectres might haunt Glenlyon, the Master

of Stair had neither fear nor remorse. He was indeed mortified; but he was mortified only by the blunders of

Hamilton and by the escape of so many of the damnable breed. "Do right, and fear nobody;" such is the

language of his letters. "Can there be a more sacred duty than to rid the country of thieving? The only thing

On the sixth of March, William, entirely ignorant, in all probability, of the details of the crime which has cast

a dark shade over his glory, had set out for the Continent, leaving the Queen his viceregent in England.242

He would perhaps have postponed his departure if he had been aware that the French Government had,

during some time, been making great preparations for a descent on our island.243 An event had taken place

which had changed the policy of the Court of Versailles. Louvois was no more. He had been at the head of

the military administration of his country during a quarter of a century; he had borne a chief part in the

direction of two wars which had enlarged the French territory, and had filled the world with the renown of the

French arms; and he had lived to see the beginning of a third war which tasked his great powers to the

utmost. Between him and the celebrated captains who carried his plans into execution there was little

harmony. His imperious temper and his confidence in himself impelled him to interfere too much with the

conduct of troops in the field, even when those troops were commanded by Conde, by Turenne or by

Luxemburg. But he was the greatest Adjutant General, the greatest Quartermaster General, the greatest

Commissary General, that Europe had seen. He may indeed be said to have made a revolution in the art of

disciplining, distributing, equipping and provisioning armies. In spite, however, of his abilities and of his

services, he had become odious to Lewis and to her who governed Lewis. On the last occasion on which the

King and the minister transacted business together, the ill humour on both sides broke violently forth. The

servant, in his vexation, dashed his portfolio on the ground. The master, forgetting, what he seldom forgot,

that a King should be a gentleman, lifted his cane. Fortunately his wife was present. She, with her usual

prudence, caught his arm. She then got Louvois out of the room, and exhorted him to come back the next day

as if nothing had happened. The next day he came; but with death in his face. The King, though full of

resentment, was touched with pity, and advised Louvois to go home and take care of himself. That evening

Louvois had constantly opposed all plans for the invasion of England. His death was therefore regarded at

Saint Germains as a fortunate event.245 It was however necessary to look sad, and to send a gentleman to

Versailles with some words of condolence. The messenger found the gorgeous circle of courtiers assembled

round their master on the terrace above the orangery. "Sir," said Lewis, in a tone so easy and cheerful that it

filled all the bystanders with amazement, "present my compliments and thanks to the King and Queen of

England, and tell them that neither my affairs nor theirs will go on the worse by what has happened." These

words were doubtless meant to intimate that the influence of Louvois had not been exerted in favour of the

House of Stuart.246 One compliment, however, a compliment which cost France dear, Lewis thought it right

to pay to the memory of his ablest servant. The Marquess of Barbesieux, son of Louvois, was placed, in his

twentyfifth year, at the head of the war department. The young man was by no means deficient in abilities,

and had been, during some years, employed in business of grave importance. But his passions were strong;

his judgment was not ripe; and his sudden elevation turned his head. His manners gave general disgust. Old

officers complained that he kept them long in his antechamber while he was amusing himself with his

spaniels and his flatterers. Those who were admitted to his presence went away disgusted by his rudeness and

arrogance. As was natural at his age, he valued power chiefly as the means of procuring pleasure. Millions of

crowns were expended on the luxurious villa where he loved to forget the cares of office in gay conversation,

delicate cookery and foaming champagne. He often pleaded an attack of fever as an excuse for not making

his appearance at the proper hour in the royal closet, when in truth he had been playing truant among his boon

companions and mistresses. "The French King," said William, "has an odd taste. He chooses an old woman

There can be little doubt that Louvois, by pursuing that course which had made him odious to the inmates of

Saint Germains, had deserved well of his country. He was not maddened by Jacobite enthusiasm. He well

knew that exiles are the worst of all advisers. He had excellent information; he had excellent judgment; he

calculated the chances; and he saw that a descent was likely to fail, and to fail disastrously and disgracefully.

James might well be impatient to try the experiment, though the odds should be ten to one against him. He

might gain; and he could not lose. His folly and obstinacy had left him nothing to risk. His food, his drink, his

lodging, his clothes, he owed to charity. Nothing could be more natural than that, for the very smallest chance

of recovering the three kingdoms which he had thrown away, he should be willing to stake what was not his

own, the honour of the French arms, the grandeur and the safety of the French monarchy. To a French

statesman such a wager might well appear in a different light. But Louvois was gone. His master yielded to

the importunity of James, and determined to send an expedition against England.248

The scheme was, in some respects, well concerted. It was resolved that a camp should be formed on the coast

of Normandy, and that in this camp all the Irish regiments which were in the French service should be

assembled under their countryman Sarsfield. With them were to be joined about ten thousand French troops.

A noble fleet of about eighty ships of the line was to convoy this force to the shores of England. In the

dockyards both of Brittany and of Provence immense preparations were made. Four and forty men of war,

some of which were among the finest that had ever been built, were assembled in the harbour of Brest under

Tourville. The Count of Estrees, with thirtyfive more, was to sail from Toulon. Ushant was fixed for the

place of rendezvous. The very day was named. In order that there might be no want either of seamen or of

vessels for the intended expedition, all maritime trade, all privateering was, for a time, interdicted by a royal

mandate.249 Three hundred transports were collected near the spot where the troops were to embark. It was

hoped that all would be ready early in the spring, before the English ships were half rigged or half manned,

James had indeed persuaded himself that, even if the English fleet should fall in with him, it would not

oppose him. He imagined that he was personally a favourite with the mariners of all ranks. His emissaries had

been busy among the naval officers, and had found some who remembered him with kindness, and others

who were out of humour with the men now in power. All the wild talk of a class of people not distinguished

by taciturnity or discretion was reported to him with exaggeration, till he was deluded into a belief that he had

more friends than enemies on board of the vessels which guarded our coasts. Yet he should have known that

a rough sailor, who thought himself ill used by the Admiralty, might, after the third bottle, when drawn on by

artful companions, express his regret for the good old times, curse the new government, and curse himself for

being such a fool as to fight for that government, and yet might be by no means prepared to go over to the

French on the day of battle. Of the malecontent officers, who, as James believed, were impatient to desert, the

great majority had probably given no pledge of their attachment to him except an idle word hiccoughed out

when they were drunk, and forgotten when they were sober. One those from whom he expected support, Rear

Admiral Carter, had indeed heard and perfectly understood what the Jacobite agents had to say, had given

But the chief dependence of James was on Russell. That false, arrogant and wayward politician was to

command the Channel Fleet. He had never ceased to assure the Jacobite emissaries that he was bent on

effecting a Restoration. Those emissaries fully reckoned, if not on his entire cooperation, yet at least on his

connivance; and there could be no doubt that, with his connivance, a French fleet might easily convoy an

army to our shores. James flattered himself that, as soon as he had landed, he should be master of the island.

But in truth, when the voyage had ended, the difficulties of his enterprise would have been only beginning.

Two years before he had received a lesson by which he should have profited. He had then deceived himself

and others into the belief that the English were regretting him, were pining for him, were eager to rise in arms

by tens of thousands to welcome him. William was then, as now, at a distance. Then, as now, the

administration was entrusted to a woman. Then, as now, there were few regular troops in England. Torrington

had then done as much to injure the government which he served as Russell could now do. The French fleet

had then, after riding, during several weeks, victorious and dominant in the Channel, landed some troops on

the southern coast. The immediate effect had been that whole counties, without distinction of Tory or Whig,

Churchman or Dissenter, had risen up, as one man, to repel the foreigners, and that the Jacobite party, which

had, a few days before, seemed to be half the nation, had crouched down in silent terror, and had made itself

so small that it had, during some time, been invisible. What reason was there for believing that the multitude

who had, in 1690, at the first lighting of the beacons, snatched up firelocks, pikes, scythes, to defend, their

native soil against the French, would now welcome the French as allies? And of the army by which James

was now to be accompanied the French formed the least odious part. More than half of that army was to

consist of Irish Papists; and the feeling, compounded of hatred and scorn, with which the Irish Papists had

long been regarded by the English Protestants, had by recent events been stimulated to a vehemence before

unknown. The hereditary slaves, it was said, had been for a moment free; and that moment had sufficed to

prove that they knew neither how to use nor how to defend their freedom. During their short ascendency they

had done nothing but slay, and burn, and pillage, and demolish, and attaint, and confiscate. In three years they

had committed such waste on their native land as thirty years of English intelligence and industry would

scarcely repair. They would have maintained their independence against the world, if they had been as ready

to fight as they were to steal. But they had retreated ignominiously from the walls of Londonderry. They had

fled like deer before the yeomanry of Enniskillen. The Prince whom they now presumed to think that they

could place, by force of arms, on the English throne, had himself, on the morning after the rout of the Boyne,

reproached them with their cowardice, and told them that he would never again trust to their soldiership. On

this subject Englishmen were of one mind. Tories, Nonjurors, even Roman Catholics, were as loud as Whigs

in reviling the ill fated race. It is, therefore, not difficult to guess what effect would have been produced by

the appearance on our soil of enemies whom, on their own soil, we had vanquished and trampled down.

James, however, in spite of the recent and severe teaching of experience, believed whatever his

correspondents in England told him; and they told him that the whole nation was impatiently expecting him,

that both the West and the North were ready to rise, that he would proceed from the place of landing to

Whitehall with as little opposition as when, in old times, he returned from a progress. Ferguson distinguished

himself by the confidence with which he predicted a complete and bloodless victory. He and his printer, he

was absurd enough to write, would be the two first men in the realm to take horse for His Majesty. Many

other agents were busy up and down the country, during the winter and the early part of the spring. It does not

appear that they had much success in the counties south of Trent. But in the north, particularly in Lancashire,

where the Roman Catholics were more numerous and more powerful than in any other part of the kingdom,

and where there seems to have been, even among the Protestant gentry, more than the ordinary proportion of

bigoted Jacobites, some preparations for an insurrection were made. Arms were privately bought; officers

were appointed; yeomen, small farmers, grooms, huntsmen, were induced to enlist. Those who gave in their

names were distributed into eight regiments of cavalry and dragoons, and were directed to hold themselves in

One of the circumstances which filled James, at this time, with vain hopes, was that his wife was pregnant

and near her delivery. He flattered himself that malice itself would be ashamed to repeat any longer the story

of the warming pan, and that multitudes whom that story had deceived would instantly return to their

allegiance. He took, on this occasion, all those precautions which, four years before, he had foolishly and

perversely forborne to take. He contrived to transmit to England letters summoning many Protestant women

of quality to assist at the expected birth; and he promised, in the name of his dear brother the Most Christian

King, that they should be free to come and go in safety. Had some of these witnesses been invited to Saint

James's on the morning of the tenth of June 1688, the House of Stuart might, perhaps, now be reigning in our

island. But it is easier to keep a crown than to regain one. It might be true that a calumnious fable had done

much to bring about the Revolution. But it by no means followed that the most complete refutation of that

fable would bring about a Restoration. Not a single lady crossed the sea in obedience to James's call. His

Queen was safely delivered of a daughter; but this event produced no perceptible effect on the state of public

Meanwhile the preparations for his expedition were going on fast. He was on the point of setting out for the

place of embarkation before the English government was at all aware of the danger which was impending. It

had been long known indeed that many thousands of Irish were assembled in Normandy; but it was supposed

that they had been assembled merely that they might be mustered and drilled before they were sent to

Flanders, Piedmont, and Catalonia.254 Now, however, intelligence, arriving from many quarters, left no

doubt that an invasion would be almost immediately attempted. Vigorous preparations for defence were

made. The equipping and manning of the ships was urged forward with vigour. The regular troops were

drawn together between London and the sea. A great camp was formed on the down which overlooks

Portsmouth. The militia all over the kingdom was called out. Two Westminster regiments and six City

regiments, making up a force of thirteen thousand fighting men, were arrayed in Hyde Park, and passed in

review before the Queen. The trainbands of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey marched down to the coast. Watchmen

were posted by the beacons. Some nonjurors were imprisoned, some disarmed, some held to bail. The house

of the Earl of Huntingdon, a noted Jacobite, was searched. He had had time to burn his papers and to hide his

arms; but his stables presented a most suspicious appearance. Horses enough to mount a whole troop of

cavalry were at the mangers; and this evidence, though not legally sufficient to support a charge of treason,

was thought sufficient, at such a conjuncture, to justify the Privy Council in sending him to the Tower.255

Meanwhile James had gone down to his army, which was encamped round the basin of La Hogue, on the

northern coast of the peninsula known by the name of the Cotentin. Before he quitted Saint Germains, he held

a Chapter of the Garter for the purpose of admitting his son into the order. Two noblemen were honoured

with the same distinction, Powis, who, among his brother exiles, was now called a Duke, and Melfort, who

had returned from Rome, and was again James's Prime Minister.256 Even at this moment, when it was of the

greatest importance to conciliate the members of the Church of England, none but members of the Church of

Rome were thought worthy of any mark of royal favour. Powis indeed was an eminent member of the English

aristocracy; and his countrymen disliked him as little as they disliked any conspicuous Papist. But Melfort

was not even an Englishman; he had never held office in England; he had never sate in the English

Parliament; and he had therefore no pretensions to a dignity peculiarly English. He was moreover hated by all

the contending factions of all the three kingdoms. Royal letters countersigned by him had been sent both to

the Convention at Westminster and to the Convention at Edinburgh; and, both at Westminster and at

Edinburgh, the sight of his odious name and handwriting had made the most zealous friends of hereditary

right hang down their heads in shame. It seems strange that even James should have chosen, at such a

conjuncture, to proclaim to the world that the men whom his people most abhorred were the men whom he

Still more injurious to his interests was the Declaration in which he announced his intentions to his subjects.

Of all the State papers which were put forth even by him it was the most elaborately and ostentatiously

injudicious. When it had disgusted and exasperated all good Englishmen of all parties, the Papists at Saint

Germains pretended that it had been drawn up by a stanch Protestant, Edward Herbert, who had been Chief

Justice of the Common Pleas before the Revolution, and who now bore the empty title of Chancellor.257 But

it is certain that Herbert was never consulted about any matter of importance, and that the Declaration was the

work of Melfort and of Melfort alone.258 In truth, those qualities of head and heart which had made Melfort

the favourite of his master shone forth in every sentence. Not a word was to be found indicating that three

years of banishment had made the King wiser, that he had repented of a single error, that he took to himself

even the smallest part of the blame of that revolution which had dethroned him, or that he purposed to follow

a course in any respect differing from that which had already been fatal to him. All the charges which had

been brought against him he pronounced to be utterly unfounded. Wicked men had put forth calumnies.

Weak men had believed those calumnies. He alone had been faultless. He held out no hope that he would

consent to any restriction of that vast dispensing power to which he had formerly laid claim, that he would

not again, in defiance of the plainest statutes, fill the Privy Council, the bench of justice, the public offices,

the army, the navy, with Papists, that he would not reestablish the High Commission, that he would not

appoint a new set of regulators to remodel all the constituent bodies of the kingdom. He did indeed

condescend to say that he would maintain the legal rights of the Church of England; but he had said this

before; and all men knew what those words meant in his mouth. Instead of assuring his people of his

forgiveness, he menaced them with a proscription more terrible than any which our island had ever seen. He

published a list of persons who had no mercy to expect. Among these were Ormond, Caermarthen,

Nottingham, Tillotson and Burnet. After the roll of those who were doomed to death by name, came a series

of categories. First stood all the crowd of rustics who had been rude to His Majesty when he was stopped at

Sheerness in his flight. These poor ignorant wretches, some hundreds in number, were reserved for another

bloody circuit. Then came all persons who had in any manner borne a part in the punishment of any Jacobite

conspirator; judges, counsel, witnesses, grand jurymen, petty jurymen, sheriffs and undersheriffs, constables

and turnkeys, in short, all the ministers of justice from Holt down to Ketch. Then vengeance was denounced

against all spies and all informers who had divulged to the usurpers the designs of the Court of Saint

Germains. All justices of the peace who should not declare for their rightful Sovereign the moment that they

heard of his landing, all gaolers who should not instantly set political prisoners at liberty, were to be left to

the extreme rigour of the law. No exception was made in favour of a justice or of a gaoler who might be

within a hundred yards of one of William's regiments, and a hundred miles from the nearest place where there

It might have been expected that James, after thus denouncing vengeance against large classes of his subjects,

would at least have offered a general amnesty to the rest. But of general amnesty he said not a word. He did

indeed promise that any offender who was not in any of the categories of proscription, and who should by

any eminent service merit indulgence, should receive a special pardon. But, with this exception, all the

offenders, hundreds of thousands in number, were merely informed that their fate should be decided in

The agents of James speedily dispersed his Declaration over every part of the kingdom, and by doing so

rendered a great service to William. The general cry was that the banished oppressor had at least given

Englishmen fair warning, and that, if, after such a warning, they welcomed him home, they would have no

pretence for complaining, though every county town should be polluted by an assize resembling that which

Jeffreys had held at Taunton. That some hundreds of people,the Jacobites put the number so low as five

hundred,were to be hanged without mercy was certain; and nobody who had concurred in the Revolution,

nobody who had fought for the new government by sea or land, no soldier who had borne a part in the

conquest of Ireland, no Devonshire ploughman or Cornish miner who had taken arms to defend his wife and

children against Tourville, could be certain that he should not be hanged. How abject too, how spiteful, must

be the nature of a man who, engaged in the most momentous of all undertakings, and aspiring to the noblest

of all prizes, could not refrain from proclaiming that he thirsted for the blood of a multitude of poor

fishermen, because, more than three years before, they had pulled him about and called him Hatchetface. If,

at the very moment when he had the strongest motives for trying to conciliate his people by the show of

clemency, he could not bring himself to hold towards them any language but that of an implacable enemy,

what was to be expected from him when he should be again their master? So savage was his nature that, in a

situation in which all other tyrants have resorted to blandishments and fair promises, he could utter nothing

but reproaches and threats. The only words in his Declaration which had any show of graciousness were

those in which he promised to send away the foreign troops as soon as his authority was reestablished; and

many said that those words, when examined, would be found full of sinister meaning. He held out no hope

that he would send away Popish troops who were his own subjects. His intentions were manifest. The French

might go; but the Irish would remain. The people of England were to be kept down by these thrice subjugated

barbarians. No doubt a Rapparee who had run away at Newton Butler and the Boyne might find courage

enough to guard the scaffolds on which his conquerors were to die, and to lay waste our country as he had

The Queen and her ministers, instead of attempting to suppress James's manifesto, very wisely reprinted it,

and sent it forth licensed by the Secretary of State, and interspersed with remarks by a shrewd and severe

commentator. It was refuted in many keen pamphlets; it was turned into doggrel rhymes; and it was left

undefended even by the boldest and most acrimonious libellers among the nonjurors.259

Indeed, some of the nonjurors were so much alarmed by observing the effect which this manifesto produced,

that they affected to treat it as spurious, and published as their master's genuine Declaration a paper full of

gracious professions and promises. They made him offer a free pardon to all his people with the exception of

four great criminals. They made him hold out hopes of great remissions of taxation. They made him pledge

his word that he would entrust the whole ecclesiastical administration to the nonjuring bishops. But this

forgery imposed on nobody, and was important only as showing that even the Jacobites were ashamed of the

No man read the Declaration with more surprise and anger than Russell. Bad as he was, he was much under

the influence of two feelings, which, though they cannot be called virtuous, have some affinity to virtue, and

are respectable when compared with mere selfish cupidity. Professional spirit and party spirit were strong in

him. He might be false to his country, but not to his flag; and, even in becoming a Jacobite, he had not ceased

to be a Whig. In truth, he was a Jacobite only because he was the most intolerant and acrimonious of Whigs.

He thought himself and his faction ungratefully neglected by William, and was for a time too much blinded

by resentment to perceive that it would be mere madness in the old Roundheads, the old Exclusionists, to

punish William by recalling James. The near prospect of an invasion, and the Declaration in which

Englishmen were plainly told what they had to expect if that invasion should be successful, produced, it

should seem, a sudden and entire change in Russell's feelings; and that change he distinctly avowed. "I wish,"

he said to Lloyd, "to serve King James. The thing might be done, if it were not his own fault. But he takes the

wrong way with us. Let him forget all the past; let him grant a general pardon; and then I will see what I can

do for him." Lloyd hinted something about the honours and rewards designed for Russell himself. But the

Admiral, with a spirit worthy of a better man, cut him short. "I do not wish to hear anything on that subject.

My solicitude is for the public. And do not think that I will let the French triumph over us in our own sea.

Understand this, that if I meet them I fight them, ay, though His Majesty himself should be on board."

This conversation was truly reported to James; but it does not appear to have alarmed him. He was, indeed,

possessed with a belief that Russell, even if willing, would not be able to induce the officers and sailors of the

The hopes which James felt, he and his favourite Melfort succeeded in imparting to Lewis and to Lewis's

ministers.261 But for those hopes, indeed, it is probable that all thoughts of invading England in the course of

that year would have been laid aside. For the extensive plan which had been formed in the winter had, in the

course of the spring, been disconcerted by a succession of accidents such as are beyond the control of human

wisdom. The time fixed for the assembling of all the maritime forces of France at Ushant had long elapsed;

and not a single sail had appeared at the place of rendezvous. The Atlantic squadron was still detained by bad

weather in the port of Brest. The Mediterranean squadron, opposed by a strong west wind, was vainly

struggling to pass the pillars of Hercules. Two fine vessels had gone to pieces on the rocks of Ceuta.262

Meanwhile the admiralties of the allied powers had been active. Before the end of April the English fleet was

ready to sail. Three noble ships, just launched from our dockyards, appeared for the first time on the

water.263 William had been hastening the maritime preparations of the United Provinces; and his exertions

had been successful. On the twentyninth of April a fine squadron from the Texel appeared in the Downs.

Soon came the North Holland squadron, the Maes squadron, the Zealand squadron.264 The whole force of

the confederate powers was assembled at Saint Helen's in the second week of May, more than ninety sail of

the line, manned by between thirty and forty thousand of the finest seamen of the two great maritime nations.

Russell had the chief command. He was assisted by Sir Ralph Delaval, Sir John Ashley, Sir Cloudesley

Shovel, Rear Admiral Carter, and Rear Admiral Rooke. Of the Dutch officers Van Almonde was highest in

No mightier armament had ever appeared in the British Channel. There was little reason for apprehending

that such a force could be defeated in a fair conflict. Nevertheless there was great uneasiness in London. It

was known that there was a Jacobite party in the navy. Alarming rumours had worked their way round from

France. It was said that the enemy reckoned on the cooperation of some of those officers on whose fidelity, in

this crisis, the safety of the State might depend. Russell, as far as can now be discovered, was still

unsuspected. But others, who were probably less criminal, had been more indiscreet. At all the coffee houses

admirals and captains were mentioned by name as traitors who ought to be instantly cashiered, if not shot. It

was even confidently affirmed that some of the guilty had been put under arrest, and others turned out of the

service. The Queen and her counsellors were in a great strait. It was not easy to say whether the danger of

trusting the suspected persons or the danger of removing them were the greater. Mary, with many painful

misgivings, resolved, and the event proved that she resolved wisely, to treat the evil reports as calumnious, to

make a solemn appeal to the honour of the accused gentlemen, and then to trust the safety of her kingdom to

On the fifteenth of May a great assembly of officers was convoked at Saint Helen's on board the Britannia, a

fine three decker, from which Russell's flag was flying. The Admiral told them that he had received a

despatch which he was charged to read to them. It was from Nottingham. The Queen, the Secretary wrote,

had been informed that stories deeply affecting the character of the navy were in circulation. It had even been

affirmed that she had found herself under the necessity of dismissing many officers. But Her Majesty was

determined to believe nothing against those brave servants of the State. The gentlemen who had been so

foully slandered might be assured that she placed entire reliance on them. This letter was admirably

calculated to work on those to whom it was addressed. Very few of them probably had been guilty of any

worse offence than rash and angry talk over their wine. They were as yet only grumblers. If they had fancied

that they were marked men, they might in selfdefence have become traitors. They became enthusiastically

loyal as soon as they were assured that the Queen reposed entire confidence in their loyalty. They eagerly

signed an address in which they entreated her to believe that they would, with the utmost resolution and

alacrity, venture their lives in defence of her rights, of English freedom and of the Protestant religion, against

all foreign and Popish invaders. "God," they added, "preserve your person, direct your counsels, and prosper

The sincerity of these professions was soon brought to the test. A few hours after the meeting on board of the

Britannia the masts of Tourville's squadron were seen from the cliffs of Portland. One messenger galloped

with the news from Weymouth to London, and roused Whitehall at three in the morning. Another took the

coast road, and carried the intelligence to Russell. All was ready; and on the morning of the seventeenth of

Tourville had with him only his own squadron, consisting of fortyfour ships of the line. But he had received

positive orders to protect the descent on England, and not to decline a battle. Though these orders had been

given before it was known at Versailles that the Dutch and English fleets had joined, he was not disposed to

take on himself the responsibility of disobedience. He still remembered with bitterness the reprimand which

his extreme caution had drawn upon him after the fight of Beachy Head. He would not again be told that he

was a timid and unenterprising commander, that he had no courage but the vulgar courage of a common

sailor. He was also persuaded that the odds against him were rather apparent than real. He believed, on the

authority of James and Melfort, that the English seamen, from the flag officers down to the cabin boys, were

Jacobites. Those who fought would fight with half a heart; and there would probably be numerous desertions

at the most critical moment. Animated by such hopes he sailed from Brest, steered first towards the north

east, came in sight of the coast of Dorsetshire, and then struck across the Channel towards La Hogue, where

the army which he was to convoy to England had already begun to embark on board of the transports. He was

within a few leagues of Barfleur when, before daybreak, on the morning of the nineteenth of May, he saw the

great armament of the allies stretching along the eastern horizon. He determined to bear down on them. By

eight the two lines of battle were formed; but it was eleven before the firing began. It soon became plain that

the English, from the Admiral downward, were resolved to do their duty. Russell had visited all his ships, and

exhorted all his crews. "If your commanders play false," he said, "overboard with them, and with myself the

first." There was no defection. There was no slackness. Carter was the first who broke the French line. He

was struck by a splinter of one of his own yard arms, and fell dying on the deck. He would not be carried

below. He would not let go his sword. "Fight the ship," were his last words: "fight the ship as long as she can

swim." The battle lasted till four in the afternoon. The roar of the guns was distinctly heard more than twenty

miles off by the army which was encamped on the coast of Normandy. During the earlier part of the day the

wind was favourable to the French; they were opposed to half of the allied fleet; and against that half they

maintained the conflict with their usual courage and with more than their usual seamanship. After a hard and

doubtful fight of five hours, Tourville thought that enough had been done to maintain the honour of the white

flag, and began to draw off. But by this time the wind had veered, and was with the allies. They were now

able to avail themselves of their great superiority of force. They came on fast. The retreat of the French

became a flight. Tourville fought his own ship desperately. She was named, in allusion to Lewis's favourite

emblem, the Royal Sun, and was widely renowned as the finest vessel in the world. It was reported among

the English sailors that she was adorned with an image of the Great King, and that he appeared there, as he

appeared in the Place of Victories, with vanquished nations in chains beneath his feet. The gallant ship,

surrounded by enemies, lay like a great fortress on the sea, scattering death on every side from her hundred

and four portholes. She was so formidably manned that all attempts to board her failed. Long after sunset, she

got clear of her assailants, and, with all her scuppers spouting blood, made for the coast of Normandy. She

had suffered so much that Tourville hastily removed his flag to a ship of ninety guns which was named the

Ambitious. By this time his fleet was scattered far over the sea. About twenty of his smallest ships made their

escape by a road which was too perilous for any courage but the courage of despair. In the double darkness of

night and of a thick sea fog, they ran, with all their sails spread, through the boiling waves and treacherous

rocks of the Race of Alderney, and, by a strange good fortune, arrived without a single disaster at Saint

Maloes. The pursuers did not venture to follow the fugitives into that terrible strait, the place of innumerable

Those French vessels which were too bulky to venture into the Race of Alderney fled to the havens of the

Cotentin. The Royal Sun and two other three deckers reached Cherburg in safety. The Ambitious, with twelve

other ships, all first rates or second rates, took refuge in the Bay of La Hogue, close to the headquarters of the

The three ships which had fled to Cherburg were closely chased by an English squadron under the command

of Delaval. He found them hauled up into shoal water where no large man of war could get at them. He

therefore determined to attack them with his fireships and boats. The service was gallantly and successfully

performed. In a short time the Royal Sun and her two consorts were burned to ashes. Part of the crews

Meanwhile Russell with the greater part of his victorious fleet had blockaded the Bay of La Hogue. Here, as

at Cherburg, the French men of war had been drawn up into shallow water. They lay close to the camp of the

army which was destined for the invasion of England. Six of them were moored under a fort named Lisset.

The rest lay under the guns of another fort named Saint Vaast, where James had fixed his headquarters, and

where the Union flag, variegated by the crosses of Saint George and Saint Andrew, hung by the side of the

white flag of France. Marshal Bellefonds had planted several batteries which, it was thought, would deter the

boldest enemy from approaching either Fort Lisset or Fort Saint Vaast. James, however, who knew

something of English seamen, was not perfectly at ease, and proposed to send strong bodies of soldiers on

board of the ships. But Tourville would not consent to put such a slur on his profession.

Russell meanwhile was preparing for an attack. On the afternoon of the twentythird of May all was ready. A

flotilla consisting of sloops, of fireships, and of two hundred boats, was entrusted to the command of Rooke.

The whole armament was in the highest spirits. The rowers, flushed by success, and animated by the thought

that they were going to fight under the eyes of the French and Irish troops who had been assembled for the

purpose of subjugating England, pulled manfully and with loud huzzas towards the six huge wooden castles

which lay close to Fort Lisset. The French, though an eminently brave people, have always been more liable

to sudden panics than their phlegmatic neighbours the English and Germans. On this day there was a panic

both in the fleet and in the army. Tourville ordered his sailors to man their boats, and would have led them to

encounter the enemy in the bay. But his example and his exhortations were vain. His boats turned round and

fled in confusion. The ships were abandoned. The cannonade from Fort Lisset was so feeble and ill directed

that it did no execution. The regiments on the beach, after wasting a few musket shots, drew off. The English

boarded the men of war, set them on fire, and having performed this great service without the loss of a single

life, retreated at a late hour with the retreating tide. The bay was in a blaze during the night; and now and then

a loud explosion announced that the flames had reached a powder room or a tier of loaded guns. At eight the

next morning the tide came back strong; and with the tide came back Rooke and his two hundred boats. The

enemy made a faint attempt to defend the vessels which were near Fort Saint Vaast. During a few minutes the

batteries did some execution among the crews of our skiffs; but the struggle was soon over. The French

poured fast out of their ships on one side; the English poured in as fast on the other, and, with loud shouts,

turned the captured guns against the shore. The batteries were speedily silenced. James and Melfort,

Bellefonds and Tourville, looked on in helpless despondency while the second conflagration proceeded. The

conquerors, leaving the ships of war in flames, made their way into an inner basin where many transports lay.

Eight of these vessels were set on fire. Several were taken in tow. The rest would have been either destroyed

or carried off, had not the sea again begun to ebb. It was impossible to do more, and the victorious flotilla

slowly retired, insulting the hostile camp with a thundering chant of "God save the King."

Thus ended, at noon on the twentyfourth of May, the great conflict which had raged during five days over a

wide extent of sea and shore. One English fireship had perished in its calling. Sixteen French men of war, all

noble vessels, and eight of them threedeckers, had been sunk or burned down to the keel. The battle is

The news was received in London with boundless exultation. In the fight on the open sea, indeed, the

numerical superiority of the allies had been so great that they had little reason to boast of their success. But

the courage and skill with which the crews of the English boats had, in a French harbour, in sight of a French

army, and under the fire of French batteries, destroyed a fine French fleet, amply justified the pride with

which our fathers pronounced the name of La Hogue. That we may fully enter into their feelings, we must

remember that this was the first great check that had ever been given to the arms of Lewis the Fourteenth, and

the first great victory that the English had gained over the French since the day of Agincourt. The stain left on

our fame by the shameful defeat of Beachy Head was effaced. This time the glory was all our own. The

Dutch had indeed done their duty, as they have always done it in maritime war, whether fighting on our side

or against us, whether victorious or vanquished. But the English had borne the brunt of the fight. Russell who

commanded in chief was an Englishman. Delaval who directed the attack on Cherburg was an Englishman.

Rooke who led the flotilla into the Bay of La Hogue was an Englishman. The only two officers of note who

had fallen, Admiral Carter and Captain Hastings of the Sandwich, were Englishmen. Yet the pleasure with

which the good news was received here must not be ascribed solely or chiefly to national pride. The island

was safe. The pleasant pastures, cornfields and commons of Hampshire and Surrey would not be the seat of

war. The houses and gardens, the kitchens and dairies, the cellars and plate chests, the wives and daughters of

our gentry and clergy would not be at the mercy of Irish Rapparees, who had sacked the dwellings and

skinned the cattle of the Englishry of Leinster, or of French dragoons accustomed to live at free quarters on

the Protestants of Auvergne. Whigs and Tories joined in thanking God for this great deliverance; and the

most respectable nonjurors could not but be glad at heart that the rightful King was not to be brought back by

The public joy was therefore all but universal. During several days the bells of London pealed without

ceasing. Flags were flying on all the steeples. Rows of candles were in all the windows. Bonfires were at all

the corners of the streets.270 The sense which the government entertained of the services of the navy was

promptly, judiciously and gracefully manifested. Sidney and Portland were sent to meet the fleet at

Portsmouth, and were accompanied by Rochester, as the representative of the Tories. The three Lords took

down with them thirtyseven thousand pounds in coin, which they were to distribute as a donative among the

sailors.271 Gold medals were given to the officers.272 The remains of Hastings and Carter were brought on

shore with every mark of honour. Carter was buried at Portsmouth, with a great display of military pomp.273

The corpse of Hastings was brought up to London, and laid, with unusual solemnity, under the pavement of

Saint James's Church. The footguards with reversed arms escorted the hearse. Four royal state carriages, each

drawn by six horses, were in the procession; a crowd of men of quality in mourning cloaks filled the pews;

and the Bishop of Lincoln preached the funeral sermon.274 While such marks of respect were paid to the

slain, the wounded were not neglected. Fifty surgeons, plentifully supplied with instruments, bandages, and

drugs, were sent down in all haste from London to Portsmouth.275 It is not easy for us to form a notion of the

difficulty which there then was in providing at short notice commodious shelter and skilful attendance for

hundreds of maimed and lacerated men. At present every county, every large town, can boast of some

spacious palace in which the poorest labourer who has fractured a limb may find an excellent bed, an able

medical attendant, a careful nurse, medicines of the best quality, and nourishment such as an invalid requires.

But there was not then, in the whole realm, a single infirmary supported by voluntary contribution. Even in

the capital the only edifices open to the wounded were the two ancient hospitals of Saint Thomas and Saint

Bartholomew. The Queen gave orders that in both these hospitals arrangements should be made at the public

charge for the reception of patients from the fleet.276 At the same time it was announced that a noble and

lasting memorial of the gratitude which England felt for the courage and patriotism of her sailors would soon

rise on a site eminently appropriate. Among the suburban residences of our kings, that which stood at

Greenwich had long held a distinguished place. Charles the Second liked the situation, and determined to

rebuild the house and to improve the gardens. Soon after his Restoration, he began to erect, on a spot almost

washed by the Thames at high tide, a mansion of vast extent and cost. Behind the palace were planted long

avenues of trees which, when William reigned, were scarcely more than saplings, but which have now

covered with their massy shade the summer rambles of several generations. On the slope which has long been

the scene of the holiday sports of the Londoners, were constructed flights of terraces, of which the vestiges

may still be discerned. The Queen now publicly declared, in her husband's name, that the building

commenced by Charles should be completed, and should be a retreat for seamen disabled in the service of

One of the happiest effects produced by the good news was the calming of the public mind. During about a

month the nation had been hourly expecting an invasion and a rising, and had consequently been in an

irritable and suspicious mood. In many parts of England a nonjuror could not show himself without great risk

of being insulted. A report that arms were hidden in a house sufficed to bring a furious mob to the door. The

mansion of one Jacobite gentleman in Kent had been attacked, and, after a fight in which several shots were

fired, had been stormed and pulled down.278 Yet such riots were by no means the worst symptoms of the

fever which had inflamed the whole society. The exposure of Fuller, in February, had, as it seemed, put an

end to the practices of that vile tribe of which Oates was the patriarch. During some weeks, indeed, the world

was disposed to be unreasonably incredulous about plots. But in April there was a reaction. The French and

Irish were coming. There was but too much reason to believe that there were traitors in the island. Whoever

pretended that he could point out those traitors was sure to be heard with attention; and there was not wanting

This false witness was named Robert Young. His history was in his own lifetime so fully investigated, and so

much of his correspondence has been preserved, that the whole man is before us. His character is indeed a

curious study. His birthplace was a subject of dispute among three nations. The English pronounced him

Irish. The Irish, not being ambitious of the honour of having him for a countryman, affirmed that he was born

in Scotland. Wherever he may have been born, it is impossible to doubt where he was bred; for his

phraseology is precisely that of the Teagues who were, in his time, favourite characters on our stage. He

called himself a priest of the Established Church; but he was in truth only a deacon; and his deacon's orders

he had obtained by producing forged certificates of his learning and moral character. Long before the

Revolution he held curacies in various parts of Ireland; but he did not remain many days in any spot. He was

driven from one place by the scandal which was the effect of his lawless amours. He rode away from another

place on a borrowed horse, which he never returned. He settled in a third parish, and was taken up for

bigamy. Some letters which he wrote on this occasion from the gaol of Cavan have been preserved. He

assured each of his wives, with the most frightful imprecations, that she alone was the object of his love; and

he thus succeeded in inducing one of them to support him in prison, and the other to save his life by

forswearing herself at the assizes. The only specimens which remain to us of his method of imparting

religious instruction are to be found in these epistles. He compares himself to David, the man after God's own

heart, who had been guilty both of adultery and murder. He declares that he repents; he prays for the

forgiveness of the Almighty, and then intreats his dear honey, for Christ's sake, to perjure herself. Having

narrowly escaped the gallows, he wandered during several years about Ireland and England, begging,

stealing, cheating, personating, forging, and lay in many prisons under many names. In 1684 he was

convicted at Bury of having fraudulently counterfeited Sancroft's signature, and was sentenced to the pillory

and to imprisonment. From his dungeon he wrote to implore the Primate's mercy. The letter may still be read

with all the original bad grammar and bad spelling.279 The writer acknowledged his guilt, wished that his

eyes were a fountain of water, declared that he should never know peace till he had received episcopal

absolution, and professed a mortal hatred of Dissenters. As all this contrition and all this orthodoxy produced

no effect, the penitent, after swearing bitterly to be revenged on Sancroft, betook himself to another device.

The Western Insurrection had just broken out. The magistrates all over the country were but too ready to

listen to any accusation that might be brought against Whigs and Nonconformists. Young declared on oath

that, to his knowledge, a design had been formed in Suffolk against the life of King James, and named a peer,

several gentlemen, and ten Presbyterian ministers, as parties to the plot. Some of the accused were brought to

trial; and Young appeared in the witness box; but the story which he told was proved by overwhelming

evidence to be false. Soon after the Revolution he was again convicted of forgery, pilloried for the fourth or

fifth time, and sent to Newgate. While he lay there, he determined to try whether he should be more fortunate

as an accuser of Jacobites than he had been as an accuser of Puritans. He first addressed himself to Tillotson.

There was a horrible plot against their Majesties, a plot as deep as hell; and some of the first men in England

were concerned in it. Tillotson, though he placed little confidence in information coming from such a source,

thought that the oath which he had taken as a Privy Councillor made it his duty to mention the subject to

William. William, after his fashion, treated the matter very lightly. "I am confident," he said, "that this is a

villany; and I will have nobody disturbed on such grounds." After this rebuff, Young remained some time

quiet. But when William was on the Continent, and when the nation was agitated by the apprehension of a

French invasion and of a Jacobite insurrection, a false accuser might hope to obtain a favourable audience.

The mere oath of a man who was well known to the turnkeys of twenty gaols was not likely to injure any

body. But Young was master of a weapon which is, of all weapons, the most formidable to innocence. He had

lived during some years by counterfeiting hands, and had at length attained such consummate skill in that bad

art that even experienced clerks who were conversant with manuscript could scarcely, after the most minute

comparison, discover any difference between his imitations and the originals. He had succeeded in making a

collection of papers written by men of note who were suspected of disaffection. Some autographs he had

stolen; and some he had obtained by writing in feigned names to ask after the characters of servants or

curates. He now drew up a paper purporting to be an Association for the Restoration of the banished King.

This document set forth that the subscribers bound themselves in the presence of God to take arms for His

Majesty, and to seize on the Prince of Orange, dead or alive. To the Association Young appended the names

of Marlborough, of Cornbury, of Salisbury, of Sancroft, and of Sprat, Bishop of Rochester and Dean of

The next thing to be done was to put the paper into some hiding place in the house of one of the persons

whose signatures had been counterfeited. As Young could not quit Newgate, he was forced to employ a

subordinate agent for this purpose. He selected a wretch named Blackhead, who had formerly been convicted

of perjury and sentenced to have his ears clipped. The selection was not happy; for Blackhead had none of the

qualities which the trade of a false witness requires except wickedness. There was nothing plausible about

him. His voice was harsh. Treachery was written in all the lines of his yellow face. He had no invention, no

presence of mind, and could do little more than repeat by rote the lies taught him by others.

This man, instructed by his accomplice, repaired to Sprat's palace at Bromley, introduced himself there as the

confidential servant of an imaginary Doctor of Divinity, delivered to the Bishop, on bended knee, a letter

ingeniously manufactured by Young, and received, with the semblance of profound reverence, the episcopal

benediction. The servants made the stranger welcome. He was taken to the cellar, drank their master's health,

and entreated them to let him see the house. They could not venture to show any of the private apartments.

Blackhead, therefore, after begging importunately, but in vain, to be suffered to have one look at the study,

was forced to content himself with dropping the Association into a flowerpot which stood in a parlour near

Every thing having been thus prepared, Young informed the ministers that he could tell them something of

the highest importance to the welfare of the State, and earnestly begged to be heard. His request reached them

on perhaps the most anxious day of an anxious month. Tourville had just stood out to sea. The army of James

was embarking. London was agitated by reports about the disaffection of the naval officers. The Queen was

deliberating whether she should cashier those who were suspected, or try the effect of an appeal to their

honour and patriotism. At such a moment the ministers could not refuse to listen to any person who professed

himself able to give them valuable information. Young and his accomplice were brought before the Privy

Council. They there accused Marlborough, Cornbury, Salisbury, Sancroft and Sprat of high treason. These

great men, Young said, had invited James to invade England, and had promised to join him. The eloquent and

ingenious Bishop of Rochester had undertaken to draw up a Declaration which would inflame the nation

against the government of King William. The conspirators were bound together by a written instrument. That

instrument, signed by their own hands, would be found at Bromley if careful search was made. Young

particularly requested that the messengers might be ordered to examine the Bishop's flowerpots.

The ministers were seriously alarmed. The story was circumstantial; and part of it was probable.

Marlborough's dealings with Saint Germains were well known to Caermarthen, to Nottingham, and to

Sidney. Cornbury was a tool of Marlborough, and was the son of a nonjuror and of a notorious plotter.

Salisbury was a Papist. Sancroft had, not many months before, been, with too much show of reason,

suspected of inviting the French to invade England. Of all the accused persons Sprat was the most unlikely to

be concerned in any hazardous design. He had neither enthusiasm nor constancy. Both his ambition and his

party spirit had always been effectually kept in order by his love of ease and his anxiety for his own safety.

He had been guilty of some criminal compliances in the hope of gaining the favour of James, had sate in the

High Commission, had concurred in several iniquitous decrees pronounced by that court, and had, with

trembling hands and faltering voice, read the Declaration of Indulgence in the choir of the Abbey. But there

he had stopped. As soon as it began to be whispered that the civil and religious constitution of England would

speedily be vindicated by extraordinary means, he had resigned the powers which he had during two years

exercised in defiance of law, and had hastened to make his peace with his clerical brethren. He had in the

Convention voted for a Regency; but he had taken the oaths without hesitation; he had borne a conspicuous

part in the coronation of the new Sovereigns; and by his skilful hand had been added to the Form of Prayer

used on the fifth of November those sentences in which the Church expresses her gratitude for the second

great deliverance wrought on that day.280 Such a man, possessed of a plentiful income, of a seat in the House

of Lords, of one agreeable house among the elms of Bromley, and of another in the cloisters of Westminster,

was very unlikely to run the risk of martyrdom. He was not, indeed, on perfectly good terms with the

government. For the feeling which, next to solicitude for his own comfort and repose, seems to have had the

greatest influence on his public conduct, was his dislike of the Puritans; a dislike which sprang, not from

bigotry, but from Epicureanism. Their austerity was a reproach to his slothful and luxurious life; their

phraseology shocked his fastidious taste; and, where they were concerned, his ordinary good nature forsook

him. Loathing the nonconformists as he did, he was not likely to be very zealous for a prince whom the

nonconformists regarded as their protector. But Sprat's faults afforded ample security that he would never,

from spleen against William, engage in any plot to bring back James. Why Young should have assigned the

most perilous part in an enterprise full of peril to a man singularly pliant, cautious and selfindulgent, it is

The first step which the ministers took was to send Marlborough to the Tower. He was by far the most

formidable of all the accused persons; and that he had held a traitorous correspondence with Saint Germains

was a fact which, whether Young were perjured or not, the Queen and her chief advisers knew to be true. One

of the Clerks of the Council and several messengers were sent down to Bromley with a warrant from

Nottingham. Sprat was taken into custody. All the apartments in which it could reasonably be supposed that

he would have hidden an important document were searched, the library, the diningroom, the drawingroom,

the bedchamber, and the adjacent closets. His papers were strictly examined. Much food prose was found,

and probably some bad verse, but no treason. The messengers pried into every flowerpot that they could find,

but to no purpose. It never occurred to them to look into the room in which Blackhead had hidden the

Association: for that room was near the offices occupied by the servants, and was little used by the Bishop

and his family. The officers returned to London with their prisoner, but without the document which, if it had

Late at night he was brought to Westminster, and was suffered to sleep at his deanery. All his bookcases and

drawers were examined; and sentinels were posted at the door of his bedchamber, but with strict orders to

On the following day he was brought before the Council. The examination was conducted by Nottingham

with great humanity and courtesy. The Bishop, conscious of entire innocence, behaved with temper and

firmness. He made no complaints. "I submit," he said, "to the necessities of State in such a time of jealousy

and danger as this." He was asked whether he had drawn up a Declaration for King James, whether he had

held any correspondence with France, whether he had signed any treasonable association, and whether he

knew of any such association. To all these questions he, with perfect truth, answered in the negative, on the

word of a Christian and a Bishop. He was taken back to his deanery. He remained there in easy confinement

during ten days, and then, as nothing tending to criminate him had been discovered, was suffered to return to

Meanwhile the false accusers had been devising a new scheme. Blackhead paid another visit to Bromley, and

contrived to take the forged Association out of the place in which he had hid it, and to bring it back to Young.

One of Young's two wives then carried it to the Secretary's Office, and told a lie, invented by her husband, to

explain how a paper of such importance had come into her hands. But it was not now so easy to frighten the

ministers as it had been a few days before. The battle of La Hogue had put an end to all apprehensions of

invasion. Nottingham, therefore, instead of sending down a warrant to Bromley, merely wrote to beg that

Sprat would call on him at Whitehall. The summons was promptly obeyed, and the accused prelate was

brought face to face with Blackhead before the Council. Then the truth came out fast. The Bishop

remembered the villanous look and voice of the man who had knelt to ask the episcopal blessing. The

Bishop's secretary confirmed his master's assertions. The false witness soon lost his presence of mind. His

cheeks, always sallow, grew frightfully livid. His voice, generally loud and coarse, sank into a whisper. The

Privy Councillors saw his confusion, and crossexamined him sharply. For a time he answered their questions

by repeatedly stammering out his original lie in the original words. At last he found that he had no way of

extricating himself but by owning his guilt. He acknowledged that he had given an untrue account of his visit

to Bromley; and, after much prevarication, he related how he had hidden the Association, and how he had

removed it from its hiding place, and confessed that he had been set on by Young.

The two accomplices were then confronted. Young, with unabashed forehead, denied every thing. He knew

nothing about the flowerpots. "If so," cried Nottingham and Sidney together, "why did you give such

particular directions that the flowerpots at Bromley should be searched?" "I never gave any directions about

the flowerpots," said Young. Then the whole board broke forth. "How dare you say so? We all remember it."

Still the knave stood up erect, and exclaimed, with an impudence which Oates might have envied, "This

hiding is all a trick got up between the Bishop and Blackhead. The Bishop has taken Blackhead off; and they

are both trying to stifle the plot." This was too much. There was a smile and a lifting up of hands all round the

board. "Man," cried Caermarthen, "wouldst thou have us believe that the Bishop contrived to have this paper

put where it was ten to one that our messengers had found it, and where, if they had found it, it might have

The false accusers were removed in custody. The Bishop, after warmly thanking the ministers for their fair

and honourable conduct, took his leave of them. In the antechamber he found a crowd of people staring at

Young, while Young sate, enduring the stare with the serene fortitude of a man who had looked down on far

greater multitudes from half the pillories in England. "Young," said Sprat, "your conscience must tell you that

you have cruelly wronged me. For your own sake I am sorry that you persist in denying what your associate

has confessed." "Confessed!" cried Young; "no, all is not confessed yet; and that you shall find to your

sorrow. There is such a thing as impeachment, my Lord. When Parliament sits you shall hear more of me."

"God give you repentance," answered the Bishop. "For, depend upon it, you are in much more danger of

Fortyeight hours after the detection of this execrable fraud, Marlborough was admitted to bail. Young and

Blackhead had done him an inestimable service. That he was concerned in a plot quite as criminal as that

which they had falsely imputed to him, and that the government was to possession of moral proofs of his

guilt, is now certain. But his contemporaries had not, as we have, the evidence of his perfidy before them.

They knew that he had been accused of an offence of which he was innocent, that perjury and forgery had

been employed to ruin him, and that, in consequence of these machinations, he had passed some weeks in the

Tower. There was in the public mind a very natural confusion between his disgrace and his imprisonment. He

had been imprisoned without sufficient cause. Might it not, in the absence of all information, be reasonably

presumed that he had been disgraced without sufficient cause? It was certain that a vile calumny, destitute of

all foundation, had caused him to be treated as a criminal in May. Was it not probable, then, that calumny

Young's resources were not yet exhausted. As soon as he had been carried back from Whitehall to Newgate,

he set himself to construct a new plot, and to find a new accomplice. He addressed himself to a man named

Holland, who was in the lowest state of poverty. Never, said Young, was there such a golden opportunity. A

bold, shrewd, fellow might easily earn five hundred pounds. To Holland five hundred pounds seemed

fabulous wealth. What, he asked, was he to do for it? Nothing, he was told, but to speak the truth, that was to

say, substantial truth, a little disguised and coloured. There really was a plot; and this would have been

proved if Blackhead had not been bought off. His desertion had made it necessary to call in the help of

fiction. "You must swear that you and I were in a back room upstairs at the Lobster in Southwark. Some men

came to meet us there. They gave a password before they were admitted. They were all in white camlet

cloaks. They signed the Association in our presence. Then they paid each his shilling and went away. And

you must be ready to identify my Lord Marlborough and the Bishop of Rochester as two of these men."

"How can I identify them?" said Holland, "I never saw them." "You must contrive to see them," answered the

tempter, "as soon as you can. The Bishop will be at the Abbey. Anybody about the Court will point out my

Lord Marlborough." Holland immediately went to Whitehall, and repeated this conversation to Nottingham.

The unlucky imitator of Oates was prosecuted, by order of the government, for perjury, subornation of

perjury, and forgery. He was convicted and imprisoned, was again set in the pillory, and underwent, in

addition to the exposure, about which he cared little, such a pelting as had seldom been known.282 After his

punishment, he was, during some years, lost in the crowd of pilferers, ringdroppers and sharpers who infested

the capital. At length, in the year 1700, he emerged from his obscurity, and excited a momentary interest. The

newspapers announced that Robert Young, Clerk, once so famous, had been taken up for coining, then that he

had been found guilty, then that the dead warrant had come down, and finally that the reverend gentleman

had been hanged at Tyburn, and had greatly edified a large assembly of spectators by his penitence.283

EmperorSpainWilliam succeeds in preventing the Dissolution of the CoalitionNew Arrangements for

the Government of the Spanish NetherlandsLewis takes the Field Siege of NamurLewis returns to

VersaillesLuxemburgBattle of SteinkirkConspiracy of GrandvalReturn of William to England

Naval MaladministrationEarthquake at Port RoyalDistress in England; Increase of CrimeMeeting of

Parliament; State of PartiesThe King's Speech; Question of Privilege raised by the LordsDebates on the

State of the NationBill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of TreasonCase of Lord Mohun Debates

on the India TradeSupplyWays and Means; Land Tax Origin of the National DebtParliamentary

ReformThe Place BillThe Triennial BillThe First Parliamentary Discussion on the Liberty of the

PressState of IrelandThe King refuses to pass the Triennial BillMinisterial ArrangementsThe King

WHILE England was agitated, first by the dread of an invasion, and then by joy at the deliverance wrought

for her by the valour of her seamen, important events were taking place on the Continent. On the sixth of

March the King had arrived at the Hague, and had proceeded to make his arrangements for the approaching

The prospect which lay before him was gloomy. The coalition of which he was the author and the chief had,

during some months, been in constant danger of dissolution. By what strenuous exertions, by what ingenious

expedients, by what blandishments, by what bribes, he succeeded in preventing his allies from throwing

themselves, one by one, at the feet of France, can be but imperfectly known. The fullest and most authentic

record of the labours and sacrifices by which he kept together, during eight years, a crowd of fainthearted and

treacherous potentates, negligent of the common interest and jealous of each other, is to be found in his

correspondence with Heinsius. In that correspondence William is all himself. He had, in the course of his

eventful life, to sustain some high parts for which he was not eminently qualified; and, in those parts, his

success was imperfect. As Sovereign of England, he showed abilities and virtues which entitle him to

honourable mention in history; but his deficiencies were great. He was to the last a stranger amongst us, cold,

reserved, never in good spirits, never at his ease. His kingdom was a place of exile. His finest palaces were

prisons. He was always counting the days which must elapse before he should again see the land of his birth,

the clipped trees, the wings of the innumerable windmills, the nests of the storks on the tall gables, and the

long lines of painted villas reflected in the sleeping canals. He took no pains to hide the preference which he

felt for his native soil and for his early friends; and therefore, though he rendered great services to our

country, he did not reign in our hearts. As a general in the field, again, he showed rare courage and capacity;

but, from whatever cause, he was, as a tactician, inferior to some of his contemporaries, who, in general

powers of mind, were far inferior to him. The business for which he was preeminently fitted was diplomacy,

in the highest sense of the word. It may be doubted whether he has ever had a superior in the art of

conducting those great negotiations on which the welfare of the commonwealth of nations depends. His skill

in this department of politics was never more severely tasked or more signally proved than during the latter

One of his chief difficulties was caused by the sullen and menacing demeanour of the Northern powers.

Denmark and Sweden had at one time seemed disposed to join the coalition; but they had early become cold,

and were fast becoming hostile. From France they flattered themselves that they had little to fear. It was not

very probable that her armies would cross the Elbe, or that her fleets would force a passage through the

Sound. But the naval strength of England and Holland united might well excite apprehension at Stockholm

and Copenhagen. Soon arose vexatious questions of maritime right, questions such as, in almost every

extensive war of modern times, have arisen between belligerents and neutrals. The Scandinavian princes

complained that the legitimate trade between the Baltic and France was tyrannically interrupted. Though they

had not in general been on very friendly terms with each other, they began to draw close together, intrigued at

every petty German court, and tried to form what William called a Third Party in Europe. The King of

Sweden, who, as Duke of Pomerania, was bound to send three thousand men for the defence of the Empire,

sent, instead of them, his advice that the allies would make peace on the best terms which they could get.285

The King of Denmark seized a great number of Dutch merchantships, and collected in Holstein an army

which caused no small uneasiness to his neighbours. "I fear," William wrote, in an hour of deep dejection, to

Heinsius, "I fear that the object of this Third Party is a peace which will bring in its train the slavery of

Europe. The day will come when Sweden and her confederates will know too late how great an error they

have committed. They are farther, no doubt, than we from the danger; and therefore it is that they are thus

bent on working our ruin and their own. That France will now consent to reasonable terms is not to be

expected; and it were better to fall sword in hand than to submit to whatever she may dictate."286

While the King was thus disquieted by the conduct of the Northern powers, ominous signs began to appear in

a very different quarter. It had, from the first, been no easy matter to induce sovereigns who hated, and who,

in their own dominions, persecuted, the Protestant religion, to countenance the revolution which had saved

that religion from a great peril. But happily the example and the authority of the Vatican had overcome their

scruples. Innocent the Eleventh and Alexander the Eighth had regarded William with ill concealed partiality.

He was not indeed their friend; but he was their enemy's enemy; and James had been, and, if restored, must

again be, their enemy's vassal. To the heretic nephew therefore they gave their effective support, to the

orthodox uncle only compliments and benedictions. But Alexander the Eighth had occupied the papal throne

little more than fifteen months. His successor, Antonio Pignatelli, who took the name of Innocent the

Twelfth, was impatient to be reconciled to Lewis. Lewis was now sensible that he had committed a great

error when he had roused against himself at once the spirit of Protestantism and the spirit of Popery. He

permitted the French Bishops to submit themselves to the Holy See. The dispute, which had, at one time,

seemed likely to end in a great Gallican schism, was accommodated; and there was reason to believe that the

influence of the head of the Church would be exerted for the purpose of severing the ties which bound so

Meanwhile the coalition, which the Third Party on one side and the Pope on the other were trying to dissolve,

was in no small danger of falling to pieces from mere rottenness. Two of the allied powers, and two only,

were hearty in the common cause; England, drawing after her the other British kingdoms; and Holland,

drawing after her the other Batavian commonwealths. England and Holland were indeed torn by internal

factions, and were separated from each other by mutual jealousies and antipathies; but both were fully

resolved not to submit to French domination; and both were ready to bear their share, and more than their

share, of the charges of the contest. Most of the members of the confederacy were not nations, but men, an

Emperor, a King, Electors, Dukes; and of these men there was scarcely one whose whole soul was in the

struggle, scarcely one who did not hang back, who did not find some excuse for omitting to fulfil his

engagements, who did not expect to be hired to defend his own rights and interests against the common

enemy. But the war was the war of the people of England and of the people of Holland. Had it not been so,

the burdens which it made necessary would not have been borne by either England or Holland during a single

year. When William said that he would rather die sword in hand than humble himself before France, he

expressed what was felt, not by himself alone, but by two great communities of which he was the first

magistrate. With those two communities, unhappily, other states had little sympathy. Indeed those two

communities were regarded by other states as rich, plaindealing, generous dupes are regarded by needy

sharpers. England and Holland were wealthy; and they were zealous. Their wealth excited the cupidity of the

whole alliance; and to that wealth their zeal was the key. They were persecuted with sordid importunity by all

their confederates, from Caesar, who, in the pride of his solitary dignity, would not honour King William

with the title of Majesty, down to the smallest Margrave who could see his whole principality from the

cracked windows of the mean and ruinous old house which he called his palace. It was not enough that

England and Holland furnished much more than their contingents to the war by land, and bore unassisted the

whole charge of the war by sea. They were beset by a crowd of illustrious mendicants, some rude, some

obsequious, but all indefatigable and insatiable. One prince came mumping to them annually with a

lamentable story about his distresses. A more sturdy beggar threatened to join the Third Party, and to make a

separate peace with France, if his demands were not granted. Every Sovereign too had his ministers and

favourites; and these ministers and favourites were perpetually hinting that France was willing to pay them

for detaching their masters from the coalition, and that it would be prudent in England and Holland to outbid

Yet the embarrassment caused by the rapacity of the allied courts was scarcely greater than the

embarrassment caused by their ambition and their pride. This prince had set his heart on some childish

distinction, a title or a cross, and would do nothing for the common cause till his wishes were accomplished.

That prince chose to fancy that he had been slighted, and would not stir till reparation had been made to him.

The Duke of Brunswick Lunenburg would not furnish a battalion for the defence of Germany unless he was

made an Elector.287 The Elector of Brandenburg declared that he was as hostile as he had ever been to

France; but he had been ill used by the Spanish government; and he therefore would not suffer his soldiers to

be employed in the defence of the Spanish Netherlands. He was willing to bear his share of the war; but it

must be in his own way; he must have the command of a distinct army; and he must be stationed between the

Rhine and the Meuse.288 The Elector of Saxony complained that bad winter quarters had been assigned to

his troops; he therefore recalled them just when they should have been preparing to take the field, but very

coolly offered to send them back if England and Holland would give him four hundred thousand

It might have been expected that at least the two chiefs of the House of Austria would have put forth, at this

conjuncture, all their strength against the rival House of Bourbon. Unfortunately they could not be induced to

exert themselves vigorously even for their own preservation. They were deeply interested in keeping the

French out of Italy. Yet they could with difficulty be prevailed upon to lend the smallest assistance to the

Duke of Savoy. They seemed to think it the business of England and Holland to defend the passes of the

Alps, and to prevent the armies of Lewis from overflowing Lombardy. To the Emperor indeed the war

against France was a secondary object. His first object was the war against Turkey. He was dull and bigoted.

His mind misgave him that the war against France was, in some sense, a war against the Catholic religion;

and the war against Turkey was a crusade. His recent campaign on the Danube had been successful. He might

easily have concluded an honourable peace with the Porte, and have turned his arms westward. But he had

conceived the hope that he might extend his hereditary dominions at the expense of the Infidels. Visions of a

triumphant entry into Constantinople and of a Te Deum in Saint Sophia's had risen in his brain. He not only

employed in the East a force more than sufficient to have defended Piedmont and reconquered Loraine; but

he seemed to think that England and Holland were bound to reward him largely for neglecting their interests

Spain already was what she continued to be down to our own time. Of the Spain which had domineered over

the land and the ocean, over the Old and the New World, of the Spain which had, in the short space of twelve

years, led captive a Pope and a King of France, a Sovereign of Mexico and a Sovereign of Peru, of the Spain

which had sent an army to the walls of Paris and had equipped a mighty fleet to invade England, nothing

remained but an arrogance which had once excited terror and hatred, but which could now excite only

derision. In extent, indeed, the dominions of the Catholic King exceeded those of Rome when Rome was at

the zenith of power. But the huge mass lay torpid and helpless, and could be insulted or despoiled with

impunity. The whole administration, military and naval, financial and colonial, was utterly disorganized.

Charles was a fit representative of his kingdom, impotent physically, intellectually and morally, sunk in

ignorance, listlessness and superstition, yet swollen with a notion of his own dignity, and quick to imagine

and to resent affronts. So wretched had his education been that, when he was told of the fall of Mons, the

most important fortress in his vast empire, he asked whether Mons was in England.291 Among the ministers

who were raised up and pulled down by his sickly caprice, was none capable of applying a remedy to the

distempers of the State. In truth to brace anew the nerves of that paralysed body would have been a hard task

even for Ximenes. No servant of the Spanish Crown occupied a more important post, and none was more

unfit for an important post, than the Marquess of Gastanaga. He was Governor of the Netherlands; and in the

Netherlands it seemed probable that the fate of Christendom would be decided. He had discharged his trust as

every public trust was then discharged in every part of that vast monarchy on which it was boastfully said that

the sun never set. Fertile and rich as was the country which he ruled, he threw on England and Holland the

whole charge of defending it. He expected that arms, ammunition, waggons, provisions, every thing, would

be furnished by the heretics. It had never occurred to him that it was his business, and not theirs, to put Mons

in a condition to stand a siege. The public voice loudly accused him of having sold that celebrated stronghold

to France. But it is probable that he was guilty of nothing worse than the haughty apathy and sluggishness

Such was the state of the coalition of which William was the head. There were moments when he felt himself

overwhelmed, when his spirits sank, when his patience was wearied out, and when his constitutional

irritability broke forth. "I cannot," he wrote, "offer a suggestion without being met by a demand for a

subsidy."292 "I have refused point blank," he wrote on another occasion, when he had been importuned for

money, "it is impossible that the States General and England can bear the charge of the army on the Rhine, of

the army in Piedmont, and of the whole defence of Flanders, to say nothing of the immense cost of the naval

war. If our allies can do nothing for themselves, the sooner the alliance goes to pieces the better."293 But,

after every short fit of despondency and ill humour, he called up all the force of his mind, and put a strong

curb on his temper. Weak, mean, false, selfish, as too many of the confederates were, it was only by their

help that he could accomplish what he had from his youth up considered as his mission. If they abandoned

him, France would be dominant without a rival in Europe. Well as they deserved to be punished, he would

not, to punish them, acquiesce in the subjugation of the whole civilised world. He set himself therefore to

surmount some difficulties and to evade others. The Scandinavian powers he conciliated by waiving,

reluctantly indeed, and not without a hard internal struggle, some of his maritime rights.294 At Rome his

influence, though indirectly exercised, balanced that of the Pope himself. Lewis and James found that they

had not a friend at the Vatican except Innocent; and Innocent, whose nature was gentle and irresolute, shrank

from taking a course directly opposed to the sentiments of all who surrounded him. In private conversations

with Jacobite agents he declared himself devoted to the interests of the House of Stuart; but in his public acts

he observed a strict neutrality. He sent twenty thousand crowns to Saint Germains; but he excused himself to

the enemies of France by protesting that this was not a subsidy for any political purpose, but merely an alms

to be distributed among poor British Catholics. He permitted prayers for the good cause to be read in the

English College at Rome; but he insisted that those prayers should be drawn up in general terms, and that no

name should be mentioned. It was in vain that the ministers of the Houses of Stuart and Bourbon adjured him

to take a more decided course. "God knows," he exclaimed on one occasion, "that I would gladly shed my

blood to restore the King of England. But what can I do? If I stir, I am told that I am favouring the French,

and helping them to set up an universal monarchy. I am not like the old Popes. Kings will not listen to me as

they listened to my predecessors. There is no religion now, nothing but wicked, worldly policy. The Prince of

Orange is master. He governs us all. He has got such a hold on the Emperor and on the King of Spain that

neither of them dares to displease him. God help us! He alone can help us." And, as the old man spoke, he

To keep the German princes steady was no easy task; but it was accomplished. Money was distributed among

them, much less indeed than they asked, but much more than they had any decent pretence for asking. With

the Elector of Saxony a composition was made. He had, together with a strong appetite for subsidies, a great

desire to be a member of the most select and illustrious orders of knighthood. It seems that, instead of the

four hundred thousand rixdollars which he had demanded, he consented to accept one hundred thousand and

the Garter.296 His prime minister Schoening, the most covetous and perfidious of mankind, was secured by a

pension.297 For the Duke of Brunswick Lunenburg, William, not without difficulty, procured the long

desired title of Elector of Hanover. By such means as these the breaches which had divided the coalition were

so skilfully repaired that it appeared still to present a firm front to the enemy. William had complained

bitterly to the Spanish government of the incapacity and inertness of Gastanaga. The Spanish government,

helpless and drowsy as it was, could not be altogether insensible to the dangers which threatened Flanders

and Brabant. Gastanaga was recalled; and William was invited to take upon himself the government of the

Low Countries, with powers not less than regal. Philip the Second would not easily have believed that, within

a century after his death, his greatgrandson would implore the greatgrandson of William the Silent to exercise

The offer was in one sense tempting; but William was too wise to accept it. He knew that the population of

the Spanish Netherlands was firmly attached to the Church of Rome. Every act of a Protestant ruler was

certain to be regarded with suspicion by the clergy and people of those countries. Already Gastanaga,

mortified by his disgrace, had written to inform the Court of Rome that changes were in contemplation which

would make Ghent and Antwerp as heretical as Amsterdam and London.299 It had doubtless also occurred to

William that if, by governing mildly and justly, and by showing a decent respect for the ceremonies and the

ministers of the Roman Catholic religion, he should succeed in obtaining the confidence of the Belgians, he

would inevitably raise against himself a storm of obloquy in our island. He knew by experience what it was

to govern two nations strongly attached to two different Churches. A large party among the Episcopalians of

England could not forgive him for having consented to the establishment of the presbyterian polity in

Scotland. A large party among the Presbyterians of Scotland blamed him for maintaining the episcopal polity

in England. If he now took under his protection masses, processions, graven images, friaries, nunneries, and,

worst of all, Jesuit pulpits, Jesuit confessionals and Jesuit colleges, what could he expect but that England and

Scotland would join in one cry of reprobation? He therefore refused to accept the government of the Low

Countries, and proposed that it should be entrusted to the Elector of Bavaria. The Elector of Bavaria was,

after the Emperor, the most powerful of the Roman Catholic potentates of Germany. He was young, brave,

and ambitious of military distinction. The Spanish Court was willing to appoint him, and he was desirous to

be appointed; but much delay was caused by an absurd difficulty. The Elector thought it beneath him to ask

for what he wished to have. The formalists of the Cabinet of Madrid thought it beneath the dignity of the

Catholic King to give what had not been asked. Mediation was necessary, and was at last successful. But

much time was lost; and the spring was far advanced before the new Governor of the Netherlands entered on

William had saved the coalition from the danger of perishing by disunion. But by no remonstrance, by no

entreaty, by no bribe, could he prevail on his allies to be early in the field. They ought to have profited by the

severe lesson which had been given them in the preceding year. But again every one of them lingered, and

wondered why the rest were lingering; and again he who singly wielded the whole power of France was

found, as his haughty motto had long boasted, a match for a multitude of adversaries.301 His enemies, while

still unready, learned with dismay that he had taken the field in person at the head of his nobility. On no

occasion had that gallant aristocracy appeared with more splendour in his train. A single circumstance may

suffice to give a notion of the pomp and luxury of his camp. Among the musketeers of his household rode,

for the first time, a stripling of seventeen, who soon afterwards succeeded to the title of Duke of Saint Simon,

and to whom we owe those inestimable memoirs which have preserved, for the delight and instruction of

many lands and of many generations, the vivid picture of a France which has long passed away. Though the

boy's family was at that time very hard pressed for money, he travelled with thirtyfive horses and sumpter

mules. The princesses of the blood, each surrounded by a group of highborn and graceful ladies, accompanied

the King; and the smiles of so many charming women inspired the throng of vain and voluptuous but

highspirited gentlemen with more than common courage. In the brilliant crowd which surrounded the French

Augustus appeared the French Virgil, the graceful, the tender, the melodious Racine. He had, in conformity

with the prevailing fashion, become devout, had given up writing for the theatre; and, having determined to

apply himself vigorously to the discharge of the duties which belonged to him as historiographer of France,

he now came to see the great events which it was his office to record.302 In the neighbourhood of Mons,

Lewis entertained the ladies with the most magnificent review that had ever been seen in modern Europe. A

hundred and twenty thousand of the finest troops in the world were drawn up in a line eight miles long. It

may be doubted whether such an army had ever been brought together under the Roman eagles. The show

began early in the morning, and was not over when the long summer day closed. Racine left the ground,

astonished, deafened, dazzled, and tired to death. In a private letter he ventured to give utterance to an

amiable wish which he probably took good care not to whisper in the courtly circle: "Would to heaven that all

these poor fellows were in their cottages again with their wives and their little ones!"303

After this superb pageant Lewis announced his intention of attacking Namur. In five days he was under the

walls of that city, at the head of more than thirty thousand men. Twenty thousand peasants, pressed in those

parts of the Netherlands which the French occupied, were compelled to act as pioneers. Luxemburg, with

eighty thousand men, occupied a strong position on the road between Namur and Brussels, and was prepared

to give battle to any force which might attempt to raise the siege.304 This partition of duties excited no

surprise. It had long been known that the great Monarch loved sieges, and that he did not love battles. He

professed to think that the real test of military skill was a siege. The event of an encounter between two

armies on an open plain was, in his opinion, often determined by chance; but only science could prevail

against ravelins and bastions which science had constructed. His detractors sneeringly pronounced it

fortunate that the department of the military art which His Majesty considered as the noblest was one in

which it was seldom necessary for him to expose to serious risk a life invaluable to his people.

Namur, situated at the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse, was one of the great fortresses of Europe.

The town lay in the plain, and had no strength except what was derived from art. But art and nature had

combined to fortify that renowned citadel which, from the summit of a lofty rock, looks down on a boundless

expanse of cornfields, woods and meadows, watered by two fine rivers. The people of the city and of the

surrounding region were proud of their impregnable castle. Their boast was that never, in all the wars which

had devastated the Netherlands, had skill or valour been able to penetrate those walls. The neighbouring

fastnesses, famed throughout the world for their strength, Antwerp and Ostend, Ypres, Lisle and Tournay,

Mons and Valenciennes, Cambray and Charleroi, Limburg and Luxemburg, had opened their gates to

conquerors; but never once had the flag been pulled down from the battlements of Namur. That nothing

might be wanting to the interest of the siege, the two great masters of the art of fortification were opposed to

each other. Vauban had during many years been regarded as the first of engineers; but a formidable rival had

lately arisen, Menno, Baron of Cohorn, the ablest officer in the service of the States General. The defences of

Namur had been recently strengthened and repaired under Cohorn's superintendence; and he was now within

the walls. Vauban was in the camp of Lewis. It might therefore be expected that both the attack and the

By this time the allied armies had assembled; but it was too late.305 William hastened towards Namur. He

menaced the French works, first from the west, then from the north, then from the east. But between him and

the lines of circumvallation lay the army of Luxemburg, turning as he turned, and always so strongly posted

that to attack it would have been the height of imprudence. Meanwhile the besiegers, directed by the skill of

Vauban and animated by the presence of Lewis, made rapid progress. There were indeed many difficulties to

be surmounted and many hardships to be endured. The weather was stormy; and, on the eighth of June, the

feast of Saint Medard, who holds in the French Calendar the same inauspicious place which in our Calendar

belongs to Saint Swithin, the rain fell in torrents. The Sambre rose and covered many square miles on which

the harvest was green. The Mehaigne whirled down its bridges to the Meuse. All the roads became swamps.

The trenches were so deep in water and mire that it was the business of three days to move a gun from one

battery to another. The six thousand waggons which had accompanied the French army were useless. It was

necessary that gunpowder, bullets, corn, hay, should be carried from place to place on the backs of the war

horses. Nothing but the authority of Lewis could, in such circumstances, have maintained order and inspired

cheerfulness. His soldiers, in truth, showed much more reverence for him than for what their religion had

made sacred. They cursed Saint Medard heartily, and broke or burned every image of him that could be

found. But for their King there was nothing that they were not ready to do and to bear. In spite of every

obstacle they constantly gained ground. Cohorn was severely wounded while defending with desperate

resolution a fort which he had himself constructed, and of which he was proud. His place could not be

supplied. The governor was a feeble man whom Gastanaga had appointed, and whom William had recently

advised the Elector of Bavaria to remove. The spirit of the garrison gave way. The town surrendered on the

The history of the fall of Namur in 1692 bears a close resemblance to the history of the fail of Mons in 1691.

Both in 1691 and in 1692, Lewis, the sole and absolute master of the resources of his kingdom, was able to

open the campaign, before William, the captain of a coalition, had brought together his dispersed forces. In

both years the advantage of having the first move decided the event of the game. At Namur, as at Mons,

Lewis, assisted by Vauban conducted the siege; Luxemburg covered it; William vainly tried to raise it, and,

In one respect however the fate of the two fortresses was very different. Mons was delivered up by its own

inhabitants. Namur might perhaps have been saved if the garrison had been as zealous and determined as the

population. Strange to say, in this place, so long subject to a foreign rule, there was found a patriotism

resembling that of the little Greek commonwealths. There is no reason to believe that the burghers cared

about the balance of power, or had any preference for James or for William, for the Most Christian King or

for the Most Catholic King. But every citizen considered his own honour as bound up with the honour of the

maiden fortress. It is true that the French did not abuse their victory. No outrage was committed; the

privileges of the municipality were respected, the magistrates were not changed. Yet the people could not see

a conqueror enter their hitherto unconquered castle without tears of rage and shame. Even the barefooted

Carmelites, who had renounced all pleasures, all property, all society, all domestic affection, whose days

were all fast days, who passed month after month without uttering a word, were strangely moved. It was in

vain that Lewis attempted to soothe them by marks of respect and by munificent bounty. Whenever they met

a French uniform they turned their heads away with a look which showed that a life of prayer, of abstinence

This was perhaps the moment at which the arrogance of Lewis reached the highest point. He had achieved the

last and the most splendid military exploit of his life. His confederated foes, English, Dutch and German, had,

in their own despite, swelled his triumph, and had been witnesses of the glory which made their hearts sick.

His exultation was boundless. The inscriptions on the medals which he struck to commemorate his success,

the letters by which he enjoined the prelates of his kingdom to sing the Te Deum, were boastful and sarcastic.

His people, a people among whose many fine qualities moderation in prosperity cannot be reckoned, seemed

for a time to be drunk with pride. Even Boileau, hurried along by the prevailing enthusiasm, forgot the good

sense and good taste to which he owed his reputation. He fancied himself a lyric poet, and gave vent to his

feelings in a hundred and sixty lines of frigid bombast about Alcides, Mars, Bacchus, Ceres, the lyre of

Orpheus, the Thracian oaks and the Permessian nymphs. He wondered whether Namur, had, like Troy, been

built by Apollo and Neptune. He asked what power could subdue a city stronger than that before which the

Greeks lay ten years; and he returned answer to himself that such a miracle could be wrought only by Jupiter

or by Lewis. The feather in the hat of Lewis was the loadstar of victory. To Lewis all things must yield,

princes, nations, winds, waters. In conclusion the poet addressed himself to the banded enemies of France,

and tauntingly bade them carry back to their homes the tidings that Namur had been taken in their sight.

Before many months had elapsed both the boastful king and the boastful poet were taught that it is prudent as

One mortification Lewis had suffered even in the midst of his prosperity. While he lay before Namur, he

heard the sounds of rejoicing from the distant camp of the allies. Three peals of thunder from a hundred and

forty pieces of cannon were answered by three volleys from sixty thousand muskets. It was soon known that

these salutes were fired on account of the battle of La Hogue. The French King exerted himself to appear

serene. "They make a strange noise," he said, "about the burning of a few ships." In truth he was much

disturbed, and the more so because a report had reached the Low Countries that there had been a sea fight,

and that his fleet had been victorious. His good humour however was soon restored by the brilliant success of

those operations which were under his own immediate direction. When the siege was over, he left

Luxemburg in command of the army, and returned to Versailles. At Versailles the unfortunate Tourville soon

presented himself, and was graciously received. As soon as he appeared in the circle, the King welcomed him

in a loud voice. "I am perfectly satisfied with you and with my sailors. We have been beaten, it is true; but

Though Lewis had quitted the Netherlands, the eyes of all Europe were still fixed on that region. The armies

there had been strengthened by reinforcements drawn from many quarters. Every where else the military

operations of the year were languid and without interest. The Grand Vizier and Lewis of Baden did little

more than watch each other on the Danube. Marshal Noailles and the Duke of Medina Sidonia did little more

than watch each other under the Pyrenees. On the Upper Rhine, and along the frontier which separates France

from Piedmont, an indecisive predatory war was carried on, by which the soldiers suffered little and the

cultivators of the soil much. But all men looked, with anxious expectation of some great event, to the frontier

Luxemburg, now in his sixtysixth year, had risen, by slow degrees, and by the deaths of several great men,

to the first place among the generals of his time. He was of that noble house of Montmorency which united

many mythical and many historical titles to glory, which boasted that it sprang from the first Frank who was

baptized into the name of Christ in the fifth century, and which had, since the eleventh century, given to

France a long and splendid succession of Constables and Marshals. In valour and abilities Luxemburg was

not inferior to any of his illustrious race. But, highly descended and highly gifted as he was, he had with

difficulty surmounted the obstacles which impeded him in the road to fame. If he owed much to the bounty of

nature and fortune, he had suffered still more from their spite. His features were frightfully harsh, his stature

was diminutive; a huge and pointed hump rose on his back. His constitution was feeble and sickly. Cruel

imputations had been thrown on his morals. He had been accused of trafficking with sorcerers and with

vendors of poison, had languished long in a dungeon, and had at length regained his liberty without entirely

regaining his honour.309 He had always been disliked both by Louvois and by Lewis. Yet the war against the

European coalition had lasted but a very short time when both the minister and the King felt that the general

who was personally odious to them was necessary to the state. Conde and Turenne were no more; and

Luxemburg was without dispute the first soldier that France still possessed. In vigilance, diligence and

perseverance he was deficient. He seemed to reserve his great qualities for great emergencies. It was on a

pitched field of battle that he was all himself. His glance was rapid and unerring. His judgment was clearest

and surest when responsibility pressed heaviest on him and when difficulties gathered thickest around him.

To his skill, energy and presence of mind his country owed some glorious days. But, though eminently

successful in battles, he was not eminently successful in campaigns. He gained immense renown at William's

expense; and yet there was, as respected the objects of the war, little to choose between the two commanders.

Luxemburg was repeatedly victorious; but he had not the art of improving a victory. William was repeatedly

In the month of July William's headquarters were at Lambeque. About six miles off, at Steinkirk, Luxemburg

had encamped with the main body of his army; and about six miles further off lay a considerable force

commanded by the Marquess of Boufflers, one of the best officers in the service of Lewis.

The country between Lambeque and Steinkirk was intersected by innumerable hedges and ditches; and

neither army could approach the other without passing through several long and narrow defiles. Luxemburg

had therefore little reason to apprehend that he should be attacked in his entrenchments; and he felt assured

that he should have ample notice before any attack was made; for he had succeeded in corrupting an

adventurer named Millevoix, who was chief musician and private secretary of the Elector of Bavaria. This

man regularly sent to the French headquarters authentic information touching the designs of the allies.

The Marshal, confident in the strength of his position and in the accuracy of his intelligence, lived in his tent

as he was accustomed to live in his hotel at Paris. He was at once a valetudinarian and a voluptuary; and, in

both characters, he loved his ease. He scarcely ever mounted his horse. Light conversation and cards

occupied most of his hours. His table was luxurious; and, when he had sate down to supper, it was a service

of danger to disturb him. Some scoffers remarked that in his military dispositions he was not guided

exclusively by military reasons, that he generally contrived to entrench himself in some place where the veal

and the poultry were remarkably good, and that he was always solicitous to keep open such communications

with the sea as might ensure him, from September to April, a regular supply of Sandwich oysters.

If there were any agreeable women in the neighbourhood of his camp, they were generally to be found at his

banquets. It may easily be supposed that, under such a commander, the young princes and nobles of France

While he was amusing himself after his wonted fashion, the confederate princes discovered that their

counsels were betrayed. A peasant picked up a letter which had been dropped, and carried it to the Elector of

Bavaria. It contained full proofs of the guilt of Millevoix. William conceived a hope that he might be able to

take his enemies in the snare which they had laid for him. The perfidious secretary was summoned to the

royal presence and taxed with his crime. A pen was put into his hand; a pistol was held to his breast; and he

was commanded to write on pain of instant death. His letter, dictated by William, was conveyed to the French

camp. It apprised Luxemburg that the allies meant to send out a strong foraging party on the next day. In

order to protect this party from molestation, some battalions of infantry, accompanied by artillery, would

march by night to occupy the defiles which lay between the armies. The Marshal read, believed and went to

rest, while William urged forward the preparations for a general assault on the French lines.

The whole allied army was under arms while it was still dark. In the grey of the morning Luxemburg was

awakened by scouts, who brought tidings that the enemy was advancing in great force. He at first treated the

news very lightly. His correspondent, it seemed, had been, as usual, diligent and exact. The Prince of Orange

had sent out a detachment to protect his foragers, and this detachment had been magnified by fear into a great

host. But one alarming report followed another fast. All the passes, it was said, were choked with multitudes

of foot, horse and artillery, under the banners of England and of Spain, of the United Provinces and of the

Empire; and every column was moving towards Steinkirk. At length the Marshal rose, got on horseback, and

By this time the vanguard of the allies was close to his outposts. About half a mile in advance of his army

was encamped a brigade named from the province of Bourbonnais. These troops had to bear the first brunt of

the onset. Amazed and panicstricken, they were swept away in a moment, and ran for their lives, leaving their

Thus far William's plans had been completely successful but now fortune began to turn against him. He had

been misinformed as to the nature of the ground which lay between the station of the brigade of Bourbonnais

and the main encampment of the enemy. He had expected that he should be able to push forward without a

moment's pause, that he should find the French army in a state of wild disorder, and that his victory would be

easy and complete. But his progress was obstructed by several fences and ditches; there was a short delay;

and a short delay sufficed to frustrate his design. Luxemburg was the very man for such a conjuncture. He

had committed great faults; he had kept careless guard; he had trusted implicitly to information which had

proved false; he had neglected information which had proved true; one of his divisions was flying in

confusion; the other divisions were unprepared for action. That crisis would have paralysed the faculties of an

ordinary captain; it only braced and stimulated those of Luxemburg. His mind, nay his sickly and distorted

body, seemed to derive health and vigour from disaster and dismay. In a short time he had disposed every

thing. The French army was in battle order. Conspicuous in that great array were the household troops of

Lewis, the most renowned body of fighting men in Europe; and at their head appeared, glittering in lace and

embroidery hastily thrown on and half fastened, a crowd of young princes and lords who had just been roused

by the trumpet from their couches or their revels, and who had hastened to look death in the face with the gay

and festive intrepidity characteristic of French gentlemen. Highest in rank among these highborn warriors

was a lad of sixteen, Philip Duke of Chartres, son of the Duke of Orleans, and nephew of the King of France.

It was with difficulty and by importunate solicitation that the gallant boy had extorted Luxemburg's

permission to be where the fire was hottest. Two other youths of royal blood, Lewis Duke of Bourbon, and

Armand Prince of Conti, showed a spirit worthy of their descent. With them was a descendant of one of the

bastards of Henry the Fourth, Lewis Duke of Vendome, a man sunk in indolence and in the foulest vice, yet

capable of exhibiting on a great occasion the qualities of a great soldier. Berwick, who was beginning to earn

for himself an honourable name in arms, was there; and at his side rode Sarsfield, whose courage and ability

earned, on that day, the esteem of the whole French army. Meanwhile Luxemburg had sent off a pressing

message to summon Boufflers. But the message was needless. Boufflers had heard the firing, and, like a

brave and intelligent captain, was already hastening towards the point from which the sound came.

Though the assailants had lost all the advantage which belongs to a surprise, they came on manfully. In the

front of the battle were the British commanded by Count Solmes. The division which was to lead the way

was Mackay's. He was to have been supported, according to William's plan, by a strong body of foot and

horse. Though most of Mackay's men had never before been under fire, their behaviour gave promise of

Blenheim and Ramilies. They first encountered the Swiss, who held a distinguished place in the French army.

The fight was so close and desperate that the muzzles of the muskets crossed. The Swiss were driven back

with fearful slaughter. More than eighteen hundred of them appear from the French returns to have been

killed or wounded. Luxemburg afterwards said that he had never in his life seen so furious a struggle. He

collected in haste the opinion of the generals who surrounded him. All thought that the emergency was one

which could be met by no common means. The King's household must charge the English. The Marshal gave

the word; and the household, headed by the princes of the blood, came on, flinging their muskets back on

their shoulders. "Sword in hand," was the cry through all the ranks of that terrible brigade: "sword in hand.

No firing. Do it with the cold steel." After a long and desperate resistance the English were borne down. They

never ceased to repeat that, if Solmes had done his duty by them, they would have beaten even the household.

But Solmes gave them no effective support. He pushed forward some cavalry which, from the nature of the

ground, could do little or nothing. His infantry he would not suffer to stir. They could do no good, he said,

and he would not send them to be slaughtered. Ormond was eager to hasten to the assistance of his

countrymen, but was not permitted. Mackay sent a pressing message to represent that he and his men were

left to certain destruction; but all was vain. "God's will be done," said the brave veteran. He died as he had

lived, like a good Christian and a good soldier. With him fell Douglas and Lanier, two generals distinguished

among the conquerors of Ireland. Mountjoy too was among the slain. After languishing three years in the

Bastile, he had just been exchanged for Richard Hamilton, and, having been converted to Whiggism by

wrongs more powerful than all the arguments of Locke and Sidney, had instantly hastened to join William's

camp as a volunteer.311 Five fine regiments were entirely cut to pieces. No part of this devoted band would

have escaped but for the courage and conduct of Auverquerque, who came to the rescue in the moment of

extremity with two fresh battalions. The gallant manner in which he brought off the remains of Mackay's

division was long remembered with grateful admiration by the British camp fires. The ground where the

conflict had raged was piled with corpses; and those who buried the slain remarked that almost all the

It was said that William so far forgot his wonted stoicism as to utter a passionate exclamation at the way in

which the English regiments had been sacrificed. Soon, however, he recovered his equanimity, and

determined to fall back. It was high time; for the French army was every moment becoming stronger, as the

regiments commanded by Boufflers came up in rapid succession. The allied army returned to Lambeque

The French owned that they had about seven thousand men killed and wounded. The loss of the allies had

been little, if at all, greater. The relative strength of the armies was what it had been on the preceding day;

and they continued to occupy their old positions. But the moral effect of the battle was great. The splendour

of William's fame grew pale. Even his admirers were forced to own that, in the field, he was not a match for

Luxemburg. In France the news was received with transports of joy and pride. The Court, the Capital, even

the peasantry of the remotest provinces, gloried in the impetuous valour which had been displayed by so

many youths, the heirs of illustrious names. It was exultingly and fondly repeated all over the kingdom that

the young Duke of Chartres could not by any remonstrances be kept out of danger, that a ball had passed

through his coat that he had been wounded in the shoulder. The people lined the roads to see the princes and

nobles who returned from Steinkirk. The jewellers devised Steinkirk buckles; the perfumers sold Steinkirk

powder. But the name of the field of battle was peculiarly given to a new species of collar. Lace neckcloths

were then worn by men of fashion; and it had been usual to arrange them with great care. But at the terrible

moment when the brigade of Bourbonnais was flying before the onset of the allies, there was no time for

foppery; and the finest gentlemen of the Court came spurring to the front of the line of battle with their rich

cravats in disorder. It therefore became a fashion among the beauties of Paris to wear round their necks

kerchiefs of the finest lace studiously disarranged; and these kerchiefs were called Steinkirks.313

In the camp of the allies all was disunion and discontent. National jealousies and animosities raged without

restraint or disguise. The resentment of the English was loudly expressed. Solmes, though he was said by

those who knew him well to have some valuable qualities, was not a man likely to conciliate soldiers who

were prejudiced against him as a foreigner. His demeanour was arrogant, his temper ungovernable. Even

before the unfortunate day of Steinkirk the English officers did not willingly communicate with him, and the

private men murmured at his harshness. But after the battle the outcry against him became furious. He was

accused, perhaps unjustly, of having said with unfeeling levity, while the English regiments were contending

desperately against great odds, that he was curious to see how the bulldogs would come off. Would any body,

it was asked, now pretend that it was on account of his superior skill and experience that he had been put over

the heads of so many English officers? It was the fashion to say that those officers had never seen war on a

large scale. But surely the merest novice was competent to do all that Solmes had done, to misunderstand

orders, to send cavalry on duty which none but infantry could perform, and to look on at safe distance while

brave men were cut to pieces. It was too much to be at once insulted and sacrificed, excluded from the

honours of war, yet pushed on all its extreme dangers, sneered at as raw recruits, and then left to cope

unsupported with the finest body of veterans in the world. Such were the complains of the English army; and

Fortunately about this time a discovery was made which furnished both the camp at Lambeque and the

coffeehouses of London with a subject of conversation much less agreeable to the Jacobites than the disaster

A plot against the life of William had been, during some months, maturing in the French War Office. It

should seem that Louvois had originally sketched the design, and had bequeathed it, still rude, to his son and

successor Barbesieux. By Barbesieux the plan was perfected. The execution was entrusted to an officer

named Grandval. Grandval was undoubtedly brave, and full of zeal for his country and his religion. He was

indeed flighty and half witted, but not on that account the less dangerous. Indeed a flighty and half witted

man is the very instrument generally preferred by cunning politicians when very hazardous work is to be

done. No shrewd calculator would, for any bribe, however enormous, have exposed himself to the fate of

Grandval secured, as he conceived, the assistance of two adventurers, Dumont, a Walloon, and Leefdale, a

Dutchman. In April, soon after William had arrived in the Low Countries, the murderers were directed to

repair to their post. Dumont was then in Westphalia. Grandval and Leefdale were at Paris. Uden in North

Brabant was fixed as the place where the three were to meet and whence they were to proceed together to the

headquarters of the allies. Before Grandval left Paris he paid a visit to Saint Germains, and was presented to

James and to Mary of Modena. "I have been informed," said James, "of the business. If you and your

After this audience Grandval set out on his journey. He had not the faintest suspicion that he had been

betrayed both by the accomplice who accompanied him and by the accomplice whom he was going to meet.

Dumont and Leefdale were not enthusiasts. They cared nothing for the restoration of James, the grandeur of

Lewis, or the ascendency of the Church of Rome. It was plain to every man of common sense that, whether

the design succeeded or failed, the reward of the assassins would probably be to be disowned, with affected

abhorrence, by the Courts of Versailles and Saint Germains, and to be torn with redhot pincers, smeared with

melted lead, and dismembered by four horses. To vulgar natures the prospect of such a martyrdom was not

alluring. Both these men, therefore, had, almost at the same time, though, as far as appears, without any

concert, conveyed to William, through different channels, warnings that his life was in danger. Dumont had

acknowledged every thing to the Duke of Zell, one of the confederate princes. Leefdale had transmitted full

intelligence through his relations who resided in Holland. Meanwhile Morel, a Swiss Protestant of great

learning who was then in France, wrote to inform Burnet that the weak and hotheaded Grandval had been

heard to talk boastfully of the event which would soon astonish the world, and had confidently predicted that

These cautions were not neglected. From the moment at which Grandval entered the Netherlands, his steps

were among snares. His movements were watched; his words were noted; he was arrested, examined,

confronted with his accomplices, and sent to the camp of the allies. About a week after the battle of Steinkirk

he was brought before a Court Martial. Ginkell, who had been rewarded for his great services in Ireland with

the title of Earl of Athlone, presided; and Talmash was among the judges. Mackay and Lanier had been

named members of the board; but they were no more; and their places were filled by younger officers.

The duty of the Court Martial was very simple; for the prisoner attempted no defence. His conscience had, it

should seem, been suddenly awakened. He admitted, with expressions of remorse, the truth of all the charges,

made a minute, and apparently an ingenuous, confession, and owned that he had deserved death. He was

sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, and underwent his punishment with great fortitude and with a

show of piety. He left behind him a few lines, in which he declared that he was about to lose his life for

His confession was immediately published in several languages, and was read with very various and very

strong emotions. That it was genuine could not be doubted; for it was warranted by the signatures of some of

the most distinguished military men living. That it was prompted by the hope of pardon could hardly be

supposed; for William had taken pains to discourage that hope. Still less could it be supposed that the

prisoner had uttered untruths in order to avoid the torture. For, though it was the universal practice in the

Netherlands to put convicted assassins to the rack in order to wring out from them the names of their

employers and associates, William had given orders that, on this occasion, the rack should not be used or

even named. It should be added, that the Court did not interrogate the prisoner closely, but suffered him to

tell his story in his own way. It is therefore reasonable to believe that his narrative is substantially true; and

no part of it has a stronger air of truth than his account of the audience with which James had honoured him

In our island the sensation produced by the news was great. The Whigs loudly called both James and Lewis

assassins. How, it was asked, was it possible, without outraging common sense, to put an innocent meaning

on the words which Grandval declared that he had heard from the lips of the banished King of England? And

who that knew the Court of Versailles would believe that Barbesieux, a youth, a mere novice in politics, and

rather a clerk than a minister, would have dared to do what he had done without taking his master's pleasure?

Very charitable and very ignorant persons might perhaps indulge a hope that Lewis had not been an accessory

before the fact. But that he was an accessory after the fact no human being could doubt. He must have seen

the proceedings of the Court Martial, the evidence, the confession. If he really abhorred assassination as

honest men abhor it, would not Barbesieux have been driven with ignominy from the royal presence, and

flung into the Bastile? Yet Barbesieux was still at the War Office; and it was not pretended that he had been

punished even by a word or a frown. It was plain, then, that both Kings were partakers in the guilt of

Grandval. And if it were asked how two princes who made a high profession of religion could have fallen

into such wickedness, the answer was that they had learned their religion from the Jesuits. In reply to these

reproaches the English Jacobites said very little; and the French government said nothing at all.315

The campaign in the Netherlands ended without any other event deserving to be recorded. On the eighteenth

of October William arrived in England. Late in the evening of the twentieth he reached Kensington, having

traversed the whole length of the capital. His reception was cordial. The crowd was great; the acclamations

were loud; and all the windows along his route, from Aldgate to Piccadilly, were lighted up.316

But, notwithstanding these favourable symptoms, the nation was disappointed and discontented. The war had

been unsuccessful by land. By sea a great advantage had been gained, but had not been improved. The

general expectation had been that the victory of May would be followed by a descent on the coast of France,

that Saint Maloes would he bombarded, that the last remains of Tourville's squadron would be destroyed, and

that the arsenals of Brest and Rochefort would be laid in ruins. This expectation was, no doubt, unreasonable.

It did not follow, because Rooke and his seamen had silenced the batteries hastily thrown up by Bellefonds,

that it would be safe to expose ships to the fire of regular fortresses. The government, however, was not less

sanguine than the nation. Great preparations were made. The allied fleet, having been speedily refitted at

Portsmouth, stood out again to sea. Rooke was sent to examine the soundings and the currents along the shore

of Brittany.317 Transports were collected at Saint Helens. Fourteen thousand troops were assembled on

Portsdown under the command of Meinhart Schomberg, who had been rewarded for his father's services and

his own with the highest rank in the Irish peerage, and was now Duke of Leinster. Under him were Ruvigny,

who, for his good service at Aghrim, had been created Earl of Galway, La Melloniere and Cambon with their

gallant bands of refugees, and Argyle with the regiment which bore his name, and which, as it began to be

rumoured, had last winter done something strange and horrible in a wild country of rocks and snow, never yet

On the twentysixth of July the troops were all on board. The transports sailed, and in a few hours joined the

naval armament in the neighbourhood of Portland. On the twentyeighth a general council of war was held.

All the naval commanders, with Russell at their head, declared that it would be madness to carry their ships

within the range of the guns of Saint Maloes, and that the town must be reduced to straits by land before the

men of war in the harbour could, with any chance of success, be attacked from the sea. The military men

declared with equal unanimity that the land forces could effect nothing against the town without the

cooperation of the fleet. It was then considered whether it would be advisable to make an attempt on Brest or

Rochefort. Russell and the other flag officers, among whom were Rooke, Shovel, Almonde and Evertsen,

pronounced that the summer was too far spent for either enterprise.318 We must suppose that an opinion in

which so many distinguished admirals, both English and Dutch, concurred, however strange it may seem to

us, was in conformity with what were then the established principles of the art of maritime war. But why all

these questions could not have been fully discussed a week earlier, why fourteen thousand troops should have

been shipped and sent to sea, before it had been considered what they were to do, or whether it would be

possible for them to do any thing, we may reasonably wonder. The armament returned to Saint Helens, to the

astonishment and disgust of the whole nation.319 The ministers blamed the commanders; the commanders

blamed the ministers. The recriminations exchanged between Nottingham and Russell were loud and angry.

Nottingham, honest, industrious, versed in civil business, and eloquent in parliamentary debate, was deficient

in the qualities of a war minister, and was not at all aware of his deficiencies. Between him and the whole

body of professional sailors there was a feud of long standing. He had, some time before the Revolution, been

a Lord of the Admiralty; and his own opinion was that he had then acquired a profound knowledge of

maritime affairs. This opinion however he had very much to himself. Men who had passed half their lives on

the waves, and who had been in battles, storms and shipwrecks, were impatient of his somewhat pompous

lectures and reprimands, and pronounced him a mere pedant, who, with all his book learning, was ignorant of

what every cabin boy knew. Russell had always been froward, arrogant and mutinous; and now prosperity

and glory brought out his vices in full strength. With the government which he had saved he took all the

liberties of an insolent servant who believes himself to be necessary, treated the orders of his superiors with

contemptuous levity, resented reproof, however gentle, as an outrage, furnished no plan of his own, and

showed a sullen determination to execute no plan furnished by any body else. To Nottingham he had a strong

and a very natural antipathy. They were indeed an ill matched pair. Nottingham was a Tory; Russell was a

Whig. Nottingham was a speculative seaman, confident in his theories. Russell was a practical seaman, proud

of his achievements. The strength of Nottingham lay in speech; the strength of Russell lay in action.

Nottingham's demeanour was decorous even to formality; Russell was passionate and rude. Lastly

Nottingham was an honest man; and Russell was a villain. They now became mortal enemies. The Admiral

sneered at the Secretary's ignorance of naval affairs; the Secretary accused the Admiral of sacrificing the

While they were wrangling, the merchants of all the ports in the kingdom raised a cry against the naval

administration. The victory of which the nation was so proud was, in the City, pronounced to have been a

positive disaster. During some months before the battle all the maritime strength of the enemy had been

collected in two great masses, one in the Mediterranean and one in the Atlantic. There had consequently been

little privateering; and the voyage to New England or Jamaica had been almost as safe as in time of peace.

Since the battle, the remains of the force which had lately been collected under Tourville were dispersed over

the ocean. Even the passage from England to Ireland was insecure. Every week it was announced that twenty,

thirty, fifty vessels belonging to London or Bristol had been taken by the French. More than a hundred prices

were carried during that autumn into Saint Maloes alone. It would have been far better, in the opinion of the

shipowners and of the underwriters, that the Royal Sun had still been afloat with her thousand fighting men

on board than that she should be lying a heap of ashes on the beach at Cherburg, while her crew, distributed

among twenty brigantines, prowled for booty over the sea between Cape Finisterre and Cape Clear.321

The privateers of Dunkirk had long been celebrated; and among them, John Bart, humbly born, and scarcely

able to sign his name, but eminently brave and active, had attained an undisputed preeminence. In the country

of Anson and Hawke, of Howe and Rodney, of Duncan, Saint Vincent and Nelson, the name of the most

daring and skilful corsair would have little chance of being remembered. But France, among whose many

unquestioned titles to glory very few are derived from naval war, still ranks Bart among her great men. In the

autumn of 1692 this enterprising freebooter was the terror of all the English and Dutch merchants who traded

with the Baltic. He took and destroyed vessels close to the eastern coast of our island. He even ventured to

land in Northumberland, and burned many houses before the trainbands could be collected to oppose him.

The prizes which he carried back into his native port were estimated at about a hundred thousand pounds

sterling.322 About the same time a younger adventurer, destined to equal or surpass Bart, Du Guay Trouin,

was entrusted with the command of a small armed vessel. The intrepid boy,for he was not yet twenty years

old,entered the estuary of the Shannon, sacked a mansion in the county of Clare, and did not reimbark till a

While our trade was interrupted and our shores menaced by these rovers, some calamities which no human

prudence could have averted increased the public ill humour. An earthquake of terrible violence laid waste in

less than three minutes the flourishing colony of Jamaica. Whole plantations changed their place. Whole

villages were swallowed up. Port Royal, the fairest and wealthiest city which the English had yet built in the

New World, renowned for its quays, for its warehouses, and for its stately streets, which were said to rival

Cheapside, was turned into a mass of ruins. Fifteen hundred of the inhabitants were buried under their own

dwellings. The effect of this disaster was severely felt by many of the great mercantile houses of London and

A still heavier calamity was the failure of the harvest. The summer had been wet all over Western Europe.

Those heavy rains which had impeded the exertions of the French pioneers in the trenches of Namur had been

fatal to the crops. Old men remembered no such year since 1648. No fruit ripened. The price of the quarter of

wheat doubled. The evil was aggravated by the state of the silver coin, which had been clipped to such an

extent that the words pound and shilling had ceased to have a fixed meaning. Compared with France indeed

England might well be esteemed prosperous. Here the public burdens were heavy; there they were crushing.

Here the labouring man was forced to husband his coarse barley loaf; but there it not seldom happened that

the wretched peasant was found dead on the earth with halfchewed grass in his mouth. Our ancestors found

some consolation in thinking that they were gradually wearing out the strength of their formidable enemy,

and that his resources were likely to be drained sooner than theirs. Still there was much suffering and much

repining. In some counties mobs attacked the granaries. The necessity of retrenchment was felt by families of

every rank. An idle man of wit and pleasure, who little thought that his buffoonery would ever be cited to

illustrate the history of his times, complained that, in this year, wine ceased to be put on many hospitable

tables where he had been accustomed to see it, and that its place was supplied by punch.325

A symptom of public distress much more alarming than the substitution of brandy and lemons for claret was

the increase of crime. During the autumn of 1692 and the following winter, the capital was kept in constant

terror by housebreakers. One gang, thirteen strong, entered the mansion of the Duke of Ormond in Saint

James's Square, and all but succeeded in carrying off his magnificent plate and jewels. Another gang made an

attempt on Lambeth Palace.326 When stately abodes, guarded by numerous servants, were in such danger, it

may easily be believed that no shopkeeper's till or stock could be safe. From Bow to Hyde Park, from

Thames Street to Bloomsbury, there was no parish in which some quiet dwelling had not been sacked by

burglars.327 Meanwhile the great roads were made almost impassable by freebooters who formed themselves

into troops larger than had before been known. There was a sworn fraternity of twenty footpads which met at

an alehouse in Southwark.328 But the most formidable band of plunderers consisted of two and twenty

horsemen.329 It should seem that, at this time, a journey of fifty miles through the wealthiest and most

populous shires of England was as dangerous as a pilgrimage across the deserts of Arabia. The Oxford stage

coach was pillaged in broad day after a bloody fight.330 A waggon laden with fifteen thousand pounds of

public money was stopped and ransacked. As this operation took some time, all the travellers who came to

the spot while the thieves were busy were seized and guarded. When the booty had been secured the prisoners

were suffered to depart on foot; but their horses, sixteen or eighteen in number, were shot or hamstringed, to

prevent pursuit.331 The Portsmouth mail was robbed twice in one week by men well armed and mounted.332

Some jovial Essex squires, while riding after a hare, were themselves chased and run down by nine hunters of

a different sort, and were heartily glad to find themselves at home again, though with empty pockets.333

The friends of the government asserted that the marauders were all Jacobites; and indeed there were some

appearances which gave colour to the assertion. For example, fifteen butchers, going on a market day to buy

beasts at Thame, were stopped by a large gang, and compelled first to deliver their moneybags, and then to

drink King James's health in brandy.334 The thieves, however, to do them justice, showed, in the exercise of

their calling, no decided preference for any political party. Some of them fell in with Marlborough near Saint

Albans, and, notwithstanding his known hostility to the Court and his recent imprisonment, compelled him to

deliver up five hundred guineas, which he doubtless never ceased to regret to the last moment of his long

When William, on his return from the Continent, learned to what an extent these outrages were carried, he

expressed great indignation, and announced his resolution to put down the malefactors with a strong hand. A

veteran robber was induced to turn informer, and to lay before the King a list of the chief highwaymen, and a

full account of their habits and of their favourite haunts. It was said that this list contained not less than eighty

names.336 Strong parties of cavalry were sent out to protect the roads; and this precaution, which would, in

ordinary circumstances, have excited much murmuring, seems to have been generally approved. A fine

regiment, now called the Second Dragoon Guards, which had distinguished itself in Ireland by activity and

success in the irregular war against the Rapparees, was selected to guard several of the great avenues of the

capital. Blackheath, Barnet, Hounslow, became places of arms.337 In a few weeks the roads were as safe as

usual. The executions were numerous for, till the evil had been suppressed, the King resolutely refused to

listen to any solicitations for mercy.338 Among those who suffered was James Whitney, the most celebrated

captain of banditti in the kingdom. He had been, during some months, the terror of all who travelled from

London either northward or westward, and was at length with difficulty secured after a desperate conflict in

which one soldier was killed and several wounded.339 The London Gazette announced that the famous

highwayman had been taken, and invited all persons who had been robbed by him to repair to Newgate and to

see whether they could identify him. To identify him should have been easy; for he had a wound in the face,

and had lost a thumb.340 He, however, in the hope of perplexing the witnesses for the Crown, expended a

hundred pounds in procuring a sumptuous embroidered suit against the day of trial. This ingenious device

was frustrated by his hardhearted keepers. He was put to the bar in his ordinary clothes, convicted and

sentenced to death.341 He had previously tried to ransom himself by offering to raise a fine troop of cavalry,

all highwaymen, for service in Flanders; but his offer had been rejected.342 He had one resource still left. He

declared that he was privy to a treasonable plot. Some Jacobite lords had promised him immense rewards if

he would, at the head of his gang, fall upon the King at a stag hunt in Windsor Forest. There was nothing

intrinsically improbable in Whitney's story. Indeed a design very similar to that which he imputed to the

malecontents was, only three years later, actually formed by some of them, and was all but carried into

execution. But it was far better that a few bad men should go unpunished than that all honest men should live

in fear of being falsely accused by felons sentenced to the gallows. Chief Justice Holt advised the King to let

the law take its course. William, never much inclined to give credit to stories about conspiracies, assented.

The Captain, as he was called, was hanged in Smithfield, and made a most penitent end.343

Meanwhile, in the midst of discontent, distress and disorder, had begun a session of Parliament singularly

eventful, a session from which dates a new era in the history of English finance, a session in which some

grave constitutional questions, not yet entirely set at rest, were for the first time debated.

It is much to be lamented that any account of this session which can be framed out of the scanty and

dispersed materials now accessible must leave many things obscure. The relations of the parliamentary

factions were, during this year, in a singularly complicated state. Each of the two Houses was divided and

subdivided by several lines. To omit minor distinctions, there was the great line which separated the Whig

party from the Tory party; and there was the great line which separated the official men and their friends and

dependents, who were sometimes called the Court party, from those who were sometimes nicknamed the

Grumbletonians and sometimes honoured with the appellation of the Country party. And these two great lines

were intersecting lines. For of the servants of the Crown and of their adherents about one half were Whigs

and one half Tories. It is also to be remembered that there was, quite distinct from the feud between Whigs

and Tories, quite distinct also from the feud between those who were in and those who were out, a feud

between the Lords as Lords and the Commons as Commons. The spirit both of the hereditary and of the

elective chamber had been thoroughly roused in the preceding session by the dispute about the Court of the

The speech which the King made at the opening of the session was skilfully framed for the purpose of

conciliating the Houses. He came, he told them, to ask for their advice and assistance. He congratulated them

on the victory of La Hogue. He acknowledged with much concern that the operations of the allies had been

less successful by land than by sea; but he warmly declared that, both by land and by sea, the valour of his

English subjects had been preeminently conspicuous. The distress of his people, he said, was his own; his

interest was inseparable from theirs; it was painful to him to call on them to make sacrifices; but from

sacrifices which were necessary to the safety of the English nation and of the Protestant religion no good

The Commons thanked the King in cordial terms for his gracious speech.345 But the Lords were in a bad

humour. Two of their body, Marlborough and Huntingdon, had, during the recess, when an invasion and an

insurrection were hourly expected, been sent to the Tower, and were still under recognisances. Had a country

gentleman or a merchant been taken up and held to bail on even slighter grounds at so alarming a crisis, the

Lords would assuredly not have interfered. But they were easily moved to anger by any thing that looked like

an indignity offered to their own order. They not only crossexamined with great severity Aaron Smith, the

Solicitor of the Treasury, whose character, to say the truth, entitled him to little indulgence, but passed; by

thirty five votes to twentyeight, a resolution implying a censure on the judges of the King's Bench, men

certainly not inferior in probity, and very far superior in legal learning, to any peer of the realm. The King

thought it prudent to soothe the wounded pride of the nobility by ordering the recognisances to be cancelled;

and with this concession the House was satisfied, to the great vexation of the Jacobites, who had hoped that

the quarrel would be prosecuted to some fatal issue, and who, finding themselves disappointed, vented their

Both Houses held long and earnest deliberations on the state of the nation. The King, when he requested their

advice, had, perhaps, not foreseen that his words would be construed into an invitation to scrutinise every part

of the administration, and to offer suggestions touching matters which parliaments have generally thought it

expedient to leave entirely to the Crown. Some of the discontented peers proposed that a Committee, chosen

partly by the Lords and partly by the Commons, should be authorised to inquire into the whole management

of public affairs. But it was generally apprehended that such a Committee would become a second and more

powerful Privy Council, independent of the Crown, and unknown to the Constitution. The motion was

therefore rejected by fortyeight votes to thirtysix. On this occasion the ministers, with scarcely an

exception, voted in the majority. A protest was signed by eighteen of the minority, among whom were the

The Houses inquired, each for itself, into the causes of the public calamities. The Commons resolved

themselves into a Grand Committee to consider of the advice to be given to the King. From the concise

abstracts and fragments which have come down to us it seems that, in this Committee, which continued to sit

many days, the debates wandered over a vast space. One member spoke of the prevalence of highway

robbery; another deplored the quarrel between the Queen and the Princess, and proposed that two or three

gentlemen should be deputed to wait on Her Majesty and try to make matters up. A third described the

machinations of the Jacobites in the preceding spring. It was notorious, he said, that preparations had been

made for a rising, and that arms and horses had been collected; yet not a single traitor had been brought to

The events of the war by land and sea furnished matter for several earnest debates. Many members

complained of the preference given to aliens over Englishmen. The whole battle of Steinkirk was fought over

again; and severe reflections were thrown on Solmes. "Let English soldiers be commanded by none but

English generals," was the almost universal cry. Seymour, who had once been distinguished by his hatred of

the foreigners, but who, since he had been at the Board of Treasury, had reconsidered his opinions, asked

where English generals were to be found. "I have no love for foreigners as foreigners; but we have no choice.

Men are not born generals; nay, a man may be a very valuable captain or major, and not be equal to the

conduct of an army. Nothing but experience will form great commanders. Very few of our countrymen have

that experience; and therefore we must for the present employ strangers." Lowther followed on the same side.

"We have had a long peace; and the consequence is that we have not a sufficient supply of officers fit for

high commands. The parks and the camp at Hounslow were very poor military schools, when compared with

the fields of battle and the lines of contravallation in which the great commanders of the continental nations

have learned their art." In reply to these arguments an orator on the other side was so absurd as to declare that

he could point out ten Englishmen who, if they were in the French service, would be made Marshals. Four or

five colonels who had been at Steinkirk took part in the debate. It was said of them that they showed as much

modesty in speech as they had shown courage in action; and, from the very imperfect report which has come

down to us, the compliment seems to have been not undeserved. They did not join in the vulgar cry against

the Dutch. They spoke well of the foreign officers generally, and did full justice to the valour and conduct

with which Auverquerque had rescued the shattered remains of Mackay's division from what seemed certain

destruction. But in defence of Solmes not a word was said. His severity, his haughty manners, and, above all,

the indifference with which he had looked on while the English, borne down by overwhelming numbers,

were fighting hand to hand with the French household troops, had made him so odious that many members

were prepared to vote for an address requesting that he might be removed, and that his place might be filled

by Talmash, who, since the disgrace of Marlborough, was universally allowed to be the best officer in the

army. But Talmash's friends judiciously interfered. "I have," said one of them, "a true regard for that

gentleman; and I implore you not to do him an injury under the notion of doing him a kindness. Consider that

you are usurping what is peculiarly the King's prerogative. You are turning officers out and putting officers

in." The debate ended without any vote of censure on Solmes. But a hope was expressed, in language not

very parliamentary, that what had been said in the Committee would be reported to the King, and that His

Majesty would not disregard the general wish of the representatives of his people.349

The Commons next proceeded to inquire into the naval administration, and very soon came to a quarrel with

the Lords on that subject. That there had been mismanagement somewhere was but too evident. It was hardly

possible to acquit both Russell and Nottingham; and each House stood by its own member. The Commons

had, at the opening of the session, unanimously passed a vote of thanks to Russell for his conduct at La

Hogue. They now, in the Grand Committee of Advice, took into consideration the miscarriages which had

followed the battle. A motion was made so vaguely worded that it could hardly be said to mean any thing. It

was understood however to imply a censure on Nottingham, and was therefore strongly opposed by his

friends. On the division the Ayes were a hundred and sixtyfive, the Noes a hundred and sixty four.350

On the very next day Nottingham appealed to the Lords. He told his story with all the skill of a practised

orator, and with all the authority which belongs to unblemished integrity. He then laid on the table a great

mass of papers, which he requested the House to read and consider. The Peers seem to have examined the

papers seriously and diligently. The result of the examination was by no means favourable to Russell. Yet it

was thought unjust to condemn him unheard; and it was difficult to devise any way in which their Lordships

could hear him. At last it was resolved to send the papers down to the Commons with a message which

imported that, in the opinion of the Upper House, there was a case against the Admiral which he ought to be

The message was not very respectfully received. Russell had, at that moment, a popularity which he little

deserved, but which will not surprise us when we remember that the public knew nothing of his treasons, and

knew that he was the only living Englishman who had won a great battle. The abstract of the papers was read

by the clerk. Russell then spoke with great applause; and his friends pressed for an immediate decision. Sir

Christopher Musgrave very justly observed that it was impossible to pronounce judgment on such a pile of

despatches without perusing them; but this objection was overruled. The Whigs regarded the accused member

as one of themselves; many of the Tories were dazzled by the splendour of his recent victory; and neither

Whigs nor Tories were disposed to show any deference for the authority of the Peers. The House, without

reading the papers, passed an unanimous resolution expressing warm approbation of Russell's whole conduct.

The temper of the assembly was such that some ardent Whigs thought that they might now venture to propose

a vote of censure on Nottingham by name. But the attempt failed. "I am ready," said Lowther,and he

doubtless expressed what many felt,"I am ready to support any motion that may do honour to the Admiral;

but I cannot join in an attack on the Secretary of State. For, to my knowledge, their Majesties have no more

zealous, laborious or faithful servant than my Lord Nottingham." Finch exerted all his mellifluous eloquence

in defence of his brother, and contrived, without directly opposing himself to the prevailing sentiment, to

insinuate that Russell's conduct had not been faultless. The vote of censure on Nottingham was not pressed.

The vote which pronounced Russell's conduct to have been deserving of all praise was communicated to the

Lords; and the papers which they had sent down were very unceremoniously returned.352 The Lords, much

offended, demanded a free conference. It was granted; and the managers of the two Houses met in the Painted

Chamber. Rochester, in the name of his brethren, expressed a wish to be informed of the grounds on which

the Admiral had been declared faultless. To this appeal the gentlemen who stood on the other side of the table

answered only that they had not been authorised to give any explanation, but that they would report to those

By this time the Commons were thoroughly tired of the inquiry into the conduct of the war. The members had

got rid of much of the ill humour which they had brought up with them from their country seats by the simple

process of talking it away. Burnet hints that those arts of which Caermarthen and Trevor were the great

masters were employed for the purpose of averting votes which would have seriously embarrassed the

government. But, though it is not improbable that a few noisy pretenders to patriotism may have been quieted

with bags of guineas, it would be absurd to suppose that the House generally was influenced in this manner.

Whoever has seen anything of such assemblies knows that the spirit with which they enter on long inquiries

very soon flags, and that their resentment, if not kept alive by injudicious opposition, cools fast. In a short

time every body was sick of the Grand Committee of Advice. The debates had been tedious and desultory.

The resolutions which had been carried were for the most part merely childish. The King was to be humbly

advised to employ men of ability and integrity. He was to be humbly advised to employ men who would

stand by him against James. The patience of the House was wearied out by long discussions ending in the

pompous promulgation of truisms like these. At last the explosion came. One of the grumblers called the

attention of the Grand Committee to the alarming fact that two Dutchmen were employed in the Ordnance

department, and moved that the King should be humbly advised to dismiss them. The motion was received

with disdainful mockery. It was remarked that the military men especially were loud in the expression of

contempt. "Do we seriously think of going to the King and telling him that, as he has condescended to ask our

advice at this momentous crisis, we humbly advise him to turn a Dutch storekeeper out of the Tower? Really,

if we have no more important suggestion to carry up to the throne, we may as well go to our dinners." The

members generally were of the same mind. The chairman was voted out of the chair, and was not directed to

ask leave to sit again. The Grand Committee ceased to exist. The resolutions which it had passed were

formally reported to the House. One of them was rejected; the others were suffered to drop; and the

Commons, after considering during several weeks what advice they should give to the King, ended by giving

The temper of the Lords was different. From many circumstances it appears that there was no place where the

Dutch were, at this time, so much hated as in the Upper House. The dislike with which an Englishman of the

middle class regarded the King's foreign friends was merely national. But the dislike with which an English

nobleman regarded them was personal. They stood between him and Majesty. They intercepted from him the

rays of royal favour. The preference given to them wounded him both in his interests and in his pride. His

chance of the Garter was much smaller since they had become his competitors. He might have been Master of

the Horse but for Auverquerque, Master of the Robes but for Zulestein, Groom of the Stole but for

Bentinck.355 The ill humour of the aristocracy was inflamed by Marlborough, who, at this time, affected the

character of a patriot persecuted for standing up against the Dutch in defence of the interests of his native

land, and who did not foresee that a day would come when he would be accused of sacrificing the interests of

his native land to gratify the Dutch. The Peers determined to present an address, requesting William not to

place his English troops under the command of a foreign general. They took up very seriously that question

which had moved the House of Commons to laughter, and solemnly counselled their Sovereign not to employ

foreigners in his magazines. At Marlborough's suggestion they urged the King to insist that the youngest

English general should take precedence of the oldest general in the service of the States General. It was, they

said, derogatory to the dignity of the Crown, that an officer who held a commission from His Majesty should

ever be commanded by an officer who held a similar commission from a republic. To this advice, evidently

dictated by an ignoble malevolence to Holland, William, who troubled himself little about votes of the Upper

House which were not backed by the Lower, returned, as might have been expected, a very short and dry

While the inquiry into the conduct of the war was pending, the Commons resumed the consideration of an

important subject which had occupied much of their attention in the preceding year. The Bill for the

Regulation of Trials in cases of High Treason was again brought in, but was strongly opposed by the official

men, both Whigs and Tories. Somers, now Attorney General, strongly recommended delay. That the law, as

it stood, was open to grave objections, was not denied; but it was contended that the proposed reform would,

at that moment, produce more harm than good. Nobody would assert that, under the existing government, the

lives of innocent subjects were in any danger. Nobody would deny that the government itself was in great

danger. Was it the part of wise men to increase the perils of that which was already in serious peril for the

purpose of giving new security to that which was already perfectly secure? Those who held this language

were twitted with their inconsistency, and asked why they had not ventured to oppose the bill in the preceding

session. They answered very plausibly that the events which had taken place during the recess had taught an

important lesson to all who were capable of learning. The country had been threatened at once with invasion

and insurrection. No rational man doubted that many traitors had made preparations for joining the French,

and had collected arms, ammunition and horses for that purpose. Yet, though there was abundant moral

evidence against these enemies of their country, it had not been possible to find legal evidence against a

single one of them. The law of treason might, in theory, be harsh, and had undoubtedly, in times past, been

grossly abused. But a statesman who troubled himself less about theory than about practice, and less about

times past than about the time present, would pronounce that law not too stringent but too lax, and would,

while the commonwealth remained in extreme jeopardy, refuse to consent to any further relaxation. In spite

of all opposition, however, the principle of the bill was approved by one hundred and seventyone votes to

one hundred and fiftytwo. But in the committee it was moved and carried that the new rules of procedure

should not come into operation till after the end of the war with France. When the report was brought up the

House divided on this amendment, and ratified it by a hundred and fortyfive votes to a hundred and

twentyfive. The bill was consequently suffered to drop.357 Had it gone up to the Peers it would in all

probability have been lost after causing another quarrel between the Houses. For the Peers were fully

determined that no such bill should pass, unless it contained a clause altering the constitution of the Lord

High Steward's Court; and a clause altering the constitution of the Lord High Steward's Court would have

been less likely than ever to find favour with the Commons. For in the course of this session an event took

place which proved that the great were only too well protected by the law as it stood, and which well deserves

to be recorded as a striking illustration of the state of manners and morals in that age.

Of all the actors who were then on the English stage the most graceful was William Mountford. He had every

physical qualification for his calling, a noble figure, a handsome face, a melodious voice. It was not easy to

say whether he succeeded better in heroic or in ludicrous parts. He was allowed to be both the best Alexander

and the best Sir Courtly Nice that ever trod the boards. Queen Mary, whose knowledge was very superficial,

but who had naturally a quick perception of what was excellent in art, admired him greatly. He was a

dramatist as well as a player, and has left us one comedy which is not contemptible.358

The most popular actress of the time was Anne Bracegirdle. There were on the stage many women of more

faultless beauty, but none whose features and deportment had such power to fascinate the senses and the

hearts of men. The sight of her bright black eyes and of her rich brown cheek sufficed to put the most

turbulent audience into good humour. It was said of her that in the crowded theatre she had as many lovers as

she had male spectators. Yet no lover, however rich, however high in rank, had prevailed on her to be his

mistress. Those who are acquainted with the parts which she was in the habit of playing, and with the

epilogues which it was her especial business to recite, will not easily give her credit for any extraordinary

measure of virtue or of delicacy. She seems to have been a cold, vain and interested coquette, who perfectly

understood how much the influence of her charms was increased by the fame of a severity which cost her

nothing, and who could venture to flirt with a succession of admirers in the just confidence that no flame

which she might kindle in them would thaw her own ice.359 Among those who pursued her with an insane

desire was a profligate captain in the army named Hill. With Hill was closely bound in a league of

debauchery and violence Charles Lord Mohun, a young nobleman whose life was one long revel and brawl.

Hill, finding that the beautiful brunette was invincible, took it into his head that he was rejected for a more

favoured rival, and that this rival was the brilliant Mountford. The jealous lover swore over his wine at a

tavern that he would stab the villain. "And I," said Mohun, "will stand by my friend." From the tavern the pair

went, with some soldiers whose services Hill had secured, to Drury Lane where the lady resided. They lay

some time in wait for her. As soon as she appeared in the street she was seized and hurried to a coach. She

screamed for help; her mother clung round her; the whole neighbourhood rose; and she was rescued. Hill and

Mohun went away vowing vengeance. They swaggered sword in hand during two hours about the streets near

Mountford's dwelling. The watch requested them to put up their weapons. But when the young lord

announced that he was a peer, and bade the constables touch him if they durst, they let him pass. So strong

was privilege then; and so weak was law. Messengers were sent to warn Mountford of his danger; but

unhappily they missed him. He came. A short altercation took place between him and Mohun; and, while

The grand jury of Middlesex, consisting of gentlemen of note, found a bill of murder against Hill and Mohun.

Hill escaped. Mohun was taken. His mother threw herself at William's feet, but in vain. "It was a cruel act,"

said the King; "I shall leave it to the law." The trial came on in the Court of the Lord High Steward; and, as

Parliament happened to be sitting, the culprit had the advantage of being judged by the whole body of the

peerage. There was then no lawyer in the Upper House. It therefore became necessary, for the first time since

Buckhurst had pronounced sentence on Essex and Southampton, that a peer who had never made

jurisprudence his special study should preside over that grave tribunal. Caermarthen, who, as Lord President,

took precedence of all the nobility, was appointed Lord High Steward. A full report of the proceedings has

come down to us. No person, who carefully examines that report, and attends to the opinion unanimously

given by the judges in answer to a question which Nottingham drew up, and in which the facts brought out by

the evidence are stated with perfect fairness, can doubt that the crime of murder was fully brought home to

the prisoner. Such was the opinion of the King who was present during the trial; and such was the almost

unanimous opinion of the public. Had the issue been tried by Holt and twelve plain men at the Old Bailey,

there can be no doubt that a verdict of Guilty would have been returned. The Peers, however, by sixtynine

votes to fourteen, acquitted their accused brother. One great nobleman was so brutal and stupid as to say,

"After all the fellow was but a player; and players are rogues." All the newsletters, all the coffeehouse

orators, complained that the blood of the poor was shed with impunity by the great. Wits remarked that the

only fair thing about the trial was the show of ladies in the galleries. Letters and journals are still extant in

which men of all shades of opinion, Whigs, Tories, Nonjurors, condemn the partiality of the tribunal. It was

not to be expected that, while the memory of this scandal was fresh in the public mind, the Commons would

The Commons had, in the meantime, resumed the consideration of another highly important matter, the state

of the trade with India. They had, towards the close of the preceding session, requested the King to dissolve

the old Company and to constitute a new Company on such terms as he should think fit; and he had promised

to take their request into his serious consideration. He now sent a message to inform them that it was out of

his power to do what they had asked. He had referred the charter of the old Company to the Judges, and the

judges had pronounced that, under the provisions of that charter, the old Company could not be dissolved

without three years' notice, and must retain during those three years the exclusive privilege of trading to the

East Indies. He added that, being sincerely desirous to gratify the Commons, and finding himself unable to do

so in the way which they had pointed out, he had tried to prevail on the old Company to agree to a

compromise; but that body stood obstinately on its extreme rights; and his endeavours had been

This message reopened the whole question. The two factions which divided the City were instantly on the

alert. The debates in the House were long and warm. Petitions against the old Company were laid on the

table. Satirical handbills against the new Company were distributed in the lobby. At length, after much

discussion, it was resolved to present an address requesting the King to give the notice which the judges had

pronounced necessary. He promised to bear the subject in mind, and to do his best to promote the welfare of

the kingdom. With this answer the House was satisfied, and the subject was not again mentioned till the next

The debates of the Commons on the conduct of the war, on the law of treason and on the trade with India,

occupied much time, and produced no important result. But meanwhile real business was doing in the

Committee of Supply and the Committee of Ways and Means. In the Committee of Supply the estimates

passed rapidly. A few members declared it to be their opinion that England ought to withdraw her troops

from the Continent, to carry on the war with vigour by sea, and to keep up only such an army as might be

sufficient to repel any invader who might elude the vigilance of her fleets. But this doctrine, which speedily

became and long continued to be the badge of one of the great parties in the state, was as yet professed only

In the Committee of Ways and Means, it was determined that a great part of the charge of the year should be

defrayed by means of an impost, which, though old in substance, was new in form. From a very early period

to the middle of the seventeenth century, our Parliaments had provided for the extraordinary necessities of the

government chiefly by granting subsidies. A subsidy was raised by an impost on the people of the realm in

respect of their reputed estates. Landed property was the chief subject of taxation, and was assessed

nominally at four shillings in the pound. But the assessment was made in such a way that it not only did not

rise in proportion to the rise in the value of land or to the fall in the value of the precious metals, but went on

constantly sinking, till at length the rate was in truth less than twopence in the pound. In the time of Charles

the First a real tax of four shillings in the pound on land would probably have yielded near a million and a

The financiers of the Long Parliament devised a more efficient mode of taxing estates. The sum which was to

be raised was fixed. It was then distributed among the counties in proportion to their supposed wealth, and

was levied within each county by a rate. The revenue derived from these assessments in the time of the

Commonwealth varied from thirtyfive thousand pounds to a hundred and twenty thousand pounds a month.

After the Restoration the legislature seemed for a time inclined to revert, in finance as in other things, to the

ancient practice. Subsidies were once or twice granted to Charles the Second. But it soon appeared that the

old system was much less convenient than the new system. The Cavaliers condescended to take a lesson in

the art of taxation from the Roundheads; and, during the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution,

extraordinary calls were occasionally met by assessments resembling the assessments of the Commonwealth.

After the Revolution, the war with France made it necessary to have recourse annually to this abundant

source of revenue. In 1689, in 1690 and in 1691, great sums had been raised on the land. At length in 1692 it

was determined to draw supplies from real property more largely than ever. The Commons resolved that a

new and more accurate valuation of estates should be made over the whole realm, and that on the rental thus

Such was the origin of the existing land tax. The valuation made in 1692 has remained unaltered down to our

own time. According to that valuation, one shilling in the pound on the rental of the kingdom amounted, in

round numbers, to half a million. During a hundred and six years, a land tax bill was annually presented to

Parliament, and was annually passed, though not always without murmurs from the country gentlemen. The

rate was, in time of war, four shillings in the pound. In time of peace, before the reign of George the Third,

only two or three shillings were usually granted; and, during a short part of the prudent and gentle

administration of Walpole, the government asked for only one shilling. But, after the disastrous year in which

England drew the sword against her American colonies, the rate was never less than four shillings. At length,

in the year 1798, the Parliament relieved itself from the trouble of passing a new Act every spring. The land

tax, at four shillings in the pound, was made permanent; and those who were subject to it were permitted to

redeem it. A great part has been redeemed; and at present little more than a fiftieth of the ordinary revenue

required in time of peace is raised by that impost which was once regarded as the most productive of all the

The land tax was fixed, for the year 1693, at four shillings in the pound, and consequently brought about two

millions into the Treasury. That sum, small as it may seem to a generation which has expended a hundred and

twenty millions in twelve months, was such as had never before been raised here in one year by direct

taxation. It seemed immense both to Englishmen and to foreigners. Lewis, who found it almost impossible to

wring by cruel exactions from the beggared peasantry of France the means of supporting the greatest army

and the most gorgeous court that had existed in Europe since the downfall of the Roman empire, broke out, it

is said, into an exclamation of angry surprise when he learned that the Commons of England had, from dread

and hatred of his power, unanimously determined to lay on themselves, in a year of scarcity and of

commercial embarrassment, a burden such as neither they nor their fathers had ever before borne. "My little

cousin of Orange," he said, "seems to be firm in the saddle." He afterwards added: "No matter, the last piece

of gold will win." This however was a consideration from which, if he had been well informed touching the

resources of England, he would not have derived much comfort. Kensington was certainly a mere hovel when

compared to his superb Versailles. The display of jewels, plumes and lace, led horses and gilded coaches,

which daily surrounded him, far outshone the splendour which, even on great public occasions, our princes

were in the habit of displaying. But the condition of the majority of the people of England was, beyond all

doubt, such as the majority of the people of France might well have envied. In truth what was called severe

The land tax was not imposed without a quarrel between the Houses. The Commons appointed

commissioners to make the assessment. These commissioners were the principal gentlemen of every county,

and were named in the bill. The Lords thought this arrangement inconsistent with the dignity of the peerage.

They therefore inserted a clause providing that their estates should be valued by twenty of their own order.

The Lower House indignantly rejected this amendment, and demanded an instant conference. After some

delay, which increased the ill humour of the Commons, the conference took place. The bill was returned to

the Peers with a very concise and haughty intimation that they must not presume to alter laws relating to

money. A strong party among the Lords was obstinate. Mulgrave spoke at great length against the pretensions

of the plebeians. He told his brethren that, if they gave way, they would abdicate that authority which had

belonged to the baronage of England ever since the foundation of the monarchy, and that they would have

nothing left of their old greatness except their coronets and ermines. Burnet says that this speech was the

finest that he ever heard in Parliament; and Burnet was undoubtedly a good judge of speaking, and was

neither partial to Mulgrave nor zealous for the privileges of the aristocracy. The orator, however, though he

charmed his hearers, did not succeed in convincing them. Most of them shrank from a conflict in which they

would have had against them the Commons united as one man, and the King, who, in case of necessity,

would undoubtedly have created fifty peers rather than have suffered the land tax bill to be lost. Two strong

protests, however, signed, the first by twentyseven, the second by twentyone dissentients, show how

obstinately many nobles were prepared to contend at all hazards for the dignity of their caste. Another

conference was held; and Rochester announced that the Lords, for the sake of the public interest, waived what

they must nevertheless assert to be their clear right, and would not insist on their amendment.366 The bill

passed, and was followed by bills for laying additional duties on imports, and for taxing the dividends of joint

Still, however, the estimated revenue was not equal to the estimated expenditure. The year 1692 had

bequeathed a large deficit to the year 1693; and it seemed probable that the charge for 1693 would exceed by

about five hundred thousand pounds the charge for 1692. More than two millions had been voted for the army

and ordnance, near two millions for the navy.367 Only eight years before fourteen hundred thousand pounds

had defrayed the whole annual charge of government. More than four times that sum was now required.

Taxation, both direct and indirect, had been carried to an unprecedented point; yet the income of the state still

fell short of the outlay by about a million. It was necessary to devise something. Something was devised,

There was indeed nothing strange or mysterious in the expedient to which the government had recourse. It

was an expedient familiar, during two centuries, to the financiers of the Continent, and could hardly fail to

occur to any English statesman who compared the void in the Exchequer with the overflow in the money

During the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution the riches of the nation had been rapidly

increasing. Thousands of busy men found every Christmas that, after the expenses of the year's housekeeping

had been defrayed out of the year's income, a surplus remained; and how that surplus was to be employed

was a question of some difficulty. In our time, to invest such a surplus, at something more than three per

cent., on the best security that has ever been known in the world, is the work of a few minutes. But in the

seventeenth century a lawyer, a physician, a retired merchant, who had saved some thousands and who

wished to place them safely and profitably, was often greatly embarrassed. Three generations earlier, a man

who had accumulated wealth in a profession generally purchased real property or lent his savings on

mortgage. But the number of acres in the kingdom had remained the same; and the value of those acres,

though it had greatly increased, had by no means increased so fast as the quantity of capital which was

seeking for employment. Many too wished to put their money where they could find it at an hour's notice,

and looked about for some species of property which could be more readily transferred than a house or a

field. A capitalist might lend on bottomry or on personal security; but, if he did so, he ran a great risk of

losing interest and principal. There were a few joint stock companies, among which the East India Company

held the foremost place; but the demand for the stock of such companies was far greater than the supply.

Indeed the cry for a new East India Company was chiefly raised by persons who had found difficulty in

placing their savings at interest on good security. So great was that difficulty that the practice of hoarding was

common. We are told that the father of Pope the poet, who retired from business in the City about the time of

the Revolution, carried to a retreat in the country a strong box containing near twenty thousand pounds, and

took out from time to time what was required for household expenses; and it is highly probable that this was

not a solitary case. At present the quantity of coin which is hoarded by private persons is so small that it

would, if brought forth, make no perceptible addition to the circulation. But, in the earlier part of the reign of

William the Third, all the greatest writers on currency were of opinion that a very considerable mass of gold

The natural effect of this state of things was that a crowd of projectors, ingenious and absurd, honest and

knavish, employed themselves in devising new schemes for the employment of redundant capital. It was

about the year 1688 that the word stockjobber was first heard in London. In the short space of four years a

crowd of companies, every one of which confidently held out to subscribers the hope of immense gains,

sprang into existence; the Insurance Company, the Paper Company, the Lutestring Company, the Pearl

Fishery Company, the Glass Bottle Company, the Alum Company, the Blythe Coal Company, the

Swordblade Company. There was a Tapestry Company which would soon furnish pretty hangings for all the

parlours of the middle class and for all the bedchambers of the higher. There was a Copper Company which

proposed to explore the mines of England, and held out a hope that they would prove not less valuable than

those of Potosi. There was a Diving Company which undertook to bring up precious effects from

shipwrecked vessels, and which announced that it had laid in a stock of wonderful machines resembling

complete suits of armour. In front of the helmet was a huge glass eye like that of a cyclop; and out of the crest

went a pipe through which the air was to be admitted. The whole process was exhibited on the Thames. Fine

gentlemen and fine ladies were invited to the show, were hospitably regaled, and were delighted by seeing the

divers in their panoply descend into the river and return laden with old iron, and ship's tackle. There was a

Greenland Fishing Company which could not fail to drive the Dutch whalers and herring busses out of the

Northern Ocean. There was a Tanning Company which promised to furnish leather superior to the best that

was brought from Turkey or Russia. There was a society which undertook the office of giving gentlemen a

liberal education on low terms, and which assumed the sounding name of the Royal Academies Company. In

a pompous advertisement it was announced that the directors of the Royal Academies Company had engaged

the best masters in every branch of knowledge, and were about to issue twenty thousand tickets at twenty

shillings each. There was to be a lottery; two thousand prizes were to be drawn; and the fortunate holders of

the prizes were to be taught, at the charge of the Company, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, conic

sections, trigonometry, heraldry, japanning, fortification, bookkeeping and the art of playing the theorbo.

Some of these companies took large mansions and printed their advertisements in gilded letters. Others, less

ostentatious, were content with ink, and met at coffeehouses in the neighbourhood of the Royal Exchange.

Jonathan's and Garraway's were in a constant ferment with brokers, buyers, sellers, meetings of directors,

meetings of proprietors. Time bargains soon came into fashion. Extensive combinations were formed, and

monstrous fables were circulated, for the purpose of raising or depressing the price of shares. Our country

witnessed for the first time those phenomena with which a long experience has made us familiar. A mania of

which the symptoms were essentially the same with those of the mania of 1720, of the mania of 1825, of the

mania of 1845, seized the public mind. An impatience to be rich, a contempt for those slow but sure gains

which are the proper reward of industry, patience and thrift, spread through society. The spirit of the cogging

dicers of Whitefriars took possession of the grave Senators of the City, Wardens of Trades, Deputies,

Aldermen. It was much easier and much more lucrative to put forth a lying prospectus announcing a new

stock, to persuade ignorant people that the dividends could not fall short of twenty per cent., and to part with

five thousand pounds of this imaginary wealth for ten thousand solid guineas, than to load a ship with a well

chosen cargo for Virginia or the Levant. Every day some new bubble was puffed into existence, rose buoyant,

The new form which covetousness had taken furnished the comic poets and satirists with an excellent subject;

nor was that subject the less welcome to them because some of the most unscrupulous and most successful of

the new race of gamesters were men in sad coloured clothes and lank hair, men who called cards the Devil's

books, men who thought it a sin and a scandal to win or lose twopence over a backgammon board. It was in

the last drama of Shadwell that the hypocrisy and knavery of these speculators was, for the first time, exposed

to public ridicule. He died in November 1692, just before his Stockjobbers came on the stage; and the

epilogue was spoken by an actor dressed in deep mourning. The best scene is that in which four or five stern

Nonconformists, clad in the full Puritan costume, after discussing the prospects of the Mousetrap Company

and the Fleakilling Company, examine the question whether the godly may lawfully hold stock in a Company

for bringing over Chinese ropedancers. "Considerable men have shares," says one austere person in cropped

hair and bands; "but verily I question whether it be lawful or not." These doubts are removed by a stout old

Roundhead colonel who had fought at Marston Moor, and who reminds his weaker brother that the saints

need not themselves see the ropedancing, and that, in all probability, there will be no ropedancing to see.

"The thing," he says, "is like to take; the shares will sell well; and then we shall not care whether the dancers

come over or no." It is important to observe that this scene was exhibited and applauded before one farthing

of the national debt had been contracted. So ill informed were the numerous writers who, at a later period,

ascribed to the national debt the existence of stockjobbing and of all the immoralities connected with

stockjobbing. The truth is that society had, in the natural course of its growth, reached a point at which it was

inevitable that there should be stockjobbing whether there were a national debt or not, and inevitable also

How indeed was it possible that a debt should not have been contracted, when one party was impelled by the

strongest motives to borrow, and another was impelled by equally strong motives to lend? A moment had

arrived at which the government found it impossible, without exciting the most formidable discontents, to

raise by taxation the supplies necessary to defend the liberty and independence of the nation; and, at that very

moment, numerous capitalists were looking round them in vain for some good mode of investing their

savings, and, for want of such a mode, were keeping their wealth locked up, or were lavishing it on absurd

projects. Riches sufficient to equip a navy which would sweep the German Ocean and the Atlantic of French

privateers, riches sufficient to maintain an army which might retake Namur and avenge the disaster of

Steinkirk, were lying idle, or were passing away from the owners into the hands of sharpers. A statesman

might well think that some part of the wealth which was daily buried or squandered might, with advantage to

the proprietor, to the taxpayer and to the State, be attracted into the Treasury. Why meet the extraordinary

charge of a year of war by seizing the chairs, the tables, the beds of hardworking families, by compelling one

country gentleman to cut down his trees before they were ready for the axe, another to let the cottages on his

land fall to ruin, a third to take away his hopeful son from the University, when Change Alley was swarming

with people who did not know what to do with their money and who were pressing every body to borrow it?

It was often asserted at a later period by Tories, who hated the national debt most of all things, and who hated

Burnet most of all men, that Burnet was the person who first advised the government to contract a national

debt. But this assertion is proved by no trustworthy evidence, and seems to be disproved by the Bishop's

silence. Of all men he was the least likely to conceal the fact that an important fiscal revolution had been his

work. Nor was the Board of Treasury at that time one which much needed, or was likely much to regard, the

counsels of a divine. At that Board sate Godolphin the most prudent and experienced, and Montague the most

daring and inventive of financiers. Neither of these eminent men could be ignorant that it had long been the

practice of the neighbouring states to spread over many years of peace the excessive taxation which was

made necessary by one year of war. In Italy this practice had existed through many generations. France had,

during the war which began in 1672 and ended in 1679, borrowed not less than thirty millions of our money.

Sir William Temple, in his interesting work on the Batavian federation, had told his countrymen that, when

he was ambassador at the Hague, the single province of Holland, then ruled by the frugal and prudent De

Witt, owed about five millions sterling, for which interest at four per cent. was always ready to the day, and

that when any part of the principal was paid off the public creditor received his money with tears, well

knowing that he could find no other investment equally secure. The wonder is not that England should have

at length imitated the example both of her enemies and of her allies, but that the fourth year of her arduous

and exhausting struggle against Lewis should have been drawing to a close before she resorted to an

On the fifteenth of December 1692 the House of Commons resolved itself into a Committee of Ways and

Means. Somers took the chair. Montague proposed to raise a million by way of loan; the proposition was

approved; and it was ordered that a bill should be brought in. The details of the scheme were much discussed

and modified; but the principle appears to have been popular with all parties. The moneyed men were glad to

have a good opportunity of investing what they had hoarded. The landed men, hard pressed by the load of

taxation, were ready to consent to any thing for the sake of present ease. No member ventured to divide the

House. On the twentieth of January the bill was read a third time, carried up to the Lords by Somers, and

By this memorable law new duties were imposed on beer and other liquors. These duties were to be kept in

the Exchequer separate from all other receipts, and were to form a fund on the credit of which a million was

to be raised by life annuities. As the annuitants dropped off, their annuities were to be divided among the

survivors, till the number of survivors was reduced to seven. After that time, whatever fell in was to go to the

public. It was therefore certain that the eighteenth century would be far advanced before the debt would be

finally extinguished. The rate of interest was to be ten per cent. till the year 1700, and after that year seven

per cent. The advantages offered to the public creditor by this scheme may seem great, but were not more

than sufficient to compensate him for the risk which he ran. It was not impossible that there might be a

counterrevolution; and it was certain that, if there were a counterrevolution, those who had lent money to

Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity

and confounded the pride of statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt the nation

has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously

asserted by wise men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went on growing; and still

bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever. When the great contest with Lewis the Fourteenth was finally

terminated by the Peace of Utrecht, the nation owed about fifty millions; and that debt was considered, not

merely by the rude multitude, not merely by foxhunting squires and coffeehouse orators, but by acute and

profound thinkers, as an incumbrance which would permanently cripple the body politic; Nevertheless trade

flourished; wealth increased; the nation became richer and richer. Then came the war of the Austrian

Succession; and the debt rose to eighty millions. Pamphleteers, historians and orators pronounced that now, at

all events, our case was desperate. Yet the signs of increasing prosperity, signs which could neither be

counterfeited nor concealed, ought to have satisfied observant and reflecting men that a debt of eighty

millions was less to the England which was governed by Pelham than a debt of fifty millions had been to the

England which was governed by Oxford. Soon war again broke forth; and, under the energetic and prodigal

administration of the first William Pitt, the debt rapidly swelled to a hundred and forty millions. As soon as

the first intoxication of victory was over, men of theory and men of business almost unanimously pronounced

that the fatal day had now really arrived. The only statesman, indeed, active or speculative, who did not share

in the general delusion was Edmund Burke. David Hume, undoubtedly one of the most profound political

economists of his time, declared that our madness had exceeded the madness of the Crusaders. Richard Coeur

de Lion and Saint Lewis had not gone in the face of arithmetical demonstration. It was impossible to prove by

figures that the road to Paradise did not lie through the Holy Land; but it was possible to prove by figures that

the road to national ruin was through the national debt. It was idle, however, now to talk about the road; we

had done with the road; we had reached the goal; all was over; all the revenues of the island north of Trent

and west of Reading were mortgaged. Better for us to have been conquered by Prussia or Austria than to be

saddled with the interest of a hundred and forty millions.370 And yet this great philosopherfor such he

washad only to open his eyes, and to see improvement all around him, cities increasing, cultivation

extending, marts too small for the crowd of buyers and sellers, harbours insufficient to contain the shipping,

artificial rivers joining the chief inland seats of industry to the chief seaports, streets better lighted, houses

better furnished, richer wares exposed to sale in statelier shops, swifter carriages rolling along smoother

roads. He had, indeed, only to compare the Edinburgh of his boyhood with the Edinburgh of his old age. His

prediction remains to posterity, a memorable instance of the weakness from which the strongest minds are not

exempt. Adam Smith saw a little and but a little further. He admitted that, immense as the burden was, the

nation did actually sustain it and thrive under it in a way which nobody could have foreseen. But he warned

his countrymen not to repeat so hazardous an experiment. The limit had been reached. Even a small increase

might be fatal.371 Not less gloomy was the view which George Grenville, a minister eminently diligent and

practical, took of our financial situation. The nation must, he conceived, sink under a debt of a hundred and

forty millions, unless a portion of the load were borne by the American colonies. The attempt to lay a portion

of the load on the American colonies produced another war. That war left us with an additional hundred

millions of debt, and without the colonies whose help had been represented as indispensable. Again England

was given over; and again the strange patient persisted in becoming stronger and more blooming in spite of

all the diagnostics and prognostics of State physicians. As she had been visibly more prosperous with a debt

of a hundred and forty millions than with a debt of fifty millions, so she, as visibly more prosperous with a

debt of two hundred and forty millions than with a debt of a hundred and forty millions. Soon however the

wars which sprang from the French Revolution, and which far exceeded in cost any that the world had ever

seen, tasked the powers of public credit to the utmost. When the world was again at rest the funded debt of

England amounted to eight hundred millions. If the most enlightened man had been told, in 1792, that, in

1815, the interest on eight hundred millions would be duly paid to the day at the Bank, he would have been as

hard of belief as if he had been told that the government would be in possession of the lamp of Aladdin or of

the purse of Fortunatus. It was in truth a gigantic, a fabulous debt; and we can hardly wonder that the cry of

despair should have been louder than ever. But again that cry was found to have been as unreasonable as

ever. After a few years of exhaustion, England recovered herself. Yet, like Addison's valetudinarian, who

continued to whimper that he was dying of consumption till he became so fat that he was shamed into silence,

she went on complaining that she was sunk in poverty till her wealth showed itself by tokens which made her

complaints ridiculous. The beggared, the bankrupt society not only proved able to meet all its obligations,

but, while meeting those obligations, grew richer and richer so fast that the growth could almost be discerned

by the eye. In every county, we saw wastes recently turned into gardens; in every city, we saw new streets,

and squares, and markets, more brilliant lamps, more abundant supplies of water; in the suburbs of every

great seat of industry, we saw villas multiplying fast, each embosomed in its gay little paradise of lilacs and

roses. While shallow politicians were repeating that the energies of the people were borne down by the

weight of the public burdens, the first journey was performed by steam on a railway. Soon the island was

intersected by railways. A sum exceeding the whole amount of the national debt at the end of the American

war was, in a few years, voluntarily expended by this ruined people in viaducts, tunnels, embankments,

bridges, stations, engines. Meanwhile taxation was almost constantly becoming lighter and lighter; yet still

the Exchequer was full. It may be now affirmed without fear of contradiction that we find it as easy to pay the

interest of eight hundred millions as our ancestors found it, a century ago, to pay the interest of eighty

It can hardly be doubted that there must have been some great fallacy in the notions of those who uttered and

of those who believed that long succession of confident predictions, so signally falsified by along succession

of indisputable facts. To point out that fallacy is the office rather of the political economist than of the

historian. Here it is sufficient to say that the prophets of evil were under a double delusion. They erroneously

imagined that there was an exact analogy between the case of an individual who is in debt to another

individual and the case of a society which is in debt to a part of itself; and this analogy led them into endless

mistakes about the effect of the system of funding. They were under an error not less serious touching the

resources of the country. They made no allowance for the effect produced by the incessant progress of every

experimental science, and by the incessant efforts of every man to get on in life. They saw that the debt grew;

A long experience justifies us in believing that England may, in the twentieth century, be better able to bear a

debt of sixteen hundred millions than she is at the present time to bear her present load. But be this as it may,

those who so confidently predicted that she must sink, first under a debt of fifty millions, then under a debt of

eighty millions then under a debt of a hundred and forty millions, then under a debt of two hundred and forty

millions, and lastly under a debt of eight hundred millions, were beyond all doubt under a twofold mistake.

They greatly overrated the pressure of the burden; they greatly underrated the strength by which the burden

It may be desirable to add a few words touching the way in which the system of funding has affected the

interests of the great commonwealth of nations. If it be true that whatever gives to intelligence an advantage

over brute force and to honesty an advantage over dishonesty has a tendency to promote the happiness and

virtue of our race, it can scarcely be denied that, in the largest view, the effect of this system has been

salutary. For it is manifest that all credit depends on two things, on the power of a debtor to pay debts, and on

his inclination to pay them. The power of a society to pay debts is proportioned to the progress which that

society has made in industry, in commerce, and in all the arts and sciences which flourish under the benignant

influence of freedom and of equal law. The inclination of a society to pay debts is proportioned to the degree

in which that society respects the obligations of plighted faith. Of the strength which consists in extent of

territory and in number of fighting men, a rude despot who knows no law but his own childish fancies and

headstrong passions, or a convention of socialists which proclaims all property to be robbery, may have more

than falls to the lot of the best and wisest government. But the strength which is derived from the confidence

of capitalists such a despot, such a convention, never can possess. That strength, and it is a strength which

has decided the event of more than one great conflict,flies, by the law of its nature, from barbarism and

fraud, from tyranny and anarchy, to follow civilisation and virtue, liberty and order.

While the bill which first created the funded debt of England was passing, with general approbation, through

the regular stages, the two Houses discussed, for the first time, the great question of Parliamentary Reform.

It is to be observed that the object of the reformers of that generation was merely to make the representative

body a more faithful interpreter of the sense of the constituent body. It seems scarcely to have occurred to any

of them that the constituent body might be an unfaithful interpreter of the sense of the nation. It is true that

those deformities in the structure of the constituent body, which, at length, in our own days, raised an

irresistible storm of public indignation, were far less numerous and far less offensive in the seventeenth

century than they had become in the nineteenth. Most of the boroughs which were disfranchised in 1832

were, if not positively, yet relatively, much more important places in the reign of William the Third than in

the reign of William the Fourth. Of the populous and wealthy manufacturing towns, seaports and watering

places, to which the franchise was given in the reign of William the Fourth, some were, in the reign of

William the Third, small hamlets, where a few ploughmen or fishermen lived under thatched roofs; some

were fields covered with harvests, or moors abandoned to grouse; With the exception of Leeds and

Manchester, there was not, at the time of the Revolution, a single town of five thousand inhabitants which did

not send two representatives to the House of Commons. Even then, however, there was no want of startling

anomalies. Looe, East and West, which contained not half the population or half the wealth of the smallest of

the hundred parishes of London, returned as many members as London.372 Old Sarum, a deserted ruin which

the traveller feared to enter at night lest he should find robbers lurking there, had as much weight in the

legislature as Devonshire or Yorkshire.373 Some eminent individuals of both parties, Clarendon, for

example, among the Tories, and Pollexfen among the Whigs, condemned this system. Yet both parties were,

for very different reasons, unwilling to alter it. It was protected by the prejudices of one faction and by the

interests of the other. Nothing could be more repugnant to the genius of Toryism than the thought of

destroying at a blow institutions which had stood through ages, for the purpose of building something more

symmetrical out of the ruins. The Whigs, on the other hand, could not but know that they were much more

likely to lose than to gain by a change in this part of our polity. It would indeed be a great mistake to imagine

that a law transferring political power from small to large constituent bodies would have operated in 1692 as

In 1832 the effect of the transfer was to increase the power of the town population. In 1692 the effect would

have been to make the power of the rural population irresistible. Of the one hundred and fortytwo members

taken away in 1832 from small boroughs more than half were given to large and flourishing towns. But in

1692 there was hardly one large and flourishing town which had not already as many members as it could,

with any show of reason, claim. Almost all therefore that was taken from the small boroughs must have been

given to the counties; and there can be no doubt that whatever tended to raise the counties and to depress the

towns must on the whole have tended to raise the Tories and to depress the Whigs. From the commencement

of our civil troubles the towns had been on the side of freedom and progress, the country gentlemen and the

country clergymen on the side of authority and prescription. If therefore a reform bill, disfranchising small

constituent bodies and giving additional members to large constituent bodies, had become law soon after the

Revolution, there can be little doubt that a decided majority of the House of Commons would have consisted

of rustic baronets and squires, high Churchmen, high Tories, and half Jacobites. With such a House of

Commons it is almost certain that there would have been a persecution of the Dissenters; it is not easy to

understand how there could have been an union with Scotland; and it is not improbable that there would have

been a restoration of the Stuarts. Those parts of our constitution therefore which, in recent times, politicians

of the liberal school have generally considered as blemishes, were, five generations ago, regarded with

But, while Whigs and Tories agreed in wishing to maintain the existing rights of election, both Whigs and

Tories were forced to admit that the relation between the elector and the representative was not what it ought

to be. Before the civil wars the House of Commons had enjoyed the fullest confidence of the nation. A House

of Commons, distrusted, despised, hated by the Commons, was a thing unknown. The very words would, to

Sir Peter Wentworth or Sir Edward Coke, have sounded like a contradiction in terms. But by degrees a

change took place. The Parliament elected in 1661, during that fit of joy and fondness which followed the

return of the royal family, represented, not the deliberate sense, but the momentary caprice of the nation.

Many of the members were men who, a few months earlier or a few months later, would have had no chance

of obtaining seats, men of broken fortunes and of dissolute habits, men whose only claim to public

confidence was the ferocious hatred which they bore to rebels and Puritans. The people, as soon as they had

become sober, saw with dismay to what an assembly they had, during their intoxication, confided the care of

their property, their liberty and their religion. And the choice, made in a moment of frantic enthusiasm, might

prove to be a choice for life. As the law then stood, it depended entirely on the King's pleasure whether,

during his reign, the electors should have an opportunity of repairing their error. Eighteen years passed away.

A new generation grew up. To the fervid loyalty with which Charles had been welcomed back to Dover

succeeded discontent and disaffection. The general cry was that the kingdom was misgoverned, degraded,

given up as a prey to worthless men and more worthless women, that our navy had been found unequal to a

contest with Holland, that our independence had been bartered for the gold of France, that our consciences

were in danger of being again subjected to the yoke of Rome. The people had become Roundheads; but the

body which alone was authorised to speak in the name of the people was still a body of Cavaliers. It is true

that the King occasionally found even that House of Commons unmanageable. From the first it had contained

not a few true Englishmen; others had been introduced into it as vacancies were made by death; and even the

majority, courtly as it was, could not but feel some sympathy with the nation. A country party grew up and

became formidable. But that party constantly found its exertions frustrated by systematic corruption. That

some members of the legislature received direct bribes was with good reason suspected, but could not be

proved. That the patronage of the Crown was employed on an extensive scale for the purpose of influencing

votes was matter of notoriety. A large proportion of those who gave away the public money in supplies

received part of that money back in salaries; and thus was formed a mercenary band on which the Court

The servility of this Parliament had left a deep impression on the public mind. It was the general opinion that

England ought to be protected against all risk of being ever again represented, during a long course of years,

by men who had forfeited her confidence, and who were retained by a fee to vote against her wishes and

interests. The subject was mentioned in the Convention; and some members wished to deal with it while the

throne was still vacant. The cry for reform had ever since been becoming more and more importunate. The

people, heavily pressed by taxes, were naturally disposed to regard those who lived on the taxes with little

favour. The war, it was generally acknowledged, was just and necessary; and war could not be carried on

without large expenditure. But the larger the expenditure which was required for the defence of the nation,

the more important it was that nothing should be squandered. The immense gains of official men moved envy

and indignation. Here a gentleman was paid to do nothing. There many gentlemen were paid to do what

would be better done by one. The coach, the liveries, the lace cravat and diamond buckles of the placeman

were naturally seen with an evil eye by those who rose up early and lay down late in order to furnish him

with the means of indulging in splendour and luxury. Such abuses it was the especial business of a House of

Commons to correct. What then had the existing House of Commons done in the way of correction?

Absolutely nothing. In 1690, indeed, while the Civil List was settling, some sharp speeches had been made.

In 1691, when the Ways and Means were under consideration, a resolution had been passed so absurdly

framed that it had proved utterly abortive. The nuisance continued, and would continue while it was a source

of profit to those whose duty was to abate it. Who could expect faithful and vigilant stewardship from

stewards who had a direct interest in encouraging the waste which they were employed to check? The House

swarmed with placemen of all kinds, Lords of the Treasury, Lords of the Admiralty, Commissioners of

Customs, Commissioners of Excise, Commissioners of Prizes, Tellers, Auditors, Receivers, Paymasters,

Officers of the Mint, Officers of the household, Colonels of regiments, Captains of men of war, Governors of

forts. We send up to Westminster, it was said, one of our neighbours, an independent gentleman, in the full

confidence that his feelings and interests are in perfect accordance with ours. We look to him to relieve us

from every burden except those burdens without which the public service cannot be carried on, and which

therefore, galling as they are, we patiently and resolutely bear. But before he has been a session in Parliament

we learn that he is a Clerk of the Green Cloth or a Yeoman of the Removing Wardrobe, with a comfortable

salary. Nay, we sometimes learn that he has obtained one of those places in the Exchequer of which the

emoluments rise and fall with the taxes which we pay. It would be strange indeed if our interests were safe in

the keeping of a man whose gains consist in a percentage on our losses. The evil would be greatly diminished

if we had frequent opportunities of considering whether the powers of our agent ought to be renewed or

revoked. But, as the law stands, it is not impossible that he may hold those powers twenty or thirty years.

While he lives, and while either the King or the Queen lives, it is not likely that we shall ever again exercise

our elective franchise, unless there should be a dispute between the Court and the Parliament. The more

profuse and obsequious a Parliament is, the less likely it is to give offence to the Court. The worse our

The outcry was loud. Odious nicknames were given to the Parliament. Sometimes it was the Officers'

Parliament; sometimes it was the Standing Parliament, and was pronounced to be a greater nuisance than

Two specifics for the distempers of the State were strongly recommended, and divided the public favour. One

was a law excluding placemen from the House of Commons. The other was a law limiting the duration of

Parliaments to three years. In general the Tory reformers preferred a Place Bill, and the Whig reformers a

Triennial Bill; but not a few zealous men of both parties were for trying both remedies.

Before Christmas a Place Bill was laid on the table of the Commons. That bill has been vehemently praised

by writers who never saw it, and who merely guessed at what it contained. But no person who takes the

trouble to study the original parchment, which, embrowned with the dust of a hundred and sixty years,

reposes among the archives of the House of Lords, will find much matter for eulogy.

About the manner in which such a bill should have been framed there will, in our time, be little difference of

opinion among enlightened Englishmen. They will agree in thinking that it would be most pernicious to open

the House of Commons to all placemen, and not less pernicious to close that House against all placemen. To

draw with precision the line between those who ought to be admitted and those who ought to be excluded

would be a task requiring much time, thought and knowledge of details. But the general principles which

ought to guide us are obvious. The multitude of subordinate functionaries ought to be excluded. A few

functionaries who are at the head or near the head of the great departments of the administration ought to be

The subordinate functionaries ought to be excluded, because their admission would at once lower the

character of Parliament and destroy the efficiency of every public office. They are now excluded, and the

consequence is that the State possesses a valuable body of servants who remain unchanged while cabinet

after cabinet is formed and dissolved, who instruct every successive minister in his duties, and with whom it

is the most sacred point of honour to give true information, sincere advise, and strenuous assistance to their

superior for the time being. To the experience, the ability and the fidelity of this class of men is to be

attributed the ease and safety with which the direction of affairs has been many times, within our own

memory, transferred from Tories to Whigs and from Whigs to Tories. But no such class would have existed if

persons who received salaries from the Crown had been suffered to sit without restriction in the House of

Commons. Those commissionerships, assistant secretaryships, chief clerkships, which are now held for life

by persons who stand aloof from the strife of parties, would have been bestowed on members of Parliament

who were serviceable to the government as voluble speakers or steady voters. As often as the ministry was

changed, all this crowd of retainers would have been ejected from office, and would have been succeeded by

another set of members of Parliament who would probably have been ejected in their turn before they had

half learned their business. Servility and corruption in the legislature, ignorance and incapacity in all the

departments of the executive administration, would have been the inevitable effects of such a system.

Still more noxious, if possible, would be the effects of a system under which all the servants of the Crown,

without exception, should be excluded from the House of Commons. Aristotle has, in that treatise on

government which is perhaps the most judicious and instructive of all his writings, left us a warning against a

class of laws artfully framed to delude the vulgar, democratic in seeming, but oligarchic in effect.374 Had he

had an opportunity of studying the history of the English constitution, he might easily have enlarged his list

of such laws. That men who are in the service and pay of the Crown ought not to sit in an assembly specially

charged with the duty of guarding the rights and interests of the community against all aggression on the part

of the Crown is a plausible and a popular doctrine. Yet it is certain that if those who, five generations ago,

held that doctrine, had been able to mould the constitution according to their wishes, the effect would have

been the depression of that branch of the legislature which springs from the people and is accountable to the

people, and the ascendency of the monarchical and aristocratical elements of our polity. The government

would have been entirely in patrician hands. The House of Lords, constantly drawing to itself the first

abilities in the realm, would have become the most august of senates, while the House of Commons would

have sunk almost to the rank of a vestry. From time to time undoubtedly men of commanding genius and of

aspiring temper would have made their appearance among the representatives of the counties and boroughs.

But every such man would have considered the elective chamber merely as a lobby through which he must

pass to the hereditary chamber. The first object of his ambition would have been that coronet without which

he could not be powerful in the state. As soon as he had shown that he could be a formidable enemy and a

valuable friend to the government, he would have made haste to quit what would then have been in every

sense the Lower House for what would then have been in every sense the Upper. The conflict between

Walpole and Pulteney, the conflict between Pitt and Fox, would have been transferred from the popular to the

aristocratic part of the legislature. On every great question, foreign, domestic or colonial, the debates of the

nobles would have been impatiently expected and eagerly devoured. The report of the proceedings of an

assembly containing no person empowered to speak in the name of the government, no person who had ever

been in high political trust, would have been thrown aside with contempt. Even the control of the purse of the

nation must have passed, not perhaps in form, but in substance, to that body in which would have been found

every man who was qualified to bring forward a budget or explain an estimate. The country would have been

governed by Peers; and the chief business of the Commons would have been to wrangle about bills for the

These considerations were altogether overlooked in 1692. Nobody thought of drawing a line between the few

functionaries who ought to be allowed to sit in the House of Commons and the crowd of functionaries who

ought to be shut out. The only line which the legislators of that day took pains to draw was between

themselves and their successors. Their own interest they guarded with a care of which it seems strange that

they should not have been ashamed. Every one of them was allowed to keep the places which he had got, and

to get as many more places as he could before the next dissolution of Parliament, an event which might not

happen for many years. But a member who should be chosen after the first of February 1693 was not to be

In the House of Commons the bill passed through all its stages rapidly and without a single division. But in

the Lords the contest was sharp and obstinate. Several amendments were proposed in committee; but all were

rejected. The motion that the bill should pass was supported by Mulgrave in a lively and poignant speech,

which has been preserved, and which proves that his reputation for eloquence was not unmerited. The Lords

who took the other side did not, it should seem, venture to deny that there was an evil which required a

remedy; but they maintained that the proposed remedy would only aggravate the evil. The patriotic

representatives of the people had devised a reform which might perhaps benefit the next generation; but they

had carefully reserved to themselves the privilege of plundering the present generation. If this bill passed, it

was clear that, while the existing Parliament lasted, the number of placemen in the House of Commons would

be little, if at all, diminished; and, if this bill passed, it was highly probable that the existing Parliament would

last till both King William and Queen Mary were dead. For as, under this bill, Their Majesties would be able

to exercise a much greater influence over the existing Parliament than over any future Parliament, they would

naturally wish to put off a dissolution as long as possible. The complaint of the electors of England was that

now, in 1692, they were unfairly represented. It was not redress, but mockery, to tell them that their children

should be fairly represented in 1710 or 1720. The relief ought to be immediate; and the way to give

immediate relief was to limit the duration of Parliaments, and to begin with that Parliament which, in the

The forces were so evenly balanced that a very slight accident might have turned the scale. When the

question was put that the bill do pass, eightytwo peers were present. Of these fortytwo were for the bill,

and forty against it. Proxies were then called. There were only two proxies for the bill; there were seven

against it; but of the seven three were questioned, and were with difficulty admitted. The result was that the

The majority appears to have been composed of moderate Whigs and moderate Tories. Twenty of the

minority protested, and among them were the most violent and intolerant members of both parties, such as

Warrington, who had narrowly escaped the block for conspiring against James, and Aylesbury, who

afterwards narrowly escaped the block for conspiring against William. Marlborough, who, since his

imprisonment, had gone all lengths in opposition to the government, not only put his own name to the protest,

but made the Prince of Denmark sign what it was altogether beyond the faculties of His Royal Highness to

It is a remarkable circumstance that neither Caermarthen, the first in power as well as in abilities of the Tory

ministers, nor Shrewsbury, the most distinguished of those Whigs who were then on bad terms with the

Court, was present on this important occasion. Their absence was in all probability the effect of design; for

both of them were in the House no long time before and no long time after the division.

A few days later Shrewsbury laid on the table of the Lord a bill for limiting the duration of Parliaments. By

this bill it was provided that the Parliament then sitting should cease to exist on the first of January 1694, and

Among the Lords there seems to have been almost perfect unanimity on this subject. William in vain

endeavoured to induce those peers in whom he placed the greatest confidence to support his prerogative.

Some of them thought the proposed change salutary; others hoped to quiet the public mind by a liberal

concession; and others had held such language when they were opposing the Place Bill that they could not,

without gross inconsistency, oppose the Triennial Bill. The whole House too bore a grudge to the other

House, and had a pleasure in putting the other House in a most disagreeable dilemma. Burnet, Pembroke,

nay, even Caermarthen, who was very little in the habit of siding with the people against the throne,

supported Shrewsbury. "My Lord," said the King to Caermarthen, with bitter displeasure, "you will live to

repent the part which you are taking in this matter."377 The warning was disregarded; and the bill, having

passed the Lords smoothly and rapidly, was carried with great solemnity by two judges to the Commons.

Of what took place in the Commons we have but very meagre accounts; but from those accounts it is clear

that the Whigs, as a body, supported the bill, and that the opposition came chiefly from Tories. Old Titus,

who had been a politician in the days of the Commonwealth, entertained the House with a speech in the style

which had been fashionable in those days. Parliaments, he said, resembled the manna which God bestowed

on the chosen people. They were excellent while they were fresh; but if kept too long they became noisome;

and foul worms were engendered by the corruption of that which had been sweeter than honey. Littleton and

other leading Whigs spoke on the same side. Seymour, Finch, and Tredenham, all stanch Tories, were

vehement against the bill; and even Sir John Lowther on this point dissented from his friend and patron

Caermarthen. Several Tory orators appealed to a feeling which was strong in the House, and which had, since

the Revolution, prevented many laws from passing. Whatever, they said, comes from the Peers is to be

received with suspicion; and the present bill is of such a nature that, even if it were in itself good, it ought to

be at once rejected merely because it has been brought down from them. If their Lordships were to send us

the most judicious of all money bills, should we not kick it to the door? Yet to send us a money bill would

hardly be a grosser affront than to send us such a bill as this. They have taken an initiative which, by every

rule of parliamentary courtesy, ought to have been left to us. They have sate in judgment on us, convicted us,

condemned us to dissolution, and fixed the first of January for the execution. Are we to submit patiently to so

degrading a sentence, a sentence too passed by men who have not so conducted themselves as to have

acquired any right to censure others? Have they ever made any sacrifice of their own interest, of their own

dignity, to the general welfare? Have not excellent bills been lost because we would not consent to insert in

them clauses conferring new privileges on the nobility? And now that their Lordships are bent on obtaining

popularity, do they propose to purchase it by relinquishing even the smallest of their own oppressive

privileges? No; they offer to their country that which will cost them nothing, but which will cost us and will

cost the Crown dear. In such circumstances it is our duty to repel the insult which has been offered to us, and,

Such topics as these were doubtless well qualified to inflame the passions of the House of Commons. The

near prospect of a dissolution could not be very agreeable to a member whose election was likely to be

contested. He must go through all the miseries of a canvass, must shake hands with crowds of freeholders or

freemen, must ask after their wives and children, must hire conveyances for outvoters, must open alehouses,

must provide mountains of beef, must set rivers of ale running, and might perhaps, after all the drudgery and

all the expense, after being lampooned, hustled, pelted, find himself at the bottom of the poll, see his

antagonists chaired, and sink half ruined into obscurity. All this evil he was now invited to bring on himself,

and invited by men whose own seats in the legislature were permanent, who gave up neither dignity nor

quiet, neither power nor money, but gained the praise of patriotism by forcing him to abdicate a high station,

to undergo harassing labour and anxiety, to mortgage his cornfields and to hew down his woods. There was

naturally much irritation, more probably than is indicated by the divisions. For the constituent bodies were

generally delighted with the bill; and many members who disliked it were afraid to oppose it. The House

yielded to the pressure of public opinion, but not without a pang and a struggle. The discussions in the

committee seem to have been acrimonious. Such sharp words passed between Seymour and one of the Whig

members that it was necessary to put the Speaker in the chair and the mace on the table for the purpose of

restoring order. One amendment was made. The respite which the Lords had granted to the existing

Parliament was extended from the first of January to Lady Day, in order that there might be full time for

another session. The third reading was carried by two hundred votes to a hundred and sixtyone. The Lords

agreed to the bill as amended; and nothing was wanting but the royal assent. Whether that assent would or

would not be given was a question which remained in suspense till the last day of the session.378

One strange inconsistency in the conduct of the reformers of that generation deserves notice. It never

occurred to any one of those who were zealous for the Triennial Bill that every argument which could be

urged in favour of that bill was are argument against the rules which had been framed in old times for the

purpose of keeping parliamentary deliberations and divisions strictly secret. It is quite natural that a

government which withholds political privileges from the commonalty should withhold also political

information. But nothing can be more irrational than to give power, and not to give the knowledge without

which there is the greatest risk that power will be abused. What could be more absurd than to call constituent

bodies frequently together that they might decide whether their representative had done his duty by them, and

yet strictly to interdict them from learning, on trustworthy authority, what he had said or how he had voted?

The absurdity however appears to have passed altogether unchallenged. It is highly probable that among the

two hundred members of the House of Commons who voted for the third reading of the Triennial Bill there

was not one who would have hesitated about sending to Newgate any person who had dared to publish a

report of the debate on that bill, or a list of the Ayes and the Noes. The truth is that the secrecy of

parliamentary debates, a secrecy which would now be thought a grievance more intolerable than the

Shipmoney or the Star Chamber, was then inseparably associated, even in the most honest and intelligent

minds, with constitutional freedom. A few old men still living could remember times when a gentleman who

was known at Whitehall to have let fall a sharp word against a court favourite would have been brought

before the Privy Council and sent to the Tower. Those times were gone, never to return. There was no longer

any danger that the King would oppress the members of the legislature; and there was much danger that the

members of the legislature might oppress the people. Nevertheless the words Privilege of Parliament, those

words which the stern senators of the preceding generation had murmured when a tyrant filled their chamber

with his guards, those words which a hundred thousand Londoners had shouted in his ears when he ventured

for the last time within the walls of their city; still retained a magical influence over all who loved liberty. It

was long before even the most enlightened men became sensible that the precautions which had been

originally devised for the purpose of protecting patriots against the displeasure of the Court now served only

It is also to be observed that few of those who showed at this time the greatest desire to increase the political

power of the people were as yet prepared to emancipate the press from the control of the government. The

Licensing Act, which had passed, as a matter of course, in 1685, expired in 1693, and was renewed, not

however without an opposition, which, though feeble when compared with the magnitude of the object in

dispute, proved that the public mind was beginning dimly to perceive how closely civil freedom and freedom

On the history of the Licensing Act no preceding writer has thought it worth while to expend any care or

labour. Yet surely the events which led to the establishment of the liberty of the press in England, and in all

the countries peopled by the English race, may be thought to have as much interest for the present generation

as any of those battles and sieges of which the most minute details have been carefully recorded.

During the first three years of William's reign scarcely a voice seems to have been raised against the

restrictions which the law imposed on literature. Those restrictions were in perfect harmony with the theory

of government held by the Tories, and were not, in practice, galling to the Whigs. Roger Lestrange, who had

been licenser under the last two Kings of the House of Stuart, and who had shown as little tenderness to

Exclusionists and Presbyterians in that character as in his other character of Observator, was turned out of

office at the Revolution, and was succeeded by a Scotch gentleman, who, on account of his passion for rare

books, and his habit of attending all sales of libraries, was known in the shops and coffeehouses near Saint

Paul's by the name of Catalogue Fraser. Fraser was a zealous Whig. By Whig authors and publishers he was

extolled as a most impartial and humane man. But the conduct which obtained their applause drew on him the

abuse of the Tories, and was not altogether pleasing to his official superior Nottingham.379 No serious

difference however seems to have arisen till the year 1692. In that year an honest old clergyman named

Walker, who had, in the time of the Commonwealth, been Gauden's curate, wrote a book which convinced all

sensible and dispassionate readers that Gauden, and not Charles the First, was the author of the Icon Basilike.

This book Fraser suffered to be printed. If he had authorised the publication of a work in which the Gospel of

Saint John or the Epistle to the Romans had been represented as spurious, the indignation of the High Church

party could hardly have been greater. The question was not literary, but religious. Doubt was impiety. In truth

the Icon was to many fervent Royalists a supplementary revelation. One of them indeed had gone so far as to

propose that lessons taken out of the inestimable little volume should be read in the churches.380 Fraser

found it necessary to resign his place; and Nottingham appointed a gentleman of good blood and scanty

fortune named Edmund Bohun. This change of men produced an immediate and total change of system; for

Bohun was as strong a Tory as a conscientious man who had taken the oaths could possibly be. He had been

conspicuous as a persecutor of nonconformists and a champion of the doctrine of passive obedience. He had

edited Filmer's absurd treatise on the origin of government, and had written an answer to the paper which

Algernon Sidney had delivered to the Sheriffs on Tower Hill. Nor did Bohun admit that, in swearing

allegiance to William and Mary, he had done any thing inconsistent with his old creed. For he had succeeded

in convincing himself that they reigned by right of conquest, and that it was the duty of an Englishman to

serve them as faithfully as Daniel had served Darius or as Nehemiah had served Artaxerxes. This doctrine,

whatever peace it might bring to his own conscience, found little favour with any party. The Whigs loathed it

as servile; the Jacobites loathed it as revolutionary. Great numbers of Tories had doubtless submitted to

William on the ground that he was, rightfully or wrongfully, King in possession; but very few of them were

disposed to allow that his possession had originated in conquest. Indeed the plea which had satisfied the weak

and narrow mind of Bohun was a mere fiction, and, had it been a truth, would have been a truth not to be

uttered by Englishmen without agonies of shame and mortification.381 He however clung to his favourite

whimsy with a tenacity which the general disapprobation only made more intense. His old friends, the

stedfast adherents of indefeasible hereditary right, grew cold and reserved. He asked Sancroft's blessing, and

got only a sharp word, and a black look. He asked Ken's blessing; and Ken, though not much in the habit of

transgressing the rules of Christian charity and courtesy, murmured something about a little scribbler. Thus

cast out by one faction, Bohun was not received by any other. He formed indeed a class apart; for he was at

once a zealous Filmerite and a zealous Williamite. He held that pure monarchy, not limited by any law or

contract, was the form of government which had been divinely ordained. But he held that William was now

the absolute monarch, who might annul the Great Charter, abolish trial by jury, or impose taxes by royal

proclamation, without forfeiting the right to be implicitly obeyed by Christian men. As to the rest, Bohun was

a man of some learning, mean understanding and unpopular manners. He had no sooner entered on his

functions than all Paternoster Row and Little Britain were in a ferment. The Whigs had, under Fraser's

administration, enjoyed almost as entire a liberty as if there had been no censorship. But they were now as

severely treated as in the days of Lestrange. A History of the Bloody Assizes was about to be published, and

was expected to have as great a run as the Pilgrim's Progress. But the new licenser refused his Imprimatur.

The book, he said, represented rebels and schismatics as heroes and martyrs; and he would not sanction it for

its weight in gold. A charge delivered by Lord Warrington to the grand jury of Cheshire was not permitted to

appear, because His Lordship had spoken contemptuously of divine right and passive obedience. Julian

Johnson found that, if he wished to promulgate his notions of government, he must again have recourse, as in

the evil times of King James, to a secret press.382 Such restraint as this, coming after several years of

unbounded freedom, naturally produced violent exasperation. Some Whigs began to think that the censorship

itself was a grievance; all Whigs agreed in pronouncing the new censor unfit for his post, and were prepared

Of the transactions which terminated in Bohun's dismission, and which produced the first parliamentary

struggle for the liberty of unlicensed printing, we have accounts written by Bohun himself and by others; but

there are strong reasons for believing that in none of those accounts is the whole truth to be found. It may

perhaps not be impossible, even at this distance of time, to put together dispersed fragments of evidence in

such a manner as to produce an authentic narrative which would have astonished the unfortunate licenser

There was then about town a man of good family, of some reading, and of some small literary talent, named

Charles Blount.383 In politics he belonged to the extreme section of the Whig party. In the days of the

Exclusion Bill he had been one of Shaftesbury's brisk boys, and had, under the signature of Junius Brutus,

magnified the virtues and public services of Titus Oates, and exhorted the Protestants to take signal

vengeance on the Papists for the fire of London and for the murder of Godfrey.384 As to the theological

questions which were in issue between Protestants and Papists, Blount was perfectly impartial. He was an

infidel, and the head of a small school of infidels who were troubled with a morbid desire to make converts.

He translated from the Latin translation part of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and appended to it notes of

which the flippant profaneness called forth the severe censure of an unbeliever of a very different order, the

illustrious Bayle.385 Blount also attacked Christianity in several original treatises, or rather in several

treatises purporting to be original; for he was the most audacious of literary thieves, and transcribed, without

acknowledgment, whole pages from authors who had preceded him. His delight was to worry the priests by

asking them how light existed before the sun was made, how Paradise could be bounded by Pison, Gihon,

Hiddekel and Euphrates, how serpents moved before they were condemned to crawl, and where Eve found

thread to stitch her figleaves. To his speculations on these subjects he gave the lofty name of the Oracles of

Reason; and indeed whatever he said or wrote was considered as oracular by his disciples. Of those disciples

the most noted was a bad writer named Gildon, who lived to pester another generation with doggrel and

slander, and whose memory is still preserved, not by his own voluminous works, but by two or three lines in

Little as either the intellectual or the moral character of Blount may seem to deserve respect, it is in a great

measure to him that we must attribute the emancipation of the English press. Between him and the licensers

there was a feud of long standing. Before the Revolution one of his heterodox treatises had been grievously

mutilated by Lestrange, and at last suppressed by orders from Lestrange's superior the Bishop of London.387

Bohun was a scarcely less severe critic than Lestrange. Blount therefore began to make war on the censorship

and the censor. The hostilities were commenced by a tract which came forth without any license, and which

is entitled A Just Vindication of Learning and of the Liberty of the Press, by Philopatris.388 Whoever reads

this piece, and is not aware that Blount was one of the most unscrupulous plagiaries that ever lived, will be

surprised to find, mingled with the poor thoughts and poor words of a thirdrate pamphleteer, passages so

elevated in sentiment and style that they would be worthy of the greatest name in letters. The truth is that the

just Vindication consists chiefly of garbled extracts from the Areopagitica of Milton. That noble discourse

had been neglected by the generation to which it was addressed, had sunk into oblivion, and was at the mercy

of every pilferer. The literary workmanship of Blount resembled the architectural workmanship of those

barbarians who used the Coliseum and the Theatre of Pompey as quarries, who built hovels out of Ionian

friezes and propped cowhouses on pillars of lazulite. Blount concluded, as Milton had done, by

recommending that any book might be printed without a license, provided that the name of the author or

publisher were registered.389 The Just Vindication was well received. The blow was speedily followed up.

There still remained in the Areopagitica many fine passages which Blount had not used in his first pamphlet.

Out of these passages he constructed a second pamphlet entitled Reasons for the Liberty of Unlicensed

Printing.390 To these Reasons he appended a postscript entitled A Just and True Character of Edmund

Bohun. This character was written with extreme bitterness. Passages were quoted from the licenser's writings

to prove that he held the doctrines of passive obedience and nonresistance. He was accused of using his

power systematically for the purpose of favouring the enemies and silencing the friends of the Sovereigns

whose bread he ate; and it was asserted that he was the friend and the pupil of his predecessor Sir Roger.

Blount's Character of Bohun could not be publicly sold; but it was widely circulated. While it was passing

from hand to hand, and while the Whigs were every where exclaiming against the new censor as a second

Lestrange, he was requested to authorise the publication of an anonymous work entitled King William and

Queen Mary Conquerors.391 He readily and indeed eagerly complied. For in truth there was between the

doctrines which he had long professed and the doctrines which were propounded in this treatise a coincidence

so exact that many suspected him of being the author; nor was this suspicion weakened by a passage to which

a compliment was paid to his political writings. But the real author was that very Blount who was, at that

very time, labouring to inflame the public both against the Licensing Act and the licenser. Blount's motives

may easily be divined. His own opinions were diametrically opposed to those which, on this occasion, he put

forward in the most offensive manner. It is therefore impossible to doubt that his object was to ensnare and to

ruin Bohun. It was a base and wicked scheme. But it cannot be denied that the trap was laid and baited with

much skill. The republican succeeded in personating a high Tory. The atheist succeeded in personating a high

Churchman. The pamphlet concluded with a devout prayer that the God of light and love would open the

understanding and govern the will of Englishmen, so that they might see the things which belonged to their

peace. The censor was in raptures. In every page he found his own thoughts expressed more plainly than he

had ever expressed them. Never before, in his opinion, had the true claim of their Majesties to obedience been

so clearly stated. Every Jacobite who read this admirable tract must inevitably be converted. The nonjurors

would flock to take the oaths. The nation, so long divided, would at length be united. From these pleasing

dreams Bohun was awakened by learning, a few hours after the appearance of the discourse which had

charmed him, that the titlepage had set all London in a flame, and that the odious words, King William and

Queen Mary Conquerors, had moved the indignation of multitudes who had never read further. Only four

days after the publication he heard that the House of Commons had taken the matter up, that the book had

been called by some members a rascally book, and that, as the author was unknown, the Serjeant at Arms was

in search of the licenser.392 Bohun's mind had never been strong; and he was entirely unnerved and

bewildered by the fury and suddenness of the storm which had burst upon him. He went to the House. Most

of the members whom he met in the passages and lobbies frowned on him. When he was put to the bar, and,

after three profound obeisances, ventured to lift his head and look round him, he could read his doom in the

angry and contemptuous looks which were cast on him from every side. He hesitated, blundered, contradicted

himself, called the Speaker My Lord, and, by his confused way of speaking, raised a tempest of rude laughter

which confused him still more. As soon as he had withdrawn, it was unanimously resolved that the obnoxious

treatise should be burned in Palace Yard by the common hangman. It was also resolved, without a division,

that the King should be requested to remove Bohun from the office of licenser. The poor man, ready to faint

with grief and fear, was conducted by the officers of the House to a place of confinement.393

But scarcely was he in his prison when a large body of members clamorously demanded a more important

victim. Burnet had, shortly after he became Bishop of Salisbury, addressed to the clergy of his diocese a

Pastoral Letter, exhorting them to take the oaths. In one paragraph of this letter he had held language bearing

some resemblance to that of the pamphlet which had just been sentenced to the flames. There were indeed

distinctions which a judicious and impartial tribunal would not have failed to notice. But the tribunal before

which Burnet was arraigned was neither judicious nor impartial. His faults had made him many enemies, and

his virtues many more. The discontented Whigs complained that he leaned towards the Court, the High

Churchmen that he leaned towards the Dissenters; nor can it be supposed that a man of so much boldness and

so little tact, a man so indiscreetly frank and so restlessly active, had passed through life without crossing the

schemes and wounding the feelings of some whose opinions agreed with his. He was regarded with peculiar

malevolence by Howe. Howe had never, even while he was in office, been in the habit of restraining his bitter

and petulant tongue; and he had recently been turned out of office in a way which had made him

ungovernably ferocious. The history of his dismission is not accurately known, but it was certainly

accompanied by some circumstances which had cruelly galled his temper. If rumour could be trusted, he had

fancied that Mary was in love with him, and had availed himself of an opportunity which offered itself while

he was in attendance on her as Vice Chamberlain to make some advances which had justly moved her

indignation. Soon after he was discarded, he was prosecuted for having, in a fit of passion, beaten one of his

servants savagely within the verge of the palace. He had pleaded guilty, and had been pardoned; but from this

time he showed, on every occasion, the most rancorous personal hatred of his royal mistress, of her husband,

and of all who were favoured by either. It was known that the Queen frequently consulted Burnet; and Howe

was possessed with the belief that her severity was to be imputed to Burnet's influence.394 Now was the time

to be revenged. In a long and elaborate speech the spiteful Whigfor such he still affected to

berepresented Burnet as a Tory of the worst class. "There should be a law," he said, "making it penal for

the clergy to introduce politics into their discourses. Formerly they sought to enslave us by crying up the

divine and indefeasible right of the hereditary prince. Now they try to arrive at the same result by telling us

that we are a conquered people." It was moved that the Bishop should be impeached. To this motion there

was an unanswerable objection, which the Speaker pointed out. The Pastoral Letter had been written in 1689,

and was therefore covered by the Act of Grace which had been passed in 1690. Yet a member was not

ashamed to say, "No matter: impeach him; and force him to plead the Act." Few, however, were disposed to

take a course so unworthy of a House of Commons. Some wag cried out, "Burn it; burn it;" and this bad pun

ran along the benches, and was received with shouts of laughter. It was moved that the Pastoral Letter should

be burned by the common hangman. A long and vehement debate followed. For Burnet was a man warmly

loved as well as warmly hated. The great majority of the Whigs stood firmly by him; and his goodnature and

generosity had made him friends even among the Tories. The contest lasted two days. Montague and Finch,

men of widely different opinions, appear to have been foremost among the Bishop's champions. An attempt

to get rid of the subject by moving the previous question failed. At length the main question was put; and the

Pastoral Letter was condemned to the flames by a small majority in a full house. The Ayes were a hundred

and sixtytwo; the Noes a hundred and fifty five.395 The general opinion, at least of the capital, seems to

He was not naturally a man of fine feelings; and the life which he had led had not tended to make them finer.

He had been during many years a mark for theological and political animosity. Grave doctors had

anathematized him; ribald poets had lampooned him; princes and ministers had laid snares for his life; he had

been long a wanderer and an exile, in constant peril of being kidnapped, struck in the boots, hanged and

quartered. Yet none of these things had ever seemed to move him. His selfconceit had been proof against

ridicule, and his dauntless temper against danger. But on this occasion his fortitude seems to have failed him.

To be stigmatized by the popular branch of the legislature as a teacher of doctrines so servile that they

disgusted even Tories, to be joined in one sentence of condemnation with the editor of Filmer, was too much.

How deeply Burnet was wounded appeared many years later, when, after his death, his History of his Life

and Times was given to the world. In that work he is ordinarily garrulous even to minuteness about all that

concerns himself, and sometimes relates with amusing ingenuousness his own mistakes and the censures

which those mistakes brought upon him. But about the ignominious judgment passed by the House of

The plot which ruined Bohun, though it did no honour to those who contrived it, produced important and

salutary effects. Before the conduct of the unlucky licenser had been brought under the consideration of

Parliament, the Commons had resolved, without any division, and, as far as appears, without any discussion,

that the Act which subjected literature to a censorship should be continued. But the question had now

assumed a new aspect; and the continuation of the Act was no longer regarded as a matter of course. A

feeling in favour of the liberty of the press, a feeling not yet, it is true, of wide extent or formidable intensity,

began to show itself. The existing system, it was said, was prejudicial both to commerce and to learning.

Could it be expected that any capitalist would advance the funds necessary for a great literary undertaking, or

that any scholar would expend years of toil and research on such an undertaking, while it was possible that, at

the last moment, the caprice, the malice, the folly of one man might frustrate the whole design? And was it

certain that the law which so grievously restricted both the freedom of trade and the freedom of thought had

really added to the security of the State? Had not recent experience proved that the licenser might himself be

an enemy of their Majesties, or, worse still, an absurd and perverse friend; that he might suppress a book of

which it would be for their interest that every house in the country should have a copy, and that he might

readily give his sanction to a libel which tended to make them hateful to their people, and which deserved to

be torn and burned by the hand of Ketch? Had the government gained much by establishing a literary police

which prevented Englishmen from having the History of the Bloody Circuit, and allowed them, by way of

compensation, to read tracts which represented King William and Queen Mary as conquerors?

In that age persons who were not specially interested in a public bill very seldom petitioned Parliament

against it or for it. The only petitions therefore which were at this conjuncture presented to the two Houses

against the censorship came from booksellers, bookbinders and printers.398 But the opinion which these

The law which was about to expire had lasted eight years. It was renewed for only two years. It appears, from

an entry in the journals of the Commons which unfortunately is defective, that a division took place on an

amendment about the nature of which we are left entirely in the dark. The votes were ninetynine to eighty.

In the Lords it was proposed, according to the suggestion offered fifty years before by Milton and stolen from

him by Blount, to exempt from the authority of the licenser every book which bore the name of an author or

publisher. This amendment was rejected; and the bill passed, but not without a protest signed by eleven peers

who declared that they could not think it for the public interest to subject all learning and true information to

the arbitrary will and pleasure of a mercenary and perhaps ignorant licenser. Among those who protested

were Halifax, Shrewsbury and Mulgrave, three noblemen belonging to different political parties, but all

distinguished by their literary attainments. It is to be lamented that the signatures of Tillotson and Burnet,

Blount, by whose exertions and machinations the opposition to the censorship had been raised, did not live to

see that opposition successful. Though not a very young man, he was possessed by an insane passion for the

sister of his deceased wife. Having long laboured in vain to convince the object of his love that she might

lawfully marry him, he at last, whether from weariness of life, or in the hope of touching her heart, inflicted

on himself a wound of which, after languishing long, he died. He has often been mentioned as a blasphemer

and selfmurderer. But the important service which, by means doubtless most immoral and dishonourable, he

Late in this busy and eventful session the attention of the Houses was called to the state of Ireland. The

government of that kingdom had, during the six months which followed the surrender of Limerick, been in an

unsettled state. It was not till the Irish troops who adhered to Sarsfield had sailed for France, and till the Irish

troops who had made their election to remain at home had been disbanded, that William at length put forth a

proclamation solemnly announcing the termination of the civil war. From the hostility of the aboriginal

inhabitants, destitute as they now were of chiefs, of arms and of organization, nothing was to be apprehended

beyond occasional robberies and murders. But the war cry of the Irishry had scarcely died away when the

first faint murmurs of the Englishry began to be heard. Coningsby was during some months at the head of the

administration. He soon made himself in the highest degree odious to the dominant caste. He was an

unprincipled man; he was insatiable of riches; and he was in a situation in which riches were easily to be

obtained by an unprincipled man. Immense sums of money, immense quantities of military stores had been

sent over from England. Immense confiscations were taking place in Ireland. The rapacious governor had

daily opportunities of embezzling and extorting; and of those opportunities he availed himself without scruple

or shame. This however was not, in the estimation of the colonists, his greatest offence. They might have

pardoned his covetousness; but they could not pardon the clemency which he showed to their vanquished and

enslaved enemies. His clemency indeed amounted merely to this, that he loved money more than he hated

Papists, and that he was not unwilling to sell for a high price a scanty measure of justice to some of the

oppressed class. Unhappily, to the ruling minority, sore from recent conflict and drunk with recent victory,

the subjugated majority was as a drove of cattle, or rather as a pack of wolves. Man acknowledges in the

inferior animals no rights inconsistent with his own convenience; and as man deals with the inferior animals

the Cromwellian thought himself at liberty to deal with the Roman Catholic. Coningsby therefore drew on

himself a greater storm of obloquy by his few good acts than by his many bad acts. The clamour against him

was so violent that he was removed; and Sidney went over, with the full power and dignity of Lord

But the easy temper and graceful manners of Sidney failed to produce a conciliatory effect. He does not

indeed appear to have been greedy of unlawful gain. But he did not restrain with a sufficiently firm hand the

crowd of subordinate functionaries whom Coningsby's example and protection had encouraged to plunder the

public and to sell their good offices to suitors. Nor was the new Viceroy of a temper to bear hard on the

feeble remains of the native aristocracy. He therefore speedily became an object of suspicion and aversion to

the Anglosaxon settlers. His first act was to send out the writs for a general election. The Roman Catholics

had been excluded from every municipal corporation; but no law had yet deprived them of the county

franchise. It is probable however that not a single Roman Catholic freeholder ventured to approach the

hustings. The members chosen were, with few exceptions, men animated by the spirit of Enniskillen and

Londonderry, a spirit eminently heroic in times of distress and peril, but too often cruel and imperious in the

season of prosperity and power. They detested the civil treaty of Limerick, and were indignant when they

learned that the Lord Lieutenant fully expected from them a parliamentary ratification of that odious contract,

a contract which gave a licence to the idolatry of the mass, and which prevented good Protestants from

ruining their Popish neighbours by bringing civil actions for injuries done during the war.402

On the fifth of October 1692 the Parliament met at Dublin in Chichester House. It was very differently

composed from the assembly which had borne the same title in 1689. Scarcely one peer, not one member of

the House of Commons, who had sate at the King's Inns, was to be seen. To the crowd of O's and Macs,

descendants of the old princes of the island, had succeeded men whose names indicated a Saxon origin. A

single O, an apostate from the faith of his fathers, and three Macs, evidently emigrants from Scotland, and

The Parliament, thus composed, had then less than the powers of the Assembly of Jamaica or of the

Assembly of Virginia. Not merely was the Legislature which sate at Dublin subject to the absolute control of

the Legislature which sate at Westminster: but a law passed in the fifteenth century, during the administration

of the Lord Deputy Poynings, and called by his name, had provided that no bill which had not been

considered and approved by the Privy Council of England should be brought into either House in Ireland, and

that every bill so considered and approved should be either passed without amendment or rejected.403

The session opened with a solemn recognition of the paramount authority of the mother country. The

Commons ordered their clerk to read to them the English Act which required them to take the Oath of

Supremacy and to subscribe the Declaration against Transubstantiation. Having heard the Act read, they

immediately proceeded to obey it. Addresses were then voted which expressed the warmest gratitude and

attachment to the King. Two members, who had been untrue to the Protestant and English interest during the

troubles, were expelled. Supplies, liberal when compared with the resources of a country devastated by years

of predatory war, were voted with eagerness. But the bill for confirming the Act of Settlement was thought to

be too favourable to the native gentry, and, as it could not be amended, was with little ceremony rejected. A

committee of the whole House resolved that the unjustifiable indulgence with which the Irish had been

treated since the battle of the Boyne was one of the chief causes of the misery of the kingdom. A Committee

of Grievances sate daily till eleven in the evening; and the proceedings of this inquest greatly alarmed the

Castle. Many instances of gross venality and knavery on the part of men high in office were brought to light,

and many instances also of what was then thought a criminal lenity towards the subject nation. This Papist

had been allowed to enlist in the army; that Papist had been allowed to keep a gun; a third had too good a

horse; a fourth had been protected against Protestants who wished to bring actions against him for wrongs

committed during the years of confusion. The Lord Lieutenant, having obtained nearly as much money as he

could expect, determined to put an end to these unpleasant inquiries. He knew, however, that if he quarrelled

with the Parliament for treating either peculators or Papists with severity, he should have little support in

England. He therefore looked out for a pretext, and was fortunate enough to find one. The Commons had

passed a vote which might with some plausibility be represented as inconsistent with the Poynings statute.

Any thing which looked like a violation of that great fundamental law was likely to excite strong

disapprobation on the other side of Saint George's Channel. The Viceroy saw his advantage, and availed

himself of it. He went to the chamber of the Lords at Chichester House, sent for the Commons, reprimanded

theme in strong language, charged them with undutifully and ungratefully encroaching on the rights of the

Those whom he had lectured withdrew full of resentment. The imputation which he had thrown on them was

unjust. They had a strong feeling of love and reverence for the land from which they sprang, and looked with

confidence for redress to the supreme Parliament. Several of them went to London for the purpose of

vindicating themselves and of accusing the Lord Lieutenant. They were favoured with a long and attentive

audience, both by the Lords and by the Commons, and were requested to put the substance of what had been

said into writing. The humble language of the petitioners, and their protestations that they had never intended

to violate the Poynings statute, or to dispute the paramount authority of England, effaced the impression

which Sidney's accusations had made. Both Houses addressed the King on the state of Ireland. They censured

no delinquent by name; but they expressed an opinion that there had been gross maladministration, that the

public had been plundered, and that Roman Catholics had been treated with unjustifiable tenderness. William

in reply promised that what was amiss should be corrected. His friend Sidney was soon recalled, and

consoled for the loss of the viceregal dignity with the lucrative place of Master of the Ordnance. The

government of Ireland was for a time entrusted to Lords justices, among whom Sir Henry Capel, a zealous

Whig, very little disposed to show indulgence to Papists, had the foremost place.

The prorogation drew nigh; and still the fate of the Triennial Bill was uncertain. Some of the ablest ministers

thought the bill a good one; and, even had they thought it a bad one, they would probably have tried to

dissuade their master from rejecting it. It was impossible, however, to remove from his mind the impression

that a concession on this point would seriously impair his authority. Not relying on the judgment of his

ordinary advisers, he sent Portland to ask the opinion of Sir William Temple. Temple had made a retreat for

himself at a place called Moor Park, in the neighbourhood of Farnham. The country round his dwelling was

almost a wilderness. His amusement during some years had been to create in the waste what those Dutch

burgomasters among whom he had passed some of the best years of his life, would have considered as a

paradise. His hermitage had been occasionally honoured by the presence of the King, who had from a boy

known and esteemed the author of the Triple Alliance, and who was well pleased to find, among the heath

and furze of the wilds of Surrey, a spot which seemed to be part of Holland, a straight canal, a terrace, rows

Portland now repaired to this secluded abode and consulted the oracle. Temple was decidedly of opinion that

the bill ought to pass. He was apprehensive that the reasons which led him to form this opinion might not be

fully and correctly reported to the King by Portland, who was indeed as brave a soldier and as trusty a friend

as ever lived, whose natural abilities were not inconsiderable, and who, in some departments of business, had

great experience, but who was very imperfectly acquainted with the history and constitution of England. As

the state of Sir William's health made it impossible for him to go himself to Kensington, he determined to

send his secretary thither. The secretary was a poor scholar of four or five and twenty, under whose plain garb

and ungainly deportment were concealed some of the choicest gifts that have ever been bestowed on any of

the children of men; rare powers of observation, brilliant wit, grotesque invention, humour of the most

austere flavour, yet exquisitely delicious, eloquence singularly pure, manly and perspicuous. This young man

was named Jonathan Swift. He was born in Ireland, but would have thought himself insulted if he had been

called an Irishman. He was of unmixed English blood, and, through life, regarded the aboriginal population

of the island in which he first drew breath as an alien and a servile caste. He had in the late reign kept terms at

the University of Dublin, but had been distinguished there only by his irregularities, and had with difficulty

obtained his degree. At the time of the Revolution, he had, with many thousands of his fellow colonists, taken

refuge in the mother country from the violence of Tyrconnel, and had thought himself fortunate in being able

to obtain shelter at Moor Park.405 For that shelter, however, he had to pay a heavy price. He was thought to

be sufficiently remunerated for his services with twenty pounds a year and his board. He dined at the second

table. Sometimes, indeed, when better company was not to be had, he was honoured by being invited to play

at cards with his patron; and on such occasions Sir William was so generous as to give his antagonist a little

silver to begin with.406 The humble student would not have dared to raise his eyes to a lady of family; but,

when he had become a clergyman, he began, after the fashion of the clergymen of that generation, to make

love to a pretty waitingmaid who was the chief ornament of the servants' hall, and whose name is inseparably

Swift many years later confessed some part of what he felt when he found himself on his way to Court. His

spirit had been bowed down, and might seem to have been broken, by calamities and humiliations. The

language which he was in the habit of holding to his patron, as far as we can judge from the specimens which

still remain, was that of a lacquey, or rather of a beggar.407 A sharp word or a cold look of the master

sufficed to make the servant miserable during several days.408 But this tameness was merely the tameness

with which a tiger, caught, caged and starved, submits to the keeper who brings him food. The humble menial

was at heart the haughtiest, the most aspiring, the most vindictive, the most despotic of men. And now at

length a great, a boundless prospect was opening before him. To William he was already slightly known. At

Moor Park the King had sometimes, when his host was confined by gout to an easy chair, been attended by

the secretary about the grounds. His Majesty had condescended to teach his companion the Dutch way of

cutting and eating asparagus, and had graciously asked whether Mr. Swift would like to have a captain's

commission in a cavalry regiment. But now for the first time the young man was to stand in the royal

presence as a counsellor. He was admitted into the closet, delivered a letter from Temple, and explained and

enforced the arguments which that letter contained, concisely, but doubtless with clearness and ability. There

was, he said, no reason to think that short Parliaments would be more disposed than long Parliaments to

encroach on the just prerogatives of the Crown. In fact the Parliament which had, in the preceding generation,

waged war against a king, led him captive, sent him to the prison, to the bar, to the scaffold, was known in

our annals as emphatically the Long Parliament. Never would such disasters have befallen the monarchy but

for the fatal law which secured that assembly from dissolution.409 There was, it must be owned, a flaw in

this reasoning which a man less shrewd than William might easily detect. That one restriction of the royal

prerogative had been mischievous did not prove that another restriction would be salutary. It by no means

followed because one sovereign had been ruined by being unable to get rid of a hostile Parliament that

another sovereign might not be ruined by being forced to part with a friendly Parliament. To the great

mortification of the ambassador, his arguments failed to shake the King's resolution. On the fourteenth of

March the Commons were summoned to the Upper House; the title of the Triennial Bill was read; and it was

announced, after the ancient form, that the King and Queen would take the matter into their consideration.

Soon after the prorogation William set out for the Continent. It was necessary that, before his departure, he

should make some important changes. He was resolved not to discard Nottingham, on whose integrity, a

virtue rare among English statesmen, he placed a well founded reliance. Yet, if Nottingham remained

Secretary of State, it was impossible to employ Russell at sea. Russell, though much mortified, was induced

to accept a lucrative post in the household; and two naval officers of great note in their profession, Killegrew

and Delaval, were placed at the Board of Admiralty and entrusted with the command of the Channel

Fleet.410 These arrangements caused much murmuring among the Whigs; for Killegrew and Delaval were

certainly Tories, and were by many suspected of being Jacobites. But other promotions which took place at

the same time proved that the King wished to bear himself evenly between the hostile factions. Nottingham

had, during a year, been the sole Secretary of State. He was now joined with a colleague in whose society he

must have felt himself very ill at ease, John Trenchard. Trenchard belonged to the extreme section of the

Whig party. He was a Taunton man, animated by that spirit which had, during two generations, peculiarly

distinguished Taunton. He had, in the days of Popeburnings and of Protestant flails, been one of the

renowned Green Riband Club; he had been an active member of several stormy Parliaments; he had brought

in the first Exclusion Bill; he had been deeply concerned in the plots formed by the chiefs of the opposition;

he had fled to the Continent; he had been long an exile; and he had been excepted by name from the general

pardon of 1686. Though his life had been passed in turmoil, his temper was naturally calm; but he was

closely connected with a set of men whose passions were far fiercer than his own. He had married the sister

of Hugh Speke, one of the falsest and most malignant of the libellers who brought disgrace on the cause of

constitutional freedom. Aaron Smith, the solicitor of the Treasury, a man in whom the fanatic and the

pettifogger were strangely united, possessed too much influence over the new Secretary, with whom he had,

ten years before, discussed plans of rebellion at the Rose. Why Trenchard was selected in preference to many

men of higher rank and greater ability for a post of the first dignity and importance, it is difficult to say. It

seems however that, though he bore the title and drew the salary of Secretary of State, he was not trusted with

any of the graver secrets of State, and that he was little more than a superintendent of police, charged to look

after the printers of unlicensed books, the pastors of nonjuring congregations, and the haunters of treason

Another Whig of far higher character was called at the same time to a far higher place in the administration.

The Great Seal had now been four years in commission. Since Maynard's retirement, the constitution of the

Court of Chancery had commanded little respect. Trevor, who was the First Commissioner, wanted neither

parts nor learning; but his integrity was with good reason suspected; and the duties which, as Speaker of the

House of Commons, he had to perform during four or five months in the busiest part of every year, made it

impossible for him to be an efficient judge in equity. Every suitor complained that he had to wait a most

unreasonable time for a judgment, and that, when at length a judgment had been pronounced, it was very

likely to be reversed on appeal. Meanwhile there was no efficient minister of justice, no great functionary to

whom it especially belonged to advise the King touching the appointment of judges, of Counsel for the

Crown, of Justices of the Peace.412 It was known that William was sensible of the inconvenience of this state

of things; and, during several months, there had been flying rumours that a Lord Keeper or a Lord Chancellor

would soon be appointed.413 The name most frequently mentioned was that of Nottingham. But the same

reasons which had prevented him from accepting the Great Seal in 1689 had, since that year, rather gained

Somers was only in his fortysecond year; and five years had not elapsed since, on the great day of the trial

of the Bishops, his powers had first been made known to the world. From that time his fame had been

steadily and rapidly rising. Neither in forensic nor in parliamentary eloquence had he any superior. The

consistency of his public conduct had gained for him the entire confidence of the Whigs; and the urbanity of

his manners had conciliated the Tories. It was not without great reluctance that he consented to quit an

assembly over which he exercised an immense influence for an assembly where it would be necessary for

him to sit in silence. He had been but a short time in great practice. His savings were small. Not having the

means of supporting a hereditary title, he must, if he accepted the high dignity which was offered to him,

preside during some years in the Upper House without taking part in the debates. The opinion of others,

however, was that he would be more useful as head of the law than as head of the Whig party in the

Commons. He was sent for to Kensington, and called into the Council Chamber. Caermarthen spoke in the

name of the King. "Sir John," he said, "it is necessary for the public service that you should take this charge

upon you; and I have it in command from His Majesty to say that he can admit of no excuse." Somers

submitted. The seal was delivered to him, with a patent which entitled him to a pension of two thousand a

year from the day on which he should quit his office; and he was immediately sworn in a Privy Councillor

The Gazette which announced these changes in the administration, announced also the King's departure. He

He left orders that the Estates of Scotland should, after a recess of more than two years and a half, be again

called together. Hamilton, who had lived many months in retirement, had, since the fall of Melville, been

reconciled to the Court, and now consented to quit his retreat, and to occupy Holyrood House as Lord High

Commissioner. It was necessary that one of the Secretaries of State for Scotland should be in attendance on

the King. The Master of Stair had therefore gone to the Continent. His colleague, Johnstone, was chief

manager for the Crown at Edinburgh, and was charged to correspond regularly with Carstairs, who never

It might naturally have been expected that the session would be turbulent. The Parliament was that very

Parliament which had in 1689 passed, by overwhelming majorities, all the most violent resolutions which

Montgomery and his club could frame, which had refused supplies, which had proscribed the ministers of the

Crown, which had closed the Courts of justice, which had seemed bent on turning Scotland into an

oligarchical republic. In 1690 the Estates had been in a better temper. Yet, even in 1690, they had, when the

ecclesiastical polity of the realm was under consideration, paid little deference to what was well known to be

the royal wish. They had abolished patronage; they had sanctioned the rabbling of the episcopal clergy; they

had refused to pass a Toleration Act. It seemed likely that they would still be found unmanageable when

questions touching religion came before them; and such questions it was unfortunately necessary to bring

forward. William had, during the recess, attempted to persuade the General Assembly of the Church to

receive into communion such of the old curates as should subscribe the Confession of Faith and should

submit to the government of Synods. But the attempt had failed; and the Assembly had consequently been

dissolved by the Lord Commissioner. Unhappily, the Act which established the Presbyterian polity had not

defined the extent of the power which was to be exercised by the Sovereign over the Spiritual Courts. No

sooner therefore had the dissolution been announced than the Moderator requested permission to speak. He

was told that he was now merely a private person. As a private person he requested a hearing, and protested,

in the name of his brethren, against the royal mandate. The right, he said, of the office bearers of the Church

to meet and deliberate touching her interests was derived from her Divine Head, and was not dependent on

the pleasure of the temporal magistrate. His brethren stood up, and by an approving murmur signified their

concurrence in what their President had said. Before they retired they fixed a day for their next meeting.416 It

was indeed a very distant day; and when it came neither minister nor elder attended;for even the boldest

members shrank from a complete rupture with the civil power. But, though there was not open war between

the Church and the Government, they were estranged from each other, jealous of each other, and afraid of

each other. No progress had been made towards a reconciliation when the Estates met; and which side the

But the proceedings of this strange Parliament, in almost every one of its sessions, falsified all the predictions

of politicians. It had once been the most unmanageable of senates. It was now the most obsequious. Yet the

old men had again met in the old hall. There were all the most noisy agitators of the club, with the exception

of Montgomery, who was dying of want and of a broken heart in a garret far from his native land. There was

the canting Ross and the perfidious Annandale. There was Sir Patrick Hume, lately created a peer, and

henceforth to be called Lord Polwarth, but still as eloquent as when his interminable declamations and

dissertations ruined the expedition of Argyle. But the whole spirit of the assembly had undergone a change.

The members listened with profound respect to the royal letter, and returned an answer in reverential and

affectionate language. An extraordinary aid of a hundred and fourteen thousand pounds sterling was granted

to the Crown. Severe laws were enacted against the Jacobites. The legislation on ecclesiastical matters was as

Erastian as William himself could have desired. An Act was passed requiring all ministers of the Established

Church to swear fealty to their Majesties, and directing the General Assembly to receive into communion

those Episcopalian ministers, not yet deprived, who should declare that they conformed to the Presbyterian

doctrine and discipline.417 Nay, the Estates carried adulation so far as to make it their humble request to the

King that he would be pleased to confer a Scotch peerage on his favourite Portland. This was indeed their

chief petition. They did not ask for redress of a single grievance. They contented themselves with hinting in

general terms that there were abuses which required correction, and with referring the King for fuller

information to his own Ministers, the Lord High Commissioner and the Secretary of State.418

There was one subject on which it may seem strange that even the most servile of Scottish Parliaments should

have kept silence. More than a year had elapsed since the massacre of Glencoe; and it might have been

expected that the whole assembly, peers, commissioners of shires, commissioners of burghs, would with one

voice have demanded a strict investigation into that great crime. It is certain, however, that no motion for

investigation was made. The state of the Gaelic clans was indeed taken into consideration. A law was passed

for the more effectual suppressing of depredations and outrages beyond the Highland line; and in that law

was inserted a special proviso reserving to Mac Callum More his hereditary jurisdiction. But it does not

appear, either from the public records of the proceedings of the Estates, or from those private letters in which

Johnstone regularly gave Carstairs an account of what had passed, that any speaker made any allusion to the

fate of Mac Ian and his kinsmen.419 The only explanation of this extraordinary silence seems to be that the

public men who were assembled in the capital of Scotland knew little and cared little about the fate of a

thieving tribe of Celts. The injured clan, bowed down by fear of the allpowerful Campbells, and little

accustomed to resort to the constituted authorities of the kingdom for protection or redress, presented no

petition to the Estates. The story of the butchery had been told at coffeehouses, but had been told in different

ways. Very recently, one or two books, in which the facts were but too truly related, had come forth from the

secret presses of London. But those books were not publicly exposed to sale. They bore the name of no

responsible author. The Jacobite writers were, as a class, savagely malignant and utterly regardless of truth.

Since the Macdonalds did not complain, a prudent man might naturally be unwilling to incur the displeasure

of the King, of the ministers, and of the most powerful family in Scotland, by bringing forward an accusation

grounded on nothing but reports wandering from mouth to mouth, or pamphlets which no licenser had

approved, to which no author had put his name, and which no bookseller ventured to place in his

shopwindow. But whether this be or be not the true solution, it is certain that the Estates separated quietly

after a session of two months, during which, as far as can now be discovered, the name of Glencoe was not

NoncompoundersChange of Ministry at Saint Germains; MiddletonNew Declaration put forth by

JamesEffect of the new DeclarationFrench Preparations for the Campaign; Institution of the Order of

Saint LewisMiddleton's Account of VersaillesWilliam's Preparations for the CampaignLewis takes

the FieldLewis returns to VersaillesManoeuvres of Luxemburg Battle of LandenMiscarriage of

the Smyrna FleetExcitement in LondonJacobite Libels; William AndertonWritings and Artifices of

the JacobitesConduct of CaermarthenNow Charter granted to the East India CompanyReturn of

William to England; Military Successes of FranceDistress of FranceA Ministry necessary to

Parliamentary GovernmentThe First Ministry gradually formed SunderlandSunderland advises the

King to give the Preference to the WhigsReasons for preferring the WhigsChiefs of the Whig Party;

ParliamentDebates about the Naval MiscarriagesRussell First Lord of the Admiralty; Retirement of

NottinghamShrewsbury refuses OfficeDebates about the Trade with IndiaBill for the Regulation of

Trials in Cases of TreasonTriennial BillPlace BillBill for the Naturalisation of Foreign

ProtestantsSupplyWays and Means; Lottery LoanThe Bank of EnglandProrogation of Parliament;

Ministerial Arrangements; Shrewsbury Secretary of StateNew Titles bestowedFrench Plan of War;

English Plan of War Expedition against BrestNaval Operations in the Mediterranean War by

LandComplaints of Trenchard's AdministrationThe Lancashire ProsecutionsMeeting of the

Parliament; Death of TillotsonTenison Archbishop of Canterbury; Debates on the Lancashire

ProsecutionsPlace BillBill for the Regulation of Trials in Cases of Treason; the Triennial Bill

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

James, after seeing the fleet which was to have convoyed him back to his kingdom burned down to the water

edge, had returned in no good humour to his abode near Paris. Misfortune generally made him devout after

his own fashion; and he now starved himself and flogged himself till his spiritual guides were forced to

It is difficult to conceive a duller place than Saint Germains was when he held his Court there; and yet there

was scarcely in all Europe a residence more enviably situated than that which the generous Lewis had

assigned to his suppliants. The woods were magnificent, the air clear and salubrious, the prospects extensive

and cheerful. No charm of rural life was wanting; and the towers of the most superb city of the Continent

were visible in the distance. The royal apartments were richly adorned with tapestry and marquetry, vases of

silver and mirrors in gilded frames. A pension of more than forty thousand pounds sterling was annually paid

to James from the French Treasury. He had a guard of honour composed of some of the finest soldiers in

Europe. If he wished to amuse himself with field sports, he had at his command an establishment far more

sumptuous than that which had belonged to him when he was at the head of a great kingdom, an army of

huntsmen and fowlers, a vast arsenal of guns, spears, buglehorns and tents, miles of network, staghounds,

foxhounds, harriers, packs for the boar and packs for the wolf, gerfalcons for the heron and haggards for the

wild duck. His presence chamber and his antechamber were in outward show as splendid as when he was at

Whitehall. He was still surrounded by blue ribands and white staves. But over the mansion and the domain

brooded a constant gloom, the effect, partly of bitter regrets and of deferred hopes, but chiefly of the abject

superstition which had taken complete possession of his own mind, and which was affected by almost all

those who aspired to his favour. His palace wore the aspect of a monastery. There were three places of

worship within the spacious pile. Thirty or forty ecclesiastics were lodged in the building; and their

apartments were eyed with envy by noblemen and gentlemen who had followed the fortunes of their

Sovereign, and who thought it hard that, when there was so much room under his roof, they should be forced

to sleep in the garrets of the neighbouring town. Among the murmurers was the brilliant Anthony Hamilton.

He has left us a sketch of the life of Saint Germains, a slight sketch indeed, but not unworthy of the artist to

whom we owe the most highly finished and vividly coloured picture of the English Court in the days when

the English Court was gayest. He complains that existence was one round of religious exercises; that, in order

to live in peace, it was necessary to pass half the day in devotion or in the outward show of devotion; that, if

he tried to dissipate his melancholy by breathing the fresh air of that noble terrace which looks down on the

valley of the Seine, he was driven away by the clamour of a Jesuit who had got hold of some unfortunate

Protestant royalists from England, and was proving to them that no heretic could go to heaven. In general,

Hamilton said, men suffering under a common calamity have a strong fellow feeling and are disposed to

render good offices to each other. But it was not so at Saint Germains. There all was discord, jealousy,

bitterness of spirit. Malignity was concealed under the show of friendship and of piety. All the saints of the

royal household were praying for each other and backbiting each other from morning, to night. Here and

there in the throng of hypocrites might be remarked a man too highspirited to dissemble. But such a man,

however advantageously he might have made himself known elsewhere, was certain to be treated with

Such was the Court of James, as described by a Roman Catholic. Yet, however disagreeable that Court may

have been to a Roman Catholic, it was infinitely more disagreeable to a Protestant. For the Protestant had to

endure, in addition to all the dulness of which the Roman Catholic complained, a crowd of vexations from

which the Roman Catholic was free. In every competition between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic the

Roman Catholic was preferred. In every quarrel between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic the Roman

Catholic was supposed to be in the right. While the ambitious Protestant looked in vain for promotion, while

the dissipated Protestant looked in vain for amusement, the serious Protestant looked in vain for spiritual

instruction and consolation. James might, no doubt, easily have obtained permission for those members of the

Church of England who had sacrificed every thing in his cause to meet privately in some modest oratory, and

to receive the eucharistic bread and wine from the hands of one of their own clergy; but he did not wish his

residence to be defiled by such impious rites. Doctor Dennis Granville, who had quitted the richest deanery,

the richest archdeaconry and one of the richest livings in England, rather than take the oaths, gave mortal

offence by asking leave to read prayers to the exiles of his own communion. His request was refused; and he

was so grossly insulted by his master's chaplains and their retainers that he was forced to quit Saint Germains.

Lest some other Anglican doctor should be equally importunate, James wrote to inform his agents in England

that he wished no Protestant divine to come out to him.422 Indeed the nonjuring clergy were at least as much

sneered at and as much railed at in his palace as in his nephew's. If any man had a claim to be mentioned with

respect at Saint Germains, it was surely Sancroft. Yet it was reported that the bigots who were assembled

there never spoke of him but with aversion and disgust. The sacrifice of the first place in the Church, of the

first place in the peerage, of the mansion at Lambeth and the mansion at Croydon, of immense patronage and

of a revenue of more than five thousand a year was thought but a poor atonement for the great crime of

having modestly remonstrated against the unconstitutional Declaration of Indulgence. Sancroft was

pronounced to be just such a traitor and just such a penitent as Judas Iscariot. The old hypocrite had, it was

said, while affecting reverence and love for his master, given the fatal signal to his master's enemies. When

the mischief had been done and could not be repaired, the conscience of the sinner had begun to torture him.

He had, like his prototype, blamed himself and bemoaned himself. He had, like his prototype, flung down his

wealth at the feet of those whose instrument he had been. The best thing that he could now do was to make

James seems to have thought that the strongest proof of kindness which he could give to heretics who had

resigned wealth, country, family, for his sake, was to suffer them to be beset, on their dying beds, by his

priests. If some sick man, helpless in body and in mind, and deafened by the din of bad logic and bad

rhetoric, suffered a wafer to be thrust into his mouth, a great work of grace was triumphantly announced to

the Court; and the neophyte was buried with all the pomp of religion. But if a royalist, of the highest rank and

most stainless character, died professing firm attachment to the Church of England, a hole was dug in the

fields; and, at dead of night, he was flung into it and covered up like a mass of carrion. Such were the

obsequies of the Earl of Dunfermline, who had served the House of Stuart with the hazard of his life and to

the utter ruin of his fortunes, who had fought at Killiecrankie, and who had, after the victory, lifted from the

earth the still breathing remains of Dundee. While living he had been treated with contumely. The Scottish

officers who had long served under him had in vain entreated that, when they were formed into a company,

he might still be their commander. His religion had been thought a fatal disqualification. A worthless

adventurer, whose only recommendation was that he was a Papist, was preferred. Dunfermline continued,

during a short time, to make his appearance in the circle which surrounded the Prince whom he had served

too well; but it was to no purpose. The bigots who ruled the Court refused to the ruined and expatriated

Protestant Lord the means of subsistence; he died of a broken heart; and they refused him even a grave.424

The insults daily offered at Saint Germains to the Protestant religion produced a great effect in England. The

Whigs triumphantly asked whether it were not clear that the old tyrant was utterly incorrigible; and many

even of the nonjurors observed his proceedings with shame, disgust and alarm.425 The Jacobite party had,

from the first, been divided into two sections, which, three or four years after the Revolution, began to be

known as the Compounders and the Noncompounders. The Compounders were those who wished for a

restoration, but for a restoration accompanied by a general amnesty, and by guarantees for the security of the

civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. The Noncompounders thought it downright Whiggery,

downright rebellion; to take advantage of His Majesty's unfortunate situation for the purpose of imposing on

him any condition. The plain duty of his subjects was to bring him back. What traitors he would punish and

what traitors he would spare, what laws he would observe and with what laws he would dispense, were

questions to be decided by himself alone. If he decided them wrongly, he must answer for his fault to heaven

The great body of the English Jacobites were more or less Compounders. The pure Noncompounders were

chiefly to be found among the Roman Catholics, who, very naturally, were not solicitous to obtain any

security for a religion which they thought heretical, or for a polity from the benefits of which they were

excluded. There were also some Protestant nonjurors, such as Kettlewell and Hickes, who resolutely followed

the theory of Filmer to all the extreme consequences to which it led. But, though Kettlewell tried to convince

his countrymen that monarchical government had been ordained by God, not as a means of making them

happy here, but as a cross which it was their duty to take up and bear in the hope of being recompensed for

their sufferings hereafter, and though Hickes assured them that there was not a single Compounder in the

whole Theban legion, very few churchmen were inclined to run the risk of the gallows merely for the purpose

The Compounders formed the main strength of the Jacobite party in England; but the Noncompounders had

hitherto had undivided sway at Saint Germains. No Protestant, no moderate Roman Catholic, no man who

dared to hint that any law could bind the royal prerogative, could hope for the smallest mark of favour from

the banished King. The priests and the apostate Melfort, the avowed enemy of the Protestant religion and of

civil liberty, of Parliaments, of trial by jury and of the Habeas Corpus Act, were in exclusive possession of

the royal ear. Herbert was called Chancellor, walked before the other officers of state, wore a black robe

embroidered with gold, and carried a seal; but he was a member of the Church of England; and therefore he

The truth is that the faults of James's head and heart were incurable. In his view there could be between him

and his subjects no reciprocity of obligation. Their duty was to risk property, liberty, life, in order to replace

him on the throne, and then to bear patiently whatever he chose to inflict upon them. They could no more

pretend to merit before him than before God. When they had done all, they were still unprofitable servants.

The highest praise due to the royalist who shed his blood on the field of battle or on the scaffold for

hereditary monarchy was simply that he was not a traitor. After all the severe discipline which the deposed

King had undergone, he was still as much bent on plundering and abasing the Church of England as on the

day when he told the kneeling fellows of Magdalene to get out of his sight, or on the day when he sent the

Bishops to the Tower. He was in the habit of declaring that he would rather die without seeing England again

than stoop to capitulate with those whom he ought to command.427 In the Declaration of April 1692 the

whole man appears without disguise, full of his own imaginary rights, unable to understand how any body

but himself can have any rights, dull, obstinate and cruel. Another paper which he drew up about the same

time shows, if possible, still more clearly, how little he had profited by a sharp experience. In that paper he

set forth the plan according to which he intended to govern when he should be restored. He laid it down as a

rule that one Commissioner of the Treasury, one of the two Secretaries of State, the Secretary at War, the

majority of the Great Officers of the Household, the majority of the Lords of the Bedchamber, the majority of

It was to no purpose that the most eminent Compounders sent from London letter after letter filled with

judicious counsel and earnest supplication. It was to no purpose that they demonstrated in the plainest manner

the impossibility of establishing Popish ascendancy in a country where at least fortynine fiftieths of the

population and much more than fortynine fiftieths of the wealth and the intelligence were Protestant. It was

to no purpose that they informed their master that the Declaration of April 1692 had been read with exultation

by his enemies and with deep affliction by his friends, that it had been printed and circulated by the usurpers,

that it had done more than all the libels of the Whigs to inflame the nation against him, and that it had

furnished those naval officers who had promised him support with a plausible pretext for breaking faith with

him, and for destroying the fleet which was to have convoyed him back to his kingdom. He continued to be

deaf to the remonstrances of his best friends in England till those remonstrances began to be echoed at

Versailles. All the information which Lewis and his ministers were able to obtain touching the state of our

island satisfied them that James would never be restored unless he could bring himself to make large

concessions to his subjects. It was therefore intimated to him, kindly and courteously, but seriously, that he

would do well to change his counsels and his counsellors. France could not continue the war for the purpose

of forcing a Sovereign on an unwilling nation. She was crushed by public burdens. Her trade and industry

languished. Her harvest and her vintage had failed. The peasantry were starving. The faint murmurs of the

provincial Estates began to be heard. There was a limit to the amount of the sacrifices which the most

absolute prince could demand from those whom he ruled. However desirous the Most Christian King might

be to uphold the cause of hereditary monarchy and of pure religion all over the world, his first duty was to his

own kingdom; and, unless a counterrevolution speedily took place in England, his duty to his own kingdom

might impose on him the painful necessity of treating with the Prince of Orange. It would therefore be wise in

James to do without delay whatever he could honourably and conscientiously do to win back the hearts of his

Thus pressed, James unwillingly yielded. He consented to give a share in the management of his affairs to

Middleton's family and his peerage were Scotch. But he was closely connected with some of the noblest

houses of England; he had resided long in England; he had been appointed by Charles the Second one of the

English Secretaries of State, and had been entrusted by James with the lead of the English House of

Commons. His abilities and acquirements were considerable; his temper was easy and generous; his manners

were popular; and his conduct had generally been consistent and honourable. He had, when Popery was in the

ascendant, resolutely refused to purchase the royal favour by apostasy. Roman Catholic ecclesiastics had

been sent to convert him; and the town had been much amused by the dexterity with which the layman

baffled the divines. A priest undertook to demonstrate the doctrine of transubstantiation, and made the

approaches in the usual form. "Your Lordship believes in the Trinity." "Who told you so?" said Middleton.

"Not believe in the Trinity!" cried the priest in amazement. "Nay," said Middleton; "prove your religion to be

true if you can; but do not catechize me about mine." As it was plain that the Secretary was not a disputant

whom it was easy to take at an advantage, the controversy ended almost as soon as it began.429 When

fortune changed, Middleton adhered to the cause of hereditary monarchy with a stedfastness which was the

more respectable because he would have had no difficulty in making his peace with the new government. His

sentiments were so well known that, when the kingdom was agitated by apprehensions of an invasion and an

insurrection, he was arrested and sent to the Tower; but no evidence on which he could be convicted of

treason was discovered; and, when the dangerous crisis was past, he was set at liberty. It should seem indeed

that, during the three years which followed the Revolution, he was by no means an active plotter. He saw that

a Restoration could be effected only with the general assent of the nation, and that the nation would never

assent to a Restoration without securities against Popery and arbitrary power. He therefore conceived that,

while his banished master obstinately refused to give such securities, it would be worse than idle to conspire

Such was the man whom James, in consequence of strong representations from Versailles, now invited to join

him in France. The great body of Compounders learned with delight that they were at length to be represented

in the Council at Saint Germains by one of their favourite leaders. Some noblemen and gentlemen, who,

though they had not approved of the deposition of James, had been so much disgusted by his perverse and

absurd conduct that they had long avoided all connection with him, now began to hope that he had seen his

error. They had refused to have any thing to do with Melfort; but they communicated freely with Middleton.

The new minister conferred also with the four traitors whose infamy has been made preeminently

conspicuous by their station, their abilities, and their great public services; with Godolphin, the great object

of whose life was to be in favour with both the rival Kings at once, and to keep, through all revolutions and

counterrevolutions, his head, his estate and a place at the Board of Treasury; with Shrewsbury, who, having

once in a fatal moment entangled himself in criminal and dishonourable engagements, had not had the

resolution to break through them; with Marlborough, who continued to profess the deepest repentance for the

past and the best intentions for the future; and with Russell, who declared that he was still what he had been

before the day of La Hogue, and renewed his promise to do what Monk had done, on condition that a general

pardon should be granted to all political offenders, and that the royal power should be placed under strong

Before Middleton left England he had collected the sense of all the leading Compounders. They were of

opinion that there was one expedient which would reconcile contending factions at home, and lead to the

speedy pacification of Europe. This expedient was that James should resign the Crown in favour of the Prince

of Wales, and that the Prince of Wales should be bred a Protestant. If, as was but too probable, His Majesty

should refuse to listen to this suggestion, he must at least consent to put forth a Declaration which might do

away the unfavourable impression made by his Declaration of the preceding spring. A paper such as it was

thought expedient that he should publish was carefully drawn up, and, after much discussion, approved.

Early in the year 1693, Middleton, having been put in full possession of the views of the principal English

Jacobites, stole across the Channel, and made his appearance at the Court of James. There was at that Court

no want of slanderers and sneerers whose malignity was only the more dangerous because it wore a meek and

sanctimonious air. Middleton found, on his arrival, that numerous lies, fabricated by the priests who feared

and hated him, were already in circulation. Some Noncompounders too had written from London that he was

at heart a Presbyterian and a republican. He was however very graciously received, and was appointed

It very soon appeared that James was fully resolved never to resign the Crown, or to suffer the Prince of

Wales to be bred a heretic; and it long seemed doubtful whether any arguments or entreaties would induce

him to sign the Declaration which his friends in England had prepared. It was indeed a document very

different from any that had yet appeared under his Great Seal. He was made to promise that he would grant a

free pardon to all his subjects who should not oppose him after he should land in the island; that, as soon as

he was restored, he would call a Parliament; that he would confirm all such laws, passed during the

usurpation, as the Houses should tender to him for confirmation; that he would waive his right to the chimney

money; that he would protect and defend the Established Church in the enjoyment of all her possessions and

privileges; that he would not again violate the Test Act; that he would leave it to the legislature to define the

extent of his dispensing power; and that he would maintain the Act of Settlement in Ireland.

He struggled long and hard. He pleaded his conscience. Could a son of the Holy Roman Catholic and

Apostolic Church bind himself to protect and defend heresy, and to enforce a law which excluded true

believers from office? Some of the ecclesiastics who swarmed in his household told him that he could not

without sin give any such pledge as his undutiful subjects demanded. On this point the opinion of Middleton,

who was a Protestant, could be of no weight. But Middleton found an ally in one whom he regarded as a rival

and an enemy. Melfort, scared by the universal hatred of which he knew himself to be the object, and afraid

that he should be held accountable, both in England and in France, for his master's wrongheadedness,

submitted the case to several eminent Doctors of the Sorbonne. These learned casuists pronounced the

Declaration unobjectionable in a religious point of view. The great Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, who was

regarded by the Gallican Church as a father scarcely inferior in authority to Cyprian or Augustin, showed, by

powerful arguments, both theological and political, that the scruple which tormented James was precisely of

that sort against which a much wiser King had given a caution in the words, "Be not righteous

overmuch."431 The authority of the French divines was supported by the authority of the French government.

The language held at Versailles was so strong that James began to be alarmed. What if Lewis should take

serious offence, should think his hospitality ungratefully requited, should conclude a peace with the usurpers,

and should request his unfortunate guests to seek another asylum? It was necessary to submit. On the

seventeenth of April 1693 the Declaration was signed and sealed. The concluding sentence was a prayer. "We

come to vindicate our own right and to establish the liberties of our people; and may God give us success in

the prosecution of the one as we sincerely intend the confirmation of the other!"432 The prayer was heard.

The success of James was strictly proportioned to his sincerity. What his sincerity was we know on the best

evidence. Scarcely had he called on heaven to witness the truth of his professions, when he directed Melfort

to send a copy of the Declaration to Rome with such explanations as might satisfy the Pope. Melfort's letter

ends thus: "After all, the object of this Declaration is only to get us back to England. We shall fight the battle

of the Catholics with much greater advantage at Whitehall than at Saint Germains."433

Meanwhile the document from which so much was expected had been despatched to London. There it was

printed at a secret press in the house of a Quaker; for there was among the Quakers a party, small in number,

but zealous and active, which had imbibed the politics of William Penn.434 To circulate such a work was a

service of some danger; but agents were found. Several persons were taken up while distributing copies in the

streets of the city. A hundred packets were stopped in one day at the Post Office on their way to the fleet. But,

after a short time, the government wisely gave up the endeavour to suppress what could not be suppressed,

and published the Declaration at full length, accompanied by a severe commentary.435

The commentary, however, was hardly needed. The Declaration altogether failed to produce the effect which

Middleton had anticipated. The truth is that his advice had not been asked till it mattered not what advice he

gave. If James had put forth such a manifesto in January 1689, the throne would probably not have been

declared vacant. If he had put forth such a manifesto when he was on the coast of Normandy at the head of an

army, he would have conciliated a large part of the nation, and he might possibly have been joined by a large

part of the fleet. But both in 1689 and in 1692 he had held the language of an implacable tyrant; and it was

now too late to affect tenderness of heart and reverence for the constitution of the realm. The contrast

between the new Declaration and the preceding Declaration excited, not without reason, general suspicion

and contempt. What confidence could be placed in the word of a Prince so unstable, of a Prince who veered

from extreme to extreme? In 1692 nothing would satisfy him but the heads and quarters of hundreds of poor

ploughmen and boatmen who had, several years before, taken some rustic liberties with him at which his

grandfather Henry the Fourth would have had a hearty laugh. In 1693 the foulest and most ungrateful

treasons were to be covered with oblivion. Caermarthen expressed the general sentiment. "I do not," he said,

"understand all this. Last April I was to be hanged. This April I am to have a free pardon. I cannot imagine

what I have done during the past year to deserve such goodness." The general opinion was that a snare was

hidden under this unwonted clemency, this unwonted respect for law. The Declaration, it was said, was

excellent; and so was the Coronation oath. Every body knew how King James had observed his Coronation

oath; and every body might guess how he would observe his Declaration. While grave men reasoned thus, the

Whig jesters were not sparing of their pasquinades. Some of the Noncompounders, meantime, uttered

indignant murmurs. The King was in bad hands, in the hands of men who hated monarchy. His mercy was

cruelty of the worst sort. The general pardon which he had granted to his enemies was in truth a general

proscription of his friends. Hitherto the judges appointed by the usurper had been under a restraint, imperfect

indeed, yet not absolutely nugatory. They had known that a day of reckoning might come, and had therefore

in general dealt tenderly with the persecuted adherents of the rightful King. That restraint His Majesty had

now taken away. He had told Holt and Treby that, till he should land in England, they might hang royalists

But by no class of people was the Declaration read with so much disgust and indignation as by the native

aristocracy of Ireland. This then was the reward of their loyalty. This was the faith of kings. When England

had cast James out, when Scotland had rejected him, the Irish had still been true to him; and he had, in return,

solemnly given his sanction to a law which restored to them an immense domain of which they had been

despoiled. Nothing that had happened since that time had diminished their claim to his favour. They had

defended his cause to the last; they had fought for him long after he had deserted them; many of them, when

unable to contend longer against superior force, had followed him into banishment; and now it appeared that

he was desirous to make peace with his deadliest enemies at the expense of his most faithful friends. There

was much discontent in the Irish regiments which were dispersed through the Netherlands and along the

frontiers of Germany and Italy. Even the Whigs allowed that, for once, the O's and Macs were in the right,

and asked triumphantly whether a prince who had broken his word to his devoted servants could be expected

While the Declaration was the subject of general conversation in England, military operations recommenced

on the Continent. The preparations of France had been such as amazed even those who estimated most highly

her resources and the abilities of her rulers. Both her agriculture and her commerce were suffering. The

vineyards of Burgundy, the interminable cornfields of the Beauce, had failed to yield their increase; the

looms of Lyons were silent; and the merchant ships were rotting in the harbour of Marseilles. Yet the

monarchy presented to its numerous enemies a front more haughty and more menacing than ever. Lewis had

determined not to make any advance towards a reconciliation with the new government of England till the

whole strength of his realm had been put forth in one more effort. A mighty effort in truth it was, but too

exhausting to be repeated. He made an immense display of force at once on the Pyrenees and on the Alps, on

the Rhine and on the Meuse, in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean. That nothing might be wanting which

could excite the martial ardour of a nation eminently highspirited, he instituted, a few days before he left his

palace for the camp, a new military order of knighthood, and placed it under the protection of his own sainted

ancestor and patron. The new cross of Saint Lewis shone on the breasts of the gentlemen who had been

conspicuous in the trenches before Mons and Namur, and on the fields of Fleurus and Steinkirk; and the sight

raised a generous emulation among those who had still to win an honourable fame in arms.438

In the week in which this celebrated order began to exist Middleton visited Versailles. A letter in which he

gave his friends in England an account of his visit has come down to us.439 He was presented to Lewis, was

most kindly received, and was overpowered by gratitude and admiration. Of all the wonders of the

Court,so Middleton wrote,its master was the greatest. The splendour of the great King's personal merit

threw even the splendour of his fortunes into the shade. The language which His Most Christian Majesty held

about English politics was, on the whole, highly satisfactory. Yet in one thing this accomplished prince and

his able and experienced ministers were strangely mistaken. They were all possessed with the absurd notion

that the Prince of Orange was a great man. No pains had been spared to undeceive them; but they were under

an incurable delusion. They saw through a magnifying glass of such power that the leech appeared to them a

leviathan. It ought to have occurred to Middleton that possibly the delusion might be in his own vision and

not in theirs. Lewis and the counsellors who surrounded him were far indeed from loving William. But they

did not hate him with that mad hatred which raged in the breasts of his English enemies. Middleton was one

of the wisest and most moderate of the Jacobites. Yet even Middleton's judgment was so much darkened by

malice that, on this subject, he talked nonsense unworthy of his capacity. He, like the rest of his party, could

see in the usurper nothing but what was odious and contemptible, the heart of a fiend, the understanding and

manners of a stupid, brutal, Dutch boor, who generally observed a sulky silence, and, when forced to speak,

gave short testy answers in bad English. The French statesmen, on the other hand, judged of William's

faculties from an intimate knowledge of the way in which he had, during twenty years, conducted affairs of

the greatest moment and of the greatest difficulty. He had, ever since 1673, been playing against themselves a

most complicated game of mixed chance and skill for an immense stake; they were proud, and with reason, of

their own dexterity at that game; yet they were conscious that in him they had found more than their match.

At the commencement of the long contest every advantage had been on their side. They had at their absolute

command all the resources of the greatest kingdom in Europe; and he was merely the servant of a

commonwealth, of which the whole territory was inferior in extent to Normandy or Guienne. A succession of

generals and diplomatists of eminent ability had been opposed to him. A powerful faction in his native

country had pertinaciously crossed his designs. He had undergone defeats in the field and defeats in the

senate; but his wisdom and firmness had turned defeats into victories. Notwithstanding all that could be done

to keep him down, his influence and fame had been almost constantly rising and spreading. The most

important and arduous enterprise in the history of modern Europe had been planned and conducted to a

prosperous termination by him alone. The most extensive coalition that the world had seen for ages had been

formed by him, and would be instantly dissolved if his superintending care were withdrawn. He had gained

two kingdoms by statecraft, and a third by conquest; and he was still maintaining himself in the possession of

all three in spite of both foreign and domestic foes. That these things had been effected by a poor creature, a

man of the most ordinary capacity, was an assertion which might easily find credence among the nonjuring

parsons who congregated at Sam's Coffeehouse, but which moved the laughter of the veteran politicians of

While Middleton was in vain trying to convince the French that William was a greatly overrated man,

William, who did full justice to Middleton's merit, felt much uneasiness at learning that the Court of Saint

Germains had called in the help of so able a counsellor.440 But this was only one of a thousand causes of

anxiety which during that spring pressed on the King's mind. He was preparing for the opening of the

campaign, imploring his allies to be early in the field, rousing the sluggish, haggling with the greedy, making

up quarrels, adjusting points of precedence. He had to prevail on the Cabinet of Vienna to send timely

succours into Piedmont. He had to keep a vigilant eye on those Northern potentates who were trying to form

a third party in Europe. He had to act as tutor to the Elector of Bavaria in the Netherlands. He had to provide

for the defence of Liege, a matter which the authorities of Liege coolly declared to be not at all their business,

but the business of England and Holland. He had to prevent the House of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel from

going to blows with the House of Brunswick Lunenburg; he had to accommodate a dispute between the

Prince of Baden and the Elector of Saxony, each of whom wished to be at the head of an army on the Rhine;

and he had to manage the Landgrave of Hesse, who omitted to furnish his own contingent, and yet wanted to

And now the time for action had arrived. On the eighteenth of May Lewis left Versailles; early in June he was

under the walls of Namur. The Princesses, who had accompanied him, held their court within the fortress. He

took under his immediate command the army of Boufflers, which was encamped at Gembloux. Little more

than a mile off lay the army of Luxemburg. The force collected in that neighbourhood under the French lilies

did not amount to less than a hundred and twenty thousand men. Lewis had flattered himself that he should

be able to repeat in 1693 the stratagem by which Mons had been taken in 1691 and Namur in 1692; and he

had determined that either Liege or Brussels should be his prey. But William had this year been able to

assemble in good time a force, inferior indeed to that which was opposed to him, but still formidable. With

this force he took his post near Louvain, on the road between the two threatened cities, and watched every

Lewis was disappointed. He found that it would not be possible for him to gratify his vanity so safely and so

easily as in the two preceding years, to sit down before a great town, to enter the gates in triumph, and to

receive the keys, without exposing himself to any risk greater than that of a staghunt at Fontainebleau. Before

he could lay siege either to Liege or to Brussels he must fight and win a battle. The chances were indeed

greatly in his favour; for his army was more numerous, better officered and better disciplined than that of the

allies. Luxemburg strongly advised him to march against William. The aristocracy of France anticipated with

intrepid gaiety a bloody but a glorious day, followed by a large distribution of the crosses of the new order.

William himself was perfectly aware of his danger, and prepared to meet it with calm but mournful

fortitude.442 Just at this conjuncture Lewis announced his intention to return instantly to Versailles, and to

send the Dauphin and Boufflers, with part of the army which was assembled near Namur, to join Marshal

Lorges who commanded in the Palatinate. Luxemburg was thunderstruck. He expostulated boldly and

earnestly. Never, he said, was such an opportunity thrown away. If His Majesty would march against the

Prince of Orange, victory was almost certain. Could any advantage which it was possible to obtain on the

Rhine be set against the advantage of a victory gained in the heart of Brabant over the principal army and the

principal captain of the coalition? The Marshal reasoned; he implored; he went on his knees; but in vain; and

he quitted the royal presence in the deepest dejection. Lewis left the camp a week after he had joined it, and

The astonishment was great throughout his army. All the awe which he inspired could not prevent his old

generals from grumbling and looking sullen, his young nobles from venting their spleen, sometimes in curses

and sometimes in sarcasms, and even his common soldiers from holding irreverent language round their

watchfires. His enemies rejoiced with vindictive and insulting joy. Was it not strange, they asked, that this

great prince should have gone in state to the theatre of war, and then in a week have gone in the same state

back again? Was it necessary that all that vast retinue, princesses, dames of honour and tirewomen, equerries

and gentlemen of the bedchamber, cooks, confectioners and musicians, long trains of waggons, droves of led

horses and sumpter mules, piles of plate, bales of tapestry, should travel four hundred miles merely in order

that the Most Christian King might look at his soldiers and then return? The ignominious truth was too

evident to be concealed. He had gone to the Netherlands in the hope that he might again be able to snatch

some military glory without any hazard to his person, and had hastened back rather than expose himself to the

chances of a pitched field.443 This was not the first time that His Most Christian Majesty had shown the

same kind of prudence. Seventeen years before he had been opposed under the wails of Bouchain to the same

antagonist. William, with the ardour of a very young commander, had most imprudently offered battle. The

opinion of the ablest generals was that, if Lewis had seized the opportunity, the war might have been ended in

a day. The French army had eagerly asked to be led to the onset. The King had called his lieutenants round

him and had collected their opinions. Some courtly officers to whom a hint of his wishes had been

dexterously conveyed had, blushing and stammering with shame, voted against fighting. It was to no purpose

that bold and honest men, who prized his honour more than his life, had proved to him that, on all principles

of the military art, he ought to accept the challenge rashly given by the enemy. His Majesty had gravely

expressed his sorrow that he could not, consistently with his public duty, obey the impetuous movement of

his blood, had turned his rein, and had galloped back to his quarters.444 Was it not frightful to think what

rivers of the best blood of France, of Spain, of Germany and of England, had flowed, and were destined still

to flow, for the gratification of a man who wanted the vulgar courage which was found in the meanest of the

Though the French army in the Netherlands had been weakened by the departure of the forces commanded by

the Dauphin and Boufflers, and though the allied army was daily strengthened by the arrival of fresh troops,

Luxemburg still had a superiority of force; and that superiority he increased by an adroit stratagem. He

marched towards Liege, and made as if he were about to form the siege of that city. William was uneasy, and

the more uneasy because he knew that there was a French party among the inhabitants. He quitted his

position near Louvain, advanced to Nether Hespen, and encamped there with the river Gette in his rear. On

his march he learned that Huy had opened its gates to the French. The news increased his anxiety about

Liege, and determined him to send thither a force sufficient to overawe malecontents within the city, and to

repel any attack from without.445 This was exactly what Luxemburg had expected and desired. His feint had

served its purpose. He turned his back on the fortress which had hitherto seemed to be his object, and

hastened towards the Gette. William, who had detached more than twenty thousand men, and who had but

fifty thousand left in his camp, was alarmed by learning from his scouts, on the eighteenth of July, that the

It was still in the King's power, by a hasty retreat, to put the narrow, but deep, waters of the Gette, which had

lately been swollen by rains, between his army and the enemy. But the site which he occupied was strong;

and it could easily be made still stronger. He set all his troops to work. Ditches were dug, mounds thrown up,

palisades fixed in the earth. In a few hours the ground wore a new aspect; and the King trusted that he should

be able to repel the attack even of a force greatly outnumbering his own. Nor was it without much appearance

of reason that he felt this confidence. When the morning of the nineteenth of July broke, the bravest men of

Lewis's army looked gravely and anxiously on the fortress which had suddenly sprung up to arrest their

progress. The allies were protected by a breastwork. Here and there along the entrenchments were formed

little redoubts and half moons. A hundred pieces of cannon were disposed along the ramparts. On the left

flank, the village of Romsdorff rose close to the little stream of Landen, from which the English have named

the disastrous day. On the right was the village of Neerwinden. Both villages were, after the fashion of the

Low Countries, surrounded by moats and fences; and, within these enclosures, the little plots of ground

occupied by different families were separated by mud walls five feet in height and a foot in thickness. All

these barricades William had repaired and strengthened. Saint Simon, who, after the battle, surveyed the

ground, could hardly, he tells us, believe that defences so extensive and so formidable could have been

Luxemburg, however, was determined to try whether even this position could be maintained against the

superior numbers and the impetuous valour of his soldiers. Soon after sunrise the roar of cannon began to be

heard. William's batteries did much execution before the French artillery could be so placed as to return the

fire. It was eight o'clock before the close fighting began. The village of Neerwinden was regarded by both

commanders as the point on which every thing depended. There an attack was made by the French left wing

commanded by Montchevreuil, a veteran officer of high reputation, and by Berwick, who, though young, was

fast rising to a high place among the captains of his time. Berwick led the onset, and forced his way into the

village, but was soon driven out again with a terrible carnage. His followers fled or perished; he, while trying

to rally them, and cursing them for not doing their duty better, was surrounded by foes. He concealed his

white cockade, and hoped to be able, by the help of his native tongue, to pass himself off as an officer of the

English army. But his face was recognised by one of his mother's brothers, George Churchill, who held on

that day the command of a brigade. A hurried embrace was exchanged between the kinsmen; and the uncle

conducted the nephew to William, who, as long as every thing seemed to be going well, remained in the rear.

The meeting of the King and the captive, united by such close domestic ties, and divided by such inexpiable

injuries, was a strange sight. Both behaved as became them. William uncovered, and addressed to his

prisoner a few words of courteous greeting. Berwick's only reply was a solemn bow. The King put on his hat;

By this time the French, who had been driven in confusion out of Neerwinden, had been reinforced by a

division under the command of the Duke of Bourbon, and came gallantly back to the attack. William, well

aware of the importance of this post, gave orders that troops should move thither from other parts of his line.

This second conflict was long and bloody. The assailants again forced an entrance into the village. They were

again driven out with immense slaughter, and showed little inclination to return to the charge.

Meanwhile the battle had been raging all along the entrenchments of the allied army. Again and again

Luxemburg brought up his troops within pistolshot of the breastwork; but he could bring them no nearer.

Again and again they recoiled from the heavy fire which was poured on their front and on their flanks. It

seemed that all was over. Luxemburg retired to a spot which was out of gunshot, and summoned a few of his

chief officers to a consultation. They talked together during some time; and their animated gestures were

At length Luxemburg formed his decision. A last attempt must be made to carry Neerwinden; and the

The household troops carne on in a manner worthy of their long and terrible renown. A third time

Neerwinden was taken. A third time William tried to retake it. At the head of some English regiments he

charged the guards of Lewis with such fury that, for the first time in the memory of the oldest warrior, that far

famed band gave way.446 It was only by the strenuous exertions of Luxemburg, of the Duke of Chartres, and

of the Duke of Bourbon, that the broken ranks were rallied. But by this time the centre and left of the allied

army had been so much thinned for the purpose of supporting the conflict at Neerwinden that the

entrenchments could no longer be defended on other points. A little after four in the afternoon the whole line

gave way. All was havoc and confusion. Solmes had received a mortal wound, and fell, still alive, into the

hands of the enemy. The English soldiers, to whom his name was hateful, accused him of having in his

sufferings shown pusillanimity unworthy of a soldier. The Duke of Ormond was struck down in the press;

and in another moment he would have been a corpse, had not a rich diamond on his finger caught the eye of

one of the French guards, who justly thought that the owner of such a jewel would be a valuable prisoner.

The Duke's life was saved; and he was speedily exchanged for Berwick. Ruvigny, animated by the true

refugee hatred of the country which had cast him out, was taken fighting in the thickest of the battle. Those

into whose hands he had fallen knew him well, and knew that, if they carried him to their camp, his head

would pay for that treason to which persecution had driven him. With admirable generosity they pretended

It was only on such occasions as this that the whole greatness of William's character appeared. Amidst the

rout and uproar, while arms and standards were flung away, while multitudes of fugitives were choking up

the bridges and fords of the Gette or perishing in its waters, the King, having directed Talmash to superintend

the retreat, put himself at the head of a few brave regiments, and by desperate efforts arrested the progress of

the enemy. His risk was greater than that which others ran. For he could not be persuaded either to encumber

his feeble frame with a cuirass, or to hide the ensigns of the garter. He thought his star a good rallying point

for his own troops, and only smiled when he was told that it was a good mark for the enemy. Many fell on his

right hand and on his left. Two led horses, which in the field always closely followed his person, were struck

dead by cannon shots. One musket ball passed through the curls of his wig, another through his coat; a third

bruised his side and tore his blue riband to tatters. Many years later greyhaired old pensioners who crept

about the arcades and alleys of Chelsea Hospital used to relate how he charged at the head of Galway's horse,

how he dismounted four times to put heart into the infantry, how he rallied one corps which seemed to be

shrinking; "That is not the way to fight, gentlemen. You must stand close up to them. Thus, gentlemen, thus."

"You might have seen him," an eyewitness wrote, only four days after the battle, "with his sword in his hand,

throwing himself upon the enemy. It is certain that one time, among the rest, he was seen at the head of two

English regiments, and that he fought seven with these two in sight of the whole army, driving them before

him above a quarter of an hour. Thanks be to God that preserved him." The enemy pressed on him so close

that it was with difficulty that he at length made his way over the Gette. A small body of brave men, who

shared his peril to the last, could hardly keep off the pursuers as he crossed the bridge.447

Never, perhaps, was the change which the progress of civilisation has produced in the art of war more

strikingly illustrated than on that day. Ajax beating down the Trojan leader with a rock which two ordinary

men could scarcely lift, Horatius defending the bridge against an army, Richard the Lionhearted spurring

along the whole Saracen line without finding an enemy to stand his assault, Robert Bruce crushing with one

blow the helmet and head of Sir Henry Bohun in sight of the whole array of England and Scotland, such are

the heroes of a dark age. In such an age bodily vigour is the most indispensable qualification of a warrior. At

Landen two poor sickly beings, who, in a rude state of society, would have been regarded as too puny to bear

any part in combats, were the souls of two great armies. In some heathen countries they would have been

exposed while infants. In Christendom they would, six hundred years earlier, have been sent to some quiet

cloister. But their lot had fallen on a time when men had discovered that the strength of the muscles is far

inferior in value to the strength of the mind. It is probable that, among the hundred and twenty thousand

soldiers who were marshalled round Neerwinden under all the standards of Western Europe, the two feeblest

in body were the hunchbacked dwarf who urged forward the fiery onset of France, and the asthmatic skeleton

The French were victorious; but they had bought their victory dear. More than ten thousand of the best troops

of Lewis had fallen. Neerwinden was a spectacle at which the oldest soldiers stood aghast. The streets were

piled breast high with corpses. Among the slain were some great lords and some renowned warriors.

Montchevreuil was there, and the mutilated trunk of the Duke of Uzes, first in order of precedence among the

whole aristocracy of France. Thence too Sarsfield was borne desperately wounded to a pallet from which he

never rose again. The Court of Saint Germains had conferred on him the empty title of Earl of Lucan; but

history knows him by the name which is still dear to the most unfortunate of nations. The region, renowned

in history as the battle field, during many ages, of the most warlike nations of Europe, has seen only two

more terrible days, the day of Malplaquet and the day of Waterloo. During many months the ground was

strewn with skulls and bones of men and horses, and with fragments of hats and shoes, saddles and holsters.

The next summer the soil, fertilised by twenty thousand corpses, broke forth into millions of poppies. The

traveller who, on the road from Saint Tron to Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet spreading from

Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help fancying that the figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was

literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood, and refusing to cover the slain.448

There was no pursuit, though the sun was still high in the heaven when William crossed the Gette. The

conquerors were so much exhausted by marching and fighting that they could scarcely move; and the horses

were in even worse condition than the men. Their general thought it necessary to allow some time for rest and

refreshment. The French nobles unloaded their sumpter horses, supped gaily, and pledged one another in

champagne amidst the heaps of dead; and, when night fell, whole brigades gladly lay down to sleep in their

ranks on the field of battle. The inactivity of Luxemburg did not escape censure. None could deny that he had

in the action shown great skill and energy. But some complained that he wanted patience and perseverance.

Others whispered that he had no wish to bring to an end a war which made him necessary to a Court where he

had never, in time of peace, found favour or even justice.449 Lewis, who on this occasion was perhaps not

altogether free from some emotions of jealousy, contrived, it was reported, to mingle with the praise which he

bestowed on his lieutenant blame which, though delicately expressed, was perfectly intelligible. "In the

battle," he said, "the Duke of Luxemburg behaved like Conde; and since the battle the Prince of Orange has

In truth the ability and vigour with which William repaired his terrible defeat might well excite admiration.

"In one respect," said the Admiral Coligni, "I may claim superiority over Alexander, over Scipio, over

Caesar. They won great battles, it is true. I have lost four great battles; and yet I show to the enemy a more

formidable front than ever." The blood of Coligni ran in the veins of William; and with the blood had

descended the unconquerable spirit which could derive from failure as much glory as happier commanders

owed to success. The defeat of Landen was indeed a heavy blow. The King had a few days of cruel anxiety.

If Luxemburg pushed on, all was lost. Louvain must fall, and Mechlin, Nieuport, and Ostend. The Batavian

frontier would be in danger. The cry for peace throughout Holland might be such as neither States General

nor Stadtholder would be able to resist.450 But there was delay; and a very short delay was enough for

William. From the field of battle he made his way through the multitude of fugitives to the neighbourhood of

Louvain, and there began to collect his scattered forces. His character is not lowered by the anxiety which, at

that moment, the most disastrous of his life, he felt for the two persons who were dearest to him. As soon as

he was safe, he wrote to assure his wife of his safety.451 In the confusion of the flight he had lost sight of

Portland, who was then in very feeble health, and had therefore run more than the ordinary risks of war. A

short note which the King sent to his friend a few hours later is still extant.452 "Though I hope to see you this

evening, I cannot help writing to tell you how rejoiced I am that you got off so well. God grant that your

health may soon be quite restored. These are great trials, which he has been pleased to send me in quick

succession. I must try to submit to his pleasure without murmuring, and to deserve his anger less."

His forces rallied fast. Large bodies of troops which he had, perhaps imprudently, detached from his army

while he supposed that Liege was the object of the enemy, rejoined him by forced marches. Three weeks after

his defeat he held a review a few miles from Brussels. The number of men under arms was greater than on

the morning of the bloody day of Landen; their appearance was soldierlike; and their spirit seemed unbroken.

William now wrote to Heinsius that the worst was over. "The crisis," he said, "has been a terrible one. Thank

God that it has ended thus." He did not, however, think it prudent to try at that time the event of another

pitched field. He therefore suffered the French to besiege and take Charleroy; and this was the only advantage

which they derived from the most sanguinary battle fought in Europe during the seventeenth century.

The melancholy tidings of the defeat of Landen found England agitated by tidings not less melancholy from a

different quarter. During many months the trade with the Mediterranean Sea had been almost entirely

interrupted by the war. There was no chance that a merchantman from London or from Amsterdam would, if

unprotected, reach the Pillars of Hercules without being boarded by a French privateer; and the protection of

armed vessels was not easily to be obtained. During the year 1691, great fleets, richly laden for Spanish,

Italian and Turkish markets, had been gathering in the Thames and the Texel. In February 1693, near four

hundred ships were ready to start. The value of the cargoes was estimated at several millions sterling. Those

galleons which had long been the wonder and envy of the world had never conveyed so precious a freight

from the West Indies to Seville. The English government undertook, in concert with the Dutch government,

to escort the vessels which were laden with this great mass of wealth. The French government was bent on

The plan of the allies was that seventy ships of the line and about thirty frigates and brigantines should

assemble in the Channel under the command of Killegrew and Delaval, the two new Lords of the English

Admiralty, and should convoy the Smyrna fleet, as it was popularly called, beyond the limits within which

any danger could be apprehended from the Brest squadron. The greater part of the armament might then

return to guard the Channel, while Rooke, with twenty sail, might accompany the trading vessels and might

protect them against the squadron which lay at Toulon. The plan of the French government was that the Brest

squadron under Tourville and the Toulon squadron under Estrees should meet in the neighbourhood of the

Which plan was the better conceived may be doubted. Which was the better executed is a question which

admits of no doubt. The whole French navy, whether in the Atlantic or in the Mediterranean, was moved by

one will. The navy of England and the navy of the United Provinces were subject to different authorities; and,

both in England and in the United Provinces, the power was divided and subdivided to such an extent that no

single person was pressed by a heavy responsibility. The spring came. The merchants loudly complained that

they had already lost more by delay than they could hope to gain by the most successful voyage; and still the

ships of war were not half manned or half provisioned. The Amsterdam squadron did not arrive on our coast

till late in April; the Zealand squadron not till the middle of May.453 It was June before the immense fleet,

Tourville was already on the sea, and was steering southward. But Killegrew and Delaval were so negligent

or so unfortunate that they had no intelligence of his movements. They at first took it for granted that he was

still lying in the port of Brest. Then they heard a rumour that some shipping had been seen to the northward;

and they supposed that he was taking advantage of their absence to threaten the coast of Devonshire. It never

seems to have occurred to them as possible that he might have effected a junction with the Toulon squadron,

and might be impatiently waiting for his prey in the neighbourhood of Gibraltar. They therefore, on the sixth

of June, having convoyed the Smyrna fleet about two hundred miles beyond Ushant, announced their

intention to part company with Rooke. Rooke expostulated, but to no purpose. It was necessary for him to

submit, and to proceed with his twenty men of war to the Mediterranean, while his superiors, with the rest of

It was by this time known in England that Tourville had stolen out of Brest, and was hastening to join

Estrees. The return of Killegrew and Delaval therefore excited great alarm. A swift sailing vessel was

instantly despatched to warn Rooke of his danger; but the warning never reached him. He ran before a fair

wind to Cape Saint Vincent; and there he learned that some French ships were lying in the neighbouring Bay

of Lagos. The first information which he received led him to believe that they were few in number; and so

dexterously did they conceal their strength that, till they were within half an hour's sail, he had no suspicion

that he was opposed to the whole maritime strength of a great kingdom. To contend against fourfold odds

would have been madness. It was much that he was able to save his squadron from titter destruction. He

exerted all his skill. Two or three Dutch men of war, which were in the rear, courageously sacrificed

themselves to save the fleet. With the rest of the armament, and with about sixty merchant ships, Rooke got

safe to Madeira and thence to Cork. But more than three hundred of the vessels which he had convoyed were

scattered over the ocean. Some escaped to Ireland; some to Corunna; some to Lisbon; some to Cadiz; some

were captured, and more destroyed. A few, which had taken shelter under the rock of Gibraltar, and were

pursued thither by the enemy, were sunk when it was found that they could not be defended. Others perished

in the same manner under the batteries of Malaga. The gain to the French seems not to have been great; but

Never within the memory of man had there been in the City a day of more gloom and agitation than that on

which the news of the encounter in the Bay of Lagos arrived. Many merchants, an eyewitness said, went

away from the Royal Exchange, as pale as if they had received sentence of death. A deputation from the

merchants who had been sufferers by this great disaster went up to the Queen with an address representing

their grievances. They were admitted to the Council Chamber, where she was seated at the head of the Board.

She directed Somers to reply to them in her name; and he addressed to them a speech well calculated to

soothe their irritation. Her Majesty, he said, felt for them from her heart; and she had already appointed a

Committee of the Privy Council to inquire into the cause of the late misfortune, and to consider of the best

means of preventing similar misfortunes in time to come.455 This answer gave so much satisfaction that the

Lord Mayor soon came to the palace to thank the Queen for her goodness, to assure her that, through all

vicissitudes, London would be true to her and her consort, and to inform her that, severely as the late calamity

had been felt by many great commercial houses, the Common Council had unanimously resolved to advance

The ill humour which the public calamities naturally produced was inflamed by every factious artifice. Never

had the Jacobite pamphleteers been so savagely scurrilous as during this unfortunate summer. The police was

consequently more active than ever in seeking for the dens from which so much treason proceeded. With

great difficulty and after long search the most important of all the unlicensed presses was discovered. This

press belonged to a Jacobite named William Anderton, whose intrepidity and fanaticism marked him out as

fit to be employed on services from which prudent men and scrupulous men shrink. During two years he had

been watched by the agents of the government; but where he exercised his craft was an impenetrable mystery.

At length he was tracked to a house near Saint James's Street, where he was known by a feigned name, and

where he passed for a working jeweller. A messenger of the press went thither with several assistants, and

found Anderton's wife and mother posted as sentinels at the door. The women knew the messenger, rushed on

him, tore his hair, and cried out "Thieves" and "Murder." The alarm was thus given to Anderton. He

concealed the instruments of his calling, came forth with an assured air, and bade defiance to the messenger,

the Censor, the Secretary, and Little Hooknose himself. After a struggle he was secured. His room was

searched; and at first sight no evidence of his guilt appeared. But behind the bed was soon found a door

which opened into a dark closet. The closet contained a press, types and heaps of newly printed papers. One

of these papers, entitled Remarks on the Present Confederacy and the Late Revolution, is perhaps the most

frantic of all the Jacobite libels. In this tract the Prince of Orange is gravely accused of having ordered fifty of

his wounded English soldiers to be burned alive. The governing principle of his whole conduct, it is said, is

not vainglory, or ambition, or avarice, but a deadly hatred of Englishmen and a desire to make them

miserable. The nation is vehemently adjured, on peril of incurring the severest judgments, to rise up and free

itself from this plague, this curse, this tyrant, whose depravity makes it difficult to believe that he can have

been procreated by a human pair. Many copies were also found of another paper, somewhat less ferocious but

perhaps more dangerous, entitled A French Conquest neither desirable nor practicable. In this tract also the

people are exhorted to rise in insurrection. They are assured that a great part of the army is with them. The

forces of the Prince of Orange will melt away; he will be glad to make his escape; and a charitable hope is

sneeringly expressed that it may not be necessary to do him any harm beyond sending him back to Loo,

The government, provoked and alarmed by the virulence of the Jacobite pamphleteers, determined to make

Anderton an example. He was indicted for high treason, and brought to the bar of the Old Bailey. Treby, now

Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Powell, who had honourably distinguished himself on the day of the

trial of the bishops, were on the Bench. It is unfortunate that no detailed report of the evidence has come

down to us, and that we are forced to content ourselves with such fragments of information as can be

collected from the contradictory narratives of writers evidently partial, intemperate and dishonest. The

indictment, however, is extant; and the overt acts which it imputes to the prisoner undoubtedly amount to

high treason.457 To exhort the subjects of the realm to rise up and depose the King by force, and to add to

that exhortation the expression, evidently ironical, of a hope that it may not be necessary to inflict on him any

evil worse than banishment, is surely an offence which the least courtly lawyer will admit to be within the

scope of the statute of Edward the Third. On this point indeed there seems to have been no dispute, either at

The prisoner denied that he had printed the libels. On this point it seems reasonable that, since the evidence

has not come down to us, we should give credit to the judges and the jury who heard what the witnesses had

One argument with which Anderton had been furnished by his advisers, and which, in the Jacobite

pasquinades of that time, is represented as unanswerable, was that, as the art of printing had been unknown in

the reign of Edward the Third, printing could not be an overt act of treason under a statute of that reign. The

judges treated this argument very lightly; and they were surely justified in so treating it. For it is an argument

which would lead to the conclusion that it could not be an overt act of treason to behead a King with a

It was also urged in Anderton's favour,and this was undoubtedly an argument well entitled to

consideration,that a distinction ought to be made between the author of a treasonable paper and the man

who merely printed it. The former could not pretend that he had not understood the meaning of the words

which he had himself selected. But to the latter those words might convey no idea whatever. The metaphors,

the allusions, the sarcasms, might be far beyond his comprehension; and, while his hands were busy among

the types, his thoughts might be wandering to things altogether unconnected with the manuscript which was

before him. It is undoubtedly true that it may be no crime to print what it would be a great crime to write. But

this is evidently a matter concerning which no general rule can be laid down. Whether Anderton had, as a

mere mechanic, contributed to spread a work the tendency of which he did not suspect, or had knowingly lent

his help to raise a rebellion, was a question for the jury; and the jury might reasonably infer from his change

of his name, from the secret manner in which he worked, from the strict watch kept by his wife and mother,

and from the fury with which, even in the grasp of the messengers, he railed at the government, that he was

not the unconscious tool, but the intelligent and zealous accomplice of traitors. The twelve, after passing a

considerable time in deliberation, informed the Court that one of them entertained doubts. Those doubts were

removed by the arguments of Treby and Powell; and a verdict of Guilty was found.

The fate of the prisoner remained during sometime in suspense. The Ministers hoped that he might be

induced to save his own neck at the expense of the necks of the pamphleteers who had employed him. But his

natural courage was kept up by spiritual stimulants which the nonjuring divines well understood how to

administer. He suffered death with fortitude, and continued to revile the government to the last. The Jacobites

clamoured loudly against the cruelty of the judges who had tried him and of the Queen who had left him for

execution, and, not very consistently, represented him at once as a poor ignorant artisan who was not aware

of the nature and tendency of the act for which he suffered, and as a martyr who had heroically laid down his

The Ministers were much mistaken if they flattered themselves that the fate of Anderton would deter others

from imitating his example. His execution produced several pamphlets scarcely less virulent than those for

which he had suffered. Collier, in what he called Remarks on the London Gazette, exulted with cruel joy over

the carnage of Landen, and the vast destruction of English property on the coast of Spain.459 Other writers

did their best to raise riots among the labouring people. For the doctrine of the Jacobites was that disorder, in

whatever place or in whatever way it might begin, was likely to end in a Restoration. A phrase which,

without a commentary, may seem to be mere nonsense, but which was really full of meaning, was often in

their mouths at this time, and was indeed a password by which the members of the party recognised each

other: "Box it about; it will come to my father." The hidden sense of this gibberish was, "Throw the country

into confusion; it will be necessary at last to have recourse to King James."460 Trade was not prosperous;

and many industrious men were out of work. Accordingly songs addressed to the distressed classes were

composed by the malecontent street poets. Numerous copies of a ballad exhorting the weavers to rise against

the government were discovered in the house of that Quaker who had printed James's Declaration.461 Every

art was used for the purpose of exciting discontent in a much more formidable body of men, the sailors; and

unhappily the vices of the naval administration furnished the enemies of the State with but too good a choice

of inflammatory topics. Some seamen deserted; some mutinied; then came executions; and then came more

ballads and broadsides representing those executions as barbarous murders. Reports that the government had

determined to defraud its defenders of their hard earned pay were circulated with so much effect that a great

crowd of women from Wapping and Rotherhithe besieged Whitehall, clamouring for what was due to their

husbands. Mary had the good sense and good nature to order four of those importunate petitioners to be

admitted into the room where she was holding a Council. She heard their complaints, and herself assured

them that the rumour which had alarmed them was unfounded.462 By this time Saint Bartholomew's day

drew near; and the great annual fair, the delight of idle apprentices and the horror of Puritanical Aldermen,

was opened in Smithfield with the usual display of dwarfs, giants, and dancing dogs, the man that ate fire,

and the elephant that loaded and fired a musket. But of all the shows none proved so attractive as a dramatic

performance which, in conception, though doubtless not in execution, seems to have borne much resemblance

to those immortal masterpieces of humour in which Aristophanes held up Cleon and Lamachus to derision.

Two strollers personated Killegrew and Delaval. The Admirals were represented as flying with their whole

fleet before a few French privateers, and taking shelter under the grins of the Tower. The office of Chorus

was performed by a Jackpudding who expressed very freely his opinion of the naval administration. Immense

crowds flocked to see this strange farce. The applauses were loud; the receipts were great; and the

mountebanks, who had at first ventured to attack only the unlucky and unpopular Board of Admiralty, now,

emboldened by impunity and success, and probably prompted and rewarded by persons of much higher

station than their own, began to cast reflections on other departments of the government. This attempt to

revive the license of the Attic Stage was soon brought to a close by the appearance of a strong body of

constables who carried off the actors to prison.463 Meanwhile the streets of London were every night strewn

with seditious handbills. At all the taverns the zealots of hereditary right were limping about with glasses of

wine and punch at their lips. This fashion had just come in; and the uninitiated wondered much that so great a

number of jolly gentlemen should have suddenly become lame. But, those who were in the secret knew that

the word Limp was a consecrated word, that every one of the four letters which composed it was the initial of

an august name, and that the loyal subject who limped while he drank was taking off his bumper to Lewis,

It was not only in the capital that the Jacobites, at this time, made a great display of their wit. They mustered

strong at Bath, where the Lord President Caermarthen was trying to recruit his feeble health. Every evening

they met, as they phrased it, to serenade the Marquess. In other words they assembled under the sick man's

It is remarkable that the Lord President, at the very time at which he was insulted as a Williamite at Bath, was

considered as a stanch Jacobite at Saint Germains. How he came to be so considered is a most perplexing

question. Some writers are of opinion that he, like Shrewsbury, Russell, Godolphin and Marlborough, entered

into engagements with one king while eating the bread of the other. But this opinion does not rest on

sufficient proofs. About the treasons of Shrewsbury, of Russell, of Godolphin and of Marlborough, we have a

great mass of evidence, derived from various sources, and extending over several years. But all the

information which we possess about Caermarthen's dealings with James is contained in a single short paper

written by Melfort on the sixteenth of October 1693. From that paper it is quite clear that some intelligence

had reached the banished King and his Ministers which led them to regard Caermarthen as a friend. But there

is no proof that they ever so regarded him, either before that day or after that day.466 On the whole, the most

probable explanation of this mystery seems to be that Caermarthen had been sounded by some Jacobite

emissary much less artful than himself, and had, for the purpose of getting at the bottom of the new scheme

of policy devised by Middleton, pretended to be well disposed to the cause of the banished King, that an

exaggerated account of what had passed had been sent to Saint Germains, and that there had been much

rejoicing there at a conversion which soon proved to have been feigned. It seems strange that such a

conversion should even for a moment have been thought sincere. It was plainly Caermarthen's interest to

stand by the sovereigns in possession. He was their chief minister. He could not hope to be the chief minister

of James. It can indeed hardly be supposed that the political conduct of a cunning old man, insatiably

ambitious and covetous, was much influenced by personal partiality. But, if there were any person to whom

Caermarthen was partial, that person was undoubtedly Mary. That he had seriously engaged in a plot to

depose her, at the risk of his head if he failed, and with the certainty of losing immense power and wealth if

he succeeded, was a story too absurd for any credulity but the credulity of exiles.

Caermarthen had indeed at that moment peculiarly strong reasons for being satisfied with the place which he

held in the counsels of William and Mary. There is but too strong reason to believe that he was then

The contest between the two East India Companies was, during the autumn of 1693, fiercer than ever. The

House of Commons, finding the Old Company obstinately averse to all compromise, had, a little before the

close of the late session, requested the King to give the three years' warning prescribed by the Charter. Child

and his fellows now began to be seriously alarmed. They expected every day to receive the dreaded notice.

Nay, they were not sure that their exclusive privilege might not be taken away without any notice at all; for

they found that they had, by inadvertently omitting to pay the tax lately imposed on their stock at the precise

time fixed by law, forfeited their Charter; and, though it would, in ordinary circumstances, have been thought

cruel in the government to take advantage of such a slip, the public was not inclined to allow the Old

Company any thing more than the strict letter of the bond. Every thing was lost if the Charter were not

renewed before the meeting of Parliament. There can be little doubt that the proceedings of the corporation

were still really directed by Child. But he had, it should seem, perceived that his unpopularity had injuriously

affected the interests which were under his care, and therefore did not obtrude himself on the public notice.

His place was ostensibly filled by his near kinsman Sir Thomas Cook, one of the greatest merchants of

London, and Member of Parliament for the borough of Colchester. The Directors placed at Cook's absolute

disposal all the immense wealth which lay in their treasury; and in a short time near a hundred thousand

pounds were expended in corruption on a gigantic scale. In what proportions this enormous sum was

distributed among the great men at Whitehall, and how much of it was embezzled by intermediate agents, is

still a mystery. We know with certainty however that thousands went to Seymour and thousands to

The effect of these bribes was that the Attorney General received orders to draw up a charter regranting the

old privileges to the old Company. No minister, however, could, after what had passed in Parliament, venture

to advise the Crown to renew the monopoly without conditions. The Directors were sensible that they had no

choice, and reluctantly consented to accept the new Charter on terms substantially the same with those which

It is probable that, two years earlier, such a compromise would have quieted the feud which distracted the

City. But a long conflict, in which satire and calumny had not been spared, had heated the minds of men. The

cry of Dowgate against Leadenhall Street was louder than ever. Caveats were entered; petitions were signed;

and in those petitions a doctrine which had hitherto been studiously kept in the background was boldly

affirmed. While it was doubtful on which side the royal prerogative would be used, that prerogative had not

been questioned. But as soon as it appeared that the Old Company was likely to obtain a regrant of the

monopoly under the Great Seal, the New Company began to assert with vehemence that no monopoly could

be created except by Act of Parliament. The Privy Council, over which Caermarthen presided, after hearing

the matter fully argued by counsel on both sides, decided in favour of the Old Company, and ordered the

The autumn was by this time far advanced, and the armies in the Netherlands had gone into quarters for the

winter. On the last day of October William landed in England. The Parliament was about to meet; and he had

every reason to expect a session even more stormy than the last. The people were discontented, and not

without cause. The year had been every where disastrous to the allies, not only on the sea and in the Low

Countries, but also in Servia, in Spain, in Italy, and in Germany. The Turks had compelled the generals of the

Empire to raise the siege of Belgrade. A newly created Marshal of France, the Duke of Noailles, had invaded

Catalonia and taken the fortress of Rosas. Another newly created Marshal, the skilful and valiant Catinat, had

descended from the Alps on Piedmont, and had, at Marsiglia, gained a complete victory over the forces of the

Duke of Savoy. This battle is memorable as the first of a long series of battles in which the Irish troops

retrieved the honour lost by misfortunes and misconduct in domestic war. Some of the exiles of Limerick

showed, on that day, under the standard of France, a valour which distinguished them among many thousands

of brave men. It is remarkable that on the same day a battalion of the persecuted and expatriated Huguenots

stood firm amidst the general disorder round the standard of Savoy, and fell fighting desperately to the last.

The Duke of Lorges had marched into the Palatinate, already twice devastated, and had found that Turenne

and Duras had left him something to destroy. Heidelberg, just beginning to rise again from its ruins, was

again sacked, the peaceable citizens butchered, their wives and daughters foully outraged. The very choirs of

the churches were stained with blood; the pyxes and crucifixes were torn from the altars; the tombs of the

ancient Electors were broken open; the corpses, stripped of their cerecloths and ornaments, were dragged

about the streets. The skull of the father of the Duchess of Orleans was beaten to fragments by the soldiers of

And yet a discerning eye might have perceived that, unfortunate as the confederates seemed to have been, the

advantage had really been on their side. The contest was quite as much a financial as a military contest. The

French King had, some months before, said that the last piece of gold would carry the clay; and he now began

painfully to feel the truth of the saying. England was undoubtedly hard pressed by public burdens; but still

she stood up erect. France meanwhile was fast sinking. Her recent efforts had been too much for her strength,

and had left her spent and unnerved. Never had her rulers shown more ingenuity in devising taxes or more

severity in exacting them; but by no ingenuity, by no severity, was it possible to raise the sums necessary for

another such campaign as that of 1693. In England the harvest had been abundant. In France the corn and the

wine had again failed. The people, as usual, railed at the government. The government, with shameful

ignorance or more shameful dishonesty, tried to direct the public indignation against the dealers in grain.

Decrees appeared which seemed to have been elaborately framed for the purpose of turning dearth into

famine. The nation was assured that there was no reason for uneasiness, that there was more than a sufficient

supply of food, and that the scarcity had been produced by the villanous arts of misers, who locked up their

stores in the hope of making enormous gains. Commissioners were appointed to inspect the granaries, and

were empowered to send to market all the corn that was not necessary for the consumption of the proprietors.

Such interference of course increased the suffering which it was meant to relieve. But in the midst of the

general distress there was an artificial plenty in one favoured spot. The most arbitrary prince must always

stand in some awe of an immense mass of human beings collected in the neighbourhood of his own palace.

Apprehensions similar to those which had induced the Caesars to extort from Africa and Egypt the means of

pampering the rabble of Rome induced Lewis to aggravate the misery of twenty provinces for the purpose of

keeping one huge city in good humour. He ordered bread to be distributed in all the parishes of the capital at

less than half the market price. The English Jacobites were stupid enough to extol the wisdom and humanity

of this arrangement. The harvest, they said, had been good in England and bad in France; and yet the loaf was

cheaper at Paris than in London; and the explanation was simple. The French had a sovereign whose heart

was French, and who watched over his people with the solicitude of a father, while the English were cursed

with a Dutch tyrant, who sent their corn to Holland. The truth was that a week of such fatherly government as

that of Lewis would have raised all England in arms from Northumberland to Cornwall. That there might be

abundance at Paris, the people of Normandy and Anjou were stuffing themselves with nettles. That there

might be tranquillity at Paris, the peasantry were fighting with the bargemen and the troops all along the

Loire and the Seine. Multitudes fled from those rural districts where bread cost five sous a pound to the

happy place where bread was to be had for two sous a pound. It was necessary to drive the famished crowds

back by force from the barriers, and to denounce the most terrible punishments against all who should not go

Lewis was sensible that the strength of France had been overstrained by the exertions of the last campaign.

Even if her harvest and her vintage had been abundant, she would not have been able to do in 1694 what she

had done in 1693; and it was utterly impossible that, in a season of extreme distress, she should again send

into the field armies superior in number on every point to the armies of the coalition. New conquests were not

to be expected. It would be much if the harassed and exhausted land, beset on all sides by enemies, should be

able to sustain a defensive war without any disaster. So able a politician as the French King could not but feel

that it would be for his advantage to treat with the allies while they were still awed by the remembrance of the

gigantic efforts which his kingdom had just made, and before the collapse which had followed those efforts

He had long been communicating through various channels with some members of the confederacy, and

trying to induce them to separate themselves from the rest. But he had as yet made no overture tending to a

general pacification. For he knew that there could be no general pacification unless he was prepared to

abandon the cause of James, and to acknowledge the Prince and Princess of Orange as King and Queen of

England. This was in truth the point on which every thing turned. What should be done with those great

fortresses which Lewis had unjustly seized and annexed to his empire in time of peace, Luxemburg which

overawed the Moselle, and Strasburg which domineered over the Upper Rhine; what should be done with the

places which he had recently won in open war, Philipsburg, Mons and Namur, Huy and Charleroy; what

barrier should be given to the States General; on what terms Lorraine should be restored to its hereditary

Dukes; these were assuredly not unimportant questions. But the all important question was whether England

was to be, as she had been under James, a dependency of France, or, as she was under William and Mary, a

power of the first rank. If Lewis really wished for peace, he must bring himself to recognise the Sovereigns

whom he had so often designated as usurpers. Could he bring himself to recognise them? His superstition, his

pride, his regard for the unhappy exiles who were pining at Saint Germains, his personal dislike of the

indefatigable and unconquerable adversary who had been constantly crossing his path during twenty years,

were on one side; his interests and those of his people were on the other. He must have been sensible that it

was not in his power to subjugate the English, that he must at last leave them to choose their government for

themselves, and that what he must do at last it would be best to do soon. Yet he could not at once make up his

mind to what was so disagreeable to him. He however opened a negotiation with the States General through

the intervention of Sweden and Denmark, and sent a confidential emissary to confer in secret at Brussels with

Dykvelt, who possessed the entire confidence of William. There was much discussion about matters of

secondary importance; but the great question remained unsettled. The French agent used, in private

conversation, expressions plainly implying that the government which he represented was prepared to

recognise William and Mary; but no formal assurance could be obtained from him. Just at the same time the

King of Denmark informed the allies that he was endeavouring to prevail on France not to insist on the

restoration of James as an indispensable condition of peace, but did not say that his endeavours had as yet

been successful. Meanwhile Avaux, who was now Ambassador at Stockholm, informed the King of Sweden,

that, as the dignity of all crowned heads had been outraged in the person of James, the Most Christian King

felt assured that not only neutral powers, but even the Emperor, would try to find some expedient which

might remove so grave a cause of quarrel. The expedient at which Avaux hinted doubtless was that James

should waive his rights, and that the Prince of Wales should be sent to England, bred a Protestant, adopted by

William and Mary, and declared their heir. To such an arrangement William would probably have had no

personal objection. But we may be assured that he never would have consented to make it a condition of

peace with France. Who should reign in England was a question to be decided by England alone.469

It might well be suspected that a negotiation conducted in this manner was merely meant to divide the

confederates. William understood the whole importance of the conjuncture. He had not, it may be, the eye of

a great captain for all the turns of a battle. But he had, in the highest perfection, the eye of a great statesman

for all the turns of a war. That France had at length made overtures to him was a sufficient proof that she felt

herself spent and sinking. That those overtures were made with extreme reluctance and hesitation proved that

she had not yet come to a temper in which it was possible to have peace with her on fair terms. He saw that

the enemy was beginning to give ground, and that this was the time to assume the offensive, to push forward,

to bring up every reserve. But whether the opportunity should be seized or lost it did not belong to him to

decide. The King of France might levy troops and exact taxes without any limit save that which the laws of

nature impose on despotism. But the King of England could do nothing without the support of the House of

Commons; and the House of Commons, though it had hitherto supported him zealously and liberally, was not

a body on which he could rely. It had indeed got into a state which perplexed and alarmed all the most

sagacious politicians of that age. There was something appalling in the union of such boundless power and

such boundless caprice. The fate of the whole civilised world depended on the votes of the representatives of

the English people; and there was no public man who could venture to say with confidence what those

representatives might not be induced to vote within twentyfour hours.470 William painfully felt that it was

scarcely possible for a prince dependent on an assembly so violent at one time, so languid at another, to effect

any thing great. Indeed, though no sovereign did so much to secure and to extend the power of the House of

Commons, no sovereign loved the House of Commons less. Nor is this strange; for he saw that House at the

very worst. He saw it when it had just acquired the power and had not yet acquired the gravity of a senate. In

his letters to Heinsius he perpetually complains of the endless talking, the factious squabbling, the

inconstancy, the dilatoriness, of the body which his situation made it necessary for him to treat with

deference. His complaints were by no means unfounded; but he had not discovered either the cause or the

The truth was that the change which the Revolution had made in the situation of the House of Commons had

made another change necessary; and that other change had not yet taken place. There was parliamentary

government; but there was no Ministry; and, without a Ministry, the working of a parliamentary government,

It is essential to our liberties that the House of Commons should exercise a control over all the departments of

the executive administration. And yet it is evident that a crowd of five or six hundred people, even if they

were intellectually much above the average of the members of the best Parliament, even if every one of them

were a Burleigh, or a Sully, would be unfit for executive functions. It has been truly said that every large

collection of human beings, however well educated, has a strong tendency to become a mob; and a country of

Happily a way has been found out in which the House of Commons can exercise a paramount influence over

the executive government, without assuming functions such as can never be well discharged by a body so

numerous and so variously composed. An institution which did not exist in the times, of the Plantagenets, of

the Tudors or of the Stuarts, an institution not known to the law, an institution not mentioned in any statute,

an institution of which such writers as De Lolme and Blackstone take no notice, began to exist a few years

after the Revolution, grew rapidly into importance, became firmly established, and is now almost as essential

a part of our polity as the Parliament itself. This institution is the Ministry.

The Ministry is, in fact, a committee of leading members of the two Houses. It is nominated by the Crown;

but it consists exclusively of statesmen whose opinions on the pressing questions of the time agree, in the

main, with the opinions of the majority of the House of Commons. Among the members of this committee

are distributed the great departments of the administration. Each Minister conducts the ordinary business of

his own office without reference to his colleagues. But the most important business of every office, and

especially such business as is likely to be the subject of discussion in Parliament, is brought under the

consideration of the whole Ministry. In Parliament the Ministers are bound to act as one man on all questions

relating to the executive government. If one of them dissents from the rest on a question too important to

admit of compromise, it is his duty to retire. While the Ministers retain the confidence of the parliamentary

majority, that majority supports them against opposition, and rejects every motion which reflects on them or

is likely to embarrass them. If they forfeit that confidence, if the parliamentary majority is dissatisfied with

the way in which patronage is distributed, with the way in which the prerogative of mercy is used, with the

conduct of foreign affairs, with the conduct of a war, the remedy is simple. It is not necessary that the

Commons should take on themselves the business of administration, that they should request the Crown to

make this man a bishop and that man a judge, to pardon one criminal and to execute another, to negotiate a

treaty on a particular basis or to send an expedition to a particular place. They have merely to declare that

they have ceased to trust the Ministry, and to ask for a Ministry which they can trust.

It is by means of Ministries thus constituted, and thus changed, that the English government has long been

conducted in general conformity with the deliberate sense of the House of Commons, and yet has been

wonderfully free from the vices which are characteristic of governments administered by large, tumultuous

and divided assemblies. A few distinguished persons, agreeing in their general opinions, are the confidential

advisers at once of the Sovereign and of the Estates of the Realm. In the closet they speak with the authority

of men who stand high in the estimation of the representatives of the people. In Parliament they speak with

the authority of men versed in great affairs and acquainted with all the secrets of the State. Thus the Cabinet

has something of the popular character of a representative body; and the representative body has something

Sometimes the state of parties is such that no set of men who can be brought together possesses the full

confidence and steady support of a majority of the House of Commons. When this is the case, there must be a

weak Ministry; and there will probably be a rapid succession of weak Ministries. At such times the House of

Commons never fails to get into a state which no person friendly to representative government can

contemplate without uneasiness, into a state which may enable us to form some faint notion of the state of

that House during the earlier years of the reign of William. The notion is indeed but faint; for the weakest

Ministry has great power as a regulator of parliamentary proceedings; and in the earlier years of the reign of

No writer has yet attempted to trace the progress of this institution, an institution indispensable to the

harmonious working of our other institutions. The first Ministry was the work, partly of mere chance, and

partly of wisdom, not however of that highest wisdom which is conversant with great principles of political

philosophy, but of that lower wisdom which meets daily exigencies by daily expedients. Neither William nor

the most enlightened of his advisers fully understood the nature and importance of that noiseless

revolution,for it was no less, which began about the close of 1693, and was completed about the close

of 1696. But every body could perceive that, at the close of 1693, the chief offices in the government were

distributed not unequally between the two great parties, that the men who held those offices were perpetually

caballing against each other, haranguing against each other, moving votes of censure on each other,

exhibiting articles of impeachment against each other, and that the temper of the House of Commons was

wild, ungovernable and uncertain. Everybody could perceive that at the close of 1696, all the principal

servants of the Crown were Whigs, closely bound together by public and private ties, and prompt to defend

one another against every attack, and that the majority of the House of Commons was arrayed in good order

under those leaders, and had learned to move, like one man, at the word of command. The history of the

period of transition and of the steps by which the change was effected is in a high degree curious and

The statesman who had the chief share in forming the first English Ministry had once been but too well

known, but had long hidden himself from the public gaze, and had but recently emerged from the obscurity in

which it had been expected that he would pass the remains of an ignominious and disastrous life. During that

period of general terror and confusion which followed the flight of James, Sunderland had disappeared. It

was high time; for of all the agents of the fallen government he was, with the single exception of Jeffreys, the

most odious to the nation. Few knew that Sunderland's voice had in secret been given against the spoliation

of Magdalene College and the prosecution of the Bishops; but all knew that he had signed numerous

instruments dispensing with statutes, that he had sate in the High Commission, that he had turned or

pretended to turn Papist, that he had, a few days after his apostasy, appeared in Westminster Hall as a witness

against the oppressed fathers of the Church. He had indeed atoned for many crimes by one crime baser than

all the rest. As soon as he had reason to believe that the day of deliverance and retribution was at hand, he

had, by a most dexterous and seasonable treason, earned his pardon. During the three months which preceded

the arrival of the Dutch armament in Torbay, he had rendered to the cause of liberty and of the Protestant

religion services of which it is difficult to overrate either the wickedness or the utility. To him chiefly it was

owing that, at the most critical moment in our history, a French army was not menacing the Batavian frontier

and a French fleet hovering about the English coast. William could not, without staining his own honour,

refuse to protect one whom he had not scrupled to employ. Yet it was no easy task even for William to save

that guilty head from the first outbreak of public fury. For even those extreme politicians of both sides who

agreed in nothing else agreed in calling for vengeance on the renegade. The Whigs hated him as the vilest of

the slaves by whom the late government had been served, and the Jacobites as the vilest of the traitors by

whom it had been overthrown. Had he remained in England, he would probably have died by the hand of the

executioner, if indeed the executioner had not been anticipated by the populace. But in Holland a political

refugee, favoured by the Stadtholder, might hope to live unmolested. To Holland Sunderland fled, disguised,

it is said, as a woman; and his wife accompanied him. At Rotterdam, a town devoted to the House of Orange,

he thought himself secure. But the magistrates were not in all the secrets of the Prince, and were assured by

some busy Englishmen that His Highness would be delighted to hear of the arrest of the Popish dog, the

Judas, whose appearance on Tower Hill was impatiently expected by all London. Sunderland was thrown into

prison, and remained there till an order for his release arrived from Whitehall. He then proceeded to

Amsterdam, and there changed his religion again. His second apostasy edified his wife as much as his first

apostasy had edified his master. The Countess wrote to assure her pious friends in England that her poor dear

lord's heart had at last been really touched by divine grace, and that, in spite of all her afflictions, she was

comforted by seeing him so true a convert. We may, however, without any violation of Christian charity,

suspect that he was still the same false, callous, Sunderland who, a few months before, had made Bonrepaux

shudder by denying the existence of a God, and had, at the same time, won the heart of James by pretending

to believe in transubstantiation. In a short time the banished man put forth an apology for his conduct. This

apology, when examined, will be found to amount merely to a confession that he had committed one series of

crimes in order to gain James's favour, and another series in order to avoid being involved in James's ruin.

The writer concluded by announcing his intention to pass all the rest of his life in penitence and prayer. He

soon retired from Amsterdam to Utrecht, and at Utrecht made himself conspicuous by his regular and devout

attendance on the ministrations of Huguenot preachers. If his letters and those of his wife were to be trusted,

he had done for ever with ambition. He longed indeed to be permitted to return from exile, not that he might

again enjoy and dispense the favours of the Crown, not that his antechambers might again be filled by the

daily swarm of suitors, but that he might see again the turf, the trees and the family pictures of his country

seat. His only wish was to be suffered to end his troubled life at Althorpe; and he would be content to forfeit

While the House of Commons, which had been elected during the vacancy of the throne, was busily engaged

in the work of proscription, he could not venture to show himself in England. But when that assembly had

ceased to exist, he thought himself safe. He returned a few days after the Act of Grace had been laid on the

table of the Lords. From the benefit of that Act he was by name excluded; but he well knew that he had now

nothing to fear. He went privately to Kensington, was admitted into the closet, had an audience which lasted

During many months be led a secluded life, and had no residence in London. Once in the spring of 1692, to

the great astonishment of the public, he showed his face in the circle at Court, and was graciously

received.473 He seems to have been afraid that he might, on his reappearance in Parliament, receive some

marked affront. He therefore, very prudently, stole down to Westminster, in the dead time of the year, on a

day to which the Houses stood adjourned by the royal command, and on which they met merely for the

purpose of adjourning again. Sunderland had just time to present himself, to take the oaths, to sign the

declaration against transubstantiation, and to resume his seat. None of the few peers who were present had an

opportunity of making any remark.474 It was not till the year 1692 that he began to attend regularly. He was

silent; but silent he had always been in large assemblies, even when he was at the zenith of power. His talents

were not those of a public speaker. The art in which he surpassed all men was the art of whispering. His tact,

his quick eye for the foibles of individuals, his caressing manners, his power of insinuation, and, above all,

his apparent frankness, made him irresistible in private conversation. By means of these qualities he had

To govern William, indeed, was not easy. But Sunderland succeeded in obtaining such a measure of favour

and influence as excited much surprise and some indignation. In truth, scarcely any mind was strong enough

to resist the witchery of his talk and of his manners. Every man is prone to believe in the gratitude and

attachment even of the most worthless persons on whom he has conferred great benefits. It can therefore

hardly be thought strange that the most skilful of all flatterers should have been heard with favour, when he,

with every outward sign of strong emotion, implored permission to dedicate all his faculties to the service of

the generous protector to whom he owed property, liberty, life. It is not necessary, however, to suppose that

the King was deceived. He may have thought, with good reason, that, though little confidence could be

placed in Sunderland's professions, much confidence might be placed in Sunderland's situation; and the truth

is that Sunderland proved, on the whole, a more faithful servant than a much less depraved man might have

been. He did indeed make, in profound secresy, some timid overtures towards a reconciliation with James.

But it may be confidently affirmed that, even had those overtures been graciously received,and they appear

to have been received very ungraciously,the twice turned renegade would never have rendered any real

service to the Jacobite cause. He well knew that he had done that which at Saint Germains must be regarded

as inexpiable. It was not merely that he had been treacherous and ungrateful. Marlborough had been as

treacherous and ungrateful; and Marlborough had been pardoned. But Marlborough had not been guilty of the

impious hypocrisy of counterfeiting the signs of conversion. Marlborough had not pretended to be convinced

by the arguments of the Jesuits, to be touched by divine grace, to pine for union with the only true Church.

Marlborough had not, when Popery was in the ascendant, crossed himself, shrived himself, done penance,

taken the communion in one kind, and, as soon as a turn of fortune came, apostatized back again, and

proclaimed to all the world that, when he knelt at the confessional and received the host, he was merely

laughing at the King and the priests. The crime of Sunderland was one which could never be forgiven by

James; and a crime which could never be forgiven by James was, in some sense, a recommendation to

William. The Court, nay, the Council, was full of men who might hope to prosper if the banished King were

restored. But Sunderland had left himself no retreat. He had broken down all the bridges behind him. He had

been so false to one side that he must of necessity be true to the other. That he was in the main true to the

government which now protected him there is no reason to doubt; and, being true, he could not but be useful.

He was, in some respects, eminently qualified to be at that time an adviser of the Crown. He had exactly the

talents and the knowledge which William wanted. The two together would have made up a consummate

statesman. The master was capable of forming and executing large designs, but was negligent of those small

arts in which the servant excelled. The master saw farther off than other men; but what was near no man saw

so clearly as the servant. The master, though profoundly versed in the politics of the great community of

nations, never thoroughly understood the politics of his own kingdom. The servant was perfectly well

informed as to the temper and the organization of the English factions, and as to the strong and weak parts of

Early in 1693, it was rumoured that Sunderland was consulted on all important questions relating to the

internal administration of the realm; and the rumour became stronger when it was known that he had come up

to London in the autumn before the meeting of Parliament and that he had taken a large mansion near

Whitehall. The coffeehouse politicians were confident that he was about to hold some high office. As yet,

however, he had the wisdom to be content with the reality of power, and to leave the show to others.475

His opinion was that, as long as the King tried to balance the two great parties against each other, and to

divide his favour equally between them, both would think themselves ill used, and neither would lend to the

government that hearty and steady support which was now greatly needed. His Majesty must make up his

mind to give a marked preference to one or the other; and there were three weighty reasons for giving the

In the first place, the Whigs were on principle attached to the reigning dynasty. In their view the Revolution

had been, not merely necessary, not merely justifiable, but happy and glorious. It had been the triumph of

their political theory. When they swore allegiance to William, they swore without scruple or reservation; and

they were so far from having any doubt about his title that they thought it the best of all titles. The Tories, on

the other hand, very generally disapproved of that vote of the Convention which had placed him on the

throne. Some of them were at heart Jacobites, and had taken the oath of allegiance to him only that they

might be able to injure him. Others, though they thought it their duty to obey him as King in fact, denied that

he was King by right, and, if they were loyal to him, were loyal without enthusiasm. There could, therefore,

In the second place, as to the particular matter on which his heart was at present set, the Whigs were, as a

body, prepared to support him strenuously, and the Tories were, as a body, inclined to thwart him. The minds

of men were at this time much occupied by the question, in what way the war ought to be carried on. To that

question the two parties returned very different answers. An opinion had during many months been growing

among the Tories that the policy of England ought to be strictly insular; that she ought to leave the defence of

Flanders and the Rhine to the States General, the House of Austria and the Princes of the Empire; that she

ought to carry on hostilities with vigour by sea, but to keep up only such an army as might, with the help of

the militia, be sufficient to repel an invasion. It was plain that, if this system were adopted, there might be an

immediate reduction of the taxes which pressed most heavily on the nation. But the Whigs maintained that

this relief would be dearly purchased. Many thousands of brave English soldiers were now in Flanders. Yet

the allies had not been able to prevent the French from taking Mons in 1691, Namur in 1692, Charleroy in

1693. If the English troops were withdrawn, it was certain that Ostend, Ghent, Liege, Brussels would fall.

The German Princes would hasten to make peace, each for himself. The Spanish Netherlands would probably

be annexed to the French monarchy. The United Provinces would be again in as great peril as in 1672, and

would accept whatever terms Lewis might be pleased to dictate. In a few months, he would be at liberty to

put forth his whole strength against our island. Then would come a struggle for life and death. It might well

be hoped that we should be able to defend our soil even against such a general and such an army as had won

the battle of Landen. But the fight must be long and hard. How many fertile counties would be turned into

deserts, how many flourishing towns would be laid in ashes, before the invaders were destroyed or driven

out! One triumphant campaign in Kent and Middlesex would do more to impoverish the nation than ten

disastrous campaigns in Brabant. It is remarkable that this dispute between the two great factions was, during

seventy years, regularly revived as often as our country was at war with France. That England ought never to

attempt great military operations on the Continent continued to be a fundamental article of the creed of the

Tories till the French Revolution produced a complete change in their feelings.476 As the chief object of

William was to open the campaign of 1694 in Flanders with an immense display of force, it was sufficiently

In the third place, the Whigs were the stronger party in Parliament. The general election of 1690, indeed, had

not been favourable to them. They had been, for a time, a minority; but they had ever since been constantly

gaining ground; they were now in number a full half of the Lower House; and their effective strength was

more than proportioned to their number; for in energy, alertness and discipline, they were decidedly superior

to their opponents. Their organization was not indeed so perfect as it afterwards became; but they had already

begun to look for guidance to a small knot of distinguished men, which was long afterwards widely known

by the name of the junto. There is, perhaps, no parallel in history, ancient or modern, to the authority

exercised by this council, during twenty troubled years, over the Whig body. The men who acquired that

authority in the days of William and Mary continued to possess it, without interruption, in office and out of

One of these men was Russell. Of his shameful dealings with the Court of Saint Germains we possess proofs

which leave no room for doubt. But no such proofs were laid before the world till he had been many years

dead. If rumours of his guilt got abroad, they were vague and improbable; they rested on no evidence; they

could be traced to no trustworthy author; and they might well be regarded by his contemporaries as Jacobite

calumnies. What was quite certain was that he sprang from an illustrious house, which had done and suffered

great things for liberty and for the Protestant religion, that he had signed the invitation of the thirtieth of June,

that he had landed with the Deliverer at Torbay, that he had in Parliament, on all occasions, spoken and voted

as a zealous Whig, that he had won a great victory, that he had saved his country from an invasion, and that,

since he had left the Admiralty, every thing had gone wrong. We cannot therefore wonder that his influence

But the greatest man among the members of the junto, and, in some respects, the greatest man of that age,

was the Lord Keeper Somers. He was equally eminent as a jurist and as a politician, as an orator and as a

writer. His speeches have perished; but his State papers remain, and are models of terse, luminous, and

dignified eloquence. He had left a great reputation in the House of Commons, where he had, during four

years, been always heard with delight; and the Whig members still looked up to him as their leader, and still

held their meetings under his roof. In the great place to which he had recently been promoted, he had so

borne himself that, after a very few months, even faction and envy had ceased to murmur at his elevation. In

truth, he united all the qualities of a great judge, an intellect comprehensive, quick and acute, diligence,

integrity, patience, suavity. In council, the calm wisdom which he possessed in a measure rarely found among

men of parts so quick and of opinions so decided as his, acquired for him the authority of an oracle. The

superiority of his powers appeared not less clearly in private circles. The charm of his conversation was

heightened by the frankness with which he poured out his thoughts.477 His good temper and his good

breeding never failed. His gesture, his look, his tones were expressive of benevolence. His humanity was the

more remarkable, because he had received from nature a body such as is generally found united with a

peevish and irritable mind. His life was one long malady; his nerves were weak; his complexion was livid;

his face was prematurely wrinkled. Yet his enemies could not pretend that he had ever once, during a long

and troubled public life, been goaded, even by sudden provocation, into vehemence inconsistent with the

mild dignity of his character. All that was left to them was to assert that his disposition was very far from

being so gentle as the world believed, that he was really prone to the angry passions, and that sometimes,

while his voice was soft, and his words kind and courteous, his delicate frame was almost convulsed by

suppressed emotion. It will perhaps be thought that this reproach is the highest of all eulogies.

The most accomplished men of those times have told us that there was scarcely any subject on which Somers

was not competent to instruct and to delight. He had never travelled; and, in that age, an Englishman who had

not travelled was generally thought incompetent to give an opinion on works of art. But connoisseurs familiar

with the masterpieces of the Vatican and of the Florentine gallery allowed that the taste of Somers in painting

and sculpture was exquisite. Philology was one of his favourite pursuits. He had traversed the whole vast

range of polite literature, ancient and modern. He was at once a munificent and severely judicious patron of

genius and learning. Locke owed opulence to Somers. By Somers Addison was drawn forth from a cell in a

college. In distant countries the name of Somers was mentioned with respect and gratitude by great scholars

and poets who had never seen his face. He was the benefactor of Leclerc. He was the friend of Filicaja.

Neither political nor religious differences prevented him from extending his powerful protection to merit.

Hickes, the fiercest and most intolerant of all the nonjurors, obtained, by the influence of Somers, permission

to study Teutonic antiquities in freedom and safety. Vertue, a strict Roman Catholic, was raised by the

discriminating and liberal patronage of Somers from poverty and obscurity to the first rank among the

The generosity with which Somers treated his opponents was the more honourable to him because he was no

waverer in politics. From the beginning to the end of his public life he was a steady Whig. His voice was

indeed always raised, when his party was dominant in the State, against violent and vindictive counsels; but

he never forsook his friends, even when their perverse neglect of his advice had brought them to the verge of

His powers of mind and his acquirements were not denied, even by his detractors. The most acrimonious

Tories were forced to admit, with an ungracious snarl, which increased the value of their praise, that he had

all the intellectual qualities of a great man, and that in him alone, among his contemporaries, brilliant

eloquence and wit were to be found associated with the quiet and steady prudence which ensures success in

life. It is a remarkable fact, that, in the foulest of all the many libels that were published against him, he was

slandered under the name of Cicero. As his abilities could not be questioned, he was charged with irreligion

and immorality. That he was heterodox all the country vicars and foxhunting squires firmly believed; but as

to the nature and extent of his heterodoxy there were many different opinions. He seems to have been a Low

Churchman of the school of Tillotson, whom he always loved and honoured; and he was, like Tillotson,

The private life of this great statesman and magistrate was malignantly scrutinised; and tales were told about

his libertinism which went on growing till they became too absurd for the credulity even of party spirit. At

last, long after he had been condemned to flannel and chicken broth, a wretched courtesan, who had probably

never seen him except in the stage box at the theatre, when she was following her vocation below in a mask,

published a lampoon in which she described him as the master of a haram more costly than the Great Turk's.

There is, however, reason to believe that there was a small nucleus of truth round which this great mass of

fiction gathered, and that the wisdom and selfcommand which Somers never wanted in the senate, on the

judgment seat, at the council board, or in the society of wits, scholars and philosophers, were not always

Another director of the Whig party was Charles Montague. He was often, when he had risen to power,

honours and riches, called an upstart by those who envied his success. That they should have called him so

may seem strange; for few of the statesmen of his time could show such a pedigree as his. He sprang from a

family as old as the Conquest; he was in the succession to an earldom, and was, by the paternal side, cousin

of three earls. But he was the younger son of a younger brother; and that phrase had, ever since the time of

Shakspeare and Raleigh, and perhaps before their time, been proverbially used to designate a person so poor

as to be broken to the most abject servitude or ready for the most desperate adventure.

Charles Montague was early destined for the Church, was entered on the foundation of Westminster, and,

after distinguishing himself there by skill in Latin versification, was sent up to Trinity College, Cambridge.

At Cambridge the philosophy of Des Cartes was still dominant in the schools. But a few select spirits had

separated from the crowd, and formed a fit audience round a far greater teacher.479 Conspicuous among the

youths of high promise who were proud to sit at the feet of Newton was the quick and versatile Montague.

Under such guidance the young student made considerable proficiency in the severe sciences; but poetry was

his favourite pursuit; and when the University invited her sons to celebrate royal marriages and funerals, he

was generally allowed to have surpassed his competitors. His fame travelled to London; he was thought a

clever lad by the wits who met at Will's, and the lively parody which he wrote, in concert with his friend and

fellow student Prior, on Dryden's Hind and Panther, was received with great applause.

At this time all Montague's wishes pointed towards the Church. At a later period, when he was a peer with

twelve thousand a year, when his villa on the Thames was regarded as the most delightful of all suburban

retreats, when he was said to revel in Tokay from the Imperial cellar, and in soups made out of birds' nests

brought from the Indian Ocean, and costing three guineas a piece, his enemies were fond of reminding him

that there had been a time when he had eked out by his wits an income of barely fifty pounds, when he had

been happy with a trencher of mutton chops and a flagon of ale from the College buttery, and when a tithe pig

was the rarest luxury for which he had dared to hope. The Revolution came, and changed his whole scheme

of life. He obtained, by the influence of Dorset, who took a peculiar pleasure in befriending young men of

promise, a seat in the House of Commons. Still, during a few months, the needy scholar hesitated between

politics and divinity. But it soon became clear that, in the new order of things, parliamentary ability must

fetch a higher price than any other kind of ability; and he felt that in parliamentary ability he had no superior.

He was in the very situation for which he was peculiarly fitted by nature; and during some years his life was a

Of him, as of several of his contemporaries, especially of Mulgrave and of Sprat, it may be said that his fame

has suffered from the folly of those editors who, down to our own time, have persisted in reprinting his

rhymes among the works of the British poets. There is not a year in which hundreds of verses as good as any

that he ever wrote are not sent in for the Newdigate prize at Oxford and for the Chancellor's medal at

Cambridge. His mind had indeed great quickness and vigour, but not that kind of quickness and vigour which

produces great dramas or odes; and it is most unjust to him that his loan of Honour and his Epistle on the

Battle of the Boyne should be placed side by side with Comus and Alexander's Feast. Other eminent

statesmen and orators, Walpole, Pulteney, Chatham, Fox, wrote poetry not better than his. But fortunately for

them, their metrical compositions were never thought worthy to be admitted into any collection of our

It has long been usual to represent the imagination under the figure of a wing, and to call the successful

exertions of the imagination flights. One poet is the eagle; another is the swan; a third modestly compares

himself to the bee. But none of these types would have suited Montague. His genius may be compared to that

pinion which, though it is too weak to lift the ostrich into the air, enables her, while she remains on the earth,

to outrun hound, horse and dromedary. If the man who possesses this kind of genius attempts to ascend the

heaven of invention, his awkward and unsuccessful efforts expose him to derision. But if he will be content to

stay in the terrestrial region of business, he will find that the faculties which would not enable him to soar

into a higher sphere will enable him to distance all his competitors in the lower. As a poet Montague could

never have risen above the crowd. But in the House of Commons, now fast becoming supreme in the State,

and extending its control over one executive department after another, the young adventurer soon obtained a

place very different from the place which he occupies among men of letters. At thirty, he would gladly have

given all his chances in life for a comfortable vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At thirtyseven, he was First

Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Regent of the kingdom; and this elevation he owed

not at all to favour, but solely to the unquestionable superiority of his talents for administration and debate.

The extraordinary ability with which, at the beginning of the year 1692, he managed the conference on the

Bill for regulating Trials in cases of Treason, placed him at once in the first rank of parliamentary orators. On

that occasion he was opposed to a crowd of veteran senators renowned for their eloquence, Halifax,

Rochester, Nottingham, Mulgrave, and proved himself a match for them all. He was speedily seated at the

Board of Treasury; and there the clearheaded and experienced Godolphin soon found that his young

colleague was his master. When Somers had quitted the House of Commons, Montague had no rival there.

Sir Thomas Littleton, once distinguished as the ablest debater and man of business among the Whig

members, was content to serve under his junior. To this day we may discern in many parts of our financial

and commercial system the marks of the vigorous intellect and daring spirit of Montague. His bitterest

enemies were unable to deny that some of the expedients which he had proposed had proved highly beneficial

to the nation. But it was said that these expedients were not devised by himself. He was represented, in a

hundred pamphlets, as the daw in borrowed plumes. He had taken, it was affirmed, the hint of every one of

his great plans from the writings or the conversation of some ingenious speculator. This reproach was, in

truth, no reproach. We can scarcely expect to find in the same human being the talents which are necessary

for the making of new discoveries in political science, and the talents which obtain the assent of divided and

tumultuous assemblies to great practical reforms. To be at once an Adam Smith and a Pitt is scarcely

possible. It is surely praise enough for a busy politician that he knows how to use the theories of others, that

he discerns, among the schemes of innumerable projectors, the precise scheme which is wanted and which is

practicable, that he shapes it to suit pressing circumstances and popular humours, that he proposes it just

when it is most likely to be favourably received, that he triumphantly defends it against all objectors, and that

he carries it into execution with prudence and energy; and to this praise no English statesman has a fairer

It is a remarkable proof of his selfknowledge that, from the moment at which he began to distinguish himself

in public life, he ceased to be a versifier. It does not appear that, after he became a Lord of the Treasury, he

ever wrote a couplet, with the exception of a few well turned lines inscribed on a set of toasting glasses which

were sacred to the most renowned Whig beauties of his time. He wisely determined to derive from the poetry

of others a glory which he never would have derived from his own. As a patron of genius and learning he

ranks with his two illustrious friends, Dorset and Somers. His munificence fully equalled theirs; and, though

he was inferior to them in delicacy of taste, he succeeded in associating his name inseparably with some

Yet it must be acknowledged that Montague, with admirable parts and with many claims on the gratitude of

his country, had great faults, and unhappily faults not of the noblest kind. His head was not strong enough to

bear without giddiness the speed of his ascent and the height of his position. He became offensively arrogant

and vain. He was too often cold to his old friends, and ostentatious in displaying his new riches. Above all, he

was insatiably greedy of praise, and liked it best when it was of the coarsest and rankest quality. But, in 1693,

With Russell, Somers and Montague, was closely connected, during a quarter of a century a fourth Whig,

who in character bore little resemblance to any of them. This was Thomas Wharton, eldest son of Philip Lord

Wharton. Thomas Wharton has been repeatedly mentioned in the course of this narrative. But it is now time

to describe him more fully. He was in his fortyseventh year, but was still a young man in constitution, in

appearance and in manners. Those who hated him most heartily,and no man was hated more

heartily,admitted that his natural parts were excellent, and that he was equally qualified for debate and for

action. The history of his mind deserves notice; for it was the history of many thousands of minds. His rank

and abilities made him so conspicuous that in him we are able to trace distinctly the origin and progress of a

He was born in the days of the Covenant, and was the heir of a covenanted house. His father was renowned as

a distributor of Calvinistic tracts, and a patron of Calvinistic divines. The boy's first years were past amidst

Geneva bands, heads of lank hair, upturned eyes, nasal psalmody, and sermons three hours long. Plays and

poems, hunting and dancing, were proscribed by the austere discipline of his saintly family. The fruits of this

education became visible, when, from the sullen mansion of Puritan parents, the hotblooded, quickwitted

young patrician emerged into the gay and voluptuous London of the Restoration. The most dissolute cavaliers

stood aghast at the dissoluteness of the emancipated precisian. He early acquired and retained to the last the

reputation of being the greatest rake in England. Of wine indeed he never became the slave; and he used it

chiefly for the purpose of making himself the master of his associates. But to the end of his long life the

wives and daughters of his nearest friends were not safe from his licentious plots. The ribaldry of his

conversation moved astonishment even in that age. To the religion of his country he offered, in the mere

wantonness of impiety, insults too foul to be described. His mendacity and his effrontery passed into

proverbs. Of all the liars of his time he was the most deliberate, the most inventive and the most

circumstantial. What shame meant he did not seem to understand. No reproaches, even when pointed and

barbed with the sharpest wit, appeared to give him pain. Great satirists, animated by a deadly personal

aversion, exhausted all their strength in attacks upon him. They assailed him with keen invective; they

assailed him with still keener irony; but they found that neither invective nor irony could move him to any

thing but an unforced smile and a goodhumoured curse; and they at length threw down the lash,

acknowledging that it was impossible to make him feel. That, with such vices, he should have played a great

part in life, should have carried numerous elections against the most formidable opposition by his personal

popularity, should have had a large following in Parliament, should have risen to the highest offices of the

State, seems extraordinary. But he lived in times when faction was almost a madness; and he possessed in an

eminent degree the qualities of the leader of a faction. There was a single tie which he respected. The falsest

of mankind in all relations but one, he was the truest of Whigs. The religious tenets of his family he had early

renounced with contempt; but to the politics of his family he stedfastly adhered through all the temptations

and dangers of half a century. In small things and in great his devotion to his party constantly appeared. He

had the finest stud in England; and his delight was to win plates from Tories. Sometimes when, in a distant

county, it was fully expected that the horse of a High Church squire would be first on the course, down came,

on the very eve of the race, Wharton's Careless, who had ceased to run at Newmarket merely for want of

competitors, or Wharton's Gelding, for whom Lewis the Fourteenth had in vain offered a thousand pistoles. A

man whose mere sport was of this description was not likely to be easily beaten in any serious contest. Such a

master of the whole art of electioneering England had never seen. Buckinghamshire was his own especial

province; and there he ruled without a rival. But he extended his care over the Whig interest in Yorkshire,

Cumberland, Westmoreland, Wiltshire. Sometimes twenty, sometimes thirty, members of Parliament were

named by him. As a canvasser he was irresistible. He never forgot a face that he had once seen. Nay, in the

towns in which he wished to establish an interest, he remembered, not only the voters, but their families. His

opponents were confounded by the strength of his memory and the affability of his deportment, and owned,

that it was impossible to contend against a great man who called the shoemaker by his Christian name, who

was sure that the butcher's daughter must be growing a fine girl, and who was anxious to know whether the

blacksmith's youngest boy was breeched. By such arts as these he made himself so popular that his journeys

to the Buckinghamshire Quarter Sessions resembled royal progresses. The bells of every parish through

which he passed were rung, and flowers were strewed along the road. It was commonly believed that, in the

course of his life, he expended on his parliamentary interest not less than eighty thousand pounds, a sum

which, when compared with the value of estates, must be considered as equivalent to more than three hundred

But the chief service which Wharton rendered to the Whig party was that of bringing in recruits from the

young aristocracy. He was quite as dexterous a canvasser among the embroidered coats at the Saint James's

Coffeehouse as among the leathern aprons at Wycombe and Aylesbury. He had his eye on every boy of

quality who came of age; and it was not easy for such a boy to resist the arts of a noble, eloquent and wealthy

flatterer, who united juvenile vivacity to profound art and long experience of the gay world. It mattered not

what the novice preferred, gallantry or field sports, the dicebox or the bottle. Wharton soon found out the

master passion, offered sympathy, advice and assistance, and, while seeming to be only the minister of his

The party to whose interests Wharton, with such spirit and constancy, devoted his time, his fortune, his

talents, his very vices, judged him, as was natural, far too leniently. He was widely known by the very

undeserved appellation of Honest Tom. Some pious men, Burnet, for example, and Addison, averted their

eyes from the scandal which he gave, and spoke of him, not indeed with esteem, yet with goodwill. A most

ingenious and accomplished Whig, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, author of the Characteristics, described

Wharton as the most mysterious of human beings, as a strange compound of best and worst, of private

depravity and public virtue, and owned himself unable to understand how a man utterly without principle in

every thing but politics should in politics be as true as steel. But that which, in the judgment of one faction,

more than half redeemed all Wharton's faults, seemed to the other faction to aggravate them all. The opinion

which the Tories entertained of him is expressed in a single line written after his death by the ablest man of

that party; "He was the most universal villain that ever I knew."480 Wharton's political adversaries thirsted

for his blood, and repeatedly tried to shed it. Had he not been a man of imperturbable temper, dauntless

courage and consummate skill in fence, his life would have been a short one. But neither anger nor danger

ever deprived him of his presence of mind; he was an incomparable swordsman; and he had a peculiar way of

disarming opponents which moved the envy of all the duellists of his time. His friends said that he had never

given a challenge, that he had never refused one, that he had never taken a life, and yet that he had never

The four men who have been described resembled each other so little that it may be thought strange that they

should ever have been able to act in concert. They did, however, act in the closest concert during many years.

They more than once rose and more than once fell together. But their union lasted till it was dissolved by

death. Little as some of them may have deserved esteem, none of them can be accused of having been false to

While the great body of the Whigs was, under these able chiefs, arraying itself in order resembling that of a

regular army, the Tories were in a state of an ill drilled and ill officered militia. They were numerous; and

they were zealous; but they can hardly be said to have had, at this time, any chief in the House of Commons.

The name of Seymour had once been great among them, and had not quite lost its influence. But, since he had

been at the Board of Treasury, he had disgusted them by vehemently defending all that he had himself, when

out of place, vehemently attacked. They had once looked up to the Speaker, Trevor; but his greediness,

impudence and venality were now so notorious that all respectable gentlemen, of all shades of opinion, were

ashamed to see him in the chair. Of the old Tory members Sir Christopher Musgrave alone had much weight.

Indeed the real leaders of the party were two or three men bred in principles diametrically opposed to

Toryism, men who had carried Whiggism to the verge of republicanism, and who had been considered not

merely as Low Churchmen, but as more than half Presbyterians. Of these men the most eminent were two

The space which Robert Harley fills in the history of three reigns, his elevation, his fall, the influence which,

at a great crisis, he exercised on the politics of all Europe, the close intimacy in which he lived with some of

the greatest wits and poets of his time, and the frequent recurrence of his name in the works of Swift, Pope,

Arbuthnot, and Prior, must always make him an object of interest. Yet the man himself was of all men the

least interesting. There is indeed a whimsical contrast between the very ordinary qualities of his mind and the

He was the heir of a Puritan family. His father, Sir Edward Harley, had been conspicuous among the patriots

of the Long parliament, had commanded a regiment under Essex, had, after the Restoration, been an active

opponent of the Court, had supported the Exclusion Bill, had harboured dissenting preachers, had frequented

meetinghouses, and had made himself so obnoxious to the ruling powers that at the time of the Western

Insurrection, he had been placed under arrest, and his house had been searched for arms. When the Dutch

army was marching from Torbay towards London, he and his eldest son Robert declared for the Prince of

Orange and a free Parliament, raised a large body of horse, took possession of Worcester, and evinced their

zeal against Popery by publicly breaking to pieces, in the High Street of that city, a piece of sculpture which

to rigid precisians seemed idolatrous. Soon after the Convention became a Parliament, Robert Harley was

sent up to Westminster as member for a Cornish borough. His conduct was such as might have been expected

from his birth and education. He was a Whig, and indeed an intolerant and vindictive Whig. Nothing would

satisfy him but a general proscription of the Tories. His name appears in the list of those members who voted

for the Sacheverell clause; and, at the general election which took place in the spring of 1690, the party which

he had persecuted made great exertions to keep him out of the House of Commons. A cry was raised that the

Harleys were mortal enemies of the Church; and this cry produced so much effect that it was with difficulty

that any of them could obtain a seat. Such was the commencement of the public life of a man whose name, a

quarter of a century later, was inseparably coupled with the High Church in the acclamations of Jacobite

Soon, however, it began to be observed that in every division Harley was in the company of those gentlemen

who held his political opinions in abhorrence; nor was this strange; for he affected the character of a Whig of

the old pattern; and before the Revolution it had always been supposed that a Whig was a person who

watched with jealousy every exertion of the prerogative, who was slow to loose the strings of the public

purse, and who was extreme to mark the faults of the ministers of the Crown. Such a Whig Harley still

professed to be. He did not admit that the recent change of dynasty had made any change in the duties of a

representative of the people. The new government ought to be observed as suspiciously, checked as severely,

and supplied as sparingly as the old one. Acting on these principles he necessarily found himself acting with

men whose principles were diametrically opposed to his. He liked to thwart the King; they liked to thwart the

usurper; the consequence was that, whenever there was an opportunity of thwarting William, the Roundhead

stayed in the House or went into the lobby in company with the whole crowd of Cavaliers.

Soon Harley acquired the authority of a leader among those with whom, notwithstanding wide differences of

opinion, he ordinarily voted. His influence in Parliament was indeed altogether out of proportion to his

abilities. His intellect was both small and slow. He was unable to take a large view of any subject. He never

acquired the art of expressing himself in public with fluency and perspicuity. To the end of his life he

He had none of the external graces of an orator. His countenance was heavy, his figure mean and somewhat

deformed, and his gestures uncouth. Yet he was heard with respect. For, such as his mind was, it had been

assiduously cultivated. His youth had been studious; and to the last he continued to love books and the

society of men of genius and learning. Indeed he aspired to the character of a wit and a poet, and occasionally

employed hours which should have been very differently spent in composing verses more execrable than the

bellman's.484 His time however was not always so absurdly wasted. He had that sort of industry and that sort

of exactness which would have made him a respectable antiquary or King at Arms. His taste led him to plod

among old records; and in that age it was only by plodding among old records that any man could obtain an

accurate and extensive knowledge of the law of Parliament. Having few rivals in this laborious and

unattractive pursuit, he soon began to be regarded as an oracle on questions of form and privilege. His moral

character added not a little to his influence. He had indeed great vices; but they were not of a scandalous

kind. He was not to be corrupted by money. His private life was regular. No illicit amour was imputed to him

even by satirists. Gambling he held in aversion; and it was said that he never passed White's, then the

favourite haunt of noble sharpers and dupes, without an exclamation of anger. His practice of flustering

himself daily with claret was hardly considered as a fault by his contemporaries. His knowledge, his gravity

and his independent position gained for him the ear of the House; and even his bad speaking was, in some

sense, an advantage to him. For people are very loth to admit that the same man can unite very different kinds

of excellence. It is soothing to envy to believe that what is splendid cannot be solid, that what is clear cannot

be profound. Very slowly was the public brought to acknowledge that Mansfield was a great jurist, and that

Burke was a great master of political science. Montague was a brilliant rhetorician, and, therefore, though he

had ten times Harley's capacity for the driest parts of business, was represented by detractors as a superficial,

prating pretender. But from the absence of show in Harley's discourses many people inferred that there must

be much substance; and he was pronounced to be a deep read, deep thinking gentleman, not a fine talker, but

fitter to direct affairs of state than all the fine talkers in the world. This character he long supported with that

cunning which is frequently found in company with ambitious and unquiet mediocrity. He constantly had,

even with his best friends, an air of mystery and reserve which seemed to indicate that he knew some

momentous secret, and that his mind was labouring with some vast design. In this way he got and long kept a

high reputation for wisdom. It was not till that reputation had made him an Earl, a Knight of the Garter, Lord

High Treasurer of England, and master of the fate of Europe, that his admirers began to find out that he was

Soon after the general election of 1690, Harley, generally voting with the Tories, began to turn Tory. The

change was so gradual as to be almost imperceptible; but was not the less real. He early began to hold the

Tory doctrine that England ought to confine herself to a maritime war. He early felt the true Tory antipathy to

Dutchmen and to moneyed men. The antipathy to Dissenters, which was necessary to the completeness of the

character, came much later. At length the transformation was complete; and the old haunter of conventicles

became an intolerant High Churchman. Yet to the last the traces of his early breeding would now and then

show themselves; and, while he acted after the fashion of Laud, he sometimes wrote in the style of Praise

Of Paul Foley we know comparatively little. His history, up to a certain point, greatly resembles that of

Harley: but he appears to have been superior to Harley both in parts and in elevation of character. He was the

son of Thomas Foley, a new man, but a. man of great merit, who, having begun life with nothing, had created

a noble estate by ironworks, and who was renowned for his spotless integrity and his munificent charity. The

Foleys were, like their neighbours the Harleys, Whigs and Puritans. Thomas Foley lived on terms of close

intimacy with Baxter, in whose writings he is mentioned with warm eulogy. The opinions and the

attachments of Paul Foley were at first those of his family. But be, like Harley, became, merely from the

vehemence of his Whiggism, an ally of the Tories, and might, perhaps, like Harley, have been completely

metamorphosed into a Tory, if the process of transmutation had not been interrupted by death. Foley's

abilities were highly respectable, and had been improved by education. He was so wealthy that it was

unnecessary for him to follow the law as a profession; but he had studied it carefully as a science. His morals

were without stain; and the greatest fault which could be imputed to him was that he paraded his

independence and disinterestedness too ostentatiously, and was so much afraid of being thought to fawn that

Another convert ought to be mentioned. Howe, lately the most virulent of the Whigs, had been, by the loss of

his place, turned into one of the most virulent of the Tories. The deserter brought to the party which he had

joined no weight of character, no capacity or semblance of capacity for great affairs, but much parliamentary

ability of a low kind, much spite and much impudence. No speaker of that time seems to have had, in such

The assistance of these men was most welcome to the Tory party; but it was impossible that they could, as

yet, exercise over that party the entire authority of leaders. For they still called themselves Whigs, and

generally vindicated their Tory votes by arguments grounded on Whig principles.487

From this view of the state of parties in the House of Commons, it seems clear that Sunderland had good

reason for recommending that the administration should be entrusted to the Whigs. The King, however,

hesitated long before he could bring himself to quit that neutral position which he had long occupied between

the contending parties. If one of those parties was disposed to question his title, the other was on principle

hostile to his prerogative. He still remembered with bitterness the unreasonable and vindictive conduct of the

Convention Parliament at the close of 1689 and the beginning of 16go; and he shrank from the thought of

being entirely in the hands of the men who had obstructed the Bill of Indemnity, who had voted for the

Sacheverell clause, who had tried to prevent him from taking the command of his army in Ireland, and who

had called him an ungrateful tyrant merely because he would not be their slave and their hangman. He had

once, by a bold and unexpected effort, freed himself from their yoke; and he was not inclined to put it on his

neck again. He personally disliked Wharton and Russell. He thought highly of the capacity of Caermarthen,

of the integrity of Nottingham, of the diligence and financial skill of Godolphin. It was only by slow degrees

that the arguments of Sunderland, backed by the force of circumstances, overcame all objections.

On the seventh of November 1693 the Parliament met; and the conflict of parties instantly began. William

from the throne pressed on the Houses the necessity of making a great exertion to arrest the progress of

France on the Continent. During the last campaign, he said, she had, on every point, had a superiority of

force; and it had therefore been found impossible to cope with her. His allies had promised to increase their

The Commons at their next sitting took the King's speech into consideration. The miscarriage of the Smyrna

fleet was the chief subject of discussion. The cry for inquiry was universal: but it was evident that the two

parties raised that cry for very different reasons. Montague spoke the sense of the Whigs. He declared that the

disasters of the summer could not, in his opinion, be explained by the ignorance and imbecility of those who

had charge of the naval administration. There must have been treason. It was impossible to believe that

Lewis, when he sent his Brest squadron to the Straits of Gibraltar, and left the whole coast of his kingdom

from Dunkirk to Bayonne unprotected, had trusted merely to chance. He must have been well assured that his

fleet would meet with a vast booty under a feeble convoy. As there had been treachery in some quarters, there

had been incapacity in others. The State was ill served. And then the orator pronounced a warm panegyric on

his friend Somers. "Would that all men in power would follow the example of my Lord Keeper! If all

patronage were bestowed as judiciously and disinterestedly as his, we should not see the public offices filled

with men who draw salaries and perform no duties." It was moved and carried unanimously, that the

Commons would support their Majesties, and would forthwith proceed to investigate the cause of the disaster

in the Bay of Lagos.489 The Lords of the Admiralty were directed to produce a great mass of documentary

evidence. The King sent down copies of the examinations taken before the Committee of Council which

Mary had appointed to inquire into the grievances of the Turkey merchants. The Turkey merchants

themselves were called in and interrogated. Rooke, though too ill to stand or speak, was brought in a chair to

the bar, and there delivered in a narrative of his proceedings. The Whigs soon thought that sufficient ground

had been laid for a vote condemning the naval administration, and moved a resolution attributing the

miscarriage of the Smyrna fleet to notorious and treacherous mismanagement. That there had been

mismanagement could not be disputed; but that there had been foul play had certainly not been proved. The

Tories proposed that the word "treacherous" should be omitted. A division took place; and the Whigs carried

their point by a hundred and forty votes to a hundred and three. Wharton was a teller for the majority.490

It was now decided that there had been treason, but not who was the traitor. Several keen debates followed.

The Whigs tried to throw the blame on Killegrew and Delaval, who were Tories; the Tories did their best to

make out that the fault lay with the Victualling Department, which was under the direction of Whigs. But the

House of Commons has always been much more ready to pass votes of censure drawn in general terms than

to brand individuals by name. A resolution clearing the Victualling Office was proposed by Montague, and

carried, after a debate of two days, by a hundred and eightyeight votes to a hundred and fiftytwo.491 But

when the victorious party brought forward a motion inculpating the admirals, the Tories came up in great

numbers from the country, and, after a debate which lasted from nine in the morning till near eleven at night,

succeeded in saving their friends. The Noes were a hundred and seventy, and the Ayes only a hundred and

sixtyone. Another attack was made a few days later with no better success. The Noes were a hundred and

eightyfive, the Ayes only a hundred and seventyfive. The indefatigable and implacable Wharton was on

In spite of this check the advantage was decidedly with the Whigs; The Tories who were at the head of the

naval administration had indeed escaped impeachment; but the escape had been so narrow that it was

impossible for the King to employ them any longer. The advice of Sunderland prevailed. A new Commission

of Admiralty was prepared; and Russell was named First Lord. He had already been appointed to the

His elevation made it necessary that Nottingham should retire. For, though it was not then unusual to see men

who were personally and politically hostile to each other holding high offices at the same time, the relation

between the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Secretary of State, who had charge of what would now be

called the War Department, was of so peculiar a nature that the public service could not be well conducted

without cordial cooperation between them; and between Nottingham and Russell such cooperation was not to

be expected. "I thank you," William said to Nottingham, "for your services. I have nothing to complain of in

your conduct. It is only from necessity that I part with you." Nottingham retired with dignity. Though a very

honest man, he went out of office much richer than lie had come in five years before. What were then

considered as the legitimate emoluments of his place were great; he had sold Kensington House to the Crown

for a large sum; and he had probably, after the fashion of that time, obtained for himself some lucrative

grants. He laid out all his gains in purchasing land. He heard, he said, that his enemies meant to accuse him of

having acquired wealth by illicit means. He was perfectly ready to abide the issue of an inquiry. He would

not, as some ministers had done, place his fortune beyond the reach of the justice of his country. He would

have no secret hoard. He would invest nothing in foreign funds. His property should all be such as could be

During some weeks the seals which Nottingham had delivered up remained in the royal closet. To dispose of

them proved no easy matter. They were offered to Shrewsbury, who of all the Whig leaders stood highest in

the King's favour; but Shrewsbury excused himself, and, in order to avoid further importunity, retired into the

country. There he soon received a pressing letter from Elizabeth Villiers. This lady had, when a girl, inspired

William with a passion which had caused much scandal and much unhappiness in the little Court of the

Hague. Her influence over him she owed not to her personal charms,for it tasked all the art of Kneller to

make her look tolerably on canvass,not to those talents which peculiarly belong to her sex,for she did

not excel in playful talk, and her letters are remarkably deficient in feminine ease and grace, but to powers

of mind which qualified her to partake the cares and guide the counsels of statesmen. To the end of her life

great politicians sought her advice. Even Swift, the shrewdest and most cynical of her contemporaries,

pronounced her the wisest of women, and more than once sate, fascinated by her conversation, from two in

the afternoon till near midnight.494 By degrees the virtues and charms of Mary conquered the first place in

her husband's affection. But he still, in difficult conjunctures, frequently applied to Elizabeth Villiers for

advice and assistance. She now implored Shrewsbury to reconsider his determination, and not to throw away

the opportunity of uniting the Whig party for ever. Wharton and Russell wrote to the same effect. In reply

came flimsy and unmeaning excuses: "I am not qualified for a court life; I am unequal to a place which

requires much exertion; I do not quite agree with any party in the State; in short, I am unfit for the world; I

want to travel; I want to see Spain." These were mere pretences. Had Shrewsbury spoken the whole truth, he

would have said that he had, in an evil hour, been false to the cause of that Revolution in which he had borne

so great a part, that he had entered into engagements of which he repented, but from which he knew not how

to extricate himself, and that, while he remained under those engagements, he was unwilling to enter into the

service of the existing government. Marlborough, Godolphin and Russell, indeed, had no scruple about

corresponding with one King while holding office under the other. But Shrewsbury had, what was wanting to

Marlborough, Godolphin and Russell, a conscience, a conscience which indeed too often failed to restrain

In consequence of his refusal to accept the Seals, the ministerial arrangements which the King had planned

were not carried into entire effect till the end of the session. Meanwhile the proceedings of the two Houses

Soon after the Parliament met, the attention of the Commons was again called to the state of the trade with

India; and the charter which had just been granted to the Old Company was laid before them. They would

probably have been disposed to sanction the new arrangement, which, in truth, differed little from that which

they had themselves suggested not many months before, if the Directors had acted with prudence. But the

Directors, from the day on which they had obtained their charter, had persecuted the interlopers without

mercy, and had quite forgotten that it was one thing to persecute interlopers in the Eastern Seas, and another

to persecute them in the port of London. Hitherto the war of the monopolists against the private trade had

been generally carried on at the distance of fifteen thousand miles from England. If harsh things were done,

the English did not see them done, and did not hear of them till long after they had been done; nor was it by

any means easy to ascertain at Westminster who had been right and who had been wrong in a dispute which

had arisen three or four years before at Moorshedabad or Canton. With incredible rashness the Directors

determined, at the very moment when the fate of their company was in the balance, to give the people of this

country a near view of the most odious features of the monopoly. Some wealthy merchants of London had

equipped a fine ship named the Redbridge. Her crew was numerous, her cargo of immense value. Her papers

had been made out for Alicant: but there was some reason to suspect that she was really bound for the

countries lying beyond the Cape of Good Hope. She was stopped by the Admiralty, in obedience to an order

which the Company obtained from the Privy Council, doubtless by the help of the Lord President. Every day

that she lay in the Thames caused a heavy expense to the owners. The indignation in the City was great and

general. The Company maintained that from the legality of the monopoly the legality of the detention

necessarily followed. The public turned the argument round, and, being firmly convinced that the detention

was illegal, drew the inference that the monopoly must be illegal too. The dispute was at the height when the

Parliament met. Petitions on both sides were speedily laid on the table of the Commons; and it was resolved

that these petitions should be taken into consideration by a Committee of the whole House. The first question

on which the conflicting parties tried their strength was the choice of a chairman. The enemies of the Old

Company proposed Papillon, once the closest ally and subsequently the keenest opponent of Child, and

carried their point by a hundred and thirtyeight votes to a hundred and six. The Committee proceeded to

inquire by what authority the Redbridge had been stopped. One of her owners, Gilbert Heathcote, a rich

merchant and a stanch Whig, appeared at the bar as a witness. He was asked whether he would venture to

deny that the ship had really been fitted out for the Indian trade. "It is no sin that I know of," he answered, "to

trade with India; and I shall trade with India till I am restrained by Act of Parliament." Papillon reported that

in the opinion of the Committee, the detention of the Redbridge was illegal. The question was then put, that

the House would agree with the Committee. The friends of the Old Company ventured on a second division,

and were defeated by a hundred and seventyone votes to a hundred and twentyfive.496

The blow was quickly followed up. A few days later it was moved that all subjects of England had equal right

to trade to the East Indies unless prohibited by Act of Parliament; and the supporters of the Old Company,

sensible that they were in a minority, suffered the motion to pass without a division.497

This memorable vote settled the most important of the constitutional questions which had been left unsettled

by the Bill of Rights. It has ever since been held to be the sound doctrine that no power but that of the whole

legislature can give to any person or to any society an exclusive privilege of trading to any part of the world.

The opinion of the great majority of the House of Commons was that the Indian trade could be

advantageously carried on only by means of a joint stock and a monopoly. It might therefore have been

expected that the resolution which destroyed the monopoly of the Old Company would have been

immediately followed by a law granting a monopoly to the New Company. No such law, however, was

passed. The Old Company, though not strong enough to defend its own privileges, was able, with the help of

its Tory friends, to prevent the rival association from obtaining similar privileges. The consequence was that,

during some years, there was nominally a free trade with India. In fact, the trade still lay under severe

restrictions. The private adventurer found indeed no difficulty in sailing from England; but his situation was

as perilous as ever when he had turned the Cape of Good Hope. Whatever respect might be paid to a vote of

the House of Commons by public functionaries in London, such a vote was, at Bombay or Calcutta, much

less regarded than a private letter from Child; and Child still continued to fight the battle with unbroken

spirit. He sent out to the factories of the Company orders that no indulgence should be shown to the intruders.

For the House of Commons and for its resolutions he expressed the bitterest contempt. "Be guided by my

instructions," he wrote," and not by the nonsense of a few ignorant country gentlemen who have hardly wit

enough to manage their own private affairs, and who know nothing at all about questions of trade." It appears

Every where in the East, during this period of anarchy, servant of the Company and the independent merchant

waged war on each other, accused each other of piracy, and tried by every artifice to exasperate the Mogul

The three great constitutional questions of the preceding year were, in this year, again brought under the

consideration of Parliament. In the first week of the session, a Bill for the Regulation of Trials in cases of

High Treason, a Triennial Bill, and a Place Bill were laid on the table of the House of Commons.

None of these bills became a law. The first passed the Commons, but was unfavourably received by the

Peers. William took so much interest in the question that he came down to the House of Lords, not in his

crown and robes, but in the ordinary dress of a gentleman, and sate through the whole debate on the second

reading. Caermarthen spoke of the dangers to which the State was at that time exposed, and entreated his

brethren not to give, at such a moment, impunity to traitors. He was powerfully supported by two eminent

orators, who had, during some years, been on the uncourtly side of every question, but who, in this session,

showed a disposition to strengthen the hands of the government, Halifax and Mulgrave. Marlborough,

Rochester and Nottingham spoke for the bill; but the general feeling was so clearly against them that they did

not venture to divide. It is probable, however, that the reasons urged by Caermarthen were not the reasons

which chiefly swayed his hearers. The Peers were fully determined that the bill should not pass without a

clause altering the constitution of the Court of the Lord High Steward: they knew that the Lower House was

as fully determined not to pass such a clause; and they thought it better that what must happen at last should

The fate of the Triennial Bill confounded all the calculations of the best informed politicians of that time, and

may therefore well seem extraordinary to us. During the recess, that bill had been described in numerous

pamphlets, written for the most part by persons zealous for the Revolution and for popular principles of

government, as the one thing needful, as the universal cure for the distempers of the State. On the first,

second and third readings in the House of Commons no division took place. The Whigs were enthusiastic.

The Tories seemed to be acquiescent. It was understood that the King, though he had used his Veto for the

purpose of giving the Houses an opportunity of reconsidering the subject, had no intention of offering a

pertinacious opposition to their wishes. But Seymour, with a cunning which long experience had matured,

after deferring the conflict to the last moment, snatched the victory from his adversaries, when they were

most secure. When the Speaker held up the bill in his hands, and put the question whether it should pass, the

Noes were a hundred and fortysix, the Ayes only a hundred and thirtysix.500 Some eager Whigs flattered

themselves that their defeat was the effect of a surprise, and might be retrieved. Within three days, therefore,

Monmouth, the most ardent and restless man in the whole party, brought into the Upper House a bill

substantially the same with that which had so strangely miscarried in the Lower. The Peers passed this bill

very expeditiously, and sent it down to the Commons. But in the Commons it found no favour. Many

members, who professed to wish that the duration of parliaments should be limited, resented the interference

of the hereditary branch of the legislature in a matter which peculiarly concerned the elective branch. The

subject, they said, is one which especially belongs to us; we have considered it; we have come to a decision;

and it is scarcely parliamentary, it is certainly most indelicate, in their Lordships, to call upon us to reverse

that decision. The question now is, not whether the duration of parliaments ought to be limited, but whether

we ought to submit our judgment to the authority of the Peers, and to rescind, at their bidding, what we did

only a fortnight ago. The animosity with which the patrician order was regarded was inflamed by the arts and

the eloquence of Seymour. The bill contained a definition of the words, "to hold a Parliament." This

definition was scrutinised with extreme jealousy, and was thought by many, with very little reason, to have

been framed for the purpose of extending the privileges, already invidiously great, of the nobility. It appears,

from the scanty and obscure fragments of the debates which have come down to us, that bitter reflections

were thrown on the general conduct, both political and judicial, of the Peers. Old Titus, though zealous for

triennial parliaments, owned that he was not surprised at the ill humour which many gentlemen showed. "It is

true," he said, "that we ought to be dissolved; but it is rather hard, I must own, that the Lords are to prescribe

the time of our dissolution. The Apostle Paul wished to be dissolved; but, I doubt, if his friends had set him a

day, he would not have taken it kindly of them." The bill was rejected by a hundred and ninetyseven votes

The Place Bill, differing very little from the Place Bill which had been brought in twelve months before,

passed easily through the Commons. Most of the Tories supported it warmly; and the Whigs did not venture

to oppose it. It went up to the Lords, and soon came back completely changed. As it had been originally

drawn, it provided that no member of the House of Commons, elected after the first of January, 1694, should

accept any place of profit under the Crown, on pain of forfeiting his seat, and of being incapable of sitting

again in the same Parliament. The Lords had added the words, "unless he be afterwards again chosen to serve

in the same Parliament." These words, few as they were, sufficed to deprive the bill of nine tenths of its

efficacy, both for good and for evil. It was most desirable that the crowd of subordinate public functionaries

should be kept out of the House of Commons. It was most undesirable that the heads of the great executive

departments should be kept out of that House. The bill, as altered, left that House open both to those who

ought and to those who ought not to have been admitted. It very properly let in the Secretaries of State and

the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but it let in with them Commissioners of Wine Licenses and Commissioners

of the Navy, Receivers, Surveyors, Storekeepers, Clerks of the Acts and Clerks of the Cheque, Clerks of the

Green Cloth and Clerks of the Great Wardrobe. So little did the Commons understand what they were about

that, after framing a law, in one view most mischievous, and in another view most beneficial, they were

perfectly willing that it should be transformed into a law quite harmless and almost useless. They agreed to

That sanction certainly ought not to have been withheld, and probably would not have been withheld, if

William had known how unimportant the bill now was. But he understood the question as little as the

Commons themselves. He knew that they imagined that they had devised a most stringent limitation of the

royal power; and he was determined not to submit, without a struggle, to any such limitation. He was

encouraged by the success with which he had hitherto resisted the attempts of the two Houses to encroach on

his prerogative. He had refused to pass the bill which quartered the judges on his hereditary revenue; and the

Parliament had silently acquiesced in the justice of the refusal. He had refused to pass the Triennial Bill; and

the Commons had since, by rejecting two Triennial Bills, acknowledged that he had done well. He ought,

however, to have considered that, on both these occasions, the announcement of his refusal was immediately

followed by the announcement that the Parliament was prorogued. On both these occasions, therefore, the

members had half a year to think and to grow cool before the next sitting. The case was now very different.

The principal business of the session was hardly begun: estimates were still under consideration: bills of

supply were still depending; and, if the Houses should take a fit of ill humour, the consequences might be

He resolved, however, to run the risk. Whether he had any adviser is not known. His determination seems to

have taken both the leading Whigs and the leading Tories by surprise. When the Clerk had proclaimed that

the King and Queen would consider of the bill touching free and impartial proceedings in Parliament, the

Commons retired from the bar of the Lords in a resentful and ungovernable mood. As soon as the Speaker

was again in his chair there was a long and tempestuous debate. All other business was postponed. All

committees were adjourned. It was resolved that the House would, early the next morning, take into

consideration the state of the nation. When the morning came, the excitement did not appear to have abated.

The mace was sent into Westminster Hall and into the Court of Requests. All members who could be found

were brought into the House. That none might be able to steal away unnoticed, the back door was locked, and

the key laid on the table. All strangers were ordered to retire. With these solemn preparations began a sitting

which reminded a few old men of some of the first sittings of the Kong Parliament. High words were uttered

by the enemies of the government. Its friends, afraid of being accused of abandoning the cause of the

Commons of England for the sake of royal favour, hardly ventured to raise their voices. Montague alone

seems to have defended the King. Lowther, though high in office and a member of the cabinet, owned that

there were evil influences at work, and expressed a wish to see the Sovereign surrounded by counsellors in

whom the representatives of the people could confide. Harley, Foley and Howe carried every thing before

them. A resolution, affirming that those who had advised the Crown on this occasion were public enemies,

was carried with only two or three Noes. Harley, after reminding his hearers that they had their negative

voice as the King had his, and that, if His Majesty refused then redress, they could refuse him money, moved

that they should go up to the Throne, not, as usual, with a Humble Address, but with a Representation. Some

members proposed to substitute the more respectful word Address: but they were overruled; and a committee

Another night passed; and, when the House met again, it appeared that the storm had greatly subsided. The

malignant joy and the wild hopes which the Jacobites had, during the last fortyeight hours, expressed with

their usual imprudence, had incensed and alarmed the Whigs and the moderate Tories. Many members too

were frightened by hearing that William was fully determined not to yield without an appeal to the nation.

Such an appeal might have been successful: for a dissolution, on any ground whatever, would, at that

moment, have been a highly popular exercise of the prerogative. The constituent bodies, it was well known,

were generally zealous for the Triennial Bill, and cared comparatively little about the Place Bill. Many Tory

members, therefore, who had recently voted against the Triennial Bill, were by no means desirous to run the

risks of a general election. When the Representation which Harley and his friends had prepared was read, it

was thought offensively strong. After being recommitted, shortened and softened, it was presented by the

whole House. William's answer was kind and gentle; but he conceded nothing. He assured the Commons that

he remembered with gratitude the support which he had on many occasions received from them, that he

should always consider their advice as most valuable, and that he should look on counsellors who might

attempt to raise dissension between him and his Parliament as his enemies but he uttered not a word which

could be construed into an acknowledgment that he had used his Veto ill, or into a promise that he would not

The Commons on the morrow took his speech into consideration. Harley and his allies complained that the

King's answer was no answer at all, threatened to tack the Place Bill to a money bill, and proposed to make a

second representation pressing His Majesty to explain himself more distinctly. But by this time there was a

strong reflux of feeling in the assembly. The Whigs had not only recovered from their dismay, but were in

high spirits and eager for conflict. Wharton, Russell and Littleton maintained that the House ought to be

satisfied with what the King had said. "Do you wish," said Littleton, "to make sport for your enemies? There

is no want of them. They besiege our very doors. We read, as we come through the lobby, in the face and

gestures of every nonjuror whom we pass, delight at the momentary coolness which has arisen between us

and the King. That should be enough for us. We may be sure that we are voting rightly when we give a vote

which tends to confound the hopes of traitors." The House divided. Harley was a teller on one side, Wharton

on the other. Only eightyeight voted with Harley, two hundred and twentynine with Wharton. The Whigs

were so much elated by their victory that some of them wished to move a vote of thanks to William for his

gracious answer; but they were restrained by wiser men. "We have lost time enough already in these unhappy

debates," said a leader of the party. "Let us get to Ways and Means as fast as we can. The best form which

Thus ended, more happily than William had a right to expect, one of the most dangerous contests in which he

ever engaged with his Parliament. At the Dutch Embassy the rising and going down of this tempest had been

watched with intense interest; and the opinion there seems to have been that the King had on the whole lost

Another question, which excited scarcely less angry feeling in Parliament and in the country, was, about the

same time, under consideration. On the sixth of December, a Whig member of the House of Commons

obtained leave to bring in a bill for the Naturalisation of Foreign Protestants. Plausible arguments in favour of

such a bill were not wanting. Great numbers of people, eminently industrious and intelligent, firmly attached

to our faith, and deadly enemies of our deadly enemies, were at that time without a country. Among the

Huguenots who had fled from the tyranny of the French King were many persons of great fame in war, in

letters, in arts and in sciences; and even the humblest refugees were intellectually and morally above the

average of the common people of any kingdom in Europe. With French Protestants who had been driven into

exile by the edicts of Lewis were now mingled German Protestants who had been driven into exile by his

arms. Vienna, Berlin, Basle, Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, swarmed with honest laborious men who had

once been thriving burghers of Heidelberg or Mannheim, or who had cultivated vineyards along the banks of

the Neckar and the Rhine. A statesman might well think that it would be at once generous and politic to invite

to the English shores and to incorporate with the English people emigrants so unfortunate and so respectable.

Their ingenuity and their diligence could not fail to enrich any land which should afford them an asylum; nor

could it be doubted that they would manfully defend the country of their adoption against him whose cruelty

The first two readings passed without a division. But, on the motion that the bill should be committed, there

was a debate in which the right of free speech was most liberally used by the opponents of the government. It

was idle, they said, to talk about the poor Huguenots or the poor Palatines. The bill was evidently meant for

the benefit, not of French Protestants or German Protestants, but of Dutchmen, who would be Protestants,

Papists or Pagans for a guilder a head, and who would, no doubt, be as ready to sign the Declaration against

Transubstantiation in England as to trample on the Cross in Japan. They would come over in multitudes.

They would swarm in every public office. They would collect the customs, and gauge the beer barrels. Our

Navigation Laws would be virtually repealed. Every merchant ship that cleared out from the Thames or the

Severn would be manned by Zealanders and Hollanders and Frieslanders. To our own sailors would be left

the hard and perilous service of the royal navy. For Hans, after filling the pockets of his huge trunk hose with

our money by assuming the character of a native, would, as soon as a pressgang appeared, lay claim to the

privileges of an alien. The intruders would soon rule every corporation. They would elbow our own

Aldermen off the Royal Exchange. They would buy the hereditary woods and halls of our country gentlemen.

Already one of the most noisome of the plagues of Egypt was among us. Frogs had made their appearance

even in the royal chambers. Nobody could go to Saint James's without being disgusted by hearing the reptiles

of the Batavian marshes croaking all round him; and if this bill should pass, the whole country would be as

The orator who indulged himself most freely in this sort of rhetoric was Sir John Knight, member for Bristol,

a coarseminded and spiteful Jacobite, who, if he had been an honest man, would have been a nonjuror. Two

years before, when Mayor of Bristol, he had acquired a discreditable notoriety by treating with gross

disrespect a commission sealed with the great seal of the Sovereigns to whom he had repeatedly sworn

allegiance, and by setting on the rabble of his city to hoot and pelt the Judges.503 He now concluded a savage

invective by desiring that the Serjeant at Arms would open the doors, in order that the odious roll of

parchment, which was nothing less than a surrender of the birthright of the English people, might be treated

with proper contumely. "Let us first," he said, "kick the bill out of the House; and then let us kick the

On a division the motion for committing the bill was carried by a hundred and sixtythree votes to a hundred

and twentyeight.504 But the minority was zealous and pertinacious; and the majority speedily began to

waver. Knight's speech, retouched and made more offensive, soon appeared in print without a license. Tens

of thousands of copies were circulated by the post, or dropped in the streets; and such was the strength of

national prejudice that too many persons read this ribaldry with assent and admiration. But, when a copy was

produced in the House, there was such an outbreak of indignation and disgust, as cowed even the impudent

and savage nature of the orator. Finding himself in imminent danger of being expelled and sent to prison, he

apologized, and disclaimed all knowledge of the paper which purported to be a report of what he had said. He

escaped with impunity; but his speech was voted false, scandalous and seditious, and was burned by the

hangman in Palace Yard. The bill which had caused all this ferment was prudently suffered to drop.505

Meanwhile the Commons were busied with financial questions of grave importance. The estimates for the

year 1694 were enormous. The King proposed to add to the regular army, already the greatest regular army

that England had ever supported, four regiments of dragoons, eight of horse, and twentyfive of infantry. The

whole number of men, officers included, would thus be increased to about ninetyfour thousand.506

Cromwell, while holding down three reluctant kingdoms, and making vigorous war on Spain in Europe and

America, had never had two thirds of the military force which William now thought necessary. The great

body of the Tories, headed by three Whig chiefs, Harley, Foley and Howe, opposed any augmentation. The

great body of the Whigs, headed by Montague and Wharton, would have granted all that was asked. After

many long discussions, and probably many close divisions, in the Committee of Supply, the King obtained

the greater part of what he demanded. The House allowed him four new regiments of dragoons, six of horse,

and fifteen of infantry. The whole number of troops voted for the year amounted to eighty three thousand,

the charge to more than two millions and a half, including about two hundred thousand pounds for the

The naval estimates passed much more rapidly; for Whigs and Tories agreed in thinking that the maritime

ascendency of England ought to be maintained at any cost. Five hundred thousand pounds were voted for

paying the arrears due to seamen, and two millions for the expenses of the year 1694.508

The Commons then proceeded to consider the Ways and Means. The land tax was renewed at four shillings in

the pound; and by this simple but powerful machinery about two millions were raised with certainty and

despatch.509 A poll tax was imposed.510 Stamp duties had long been among the fiscal resources of Holland

and France, and had existed here during part of the reign of Charles the Second, but had been suffered to

expire. They were now revived; and they have ever since formed an important part of the revenue of the

State.511 The hackney coaches of the capital were taxed, and were placed under the government of

commissioners, in spite of the resistance of the wives of the coachmen, who assembled round Westminster

Hall and mobbed the members.512 But, notwithstanding all these expedients, there was still a large

deficiency; and it was again necessary to borrow. A new duty on salt and some other imposts of less

importance were set apart to form a fund for a loan. On the security of this fund a million was to be raised by

a lottery, but a lottery which had scarcely any thing but the name in common with the lotteries of a later

period. The sum to be contributed was divided into a hundred thousand shares of ten pounds each. The

interest on each share was to be twenty shillings annually, or, in other words, ten per cent., during sixteen

years. But ten per cent. for sixteen years was not a bait which was likely to attract lenders. An additional lure

was therefore held out to capitalists. On one fortieth of the shares much higher interest was to be paid than on

the other thirtynine fortieths. Which of the shares should be prizes was to be determined by lot. The

arrangements for the drawing of the tickets were made by an adventurer of the name of Neale, who, after

squandering away two fortunes, had been glad to become groom porter at the palace. His duties were to call

the odds when the Court played at hazard, to provide cards and dice, and to decide any dispute which might

arise on the bowling green or at the gaming table. He was eminently skilled in the business of this not very

exalted post, and had made such sums by raffles that he was able to engage in very costly speculations, and

was then covering the ground round the Seven Dials with buildings. He was probably the best adviser that

could have been consulted about the details of a lottery. Yet there were not wanting persons who thought it

By the lottery loan, as it was called, one million was obtained. But another million was wanted to bring the

estimated revenue for the year 1694 up to a level with the estimated expenditure. The ingenious and

enterprising Montague had a plan ready, a plan to which, except under the pressure of extreme pecuniary

difficulties, he might not easily have induced the Commons to assent, but which, to his large and vigorous

mind, appeared to have advantages, both commercial and political, more important than the immediate relief

to the finances. He succeeded, not only in supplying the wants of the State for twelve months, but in creating

a great institution, which, after the lapse of more than a century and a half, continues to flourish, and which

he lived to see the stronghold, through all vicissitudes, of the Whig party, and the bulwark, in dangerous

In the reign of William old men were still living who could remember the days when there was not a single

banking house in the city of London. So late as the time of the Restoration every trader had his own strong

box in his own house, and, when an acceptance was presented to him, told down the crowns and Caroluses on

his own counter. But the increase of wealth had produced its natural effect, the subdivision of labour. Before

the end of the reign of Charles the Second, a new mode of paying and receiving money had come into fashion

among the merchants of the capital. A class of agents arose, whose office was to keep the cash of the

commercial houses. This new branch of business naturally fell into the hands of the goldsmiths, who were

accustomed to traffic largely in the precious metals, and who had vaults in which great masses of bullion

could lie secure from fire and from robbers. It was at the shops of the goldsmiths of Lombard Street that all

the payments in coin were made. Other traders gave and received nothing but paper.

This great change did not take place without much opposition and clamour. Oldfashioned merchants

complained bitterly that a class of men who, thirty years before, had confined themselves to their proper

functions, and had made a fair profit by embossing silver bowls and chargers, by setting jewels for fine

ladies, and by selling pistoles and dollars to gentlemen setting out for the Continent, had become the

treasurers, and were fast becoming the masters, of the whole City. These usurers, it was said, played at hazard

with what had been earned by the industry and hoarded by the thrift of other men. If the dice turned up well,

the knave who kept the cash became an alderman; if they turned up ill, the dupe who furnished the cash

became a bankrupt. On the other side the conveniences of the modern practice were set forth in animated

language. The new system, it was said, saved both labour and money. Two clerks, seated in one counting

house, did what, under the old system, must have been done by twenty clerks in twenty different

establishments. A goldsmith's note might be transferred ten times in a morning; and thus a hundred guineas,

locked in his safe close to the Exchange, did what would formerly have required a thousand guineas,

dispersed through many tills, some on Ludgate Hill, some in Austin Friars, and some in Tower Street.514

Gradually even those who had been loudest in murmuring against the innovation gave way and conformed to

the prevailing usage. The last person who held out, strange to say, was Sir Dudley North. When, in 1680,

after residing many years abroad, he returned to London, nothing astonished or displeased him more than the

practice of making payments by drawing bills on bankers. He found that he could not go on Change without

being followed round the piazza by goldsmiths, who, with low bows, begged to have the honour of serving

him. He lost his temper when his friends asked where he kept his cash. "Where should I keep it," he asked,

"but in my own house?" With difficulty he was induced to put his money into the hands of one of the

Lombard Street men, as they were called. Unhappily, the Lombard Street man broke, and some of his

customers suffered severely. Dudley North lost only fifty pounds; but this loss confirmed him in his dislike of

the whole mystery of banking. It was in vain, however, that he exhorted his fellow citizens to return to the

good old practice, and not to expose themselves to utter ruin in order to spare themselves a little trouble. He

stood alone against the whole community. The advantages of the modern system were felt every hour of

every day in every part of London; and people were no more disposed to relinquish those advantages for fear

of calamities which occurred at long intervals than to refrain from building houses for fear of fires, or from

building ships for fear of hurricanes. It is a curious circumstance that a man who, as a theorist, was

distinguished from all the merchants of his time by the largeness of his views and by his superiority to vulgar

prejudices, should, in practice, have been distinguished from all the merchants of his time by the obstinacy

with which he adhered to an ancient mode of doing business, long after the dullest and most ignorant

plodders had abandoned that mode for one better suited to a great commercial society.515

No sooner had banking become a separate and important trade, than men began to discuss with earnestness

the question whether it would be expedient to erect a national bank. The general opinion seems to have been

decidedly in favour of a national bank; nor can we wonder at this; for few were then aware that trade is in

general carried on to much more advantage by individuals than by great societies; and banking really is one

of those few trades which can be carried on to as much advantage by a great society as by an individual. Two

public banks had long been renowned throughout Europe, the Bank of Saint George at Genoa, and the Bank

of Amsterdam. The immense wealth which was in the keeping of those establishments, the confidence which

they inspired, the prosperity which they had created, their stability, tried by panics, by wars, by revolutions,

and found proof against all, were favourite topics. The bank of Saint George had nearly completed its third

century. It had begun to receive deposits and to make loans before Columbus had crossed the Atlantic, before

Gama had turned the Cape, when a Christian Emperor was reigning at Constantinople, when a Mahomedan

Sultan was reigning at Granada, when Florence was a Republic, when Holland obeyed a hereditary Prince.

All these things had been changed. New continents and new oceans had been discovered. The Turk was at

Constantinople; the Castilian was at Granada; Florence had its hereditary Prince; Holland was a Republic; but

the Bank of Saint George was still receiving deposits and making loans. The Bank of Amsterdam was little

more than eighty years old; but its solvency had stood severe tests. Even in the terrible crisis of 1672, when

the whole Delta of the Rhine was overrun by the French armies, when the white flags were seen from the top

of the Stadthouse, there was one place where, amidst the general consternation and confusion, tranquillity and

order were still to be found; and that place was the Bank. Why should not the Bank of London be as great and

as durable as the Banks of Genoa and of Amsterdam? Before the end of the reign of Charles the Second

several plans were proposed, examined, attacked and defended. Some pamphleteers maintained that a

national bank ought to be under the direction of the King. Others thought that the management ought to be

entrusted to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council of the capital.516 After the Revolution the

subject was discussed with an animation before unknown. For, under the influence of liberty, the breed of

political projectors multiplied exceedingly. A crowd of plans, some of which resemble the fancies of a child

or the dreams of a man in a fever, were pressed on the government. Preeminently conspicuous among the

political mountebanks, whose busy faces were seen every day in the lobby of the House of Commons, were

John Briscoe and Hugh Chamberlayne, two projectors worthy to have been members of that Academy which

Gulliver found at Lagado. These men affirmed that the one cure for every distemper of the State was a Land

Bank. A Land Bank would work for England miracles such as had never been wrought for Israel, miracles

exceeding the heaps of quails and the daily shower of manna. There would be no taxes; and yet the

Exchequer would be full to overflowing. There would be no poor rates; for there would be no poor. The

income of every landowner would be doubled. The profits of every merchant would be increased. In short,

the island would, to use Briscoe's words, be the paradise of the world. The only losers would be the moneyed

men, those worst enemies of the nation, who had done more injury to the gentry and yeomanry than an

These blessed effects the Land Bank was to produce simply by issuing enormous quantities of notes on

landed security. The doctrine of the projectors was that every person who had real property ought to have,

besides that property, paper money to the full value of that property. Thus, if his estate was worth two

thousand pounds, he ought to have his estate and two thousand pounds in paper money.518 Both Briscoe and

Chamberlayne treated with the greatest contempt the notion that there could be an overissue of paper as long

as there was, for every ten pound note, a piece of land in the country worth ten pounds. Nobody, they said,

would accuse a goldsmith of overissuing as long as his vaults contained guineas and crowns to the full value

of all the notes which bore his signature. Indeed no goldsmith had in his vaults guineas and crowns to the full

value of all his paper. And was not a square mile of rich land in Taunton Dean at least as well entitled to be

called wealth as a bag of gold or silver? The projectors could not deny that many people had a prejudice in

favour of the precious metals, and that therefore, if the Land Bank were bound to cash its notes, it would very

soon stop payment. This difficulty they got over by proposing that the notes should be inconvertible, and that

The speculations of Chamberlayne on the subject of the currency may possibly find admirers even in our own

time. But to his other errors he added an error which began and ended with him. He was fool enough to take

it for granted, in all his reasonings, that the value of an estate varied directly as the duration. He maintained

that if the annual income derived from a manor were a thousand pounds, a grant of that manor for twenty

years must be worth twenty thousand pounds, and a grant for a hundred years worth a hundred thousand

pounds. If, therefore, the lord of such a manor would pledge it for a hundred years to the Land Bank, the

Land Bank might, on that security, instantly issue notes for a hundred thousand pounds. On this subject

Chamberlayne was proof to ridicule, to argument, even to arithmetical demonstration. He was reminded that

the fee simple of land would not sell for more than twenty years' purchase. To say, therefore, that a term of a

hundred years was worth five times as much as a term of twenty years, was to say that a term of a hundred

years was worth five times the fee simple; in other words, that a hundred was five times infinity. Those who

reasoned thus were refuted by being told that they were usurers; and it should seem that a large number of

In December 1693 Chamberlayne laid his plan, in all its naked absurdity, before the Commons, and

petitioned to be heard. He confidently undertook to raise eight thousand pounds on every freehold estate of a

hundred and fifty pounds a year which should be brought, as he expressed it, into his Land Bank, and this

without dispossessing the freeholder.520 All the squires in the House must have known that the fee simple of

such an estate would hardly fetch three thousand pounds in the market. That less than the fee simple of such

an estate could, by any device, be made to produce eight thousand pounds, would, it might have been

thought, have seemed incredible to the most illiterate foxhunter that could be found on the benches. Distress,

however, and animosity had made the landed gentlemen credulous. They insisted on referring

Chamberlayne's plan to a committee; and the committee reported that the plan was practicable, and would

tend to the benefit of the nation.521 But by this time the united force of demonstration and derision had

begun to produce an effect even on the most ignorant rustics in the House. The report lay unnoticed on the

table; and the country was saved from a calamity compared with which the defeat of Landen and the loss of

All the projectors of this busy time, however, were not so absurd as Chamberlayne. One among them,

William Paterson, was an ingenious, though not always a judicious, speculator. Of his early life little is

known except that he was a native of Scotland, and that he had been in the West Indies. In what character he

had visited the West Indies was a matter about which his contemporaries differed. His friends said that he had

been a missionary; his enemies that he had been a buccaneer. He seems to have been gifted by nature with

fertile invention, an ardent temperament and great powers of persuasion, and to have acquired somewhere in

This man submitted to the government, in 1691, a plan of a national bank; and his plan was favourably

received both by statesmen and by merchants. But years passed away; and nothing was done, till, in the

spring of 1694, it became absolutely necessary to find some new mode of defraying the charges of the war.

Then at length the scheme devised by the poor and obscure Scottish adventurer was taken up in earnest by

Montague. With Montague was closely allied Michael Godfrey, the brother of that Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey

whose sad and mysterious death had, fifteen years before, produced a terrible outbreak of popular feeling.

Michael was one of the ablest, most upright and most opulent of the merchant princes of London. He was, as

might have been expected from his near connection with the martyr of the Protestant faith, a zealous Whig.

Some of his writings are still extant, and prove him to have had a strong and clear mind.

By these two distinguished men Paterson's scheme was fathered. Montague undertook to manage the House

of Commons, Godfrey to manage the City. An approving vote was obtained from the Committee of Ways

and Means; and a bill, the title of which gave occasion to many sarcasms, was laid on the table. It was indeed

not easy to guess that a bill, which purported only to impose a new duty on tonnage for the benefit of such

persons as should advance money towards carrying on the war, was really a bill creating the greatest

The plan was that twelve hundred thousand pounds should be borrowed by the government on what was then

considered as the moderate interest of eight per cent. In order to induce capitalists to advance the money

promptly on terms so favourable to the public, the subscribers were to be incorporated by the name of the

Governor and Company of the Bank of England. The corporation was to have no exclusive privilege, and was

to be restricted from trading in any thing but bills of exchange, bullion and forfeited pledges.

As soon as the plan became generally known, a paper war broke out as furious as that between the swearers

and the nonswearers, or as that between the Old East India Company and the New East India Company. The

projectors who had failed to gain the ear of the government fell like madmen on their more fortunate brother.

All the goldsmiths and pawnbrokers set up a howl of rage. Some discontented Tories predicted ruin to the

monarchy. It was remarkable, they said, that Banks and Kings had never existed together. Banks were

republican institutions. There were flourishing banks at Venice, at Genoa, at Amsterdam and at Hamburg.

But who had ever heard of a Bank of France or a Bank of Spain?522 Some discontented Whigs, on the other

hand, predicted ruin to our liberties. Here, they said, is an instrument of tyranny more formidable than the

High Commission, than the Star Chamber, than even the fifty thousand soldiers of Oliver. The whole wealth

of the nation will be in the hands of the Tonnage Bank,such was the nickname then in use;and the

Tonnage Bank will be in the hands of the Sovereign. The power of the purse, the one great security for all the

rights of Englishmen, will be transferred from the House of Commons to the Governor and Directors of the

new Company. This last consideration was really of some weight, and was allowed to be so by the authors of

the bill. A clause was therefore most properly inserted which inhibited the Bank from advancing money to

the Crown without authority from Parliament. Every infraction of this salutary rule was to be punished by

forfeiture of three times the sum advanced; and it was provided that the King should not have power to remit

The plan, thus amended, received the sanction of the Commons more easily than might have been expected

from the violence of the adverse clamour. In truth, the Parliament was under duress. Money must be had, and

could in no other way be had so easily. What took place when the House had resolved itself into a committee

cannot be discovered; but, while the Speaker was in the chair, no division took place. The bill, however, was

not safe when it had reached the Upper House. Some Lords suspected that the plan of a national bank had

been devised for the purpose of exalting the moneyed interest at the expense of the landed interest. Others

thought that this plan, whether good or bad, ought not to have been submitted to them in such a form.

Whether it would be safe to call into existence a body which might one day rule the whole commercial world,

and how such a body should be constituted, were questions which ought not to be decided by one branch of

the Legislature. The Peers ought to be at perfect liberty to examine all the details of the proposed scheme, to

suggest amendments, to ask for conferences. It was therefore most unfair that the law establishing the Bank

should be sent up as part of a law granting supplies to the Crown. The Jacobites entertained some hope that

the session would end with a quarrel between the Houses, that the Tonnage Bill would be lost, and that

William would enter on the campaign without money. It was already May, according to the New Style. The

London season was over; and many noble families had left Covent Garden and Soho Square for their woods

and hayfields. But summonses were sent out. There was a violent rush back to town. The benches which had

lately been deserted were crowded. The sittings began at an hour unusually early, and were prolonged to an

hour unusually late. On the day on which the bill was committed the contest lasted without intermission from

nine in the morning till six in the evening. Godolphin was in the chair. Nottingham and Rochester proposed

to strike out all the clauses which related to the Bank. Something was said about the danger of setting up a

gigantic corporation which might soon give law to the King and the three Estates of the Realm. But the Peers

seemed to be most moved by the appeal which was made to them as landlords. The whole scheme, it was

asserted, was intended to enrich usurers at the expense of the nobility and gentry. Persons who had laid by

money would rather put it into the Bank than lend it on mortgage at moderate interest. Caermarthen said little

or nothing in defence of what was, in truth, the work of his rivals and enemies. He owned that there were

grave objections to the mode in which the Commons had provided for the public service of the year. But

would their Lordships amend a money bill? Would they engage in a contest of which the end must be that

they must either yield, or incur the grave responsibility of leaving the Channel without a fleet during the

summer? This argument prevailed; and, on a division, the amendment was rejected by fortythree votes to

thirtyone. A few hours later the bill received the royal assent, and the Parliament was prorogued.523 In the

City the success of Montague's plan was complete. It was then at least as difficult to raise a million at eight

per cent. as it would now be to raise thirty millions at four per cent. It had been supposed that contributions

would drop in very slowly; and a considerable time had therefore been allowed by the Act. This indulgence

was not needed. So popular was the new investment that on the day on which the books were opened three

hundred thousand pounds were subscribed; three hundred thousand more were subscribed during the next

fortyeight hours; and, in ten days, to the delight of all the friends of the government, it was announced that

the list was full. The whole sum which the Corporation was bound to lend to the State was paid into the

Exchequer before the first instalment was due.524 Somers gladly put the Great Seal to a charter framed in

conformity with the terms prescribed by Parliament; and the Bank of England commenced its operations in

the house of the Company of Grocers. There, during many years, directors, secretaries and clerks might be

seen labouring in different parts of one spacious hall. The persons employed by the bank were originally only

fiftyfour. They are now nine hundred. The sum paid yearly in salaries amounted at first to only four

thousand three hundred and fifty pounds. It now exceeds two hundred and ten thousand pounds. We may

therefore fairly infer that the incomes of commercial clerks are, on an average, about three times as large in

It soon appeared that Montague had, by skilfully availing himself of the financial difficulties of the country,

rendered an inestimable service to his party. During several generations the Bank of England was

emphatically a Whig body. It was Whig, not accidentally, but necessarily. It must have instantly stopped

payment if it had ceased to receive the interest on the sum which it had advanced to the government; and of

that interest James would not have paid one farthing. Seventeen years after the passing of the Tonnage Bill,

Addison, in one of his most ingenious and graceful little allegories, described the situation of the great

Company through which the immense wealth of London was constantly circulating. He saw Public Credit on

her throne in Grocers' Hall, the Great Charter over her head, the Act of Settlement full in her view. Her touch

turned every thing to gold. Behind her seat, bags filled with coin were piled up to the ceiling. On her right

and on her left the floor was hidden by pyramids of guineas. On a sudden the door flies open. The Pretender

rushes in, a sponge in one hand, in the other a sword which he shakes at the Act of Settlement. The beautiful

Queen sinks down fainting. The spell by which she has turned all things around her into treasure is broken.

The money bags shrink like pricked bladders. The piles of gold pieces are turned into bundles of rags or

faggots of wooden tallies.526 The truth which this parable was meant to convey was constantly present to the

minds of the rulers of the Bank. So closely was their interest bound up with the interest of the government

that the greater the public danger the more ready were they to come to the rescue. In old times, when the

Treasury was empty, when the taxes came in slowly, and when the pay of the soldiers and sailors was in

arrear, it had been necessary for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to go, hat in hand, up and down Cheapside

and Cornhill, attended by the Lord Mayor and by the Aldermen, and to make up a sum by borrowing a

hundred pounds from this hosier, and two hundred pounds from that ironmonger.527 Those times were over.

The government, instead of laboriously scooping up supplies from numerous petty sources, could now draw

whatever it required from an immense reservoir, which all those petty sources kept constantly replenished. It

is hardly too much to say that, during many years, the weight of the Bank, which was constantly in the scale

of the Whigs, almost counterbalanced the weight of the Church, which was as constantly in the scale of the

A few minutes after the bill which established the Bank of England had received the royal assent, the

Parliament was prorogued by the King with a speech in which he warmly thanked the Commons for their

liberality. Montague was immediately rewarded for his services with the place of Chancellor of the

Shrewsbury had a few weeks before consented to accept the seals. He had held out resolutely from November

to March. While he was trying to find excuses which might satisfy his political friends, Sir James

Montgomery visited him. Montgomery was now the most miserable of human beings. Having borne a great

part in a great Revolution, having been charged with the august office of presenting the Crown of Scotland to

the Sovereigns whom the Estates had chosen, having domineered without a rival, during several months, in

the Parliament at Edinburgh, having seen before him in near prospect the seals of Secretary, the coronet of an

Earl, ample wealth, supreme power, he had on a sudden sunk into obscurity and abject penury. His fine parts

still remained; and he was therefore used by the Jacobites; but, though used, he was despised, distrusted and

starved. He passed his life in wandering from England to France and from France back to England, without

finding a resting place in either country. Sometimes he waited in the antechamber at Saint Germains, where

the priests scowled at him as a Calvinist, and where even the Protestant Jacobites cautioned one another in

whispers against the old Republican. Sometimes he lay hid in the garrets of London, imagining that every

footstep which he heard on the stairs was that of a bailiff with a writ, or that of a King's messenger with a

warrant. He now obtained access to Shrewsbury, and ventured to talk as a Jacobite to a brother Jacobite.

Shrewsbury, who was not at all inclined to put his estate and his neck in the power of a man whom he knew

to be both rash and perfidious, returned very guarded answers. Through some channel which is not known to

us, William obtained full intelligence of what had passed on this occasion. He sent for Shrewsbury, and again

spoke earnestly about the secretaryship. Shrewsbury again excused himself. His health, he said, was bad.

"That," said William, "is not your only reason." "No, Sir," said Shrewsbury, "it is not." And he began to

speak of public grievances, and alluded to the fate of the Triennial Bill, which he had himself introduced. But

William cut him short. "There is another reason behind. When did you see Montgomery last?" Shrewsbury

was thunderstruck. The King proceeded to repeat some things which Montgomery had said. By this time

Shrewsbury had recovered from his dismay, and had recollected that, in the conversation which had been so

accurately reported to the government, he had fortunately uttered no treason, though he had heard much.

"Sir," said he, "since Your Majesty has been so correctly informed, you must be aware that I gave no

encouragement to that man's attempts to seduce me from my allegiance." William did not deny this, but

intimated that such secret dealings with noted Jacobites raised suspicions which Shrewsbury could remove

only by accepting the seals. "That," he said, "will put me quite at ease. I know that you are a man of honour,

and that, if you undertake to serve me, you will serve me faithfully." So pressed, Shrewsbury complied, to the

great joy of his whole party; and was immediately rewarded for his compliance with a dukedom and a

Thus a Whig ministry was gradually forming. There were now two Whig Secretaries of State, a Whig Keeper

of the Great Seal, a Whig First Lord of the Admiralty, a Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Lord Privy

Seal, Pembroke, might also be called a Whig; for his mind was one which readily took the impress of any

stronger mind with which it was brought into contact. Seymour, having been long enough a Commissioner of

the Treasury to lose much of his influence with the Tory country gentlemen who had once listened to him as

to an oracle, was dismissed, and his place was filled by John Smith, a zealous and able Whig, who had taken

an active part in the debates of the late session.530 The only Tories who still held great offices in the

executive government were the Lord President, Caermarthen, who, though he began to feel that power was

slipping from his grasp, still clutched it desperately, and the first Lord of the Treasury, Godolphin, who

meddled little out of his own department, and performed the duties of that department with skill and

William, however, still tried to divide his favours between the two parties. Though the Whigs were fast

drawing to themselves the substance of power, the Tories obtained their share of honorary distinctions.

Mulgrave, who had, during the late session, exerted his great parliamentary talents in favour of the King's

policy, was created Marquess of Normanby, and named a Cabinet Councillor, but was never consulted. He

obtained at the same time a pension of three thousand pounds a year. Caermarthen, whom the late changes

had deeply mortified, was in some degree consoled by a signal mark of royal approbation. He became Duke

of Leeds. It had taken him little more than twenty years to climb from the station of a Yorkshire country

gentleman to the highest rank in the peerage. Two great Whig Earls were at the same time created Dukes,

Bedford and Devonshire. It ought to be mentioned that Bedford had repeatedly refused the dignity which he

now somewhat reluctantly accepted. He declared that he preferred his Earldom to a Dukedom, and gave a

very sensible reason for the preference. An Earl who had a numerous family might send one son to the

Temple and another to a counting house in the city. But the sons of a Duke were all lords; and a lord could

not make his bread either at the bar or on Change. The old man's objections, however, were overcome; and

the two great houses of Russell and Cavendish, which had long been closely connected by friendship and by

marriage, by common opinions, common sufferings and common triumphs, received on the same day the

The Gazette which announced these creations announced also that the King had set out for the Continent. He

had, before his departure, consulted with his ministers about the means of counteracting a plan of naval

operations which had been formed by the French government. Hitherto the maritime war had been carried on

chiefly in the Channel and the Atlantic. But Lewis had now determined to concentrate his maritime forces in

the Mediterranean. He hoped that, with their help, the army of Marshal Noailles would be able to take

Barcelona, to subdue the whole of Catalonia, and to compel Spain to sue for peace. Accordingly, Tourville's

squadron, consisting of fifty three men of war, set sail from Brest on the twentyfifth of April and passed the

William, in order to cross the designs of the enemy, determined to send Russell to the Mediterranean with the

greater part of the combined fleet of England and Holland. A squadron was to remain in the British seas

under the command of the Earl of Berkeley. Talmash was to embark on board of this squadron with a large

body of troops, and was to attack Brest, which would, it was supposed, in the absence of Tourville and his

That preparations were making at Portsmouth for an expedition, in which the land forces were to bear a part,

could not be kept a secret. There was much speculation at the Rose and at Garraway's touching the

destination of the armament. Some talked of Rhe, some of Oleron, some of Rochelle, some of Rochefort.

Many, till the fleet actually began to move westward, believed that it was bound for Dunkirk. Many guessed

that Brest would be the point of attack; but they only guessed this; for the secret was much better kept than

most of the secrets of that age.532 Russell, till he was ready to weigh anchor, persisted in assuring his

Jacobite friends that he knew nothing. His discretion was proof even against all the arts of Marlborough.

Marlborough, however, had other sources of intelligence. To those sources he applied himself; and he at

length succeeded in discovering the whole plan of the government. He instantly wrote to James. He had, he

said, but that moment ascertained that twelve regiments of infantry and two regiments of marines were about

to embark, under the command of Talmash, for the purpose of destroying the harbour of Brest and the

shipping which lay there. "This," he added, "would be a great advantage to England. But no consideration

can, or ever shall, hinder me from letting you know what I think may be for your service." He then proceeded

to caution James against Russell. "I endeavoured to learn this some time ago from him; but he always denied

it to me, though I am very sure that he knew the design for more than six weeks. This gives me a bad sign of

The intelligence sent by Marlborough to James was communicated by James to the French government. That

government took its measures with characteristic promptitude. Promptitude was indeed necessary; for, when

Marlborough's letter was written, the preparations at Portsmouth were all but complete; and, if the wind had

been favourable to the English, the objects of the expedition might have been attained without a struggle. But

adverse gales detained our fleet in the Channel during another month. Meanwhile a large body of troops was

collected at Brest. Vauban was charged with the duty of putting the defences in order; and, under his skilful

direction, batteries were planted which commanded every spot where it seemed likely that an invader would

attempt to land. Eight large rafts, each carrying many mortars, were moored in the harbour, and, some days

On the sixth of June the whole allied fleet was on the Atlantic about fifteen leagues west of Cape Finisterre.

There Russell and Berkeley parted company. Russell proceeded towards the Mediterranean. Berkeley's

squadron, with the troops on board, steered for the coast of Brittany, and anchored just without Camaret Bay,

close to the mouth of the harbour of Brest. Talmash proposed to land in Camaret Bay. It was therefore

desirable to ascertain with accuracy the state of the coast. The eldest son of the Duke of Leeds, now called

Marquess of Caermarthen, undertook to enter the basin and to obtain the necessary information. The passion

of this brave and eccentric young man for maritime adventure was unconquerable. He had solicited and

obtained the rank of Rear Admiral, and had accompanied the expedition in his own yacht, the Peregrine,

renowned as the masterpiece of shipbuilding, and more than once already mentioned in this history. Cutts,

who had distinguished himself by his intrepidity in the Irish war, and had been rewarded with an Irish

peerage, offered to accompany Caermarthen, Lord Mohun, who, desirous, it may be hoped, to efface by

honourable exploits the stain which a shameful and disastrous brawl had left on his name, was serving with

the troops as a volunteer, insisted on being of the party. The Peregrine went into the bay with its gallant crew,

and came out safe, but not without having run great risks. Caermarthen reported that the defences, of which

however he had seen only a small part, were formidable. But Berkeley and Talmash suspected that he

overrated the danger. They were not aware that their design had long been known at Versailles, that an army

had been collected to oppose them, and that the greatest engineer in the world had been employed to fortify

the coast against them. They therefore did not doubt that their troops might easily be put on shore under the

protection of a fire from the ships. On the following morning Caermarthen was ordered to enter the bay with

eight vessels and to batter the French works. Talmash was to follow with about a hundred boats full of

soldiers. It soon appeared that the enterprise was even more perilous than it had on the preceding day

appeared to be. Batteries which had then escaped notice opened on the ships a fire so murderous that several

decks were soon cleared. Great bodies of foot and horse were discernible; and, by their uniforms, they

appeared to be regular troops. The young Rear Admiral sent an officer in all haste to warn Talmash. But

Talmash was so completely possessed by the notion that the French were not prepared to repel an attack that

he disregarded all cautions and would not even trust his own eyes. He felt sure that the force which he saw

assembled on the shore was a mere rabble of peasants, who had been brought together in haste from the

surrounding country. Confident that these mock soldiers would run like sheep before real soldiers, he ordered

his men to pull for the beach. He was soon undeceived. A terrible fire mowed down his troops faster than

they could get on shore. He had himself scarcely sprung on dry ground when he received a wound in the

thigh from a cannon ball, and was carried back to his skiff. His men reembarked in confusion. Ships and

boats made haste to get out of the bay, but did not succeed till four hundred seamen and seven hundred

soldiers had fallen. During many days the waves continued to throw up pierced and shattered corpses on the

beach of Brittany. The battery from which Talmash received his wound is called, to this day, the

The unhappy general was laid on his couch; and a council of war was held in his cabin. He was for going

straight into the harbour of Brest and bombarding the town. But this suggestion, which indicated but too

clearly that his judgment had been affected by the irritation of a wounded body and a wounded mind, was

wisely rejected by the naval officers. The armament returned to Portsmouth. There Talmash died, exclaiming

with his last breath that he had been lured into a snare by treachery. The public grief and indignation were

loudly expressed. The nation remembered the services of the unfortunate general, forgave his rashness, pitied

his sufferings, and execrated the unknown traitors whose machinations had been fatal to him. There were

many conjectures and many rumours. Some sturdy Englishmen, misled by national prejudice, swore that

none of our plans would ever be kept a secret from the enemy while French refugees were in high military

command. Some zealous Whigs, misled by party sprit, muttered that the Court of Saint Germains would

never want good intelligence while a single Tory remained in the Cabinet Council. The real criminal was not

named; nor, till the archives of the House of Stuart were explored, was it known to the world that Talmash

Yet never had Marlborough been less a Jacobite than at the moment when he rendered this wicked and

shameful service to the Jacobite cause. It may be confidently affirmed that to serve the banished family was

not his object, and that to ingratiate himself with the banished family was only his secondary object. His

primary object was to force himself into the service of the existing government, and to regain possession of

those important and lucrative places from which he had been dismissed more than two years before. He knew

that the country and the Parliament would not patiently bear to see the English army commanded by foreign

generals. Two Englishmen only had shown themselves fit for high military posts, himself and Talmash. If

Talmash were defeated and disgraced, William would scarcely have a choice. In fact, as soon as it was known

that the expedition had failed, and that Talmash was no more, the general cry was that the King ought to

receive into his favour the accomplished Captain who had done such good service at Walcourt, at Cork and at

Kinsale. Nor can we blame the multitude for raising this cry. For every body knew that Marlborough was an

eminently brave, skilful and successful officer; but very few persons knew that he had, while commanding

William's troops, while sitting in William's council, while waiting in William's bedchamber, formed a most

artful and dangerous plot for the subversion of William's throne; and still fewer suspected the real author of

the recent calamity, of the slaughter in the Bay of Camaret, of the melancholy fate of Talmash. The effect

therefore of the foulest of all treasons was to raise the traitor in public estimation. Nor was he wanting to

himself at this conjuncture. While the Royal Exchange was in consternation at this disaster of which he was

the cause, while many families were clothing themselves in mourning for the brave men of whom he was the

murderer, he repaired to Whitehall; and there, doubtless with all that grace, that nobleness, that suavity, under

which lay, hidden from all common observers, a seared conscience and a remorseless heart, he professed

himself the most devoted, the most loyal, of all the subjects of William and Mary, and expressed a hope that

he might, in this emergency, be permitted to offer his sword to their Majesties. Shrewsbury was very desirous

that the offer should be accepted; but a short and dry answer from William, who was then in the Netherlands,

put an end for the present to all negotiation. About Talmash the King expressed himself with generous

tenderness. "The poor fellow's fate," he wrote, "has affected me much. I do not indeed think that he managed

well; but it was his ardent desire to distinguish himself that impelled him to attempt impossibilities."534

The armament which had returned to Portsmouth soon sailed again for the coast of France, but achieved only

exploits worse than inglorious. An attempt was made to blow up the pier at Dunkirk. Some towns inhabited

by quiet tradesmen and fishermen were bombarded. In Dieppe scarcely a house was left standing; a third part

of Havre was laid in ashes; and shells were thrown into Calais which destroyed thirty private dwellings. The

French and the Jacobites loudly exclaimed against the cowardice and barbarity of making war on an

unwarlike population. The English government vindicated itself by reminding the world of the sufferings of

the thrice wasted Palatinate; and, as against Lewis and the flatterers of Lewis, the vindication was complete.

But whether it were consistent with humanity and with sound policy to visit the crimes which an absolute

Prince and a ferocious soldiery had committed in the Palatinate on shopkeepers and labourers, on women and

Meanwhile Russell's fleet was rendering good service to the common cause. Adverse winds had impeded his

progress through the Straits so long that he did not reach Carthagena till the middle of July. By that time the

progress of the French arms had spread terror even to the Escurial. Noailles had, on the banks of the Tar,

routed an army commanded by the Viceroy of Catalonia; and, on the day on which this victory was won, the

Brest squadron had joined the Toulon squadron in the Bay of Rosas. Palamos, attacked at once by land and

sea, was taken by storm. Gerona capitulated after a faint show of resistance. Ostalric surrendered at the first

summons. Barcelona would in all probability have fallen, had not the French Admirals learned that the

conquerors of La Hogue was approaching. They instantly quitted the coast of Catalonia, and never thought

The Spanish government expressed warm gratitude for this seasonable assistance, and presented to the

English Admiral a jewel which was popularly said to be worth near twenty thousand pounds sterling. There

was no difficulty in finding such a jewel among the hoards of gorgeous trinkets which had been left by

Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second to a degenerate race. But, in all that constitutes the true wealth of

states, Spain was poor indeed. Her treasury was empty; her arsenals were unfurnished; her ships were so

rotten that they seemed likely to fly asunder at the discharge of their own guns. Her ragged and starving

soldiers often mingled with the crowd of beggars at the doors of convents, and battled there for a mess of

pottage and a crust of bread. Russell underwent those trials which no English commander whose hard fate it

has been to cooperate with Spaniards has escaped. The Viceroy of Catalonia promised much, did nothing, and

expected every thing. He declared that three hundred and fifty thousand rations were ready to be served out to

the fleet at Carthagena. It turned out that there were not in all the stores of that port provisions sufficient to

victual a single frigate for a single week. Yet His Excellency thought himself entitled to complain because

England had not sent an army as well as a fleet, and because the heretic Admiral did not choose to expose the

fleet to utter destruction by attacking the French under the guns of Toulon. Russell implored the Spanish

authorities to look well to their dockyards, and to try to have, by the next spring, a small squadron which

might at least be able to float; but he could not prevail on them to careen a single ship. He could with

difficulty obtain, on hard conditions, permission to send a few of his sick men to marine hospitals on shore.

Yet, in spite of all the trouble given him by the imbecility and ingratitude of a government which has

generally caused more annoyance to its allies than to its enemies, he acquitted himself well. It is but just to

him to say that, from the time at which he became First Lord of the Admiralty, there was a decided

improvement in the naval administration. Though he lay with his fleet many months near an inhospitable

shore, and at a great distance from England, there were no complaints about the quality or the quantity of

provisions. The crews had better food and drink than they had ever had before; comforts which Spain did not

afford were supplied from home; and yet the charge was not greater than when, in Torrington's time, the

As almost the whole maritime force of France was in the Mediterranean, and as it seemed likely that an

attempt would be made on Barcelona in the following year, Russell received orders to winter at Cadiz. In

October he sailed to that port; and there he employed himself in refitting his ships with an activity

unintelligible to the Spanish functionaries, who calmly suffered the miserable remains of what had once been

Along the eastern frontier of France the war during this year seemed to languish. In Piedmont and on the

Rhine the most important events of the campaign were petty skirmishes and predatory incursions. Lewis

remained at Versailles, and sent his son, the Dauphin, to represent him in the Netherlands; but the Dauphin

was placed under the tutelage of Luxemburg, and proved a most submissive pupil. During several months the

hostile armies observed each other. The allies made one bold push with the intention of carrying the war into

the French territory; but Luxemburg, by a forced march, which excited the admiration of persons versed in

the military art, frustrated the design. William on the other hand succeeded in taking Huy, then a fortress of

the third rank. No battle was fought; no important town was besieged; but the confederates were satisfied

with their campaign. Of the four previous years every one had been marked by some great disaster. In 1690

Waldeck had been defeated at Fleurus. In 1691 Mons had fallen. In 1692 Namur had been taken in sight of

the allied army; and this calamity had been speedily followed by the defeat of Steinkirk. In 1693 the battle of

Landen had been lost; and Charleroy had submitted to the conqueror. At length in 1694 the tide had begun to

turn. The French arms had made no progress. What had been gained by the allies was indeed not much; but

the smallest gain was welcome to those whom a long run of evil fortune had discouraged.

In England, the general opinion was that, notwithstanding the disaster in Camaret Bay, the war was on the

whole proceeding satisfactorily both by land and by sea. But some parts of the internal administration

Since Trenchard had been appointed Secretary of State, the Jacobite agitators had found their situation much

more unpleasant than before. Sidney had been too indulgent and too fond of pleasure to give them much

trouble. Nottingham was a diligent and honest minister; but he was as high a Tory as a faithful subject of

William and Mary could be; he loved and esteemed many of the nonjurors; and, though he might force

himself to be severe when nothing but severity could save the State, he was not extreme to mark the

transgressions of his old friends; nor did he encourage talebearers to come to Whitehall with reports of

conspiracies. But Trenchard was both an active public servant and an earnest Whig. Even if he had himself

been inclined to lenity, he would have been urged to severity by those who surrounded him. He had

constantly at his side Hugh Speke and Aaron Smith, men to whom a hunt after a Jacobite was the most

exciting of all sports. The cry of the malecontents was that Nottingham had kept his bloodhounds in the leash,

but that Trenchard had let them slip. Every honest gentleman who loved the Church and hated the Dutch went

in danger of his life. There was a constant bustle at the Secretary's Office, a constant stream of informers

coming in, and of messengers with warrants going out. It was said too, that the warrants were often

irregularly drawn, that they did not specify the person, that they did not specify the crime, and yet that, under

the authority of such instruments as these, houses were entered, desks and cabinets searched, valuable papers

carried away, and men of good birth and breeding flung into gaol among felons.536 The minister and his

agents answered that Westminster Hall was open; that, if any man had been illegally imprisoned, he had only

to bring his action; that juries were quite sufficiently disposed to listen to any person who pretended to have

been oppressed by cruel and griping men in power, and that, as none of the prisoners whose wrongs were so

pathetically described had ventured to resort to this obvious and easy mode of obtaining redress, it might

fairly be inferred that nothing had been done which could not be justified. The clamour of the malecontents

however made a considerable impression on the public mind; and at length, a transaction in which Trenchard

was more unlucky than culpable, brought on him and on the government with which he was connected much

Among the informers who haunted his office was an Irish vagabond who had borne more than one name and

had professed more than one religion. He now called himself Taaffe. He had been a priest of the Roman

Catholic Church, and secretary to Adda the Papal Nuncio, but had since the Revolution turned Protestant, had

taken a wife, and had distinguished himself by his activity in discovering the concealed property of those

Jesuits and Benedictines who, during the late reign, had been quartered in London. The ministers despised

him; but they trusted him. They thought that he had, by his apostasy, and by the part which he had borne in

the spoliation of the religious orders, cut himself off from all retreat, and that, having nothing but a halter to

This man fell in with a Jacobite agent named Lunt, who had, since the Revolution, been repeatedly employed

among the discontented gentry of Cheshire and Lancashire, and who had been privy to those plans of

insurrection which had been disconcerted by the battle of the Boyne in 1690, and by the battle of La Hogue in

1692. Lunt had once been arrested on suspicion of treason, but had been discharged for want of legal proof of

his guilt. He was a mere hireling, and was, without much difficulty, induced by Taaffe to turn approver. The

pair went to Trenchard. Lunt told his story, mentioned the names of some Cheshire and Lancashire squires to

whom he had, as he affirmed, carried commissions from Saint Germains, and of others, who had, to his

knowledge, formed secret hoards of arms and ammunition. His simple oath would not have been sufficient to

support a charge of high treason; but he produced another witness whose evidence seemed to make the case

complete. The narrative was plausible and coherent; and indeed, though it may have been embellished by

fictions, there can be little doubt that it was in substance true.538 Messengers and search warrants were sent

down to Lancashire. Aaron Smith himself went thither; and Taaffe went with him. The alarm had been given

by some of the numerous traitors who ate the bread of William. Some of the accused persons had fled; and

others had buried their sabres and muskets and burned their papers. Nevertheless, discoveries were made

which confirmed Lunt's depositions. Behind the wainscot of the old mansion of one Roman Catholic family

was discovered a commission signed by James. Another house, of which the master had absconded, was

strictly searched, in spite of the solemn asseverations of his wife and his servants that no arms were concealed

there. While the lady, with her hand on her heart, was protesting on her honour that her husband was falsely

accused, the messengers observed that the back of the chimney did not seem to be firmly fixed. It was

removed, and a heap of blades such as were used by horse soldiers tumbled out. In one of the garrets were

found, carefully bricked up, thirty saddles for troopers, as many breastplates, and sixty cavalry swords.

Trenchard and Aaron Smith thought the case complete; and it was determined that those culprits who had

Taaffe now confidently expected to be recompensed for his services; but he found a cold reception at the

Treasury. He had gone down to Lancashire chiefly in order that he might, under the protection of a search

warrant, pilfer trinkets and broad pieces from secret drawers. His sleight of hand however had not altogether

escaped the observation of his companions. They discovered that he had made free with the communion plate

of the Popish families, whose private hoards he had assisted in ransacking. When therefore he applied for

reward, he was dismissed, not merely with a refusal, but with a stern reprimand. He went away mad with

greediness and spite. There was yet one way in which he might obtain both money and revenge; and that way

he took. He made overtures to the friends of the prisoners. He and he alone could undo what he had done,

could save the accused from the gallows, could cover the accusers with infamy, could drive from office the

Secretary and the Solicitor who were the dread of all the friends of King James. Loathsome as Taaffe was to

the Jacobites, his offer was not to be slighted. He received a sum in hand; he was assured that a comfortable

annuity for life should be settled on him when the business was done; and he was sent down into the country,

Meanwhile unlicensed pamphlets, in which the Lancashire plot was classed with Oates's plot, with

Dangerfield's plot, with Fuller's plot, with Young's plot, with Whitney's plot, were circulated all over the

kingdom, and especially in the county which was to furnish the jury. Of these pamphlets the longest, the

ablest, and the bitterest, entitled a Letter to Secretary Trenchard, was commonly ascribed to Ferguson. It is

not improbable that Ferguson may have furnished some of the materials, and may have conveyed the

manuscript to the press. But many passages are written with an art and a vigour which assuredly did not

belong to him. Those who judge by internal evidence may perhaps think that, in some parts of this

remarkable tract, they can discern the last gleam of the malignant genius of Montgomery. A few weeks after

the appearance of the Letter he sank, unhonoured and unlamented, into the grave.541

There were then no printed newspapers except the London Gazette. But since the Revolution the newsletter

had become a more important political engine than it had previously been. The newsletters of one writer

named Dyer were widely circulated in manuscript. He affected to be a Tory and a High Churchman, and was

consequently regarded by the foxhunting lords of manors, all over the kingdom, as an oracle. He had already

been twice in prison; but his gains had more than compensated for his sufferings, and he still persisted in

seasoning his intelligence to suit the taste of the country gentlemen. He now turned the Lancashire plot into

ridicule, declared that the guns which had been found were old fowling pieces, that the saddles were meant

only for hunting, and that the swords were rusty reliques of Edge Hill and Marston Moor.542 The effect

produced by all this invective and sarcasm on the public mind seems to have been great. Even at the Dutch

Embassy, where assuredly there was no leaning towards Jacobitism, there was a strong impression that it

would be unwise to bring the prisoners to trial. In Lancashire and Cheshire the prevailing sentiments were

pity for the accused and hatred of the prosecutors. The government however persevered. In October four

Judges went down to Manchester. At present the population of that town is made up of persons born in every

part of the British Isles, and consequently has no especial sympathy with the landowners, the farmers and the

agricultural labourers of the neighbouring districts. But in the seventeenth century the Manchester man was a

Lancashire man. His politics were those of his county. For the old Cavalier families of his county he felt a

great respect; and he was furious when he thought that some of the best blood of his county was about to be

shed by a knot of Roundhead pettifoggers from London. Multitudes of people from the neighbouring villages

filled the streets of the town, and saw with grief and indignation the array of drawn swords and loaded

carbines which surrounded the culprits. Aaron Smith's arrangements do not seem to have been skilful. The

chief counsel for the Crown was Sir William Williams, who, though now well stricken in years and possessed

of a great estate, still continued to practise. One fault had thrown a dark shade over the latter part of his life.

The recollection of that day on which he had stood up in Westminster Hall, amidst laughter and hooting, to

defend the dispensing power and to attack the right of petition, had, ever since the Revolution, kept him back

from honour. He was an angry and disappointed man, and was by no means disposed to incur unpopularity in

the cause of a government to which he owed nothing, and from which he hoped nothing.

Of the trial no detailed report has come down to us; but we have both a Whig narrative and a Jacobite

narrative.543 It seems that the prisoners who were first arraigned did not sever in their challenges, and were

consequently tried together. Williams examined or rather crossexamined his own witnesses with a severity

which confused them. The crowd which filled the court laughed and clamoured. Lunt in particular became

completely bewildered, mistook one person for another, and did not recover himself till the judges took him

out of the hands of the counsel for the Crown. For some of the prisoners an alibi was set up. Evidence was

also produced to show, what was undoubtedly quite true, that Lunt was a man of abandoned character. The

result however seemed doubtful till, to the dismay of the prosecutors, Taaffe entered the box. He swore with

unblushing forehead that the whole story of the plot was a circumstantial lie devised by himself and Lunt.

Williams threw down his brief; and, in truth, a more honest advocate might well have done the same. The

prisoners who were at the bar were instantly acquitted; those who had not yet been tried were set at liberty;

the witnesses for the prosecution were pelted out of Manchester; the Clerk of the Crown narrowly escaped

A few days after the close of the trials at Manchester William returned to England. On the twelfth of

November, only fortyeight hours after his arrival at Kensington, the Houses met. He congratulated them on

the improved aspect of affairs. Both by land and by sea the events of the year which was about to close had

been, on the whole, favourable to the allies; the French armies had made no progress; the French fleets had

not ventured to show themselves; nevertheless, a safe and honourable peace could be obtained only by a

vigorous prosecution of the war; and the war could not be vigorously prosecuted without large supplies.

William then reminded the Commons that the Act by which they had settled the tonnage and poundage on the

Crown for four years was about to expire, and expressed his hope that it would be renewed.

After the King had spoken, the Commons, for some reason which no writer has explained, adjourned for a

week. Before they met again, an event took place which caused great sorrow at the palace, and through all the

ranks of the Low Church party. Tillotson was taken suddenly ill while attending public worship in the chapel

of Whitehall. Prompt remedies might perhaps have saved him; but he would not interrupt the prayers; and,

before the service was over, his malady was beyond the reach of medicine. He was almost speechless; but his

friends long remembered with pleasure a few broken ejaculations which showed that he enjoyed peace of

mind to the last. He was buried in the church of Saint Lawrence Jewry, near Guildhall. It was there that he

had won his immense oratorical reputation. He had preached there during the thirty years which preceded his

elevation to the throne of Canterbury. His eloquence had attracted to the heart of the City crowds of the

learned and polite, from the Inns of Court and from the lordly mansions of Saint James's and Soho. A

considerable part of his congregation had generally consisted of young clergymen, who came to learn the art

of preaching at the feet of him who was universally considered as the first of preachers. To this church his

remains were now carried through a mourning population. The hearse was followed by an endless train of

splendid equipages from Lambeth through Southwark and over London Bridge. Burnet preached the funeral

sermon. His kind and honest heart was overcome by so many tender recollections that, in the midst of his

discourse, he paused and burst into tears, while a loud moan of sorrow rose from the whole auditory. The

Queen could not speak of her favourite instructor without weeping. Even William was visibly moved. "I have

lost," he said, "the best friend that I ever had, and the best man that I ever knew." The only Englishman who

is mentioned with tenderness in any part of the great mass of letters which the King wrote to Heinsius is

Tillotson. The Archbishop had left a widow. To her William granted a pension of four hundred a year, which

he afterwards increased to six hundred. His anxiety that she should receive her income regularly and without

stoppages was honourable to him. Every quarterday he ordered the money, without any deduction, to be

brought to himself, and immediately sent it to her. Tillotson had bequeathed to her no property, except a great

number of manuscript sermons. Such was his fame among his contemporaries that those sermons were

purchased by the booksellers for the almost incredible sum of two thousand five hundred guineas, equivalent,

in the wretched state in which the silver coin then was, to at least three thousand six hundred pounds. Such a

price had never before been given in England for any copyright. About the same time Dryden, whose

reputation was then in the zenith, received thirteen hundred pounds for his translation of all the works of

It was not easy to fill satisfactorily the high place which Tillotson had left vacant. Mary gave her voice for

Stillingfleet, and pressed his claims as earnestly as she ever ventured to press any thing. In abilities and

attainments he had few superiors among the clergy. But, though he would probably have been considered as a

Low Churchman by Jane and South, he was too high a Churchman for William; and Tenison was appointed.

The new primate was not eminently distinguished by eloquence or learning: but he was honest, prudent,

laborious and benevolent; he had been a good rector of a large parish and a good bishop of a large diocese;

detraction had not yet been busy with his name; and it might well be thought that a man of plain sense,

moderation and integrity, was more likely than a man of brilliant genius and lofty spirit to succeed in the

Meanwhile the Commons had entered upon business. They cheerfully voted about two million four hundred

thousand pounds for the army, and as much for the navy. The land tax for the year was again fixed at four

shillings in the pound; the Tonnage Act was renewed for a term of five years; and a fund was established on

Some time was spent by both Houses in discussing the Manchester trials. If the malecontents had been wise,

they would have been satisfied with the advantage which they had already gained. Their friends had been set

free. The prosecutors had with difficulty escaped from the hands of an enraged multitude. The character of

the government had been seriously damaged. The ministers were accused, in prose and in verse, sometimes in

earnest and sometimes in jest, of having hired a gang of ruffians to swear away the lives of honest gentlemen.

Even moderate politicians, who gave no credit to these foul imputations, owned that Trenchard ought to have

remembered the villanies of Fuller and Young, and to have been on his guard against such wretches as Taaffe

and Lunt. The unfortunate Secretary's health and spirits had given way. It was said that he was dying; and it

was certain that he would not long continue to hold the seals. The Tories had won a great victory; but, in their

Early in the session Howe complained, with his usual vehemence and asperity, of the indignities to which

innocent and honourable men, highly descended and highly esteemed, had been subjected by Aaron Smith

and the wretches who were in his pay. The leading Whigs, with great judgment, demanded an inquiry. Then

the Tories began to flinch. They well knew that an inquiry could not strengthen their case, and might weaken

it. The issue, they said, had been tried; a jury had pronounced; the verdict was definitive; and it would be

monstrous to give the false witnesses who had been stoned out of Manchester an opportunity of repeating

their lesson. To this argument the answer was obvious. The verdict was definitive as respected the

defendants, but not as respected the prosecutors. The prosecutors were now in their turn defendants, and were

entitled to all the privileges of defendants. It did not follow, because the Lancashire gentlemen had been

found, and very properly found, not guilty of treason, that the Secretary of State or the Solicitor of the

Treasury had been guilty of unfairness or even of rashness. The House, by one hundred and nineteen votes to

one hundred and two resolved that Aaron Smith and the witnesses on both sides should be ordered to attend.

Several days were passed in examination and crossexamination; and sometimes the sittings extended far into

the night. It soon became clear that the prosecution had not been lightly instituted, and that some of the

persons who had been acquitted had been concerned in treasonable schemes. The Tories would now have

been content with a drawn battle; but the Whigs were not disposed to forego their advantage. It was moved

that there had been a sufficient ground for the proceedings before the Special Commission; and this motion

was carried without a division. The opposition proposed to add some words implying that the witnesses for

the Crown had forsworn themselves; but these words were rejected by one hundred and thirtysix votes to

one hundred and nine, and it was resolved by one hundred and thirty three votes to ninetyseven that there

had been a dangerous conspiracy. The Lords had meanwhile been deliberating on the same subject, and had

come to the same conclusion. They sent Taaffe to prison for prevarication; and they passed resolutions

acquitting both the government and the judges of all blame. The public however continued to think that the

gentlemen who had been tried at Manchester had been unjustifiably persecuted, till a Jacobite plot of singular

atrocity, brought home to the plotters by decisive evidence, produced a violent revulsion of feeling.545

Meanwhile three bills, which had been repeatedly discussed in preceding years, and two of which had been

carried in vain to the foot of the throne, had been again brought in; the Place Bill, the Bill for the Regulation

The Place Bill did not reach the Lords. It was thrice read in the Lower House, but was not passed. At the very

last moment it was rejected by a hundred and seventyfive votes to a hundred and fortytwo. Howe and

The Bill for the Regulation of Trials in cases of Treason went up again to the Peers. Their Lordships again

added to it the clause which had formerly been fatal to it. The Commons again refused to grant any new

privilege to the hereditary aristocracy. Conferences were again held; reasons were again exchanged; both

The Triennial Bill was more fortunate. It was brought in on the first day of the session, and went easily and

rapidly through both Houses. The only question about which there was any serious contention was, how long

the existing Parliament should be suffered to continue. After several sharp debates November in the year

1696 was fixed as the extreme term. The Tonnage Bill and the Triennial Bill proceeded almost side by side.

Both were, on the twentysecond of December, ready for the royal assent. William came in state on that day

to Westminster. The attendance of members of both Houses was large. When the Clerk of the Crown read the

words, "A Bill for the frequent Calling and Meeting of Parliaments," the anxiety was great. When the Clerk

of the Parliament made answer, "Le roy et la royne le veulent," a loud and long hum of delight and exultation

rose from the benches and the bar.548 William had resolved many months before not to refuse his assent a

second time to so popular a law.549 There was some however who thought that he would not have made so

great a concession if he had on that day been quite himself. It was plain indeed that he was strangely agitated

and unnerved. It had been announced that he would dine in public at Whitehall. But he disappointed the

curiosity of the multitude which on such occasions flocked to the Court, and hurried back to Kensington.550

He had but too good reason to be uneasy. His wife had, during two or three days, been poorly; and on the

preceding evening grave symptoms had appeared. Sir Thomas Millington, who was physician in ordinary to

the King, thought that she had the measles. But Radcliffe, who, with coarse manners and little book learning,

had raised himself to the first practice in London chiefly by his rare skill in diagnostics, uttered the more

alarming words, small pox. That disease, over which science has since achieved a succession of glorious and

beneficient victories, was then the most terrible of all the ministers of death. The havoc of the plague had

been far more rapid; but the plague had visited our shores only once or twice within living memory; and the

small pox was always present, filling the churchyards with corpses, tormenting with constant fears all whom

it had not yet stricken, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe

into a changeling at which the mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden

objects of horror to the lover. Towards the end of the year 1694, this pestilence was more than usually severe.

At length the infection spread to the palace, and reached the young and blooming Queen. She received the

intimation of her danger with true greatness of soul. She gave orders that every lady of her bedchamber,

every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who had not had the small pox, should instantly leave

Kensington House. She locked herself up during a short time in her closet, burned some papers, arranged

During two or three days there were many alternations of hope and fear. The physicians contradicted each

other and themselves in a way which sufficiently indicates the state of medical science in that age. The

disease was measles; it was scarlet fever; it was spotted fever; it was erysipelas. At one moment some

symptoms, which in truth showed that the case was almost hopeless, were hailed as indications of returning

health. At length all doubt was over. Radcliffe's opinion proved to be right. It was plain that the Queen was

All this time William remained night and day near her bedside. The little couch on which he slept when he

was in camp was spread for him in the antechamber; but he scarcely lay down on it. The sight of his misery,

the Dutch Envoy wrote, was enough to melt the hardest heart. Nothing seemed to be left of the man whose

serene fortitude had been the wonder of old soldiers on the disastrous day of Landen, and of old sailors on

that fearful night among the sheets of ice and banks of sand on the coast of Goree. The very domestics saw

the tears running unchecked down that face, of which the stern composure had seldom been disturbed by any

triumph or by any defeat. Several of the prelates were in attendance. The King drew Burnet aside, and gave

way to an agony of grief. "There is no hope," he cried. "I was the happiest man on earth; and I am the most

miserable. She had no fault; none; you knew her well; but you could not know, nobody but myself could

know, her goodness." Tenison undertook to tell her that she was dying. He was afraid that such a

communication, abruptly made, might agitate her violently, and began with much management. But she soon

caught his meaning, and, with that gentle womanly courage which so often puts our bravery to shame,

submitted herself to the will of God. She called for a small cabinet in which her most important papers were

locked up, gave orders that, as soon as she was no more, it should be delivered to the King, and then

dismissed worldly cares from her mind. She received the Eucharist, and repeated her part of the office with

unimpaired memory and intelligence, though in a feeble voice. She observed that Tenison had been long

standing at her bedside, and, with that sweet courtesy which was habitual to her, faltered out her commands

that he would sit down, and repeated them till he obeyed. After she had received the sacrament she sank

rapidly, and uttered only a few broken words. Twice she tried to take a last farewell of him whom she had

loved so truly and entirely; but she was unable to speak. He had a succession of fits so alarming that his Privy

Councillors, who were assembled in a neighbouring room, were apprehensive for his reason and his life. The

Duke of Leeds, at the request of his colleagues, ventured to assume the friendly guardianship of which minds

deranged by sorrow stand in need. A few minutes before the Queen expired, William was removed, almost

Mary died in peace with Anne. Before the physicians had pronounced the case hopeless, the Princess, who

was then in very delicate health, had sent a kind message; and Mary had returned a kind answer. The Princess

had then proposed to come herself; but William had, in very gracious terms, declined the offer. The

excitement of an interview, he said, would be too much for both sisters. If a favourable turn took place, Her

Royal Highness should be most welcome to Kensington. A few hours later all was over.551

The public sorrow was great and general. For Mary's blameless life, her large charities and her winning

manners had conquered the hearts of her people. When the Commons next met they sate for a time in

profound silence. At length it was moved and resolved that an Address of Condolence should be presented to

the King; and then the House broke up without proceeding to other business. The Dutch envoy informed the

States General that many of the members had handkerchiefs at their eyes. The number of sad faces in the

street struck every observer. The mourning was more general than even the mourning for Charles the Second

had been. On the Sunday which followed the Queen's death her virtues were celebrated in almost every parish

The most estimable Jacobites respected the sorrow of William and the memory of Mary. But to the fiercer

zealots of the party neither the house of mourning nor the grave was sacred. At Bristol the adherents of Sir

John Knight rang the bells as if for a victory.553 It has often been repeated, and is not at all improbable, that

a nonjuring divine, in the midst of the general lamentation, preached on the text, "Go; see now this cursed

woman and bury her; for she is a King's daughter." It is certain that some of the ejected priests pursued her to

the grave with invectives. Her death, they said, was evidently a judgment for her crime. God had, from the

top of Sinai, in thunder and lightning, promised length of days to children who should honour their parents;

and in this promise was plainly implied a menace. What father had ever been worse treated by his daughters

than James by Mary and Anne? Mary was gone, cut off in the prime of life, in the glow of beauty, in the

height of prosperity; and Anne would do well to profit by the warning. Wagstaffe went further, and dwelt

much on certain wonderful coincidences of time. James had been driven from his palace and country in

Christmas week. Mary had died in Christmas week. There could be no doubt that, if the secrets of Providence

were disclosed to us, we should find that the turns of the daughter's complaint in December 1694 bore an

exact analogy to the turns of the father's fortune in December 1688. It was at midnight that the father ran

away from Rochester; it was at midnight that the daughter expired. Such was the profundity and such the

ingenuity of a writer whom the Jacobite schismatics justly regarded as one of their ablest chiefs.554

The Whigs soon had an opportunity of retaliating. They triumphantly related that a scrivener in the Borough,

a stanch friend of hereditary right, while exulting in the judgment which had overtaken the Queen, had

The funeral was long remembered as the saddest and most august that Westminster had ever seen. While the

Queen's remains lay in state at Whitehall, the neighbouring streets were filled every day, from sunrise to

sunset, by crowds which made all traffic impossible. The two Houses with their maces followed the hearse,

the Lords robed in scarlet and ermine, the Commons in long black mantles. No preceding Sovereign had ever

been attended to the grave by a Parliament; for, till then, the Parliament had always expired with the

Sovereign. A paper had indeed been circulated, in which the logic of a small sharp pettifogger was employed

to prove that writs, issued in the joint names of William and Mary, ceased to be of force as soon as William

reigned alone. But this paltry cavil had completely failed. It had not even been mentioned in the Lower

House, and had been mentioned in the Upper only to be contemptuously overruled. The whole Magistracy of

the City swelled the procession. The banners of England and France, Scotland and Ireland, were carried by

great nobles before the corpse. The pall was borne by the chiefs of the illustrious houses of Howard,

Seymour, Grey, and Stanley. On the gorgeous coffin of purple and gold were laid the crown and sceptre of

the realm. The day was well suited to such a ceremony. The sky was dark and troubled; and a few ghastly

flakes of snow fell on the black plumes of the funeral car. Within the Abbey, nave, choir and transept were in

a blaze with innumerable waxlights. The body was deposited under a magnificent canopy in the centre of the

church while the Primate preached. The earlier part of his discourse was deformed by pedantic divisions and

subdivisions; but towards the close he told what he had himself seen and heard with a simplicity and

earnestness more affecting than the most skilful rhetoric. Through the whole ceremony the distant booming

of cannon was heard every minute from the batteries of the Tower. The gentle Queen sleeps among her

illustrious kindred in the southern aisle of the Chapel of Henry the Seventh.556

The affection with which her husband cherished her memory was soon attested by a monument the most

superb that was ever erected to any sovereign. No scheme had been so much her own, none had been so near

her heart, as that of converting the palace at Greenwich into a retreat for seamen. It had occurred to her when

she had found it difficult to provide good shelter and good attendance for the thousands of brave men who

had come back to England wounded after the battle of La Hogue. While she lived scarcely any step was taken

towards the accomplishing of her favourite design. But it should seem that, as soon as her husband had lost

her, he began to reproach himself for having neglected her wishes. No time was lost. A plan was furnished by

Wren; and soon an edifice, surpassing that asylum which the magnificent Lewis had provided for his soldiers,

rose on the margin of the Thames. Whoever reads the inscription which runs round the frieze of the hall will

observe that William claims no part of the merit of the design, and that the praise is ascribed to Mary alone.

Had the King's life been prolonged till the works were completed, a statue of her who was the real foundress

of the institution would have had a conspicuous place in that court which presents two lofty domes and two

graceful colonnades to the multitudes who are perpetually passing up and down the imperial river. But that

part of the plan was never carried into effect; and few of those who now gaze on the noblest of European

hospitals are aware that it is a memorial of the virtues of the good Queen Mary, of the love and sorrow of

Effect of Mary's Death on the ContinentDeath of Luxemburg Distress of WilliamParliamentary

Proceedings; Emancipation of the PressDeath of HalifaxParliamentary Inquiries into the Corruption of

the Public OfficesVote of Censure on the Speaker Foley elected Speaker; Inquiry into the Accounts of

the East India CompanySuspicious Dealings of SeymourBill against Sir Thomas CookInquiry by a

joint Committee of Lords and Commons Impeachment of LeedsDisgrace of LeedsLords Justices

appointed; Reconciliation between William and the Princess Anne Jacobite Plots against William's

PersonCharnock; Porter Goodman; ParkynsFenwickSession of the Scottish Parliament; Inquiry

into the Slaughter of GlencoeWar in the Netherlands; Marshal VilleroyThe Duke of MaineJacobite

Plots against the Government during William's AbsenceSiege of NamurSurrender of the Town of

NamurSurrender of the Castle of NamurArrest of BoufflersEffect of the Emancipation of the English

Press Return of William to England; Dissolution of the Parliament William makes a Progress through

the Country The Elections Alarming State of the CurrencyMeeting of the Parliament; Loyalty of the

House of CommonsControversy touching the CurrencyParliamentary Proceedings touching the

Currency Passing of the Act regulating Trials in Cases of High Treason Parliamentary Proceedings

touching the Grant of Crown Lands in Wales to PortlandTwo Jacobite Plots formedBerwick's Plot; the

Assassination Plot; Sir George BarclayFailure of Berwick's PlotDetection of the Assassination

PlotParliamentary Proceedings touching the Assassination PlotState of Public FeelingTrial of

Charnock, King and KeyesExecution of Charnock, King and KeyesTrial of FriendTrial of Parkyns

Execution of Friend and ParkynsTrials of Rookwood, Cranburne and LowickThe AssociationBill for

ON the Continent the news of Mary's death excited various emotions. The Huguenots, in every part of

Europe to which they had wandered, bewailed the Elect Lady, who had retrenched from her own royal state

in order to furnish bread and shelter to the persecuted people of God.557 In the United Provinces, where she

was well known and had always been popular, she was tenderly lamented. Matthew Prior, whose parts and

accomplishments had obtained for him the patronage of the magnificent Dorset, and who was now attached to

the Embassy at the Hague, wrote that the coldest and most passionless of nations was touched. The very

marble, he said, wept.558 The lamentations of Cambridge and Oxford were echoed by Leyden and Utrecht.

The States General put on mourning. The bells of all the steeples of Holland tolled dolefully day after

day.559 James, meanwhile, strictly prohibited all mourning at Saint Germains, and prevailed on Lewis to

issue a similar prohibition at Versailles. Some of the most illustrious nobles of France, and among them the

Dukes of Bouillon and of Duras, were related to the House of Nassau, and had always, when death visited

that House, punctiliously observed the decent ceremonial of sorrow. They were now forbidden to wear black;

and they submitted; but it was beyond the power of the great King to prevent his highbred and sharpwitted

courtiers from whispering to each other that there was something pitiful in this revenge taken by the living on

The hopes of James and of his companions in exile were now higher than they had been since the day of La

Hogue. Indeed the general opinion of politicians, both here and on the Continent was that William would find

it impossible to sustain himself much longer on the throne. He would not, it was said, have sustained himself

so long but for the help of his wife. Her affability had conciliated many who had been repelled by his freezing

looks and short answers. Her English tones, sentiments and tastes had charmed many who were disgusted by

his Dutch accent and Dutch habits. Though she did not belong to the High Church party, she loved that ritual

to which she had been accustomed from infancy, and complied willingly and reverently with some

ceremonies which he considered, not indeed as sinful, but as childish, and in which he could hardly bring

himself to take part. While the war lasted, it would be necessary that he should pass nearly half the year out

of England. Hitherto she had, when he was absent, supplied his place, and had supplied it well. Who was to

supply it now? In what vicegerent could he place equal confidence? To what vicegerent would the nation

look up with equal respect? All the statesmen of Europe therefore agreed in thinking that his position,

difficult and dangerous at best, had been made far more difficult and more dangerous by the death of the

Queen. But all the statesmen of Europe were deceived; and, strange to say, his reign was decidedly more

A few hours after he had lost the most tender and beloved of all his friends, he was delivered from the most

formidable of all his enemies. Death had been busy at Paris as well as in London. While Tenison was praying

by the bed of Mary, Bourdaloue was administering the last unction to Luxemburg. The great French general

had never been a favourite at the French Court; but when it was known that his feeble frame, exhausted by

war and pleasure, was sinking under a dangerous disease, the value of his services was, for the first time,

fully appreciated; the royal physicians were sent to prescribe for him; the sisters of Saint Cyr were ordered to

pray for him; but prayers and prescriptions were vain. "How glad the Prince of Orange will be," said Lewis,

"when the news of our loss reaches him." He was mistaken. That news found William unable to think of any

During the month which followed the death of Mary the King was incapable of exertion. Even to the

addresses of the two Houses of Parliament he replied only by a few inarticulate sounds. The answers which

appear in the journals were not uttered by him, but were delivered in writing. Such business as could not be

deferred was transacted by the intervention of Portland, who was himself oppressed with sorrow. During

some weeks the important and confidential correspondence between the King and Heinsius was suspended.

At length William forced himself to resume that correspondence: but his first letter was the letter of a

heartbroken man. Even his martial ardour had been tamed by misery. "I tell you in confidence," he wrote,

"that I feel myself to be no longer fit for military command. Yet I will try to do my duty; and I hope that God

will strengthen me." So despondingly did he look forward to the most brilliant and successful of his many

There was no interruption of parliamentary business. While the Abbey was hanging with black for the funeral

of the Queen, the Commons came to a vote, which at the time attracted little attention, which produced no

excitement, which has been left unnoticed by voluminous annalists, and of which the history can be but

imperfectly traced in the archives of Parliament, but which has done more for liberty and for civilisation than

the Great Charter or the Bill of Rights. Early in the session a select committee had been appointed to

ascertain what temporary statutes were about to expire, and to consider which of those statutes it might be

expedient to continue. The report was made; and all the recommendations contained in that report were

adopted, with one exception. Among the laws which the committee advised the House to renew was the law

which subjected the press to a censorship. The question was put, "that the House do agree with the committee

in the resolution that the Act entitled an Act for preventing Abuses in printing seditious, treasonable and

unlicensed Pamphlets, and for regulating of Printing and Printing Presses, be continued." The Speaker

A bill for continuing all the other temporary Acts, which, in the opinion of the Committee, could not properly

be suffered to expire, was brought in, passed and sent to the Lords. In a short time this bill came back with an

important amendment. The Lords had inserted in the list of Acts to be continued the Act which placed the

press under the control of licensers. The Commons resolved not to agree to the amendment, demanded a

conference, and appointed a committee of managers. The leading manager was Edward Clarke, a stanch

Whig, who represented Taunton, the stronghold, during fifty troubled years, of civil and religious freedom.

Clarke delivered to the Lords in the Painted Chamber a paper containing the reasons which had determined

the Lower House not to renew the Licensing Act. This paper completely vindicates the resolution to which

the Commons had come. But it proves at the same time that they knew not what they were doing, what a

revolution they were making, what a power they were calling into existence. They pointed out concisely,

clearly, forcibly, and sometimes with a grave irony which is not unbecoming, the absurdities and iniquities of

the statute which was about to expire. But all their objections will be found to relate to matters of detail. On

the great question of principle, on the question whether the liberty of unlicensed printing be, on the whole, a

blessing or a curse to society, not a word is said. The Licensing Act is condemned, not as a thing essentially

evil, but on account of the petty grievances, the exactions, the jobs, the commercial restrictions, the

domiciliary visits which were incidental to it. It is pronounced mischievous because it enables the Company

of Stationers to extort money from publishers, because it empowers the agents of the government to search

houses under the authority of general warrants, because it confines the foreign book trade to the port of

London; because it detains valuable packages of books at the Custom House till the pages are mildewed. The

Commons complain that the amount of the fee which the licenser may demand is not fixed. They complain

that it is made penal in an officer of the Customs to open a box of books from abroad, except in the presence

of one of the censors of the press. How, it is very sensibly asked, is the officer to know that there are books in

the box till he has opened it? Such were the arguments which did what Milton's Areopagitica had failed to do.

The Lords yielded without a contest. They probably expected that some less objectionable bill for the

regulation of the press would soon be sent up to them; and in fact such a bill was brought into the House of

Commons, read twice, and referred to a select committee. But the session closed before the committee had

reported; and English literature was emancipated, and emancipated for ever, from the control of the

government.563 This great event passed almost unnoticed. Evelyn and Luttrell did not think it worth

mentioning in their diaries. The Dutch minister did not think it worth mentioning in his despatches. No

allusion to it is to be found in the Monthly Mercuries. The public attention was occupied by other and far

One of those subjects was the death of the most accomplished, the most enlightened, and, in spite of great

faults, the most estimable of the statesmen who were formed in the corrupt and licentious Whitehall of the

Restoration. About a month after the splendid obsequies of Mary, a funeral procession of almost ostentatious

simplicity passed round the shrine of Edward the Confessor to the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. There, at the

distance of a few feet from her coffin, lies the coffin of George Savile, Marquess of Halifax.

Halifax and Nottingham had long been friends; and Lord Eland, now Halifax's only son, had been affianced

to the Lady Mary Finch, Nottingham's daughter. The day of the nuptials was fixed; a joyous company

assembled at Burley on the Hill, the mansion of the bride's father, which, from one of the noblest terraces in

the island, looks down on magnificent woods of beech and oak, on the rich valley of Catmos, and on the spire

of Oakham. The father of the bridegroom was detained to London by indisposition, which was not supposed

to be dangerous. On a sudden his malady took an alarming form. He was told that he had but a few hours to

live. He received the intimation with tranquil fortitude. It was proposed to send off an express to summon his

son to town. But Halifax, good natured to the last, would not disturb the felicity of the wedding day. He gave

strict orders that his interment should be private, prepared himself for the great change by devotions which

astonished those who had called him an atheist, and died with the serenity of a philosopher and of a Christian,

while his friends and kindred, not suspecting his danger, were tasting the sack posset and drawing the

curtain.564 His legitimate male posterity and his titles soon became extinct. No small portion, however, of

his wit and eloquence descended to his daughter's son, Philip Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield. But it is

perhaps not generally known that some adventurers, who, without advantages of fortune or position, made

themselves conspicuous by the mere force of ability, inherited the blood of Halifax. He left a natural son,

Henry Carey, whose dramas once drew crowded audiences to the theatres, and some of whose gay and

spirited verses still live in the memory of hundreds of thousands. From Henry Carey descended that Edmund

Kean, who, in our time, transformed himself so marvellously into Shylock, Iago and Othello.

More than one historian has been charged with partiality to Halifax. The truth is that the memory of Halifax

is entitled in an especial manner to the protection of history. For what distinguishes him from all other

English statesmen is this, that, through a long public life, and through frequent and violent revolutions of

public feeling, he almost invariably took that view of the great questions of his time which history has finally

adopted. He was called inconstant, because the relative position in which he stood to the contending factions

was perpetually varying. As well might the pole star be called inconstant because it is sometimes to the east

and sometimes to the west of the pointers. To have defended the ancient and legal constitution of the realm

against a seditious populace at one conjuncture and against a tyrannical government at another; to have been

the foremost defender of order in the turbulent Parliament of 1680 and the foremost defender of liberty in the

servile Parliament of 1685; to have been just and merciful to Roman Catholics in the days of the Popish plot

and to Exclusionists in the days of the Rye House Plot; to have done all in his power to save both the head of

Stafford and the head of Russell; this was a course which contemporaries, heated by passion and deluded by

names and badges, might not unnaturally call fickle, but which deserves a very different name from the late

There is one and only one deep stain on the memory of this eminent man. It is melancholy to think that he,

who had acted so great a part in the Convention, could have afterwards stooped to hold communication with

Saint Germains. The fact cannot be disputed; yet for him there are excuses which cannot be pleaded for

others who were guilty of the same crime. He did not, like Marlborough, Russell, Godolphin and

Shrewsbury, betray a master by whom he was trusted, and with whose benefits he was loaded. It was by the

ingratitude and malice of the Whigs that he was driven to take shelter for a moment among the Jacobites. It

may be added that he soon repented of the error into which he had been hurried by passion, that, though never

reconciled to the Court, he distinguished himself by his zeal for the vigorous prosecution of the war, and that

his last work was a tract in which he exhorted his countrymen to remember that the public burdens, heavy as

they might seem, were light when compared with the yoke of France and of Rome.565

About a fortnight after the death of Halifax, a fate far more cruel than death befell his old rival and enemy,

the Lord President. That able, ambitious and daring statesman was again hurled down from power. In his first

fall, terrible as it was, there had been something of dignity; and he had, by availing himself with rare skill of

an extraordinary crisis in public affairs, risen once more to the most elevated position among English

subjects. The second ruin was indeed less violent than the first; but it was ignominious and irretrievable.

The peculation and venality by which the official men of that age were in the habit of enriching themselves

had excited in the public mind a feeling such as could not but vent itself, sooner or later, in some formidable

explosion. But the gains were immediate; the day of retribution was uncertain; and the plunderers of the

public were as greedy and as audacious as ever, when the vengeance, long threatened and long delayed,

The first mutterings of the coming storm did not at all indicate the direction which it would take, or the fury

with which it would burst. An infantry regiment, which was quartered at Royston, had levied contributions on

the people of that town and of the neighbourhood. The sum exacted was not large. In France or Brabant the

moderation of the demand would have been thought wonderful. But to English shopkeepers and farmers

military extortion was happily quite new and quite insupportable. A petition was sent up to the Commons.

The Commons summoned the accusers and the accused to the bar. It soon appeared that a grave offence had

been committed, but that the offenders were not altogether without excuse. The public money which had been

issued from the Exchequer for their pay and subsistence had been fraudulently detained by their colonel and

by his agent. It was not strange that men who had arms and who had not necessaries should trouble

themselves little about the Petition of Right and the Declaration of Right. But it was monstrous that, while the

citizen was heavily taxed for the purpose of paying to the soldier the largest military stipend known in

Europe, the soldier should be driven by absolute want to plunder the citizen. This was strongly set forth in a

representation which the Commons laid before William. William, who had been long struggling against

abuses which grievously impaired the efficiency of his army, was glad to have his hands thus strengthened.

He promised ample redress, cashiered the offending colonel, gave strict orders that the troops should receive

their due regularly, and established a military board for the purpose of detecting and punishing such

But the whole administration was in such a state that it was hardly possible to track one offender without

discovering ten others. In the course of the inquiry into the conduct of the troops at Royston, it was

discovered that a bribe of two hundred guineas had been received by Henry Guy, member of Parliament for

Heydon and Secretary of the Treasury. Guy was instantly sent to the Tower, not without much exultation on

the part of the Whigs; for he was one of those tools who had passed, together with the buildings and furniture

of the public offices, from James to William; he affected the character of a High Churchman; and he was

known to be closely connected with some of the heads of the Tory party, and especially with Trevor.567

Another name, which was afterwards but too widely celebrated, first became known to the public at this time.

James Craggs had begun life as a barber. He had then been a footman of the Duchess of Cleveland. His

abilities, eminently vigorous though not improved by education, had raised him in the world; and he was now

entering on a career which was destined to end, after a quarter of a century of prosperity, in unutterable

misery and despair. He had become an army clothier. He was examined as to his dealings with the colonels of

regiments; and, as he obstinately refused to produce his books, he was sent to keep Guy company in the

A few hours after Craggs had been thrown into prison, a committee, which had been appointed to inquire into

the truth of a petition signed by some of the hackney coachmen of London, laid on the table of the House a

report which excited universal disgust and indignation. It appeared that these poor hardworking men had been

cruelly wronged by the board under the authority of which an Act of the preceding session had placed them.

They had been pillaged and insulted, not only by the commissioners, but by one commissioner's lacquey and

by another commissioner's harlot. The Commons addressed the King; and the King turned the delinquents out

But by this time delinquents far higher in power and rank were beginning to be uneasy. At every new

detection, the excitement, both within and without the walls of Parliament, became more intense. The

frightful prevalence of bribery, corruption and extortion was every where the subject of conversation. A

contemporary pamphleteer compares the state of the political world at this conjuncture to the state of a city in

which the plague has just been discovered, and in which the terrible words, "Lord have mercy on us," are

already seen on some doors.570 Whispers, which at another time would have speedily died away and been

forgotten, now swelled, first into murmurs, and then into clamours. A rumour rose and spread that the funds

of the two wealthiest corporations in the kingdom, the City of London and the East India Company, had been

largely employed for the purpose of corrupting great men; and the names of Trevor, Seymour and Leeds were

The mention of these names produced a stir in the Whig ranks. Trevor, Seymour and Leeds were all three

Tories, and had, in different ways, greater influence than perhaps any other three Tories in the kingdom. If

they could all be driven at once from public life with blasted characters, the Whigs would be completely

Wharton was not the man to let such an opportunity escape him. At White's, no doubt, among those lads of

quality who were his pupils in politics and in debauchery, he would have laughed heartily at the fury with

which the nation had on a sudden begun to persecute men for doing what every body had always done and

was always trying to do. But if people would be fools, it was the business of a politician to make use of their

folly. The cant of political purity was not so familiar to the lips of Wharton as blasphemy and ribaldry; but

his abilities were so versatile, and his impudence so consummate, that he ventured to appear before the world

as an austere patriot mourning over the venality and perfidy of a degenerate age. While he, animated by that

fierce party spirit which in honest men would be thought a vice, but which in him was almost a virtue, was

eagerly stirring up his friends to demand an inquiry into the truth of the evil reports which were in circulation,

the subject was suddenly and strangely forced forward. It chanced that, while a bill of little interest was under

discussion in the Commons, the postman arrived with numerous letters directed to members; and the

distribution took place at the bar with a buzz of conversation which drowned the voices of the orators.

Seymour, whose imperious temper always prompted him to dictate and to chide, lectured the talkers on the

scandalous irregularity of their conduct, and called on the Speaker to reprimand them. An angry discussion

followed; and one of the offenders was provoked into making an allusion to the stories which were current

about both Seymour and the Speaker. "It is undoubtedly improper to talk while a bill is under discussion; but

it is much worse to take money for getting a bill passed. If we are extreme to mark a slight breach of form,

how severely ought we to deal with that corruption which is eating away the very substance of our

institutions!" That was enough; the spark had fallen; the train was ready; the explosion was immediate and

terrible. After a tumultuous debate in which the cry of "the Tower" was repeatedly heard, Wharton managed

to carry his point. Before the House rose a committee was appointed to examine the books of the City of

Foley was placed in the chair of the committee. Within a week he reported that the Speaker, Sir John Trevor,

had in the preceding session received from the City a thousand guineas for expediting a local bill. This

discovery gave great satisfaction to the Whigs, who had always hated Trevor, and was not unpleasing to

many of the Tories. During six busy sessions his sordid rapacity had made him an object of general aversion.

The legitimate emoluments of his post amounted to about four thousand a year; but it was believed that he

had made at least ten thousand a year.572 His profligacy and insolence united had been too much even for the

angelic temper of Tillotson. It was said that the gentle Archbishop had been heard to mutter something about

a knave as the Speaker passed by him.573 Yet, great as were the offences of this bad man, his punishment

was fully proportioned to them. As soon as the report of the committee had been read, it was moved that he

had been guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour. He had to stand up and to put the question. There was a

loud cry of Aye. He called on the Noes; and scarcely a voice was heard. He was forced to declare that the

Ayes had it. A man of spirit would have given up the ghost with remorse and shame; and the unutterable

ignominy of that moment left its mark even on the callous heart and brazen forehead of Trevor. Had he

returned to the House on the following day, he would have had to put the question on a motion for his own

expulsion. He therefore pleaded illness, and shut himself up in his bedroom. Wharton soon brought down a

The Whig chiefs wished to place Littleton in the chair; but they were unable to accomplish their object. Foley

was chosen, presented and approved. Though he had of late generally voted with the Tories, he still called

himself a Whig, and was not unacceptable to many of the Whigs. He had both the abilities and the knowledge

which were necessary to enable him to preside over the debates with dignity; but what, in the peculiar

circumstances in which the House then found itself placed, was not unnaturally considered as his principal

recommendation, was that implacable hatred of jobbery and corruption which he somewhat ostentatiously

professed, and doubtless sincerely felt. On the day after he entered on his functions, his predecessor was

The indiscretion of Trevor had been equal to his baseness; and his guilt had been apparent on the first

inspection of the accounts of the City. The accounts of the East India Company were more obscure. The

committee reported that they had sate in Leadenhall Street, had examined documents, had interrogated

directors and clerks, but had been unable to arrive at the bottom of the mystery of iniquity. Some most

suspicious entries had been discovered, under the head of special service. The expenditure on this account

had, in the year 1693, exceeded eighty thousand pounds. It was proved that, as to the outlay of this money,

the directors had placed implicit confidence in the governor, Sir Thomas Cook. He had merely told them in

general terms that he had been at a charge of twentythree thousand, of twentyfive thousand, of thirty

thousand pounds, in the matter of the Charter; and the Court had, without calling on him for any detailed

explanation, thanked him for his care, and ordered warrants for these great sums to be instantly made out. It

appeared that a few mutinous directors had murmured at this immense outlay, and had called for a detailed

statement. But the only answer which they had been able to extract from Cook was that there were some great

The committee also reported that they had lighted on an agreement by which the Company had covenanted to

furnish a person named Colston with two hundred tons of saltpetre. At the first glance, this transaction

seemed merchantlike and fair. But it was soon discovered that Colston was merely an agent for Seymour.

Suspicion was excited. The complicated terms of the bargain were severely examined, and were found to be

framed in such a manner that, in every possible event, Seymour must be a gainer and the Company a loser to

the extent of ten or twelve thousand pounds. The opinion of all who understood the matter was that the

compact was merely a disguise intended to cover a bribe. But the disguise was so skilfully managed that the

country gentlemen were perplexed, and that the lawyers doubted whether there were such evidence of

corruption as would be held sufficient by a court of justice. Seymour escaped without even a vote of censure,

and still continued to take a leading part in the debates of the Commons.575 But the authority which he had

long exercised in the House and in the western counties of England, though not destroyed, was visibly

diminished; and, to the end of his life, his traffic in saltpetre was a favourite theme of Whig pamphleteers and

The escape of Seymour only inflamed the ardour of Wharton and of Wharton's confederates. They were

determined to discover what had been done with the eighty or ninety thousand pounds of secret service

money which had been entrusted to Cook by the East India Company. Cook, who was member for

Colchester, was questioned in his place; he refused to answer; he was sent to the Tower; and a bill was

brought in providing that if, before a certain day, he should not acknowledge the whole truth, he should be

incapable of ever holding any office, should refund to the Company the whole of the immense sum which had

been confided to him, and should pay a fine of twenty thousand pounds to the Crown. Rich as he was, these

penalties would have reduced him to penury. The Commons were in such a temper that they passed the bill

without a single division.577 Seymour, indeed, though his saltpetre contract was the talk of the whole town,

came forward with unabashed forehead to plead for his accomplice; but his effrontery only injured the cause

which he defended.578 In the Upper House the bill was condemned in the strongest terms by the Duke of

Leeds. Pressing his hand on his heart, he declared, on his faith, on his honour, that he had no personal interest

in the question, and that he was actuated by no motive but a pure love of justice. His eloquence was

powerfully seconded by the tears and lamentations of Cook, who, from the bar, implored the Peers not to

subject him to a species of torture unknown to the mild laws of England. "Instead of this cruel bill," he said,

"pass a bill of indemnity; and I will tell you all." The Lords thought his request not altogether unreasonable.

After some communication with the Commons, it was determined that a joint committee of the two Houses

should be appointed to inquire into the manner in which the secret service money of the East India Company

had been expended; and an Act was rapidly passed providing that, if Cook would make to this committee a

true and full discovery, he should be indemnified for the crimes which he might confess; and that, till he

made such a discovery, he should remain in the Tower. To this arrangement Leeds gave in public all the

opposition that he could with decency give. In private those who were conscious of guilt employed numerous

artifices for the purpose of averting inquiry. It was whispered that things might come out which every good

Englishman would wish to hide, and that the greater part of the enormous sums which had passed through

Cook's hands had been paid to Portland for His Majesty's use. But the Parliament and the nation were

As soon as the Bill of Indemnity had received the royal assent, the joint committee, consisting of twelve lords

and twentyfour members of the House of Commons, met in the Exchequer Chamber. Wharton was placed in

The King and Portland came out of the inquiry with unblemished honour. Not only had not the King taken

any part of the secret service money dispensed by Cook; but he had not, during some years, received even the

ordinary present which the Company had, in former reigns, laid annually at the foot of the throne. It appeared

that not less than fifty thousand pounds had been offered to Portland, and rejected. The money lay during a

whole year ready to be paid to him if he should change his mind. He at length told those who pressed this

immense bribe on him, that if they persisted in insulting him by such an offer, they would make him an

enemy of their Company. Many people wondered at the probity which he showed on this occasion, for he

was generally thought interested and grasping. The truth seems to be that he loved money, but that he was a

man of strict integrity and honour. He took, without scruple, whatever he thought that he could honestly take,

but was incapable of stooping to an act of baseness. Indeed, he resented as affronts the compliments which

were paid him on this occasion.580 The integrity of Nottingham could excite no surprise. Ten thousand

pounds had been offered to him, and had been refused. The number of cases in which bribery was fully made

out was small. A large part of the sum which Cook had drawn from the Company's treasury had probably

been embezzled by the brokers whom he had employed in the work of corruption; and what had become of

the rest it was not easy to learn from the reluctant witnesses who were brought before the committee. One

glimpse of light however was caught; it was followed; and it led to a discovery of the highest moment. A

large sum was traced from Cook to an agent named Firebrace, and from Firebrace to another agent named

Bates, who was well known to be closely connected with the High Church party and especially with Leeds.

Bates was summoned, but absconded; messengers were sent in pursuit of him; he was caught, brought into

the Exchequer Chamber and sworn. The story which he told showed that he was distracted between the fear

of losing his ears and the fear of injuring his patron. He owned that he had undertaken to bribe Leeds, had

been for that purpose furnished with five thousand five hundred guineas, had offered those guineas to His

Grace, and had, by His Grace's permission, left them at His Grace's house in the care of a Swiss named

Robart, who was His Grace's confidential man of business. It should seem that these facts admitted of only

one interpretation. Bates however swore that the Duke had refused to accept a farthing. "Why then," it was

asked, "was the gold left, by his consent, at his house and in the hands of his servant?" "Because," answered

Bates, "I am bad at telling coin. I therefore begged His Grace to let me leave the pieces, in order that Robart

might count them for me; and His Grace was so good as to give leave." It was evident that, if this strange

story had been true, the guineas would, in a few hours, have been takenaway. But Bates was forced to

confess that they had remained half a year where he had left them. The money had indeed at last,and this

was one of the most suspicious circumstances in the case,been paid back by Robart on the very morning

on which the committee first met in the Exchequer Chamber. Who could believe that, if the transaction had

been free from all taint of corruption, the guineas would have been detained as long as Cook was able to

remain silent, and would have been refunded on the very first day on which he was under the necessity of

A few hours after the examination of Bates, Wharton reported to the Commons what had passed in the

Exchequer Chamber. The indignation was general and vehement. "You now understand," said Wharton, "why

obstructions have been thrown in our way at every step, why we have had to wring out truth drop by drop,

why His Majesty's name has been artfully used to prevent us from going into an inquiry which has brought

nothing to light but what is to His Majesty's honour. Can we think it strange that our difficulties should have

been great, when we consider the power, the dexterity, the experience of him who was secretly thwarting us?

It is time for us to prove signally to the world that it is impossible for any criminal to double so cunningly

that we cannot track him, or to climb so high that we cannot reach him. Never was there a more flagitious

instance of corruption. Never was there an offender who had less claim to indulgence. The obligations which

the Duke of Leeds has to his country are of no common kind. One great debt we generously cancelled; but the

manner in which our generosity has been requited forces us to remember that he was long ago impeached for

receiving money from France. How can we be safe while a man proved to be venal has access to the royal

ear? Our best laid enterprises have been defeated. Our inmost counsels have been betrayed. And what wonder

is it? Can we doubt that, together with this home trade in charters, a profitable foreign trade in secrets is

carried on? Can we doubt that he who sells us to one another will, for a good price, sell us all to the common

enemy?" Wharton concluded by moving that Leeds should be impeached of high crimes and

Leeds had many friends and dependents in the House of Commons; but they could say little. Wharton's

motion was carried without a division; and he was ordered to go to the bar of the Lords, and there, in the

name of the Commons of England, to impeach the Duke. But, before this order could be obeyed, it was

While Wharton had been making his report to the Commons, Leeds had been haranguing the Lords. He

denied with the most solemn asseverations that he had taken any money for himself. But he acknowledged,

and indeed almost boasted, that he had abetted Bates in getting money from the Company, and seemed to

think that this was a service which any man in power might be reasonably expected to render to a friend. Too

many persons, indeed, in that age made a most absurd and pernicious distinction between a minister who used

his influence to obtain presents for himself and a minister who used his influence to obtain presents for his

dependents. The former was corrupt; the latter was merely goodnatured. Leeds proceeded to tell with great

complacency a story about himself, which would, in our days, drive a public man, not only out of office, but

out of the society of gentlemen. "When I was Treasurer, in King Charles's time, my Lords, the excise was to

be farmed. There were several bidders. Harry Savile, for whom I had a great value, informed me that they had

asked for his interest with me, and begged me to tell them that he had done his best for them. 'What!' said I;

'tell them all so, when only one can have the farm?' 'No matter;' said Harry: 'tell them all so; and the one who

gets the farm will think that he owes it to me.' The gentlemen came. I said to every one of them separately,

'Sir, you are much obliged to Mr. Savile;' 'Sir, Mr. Savile has been much your friend.' In the end Harry got a

handsome present; and I wished him good luck with it. I was his shadow then. I am Mr. Bates's shadow

The Duke had hardly related this anecdote, so strikingly illustrative of the state of political morality in that

generation, when it was whispered to him that a motion to impeach him had been made in the House of

Commons. He hastened thither; but, before he arrived, the question had been put and carried. Nevertheless he

pressed for admittance; and he was admitted. A chair, according to ancient usage, was placed for him within

He spoke, but with less tact and judgment than usual. He magnified his own public services. But for him, he

said, there would have been no House of Commons to impeach him; a boast so extravagant that it naturally

made his hearers unwilling to allow him the praise which his conduct at the time of the Revolution really

deserved. As to the charge against him he said little more than that he was innocent, that there had long been

a malicious design to ruin him, that he would not go into particulars, that the facts which had been proved

would bear two constructions, and that of the two constructions the most favourable ought in candour to be

adopted. He withdrew, after praying the House to reconsider the vote which had just been passed, or, if that

His friends felt that his speech was no defence, and did not attempt to rescind the resolution which had been

carried just before he was heard. Wharton, with a large following, went up to the Lords, and informed them

that the Commons had resolved to impeach the Duke. A committee of managers was appointed to draw up

The articles were speedily drawn; but to the chain of evidence one link appeared to be wanting. That link

Robart, if he had been severely examined and confronted with other witnesses, would in all probability have

been forced to supply. He was summoned to the bar of the Commons. A messenger went with the summons

to the house of the Duke of Leeds, and was there informed that the Swiss was not within, that he had been

three days absent, and that where he was the porter could not tell. The Lords immediately presented an

address to the King, requesting him to give orders that the ports might be stopped and the fugitive arrested.

The flight of this man made it impossible for the Commons to proceed. They vehemently accused Leeds of

having sent away the witness who alone could furnish legal proof of that which was already established by

moral proof. Leeds, now at ease as to the event of the impeachment, gave himself the airs of an injured man.

"My Lords," he said, "the conduct of the Commons is without precedent. They impeach me of a high crime;

they promise to prove it; then they find that they have not the means of proving it; and they revile me for not

supplying them with the means. Surely they ought not to have brought a charge like this, without well

considering whether they had or had not evidence sufficient to support it. If Robart's testimony be, as they

now say, indispensable, why did they not send for him and hear his story before they made up their minds?

They may thank their own intemperance, their own precipitancy, for his disappearance. He is a foreigner; he

is timid; he hears that a transaction in which he has been concerned has been pronounced by the House of

Commons to be highly criminal, that his master is impeached, that his friend Bates is in prison, that his own

turn is coming. He naturally takes fright; he escapes to his own country; and, from what I know of him, I will

venture to predict that it will be long before he trusts himself again within reach of the Speaker's warrant. But

what is that to me? Am I to lie all my life under the stigma of an accusation like this, merely because the

violence of my accusers has scared their own witness out of England? I demand an immediate trial. I move

your Lordships to resolve that, unless the Commons shall proceed before the end of the session, the

impeachment shall be dismissed." A few friendly voices cried out "Well moved." But the Peers were

generally unwilling to take a step which would have been in the highest degree offensive to the Lower House,

and to the great body of those whom that House represented. The Duke's motion fell to the ground; and a few

The impeachment was never revived. The evidence which would warrant a formal verdict of guilty was not

forthcoming; and a formal verdict of guilty would hardly have answered Wharton's purpose better than the

informal verdict of guilty which the whole nation had already pronounced. The work was done. The Whigs

were dominant. Leeds was no longer chief minister, was indeed no longer a minister at all. William, from

respect probably for the memory of the beloved wife whom he had lately lost, and to whom Leeds had shown

peculiar attachment, avoided every thing that could look like harshness. The fallen statesman was suffered to

retain during a considerable time the title of Lord President, and to walk on public occasions between the

Great Seal and the Privy Seal. But he was told that he would do well not to show himself at Council; the

business and the patronage even of the department of which he was the nominal head passed into other hands;

and the place which he ostensibly filled was considered in political circles as really vacant.585

He hastened into the country, and hid himself there, during some months, from the public eye. When the

Parliament met again, however, he emerged from his retreat. Though he was well stricken in years and

cruelly tortured by disease, his ambition was still as ardent as ever. With indefatigable energy he began a

third time to climb, as he flattered himself, towards that dizzy pinnacle which he had twice reached, and from

which he had twice fallen. He took a prominent part in debate; but, though his eloquence and knowledge

always secured to him the attention of his hearers, he was never again, even when the Tory party was in

There was one great humiliation which he could not be spared. William was about to take the command of

the army in the Netherlands; and it was necessary that, before he sailed, he should determine by whom the

government should be administered during his absence. Hitherto Mary had acted as his vicegerent when he

was out of England; but she was gone. He therefore delegated his authority to seven Lords Justices, Tenison,

Archbishop of Canterbury, Somers, Keeper of the Great Seal, Pembroke, Keeper of the Privy Seal,

Devonshire, Lord Steward, Dorset, Lord Chamberlain, Shrewsbury, Secretary of State, and Godolphin, First

Commissioner of the Treasury. It is easy to judge from this list of names which way the balance of power was

now leaning. Godolphin alone of the seven was a Tory. The Lord President, still second in rank, and a few

days before first in power, of the great lay dignitaries of the realm, was passed over; and the omission was

There were some who wondered that the Princess of Denmark was not appointed Regent. The reconciliation,

which had been begun while Mary was dying, had since her death been, in external show at least, completed.

This was one of those occasions on which Sunderland was peculiarly qualified to be useful. He was

admirably fitted to manage a personal negotiation, to soften resentment, to soothe wounded pride, to select,

among all the objects of human desire, the very bait which was most likely to allure the mind with which he

was dealing. On this occasion his task was not difficult. He had two excellent assistants, Marlborough in the

Marlborough was now as desirous to support the government as he had once been to subvert it. The death of

Mary had produced a complete change in all his schemes. There was one event to which he looked forward

with the most intense longing, the accession of the Princess to the English throne. It was certain that, on the

day on which she began to reign, he would be in her Court all that Buckingham had been in the Court of

James the First. Marlborough too must have been conscious of powers of a very different order from those

which Buckingham had possessed, of a genius for politics not inferior to that of Richelieu, of a genius for war

not inferior to that of Turenne. Perhaps the disgraced General, in obscurity and inaction, anticipated the day

when his power to help and hurt in Europe would be equal to that of her mightiest princes, when he would be

servilely flattered and courted by Caesar on one side and by Lewis the Great on the other, and when every

year would add another hundred thousand pounds to the largest fortune that had ever been accumulated by

any English subject. All this might be if Mrs. Morley were Queen. But that Mr. Freeman should ever see Mrs.

Morley Queen had till lately been not very probable. Mary's life was a much better life than his, and quite as

good a life as her sister's. That William would have issue seemed unlikely. But it was generally expected that

he would soon die. His widow might marry again, and might leave children who would succeed her. In these

circumstances Marlborough might well think that he had very little interest in maintaining that settlement of

the Crown which had been made by the Convention. Nothing was so likely to serve his purpose as confusion,

civil war, another revolution, another abdication, another vacancy of the throne. Perhaps the nation, incensed

against William, yet not reconciled to James, and distracted between hatred of foreigners and hatred of

Jesuits, might prefer both to the Dutch King and to the Popish King one who was at once a native of our

country and a member of our Church. That this was the real explanation of Marlborough's dark and

complicated plots was, as we have seen, firmly believed by some of the most zealous Jacobites, and is in the

highest degree probable. It is certain that during several years he had spared no efforts to inflame the army

and the nation against the government. But all was now changed. Mary was gone. By the Bill of Rights the

Crown was entailed on Anne after the death of William. The death of William could not be far distant. Indeed

all the physicians who attended him wondered that he was still alive; and, when the risks of war were added

to the risks of disease, the probability seemed to be that in a few months he would be in his grave.

Marlborough saw that it would now be madness to throw every thing into disorder and to put every thing to

hazard. He had done his best to shake the throne while it seemed unlikely that Anne would ever mount it

except by violent means. But he did his best to fix it firmly, as soon as it became highly probably that she

The Princess was easily induced by the Churchills to write to the King a submissive and affectionate letter of

condolence. The King, who was never much inclined to engage in a commerce of insincere compliments, and

who was still in the first agonies of his grief, showed little disposition to meet her advances. But Somers, who

felt that every thing was at stake, went to Kensington, and made his way into the royal closet.

William was sitting there, so deeply sunk in melancholy that he did not seem to perceive that any person had

entered the room. The Lord Keeper, after a respectful pause, broke silence, and, doubtless with all that

cautious delicacy which was characteristic of him, and which eminently qualified him to touch the sore places

of the mind without hurting them, implored His Majesty to be reconciled to the Princess. "Do what you will,"

said William; "I can think of no business." Thus authorised, the mediators speedily concluded a treaty.587

Anne came to Kensington, and was graciously received; she was lodged in Saint James's Palace; a guard of

honour was again placed at her door; and the Gazettes again, after a long interval, announced that foreign

ministers had had the honour of being presented to her.588 The Churchills were again permitted to dwell

under the royal roof. But William did not at first include them in the peace which he had made with their

mistress. Marlborough remained excluded from military and political employment; and it was not without

much difficulty that he was admitted into the circle at Kensington, and permitted to kiss the royal hand.589

The feeling with which he was regarded by the King explains why Anne was not appointed Regent. The

Regency of Anne would have been the Regency of Marlborough; and it is not strange that a man whom it was

not thought safe to entrust with any office in the State or the army should not have been entrusted with the

Had Marlborough been of a proud and vindictive nature he might have been provoked into raising another

quarrel in the royal family, and into forming new cabals in the army. But all his passions, except ambition

and avarice, were under strict regulation. He was destitute alike of the sentiment of gratitude and of the

sentiment of revenge. He had conspired against the government while it was loading him with favours. He

now supported it, though it requited his support with contumely. He perfectly understood his own interest; he

had perfect command of his temper; he endured decorously the hardships of his present situation, and

contented himself by looking forward to a reversion which would amply repay him for a few years of

patience. He did not indeed cease to correspond with the Court of Saint Germains; but the correspondence

gradually became more and more slack, and seems, on his part, to have been made up of vague professions

The event which had changed all Marlborough's views had filled the minds of fiercer and more pertinacious

During the two years and a half which followed the execution of Grandval, no serious design had been

formed against the life of William. Some hotheaded malecontents had indeed laid schemes for kidnapping or

murdering him; but those schemes were not, while his wife lived, countenanced by her father. James did not

feel, and, to do him justice, was not such a hypocrite as to pretend to feel, any scruple about removing his

enemies by those means which he had justly thought base and wicked when employed by his enemies against

himself. If any such scruple had arisen in his mind, there was no want, under his roof, of casuists willing and

competent to soothe his conscience with sophisms such as had corrupted the far nobler natures of Anthony

Babington and Everard Digby. To question the lawfulness of assassination, in cases where assassination

might promote the interests of the Church, was to question the authority of the most illustrious Jesuits, of

Bellarmine and Suarez, of Molina and Mariana; nay, it was to rebel against the Chair of Saint Peter. One

Pope had walked in procession at the head of his cardinals, had proclaimed a jubilee, had ordered the guns of

Saint Angelo to be fired, in honour of the perfidious butchery in which Coligni had perished. Another Pope

had in a solemn allocution hymned the murder of Henry the Third of France in rapturous language borrowed

from the ode of the prophet Habakkuk, and had extolled the murderer above Phinehas and Judith.590 William

was regarded at Saint Germains as a monster compared with whom Coligni and Henry the Third were saints.

Nevertheless James, during some years, refused to sanction any attempt on his nephew's person. The reasons

which he assigned for his refusal have come down to us, as he wrote them with his own hand. He did not

affect to think that assassination was a sin which ought to be held in horror by a Christian, or a villany

unworthy of a gentleman; he merely said that the difficulties were great, and that he would not push his

friends on extreme danger when it would not be in his power to second them effectually.591 In truth, while

Mary lived, it might well be doubted whether the murder of her husband would really be a service to the

Jacobite cause. By his death the government would lose indeed the strength derived from his eminent

personal qualities, but would at the same time be relieved from the load of his personal unpopularity. His

whole power would at once devolve on his widow; and the nation would probably rally round her with

enthusiasm. If her political abilities were not equal to his, she had not his repulsive manners, his foreign

pronunciation, his partiality for every thing Dutch and for every thing Calvinistic. Many, who had thought

her culpably wanting in filial piety, would be of opinion that now at least she was absolved from all duty to a

father stained with the blood of her husband. The whole machinery of the administration would continue to

work without that interruption which ordinarily followed a demise of the Crown. There would be no

dissolution of the Parliament, no suspension of the customs and excise; commissions would retain their force;

and all that James would have gained by the fall of his enemy would have been a barren revenge.

The death of the Queen changed every thing. If a dagger or a bullet should now reach the heart of William, it

was probable that there would instantly be general anarchy. The Parliament and the Privy Council would

cease to exist. The authority of ministers and judges would expire with him from whom it was derived. It

might seem not improbable that at such a moment a restoration might be effected without a blow.

Scarcely therefore had Mary been laid in the grave when restless and unprincipled men began to plot in

earnest against the life of William. Foremost among these men in parts, in courage and in energy was Robert

Charnock. He had been liberally educated, and had, in the late reign, been a fellow of Magdalene College,

Oxford. Alone in that great society he had betrayed the common cause, had consented to be the tool of the

High Commission, had publicly apostatized from the Church of England, and, while his college was a Popish

seminary, had held the office of Vice President. The Revolution came, and altered at once the whole course

of his life. Driven from the quiet cloister and the old grove of oaks on the bank of the Cherwell, he sought

haunts of a very different kind. During several years he led the perilous and agitated life of a conspirator,

passed and repassed on secret errands between England and France, changed his lodgings in London often,

and was known at different coffeehouses by different names. His services had been requited with a captain's

With Charnock was closely connected George Porter, an adventurer who called himself a Roman Catholic

and a Royalist, but who was in truth destitute of all religious and of all political principle. Porter's friends

could not deny that he was a rake and a coxcomb, that he drank, that he swore, that he told extravagant lies

about his amours, and that he had been convicted of manslaughter for a stab given in a brawl at the

playhouse. His enemies affirmed that he was addicted to nauseous and horrible kinds of debauchery, and that

he procured the means of indulging his infamous tastes by cheating and marauding; that he was one of a gang

of clippers; that he sometimes got on horseback late in the evening and stole out in disguise, and that, when

he returned from these mysterious excursions, his appearance justified the suspicion that he had been doing

Cardell Goodman, popularly called Scum Goodman, a knave more abandoned, if possible, than Porter, was in

the plot. Goodman had been on the stage, had been kept, like some much greater men, by the Duchess of

Cleveland, had been taken into her house, had been loaded by her with gifts, and had requited her by bribing

an Italian quack to poison two of her children. As the poison had not been administered, Goodman could be

prosecuted only for a misdemeanour. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to a ruinous fine. He had since

Sir William Parkyns, a wealthy knight bred to the law, who had been conspicuous among the Tories in the

days of the Exclusion Bill, was one of the most important members of the confederacy. He bore a much fairer

character than most of his accomplices; but in one respect he was more culpable than any of them. For he

had, in order to retain a lucrative office which he held in the Court of Chancery, sworn allegiance to the

The design was imparted to Sir John Fenwick, celebrated on account of the cowardly insult which he had

offered to the deceased Queen. Fenwick, if his own assertion is to be trusted, was willing to join in an

insurrection, but recoiled from the thought of assassination, and showed so much of what was in his mind as

sufficed to make him an object of suspicion to his less scrupulous associates. He kept their secret, however,

It should seem that, at first, a natural feeling restrained the conspirators from calling their design by the

proper name. Even in their private consultations they did not as yet talk of killing the Prince of Orange. They

would try to seize him and to carry him alive into France. If there were any resistance they might be forced to

use their swords and pistols, and nobody could be answerable for what a thrust or a shot might do. In the

spring of 1695, the scheme of assassination, thus thinly veiled, was communicated to James, and his sanction

was earnestly requested. But week followed week; and no answer arrived from him. He doubtless remained

silent in the hope that his adherents would, after a short delay, venture to act on their own responsibility, and

that he might thus have the advantage without the scandal of their crime. They seem indeed to have so

understood him. He had not, they said, authorised the attempt; but he had not prohibited it; and, apprised as

he was of their plan, the absence of prohibition was a sufficient warrant. They therefore determined to strike;

but before they could make the necessary arrangements William set out for Flanders; and the plot against his

It was on the twelfth of May that the King left Kensington for Gravesend, where he proposed to embark for

the Continent. Three days before his departure the Parliament of Scotland had, after a recess of about two

years, met again at Edinburgh. Hamilton, who had, in the preceding session, sate on the throne and held the

sceptre, was dead; and it was necessary to find a new Lord High Commissioner. The person selected was

John Hay, Marquess of Tweedale, Chancellor of the Realm, a man grown old in business, well informed,

prudent, humane, blameless in private life, and, on the whole, as respectable as any Scottish lord who had

His task was not without difficulty. It was indeed well known that the Estates were generally inclined to

support the government. But it was also well known that there was one subject which would require the most

dexterous and delicate management. The cry of the blood shed more than three years before in Glencoe had at

length made itself heard. Towards the close of the year 1693, the reports, which had at first been

contemptuously derided as factious calumnies, began to be generally thought deserving of serious attention.

Many people little disposed to place confidence in any thing that came forth from the secret presses of the

Jacobites owned that, for the honour of the government, some inquiry ought to be instituted. The amiable

Mary had been much shocked by what she heard. William had, at her request, empowered the Duke of

Hamilton and several other Scotchmen of note to investigate the whole matter. But the Duke died; his

colleagues were slack in the performance of their duty; and the King, who knew little and cared little about

It now appeared that the government would have done wisely as well as rightly by anticipating the wishes of

the country. The horrible story repeated by the nonjurors pertinaciously, confidently, and with so many

circumstances as almost enforced belief, had at length roused all Scotland. The sensibility of a people

eminently patriotic was galled by the taunts of southern pamphleteers, who asked whether there was on the

north of the Tweed, no law, no justice, no humanity, no spirit to demand redress even for the foulest wrongs.

Each of the two extreme parties, which were diametrically opposed to each other in general politics, was

impelled by a peculiar feeling to call for inquiry. The Jacobites were delighted by the prospect of being able

to make out a case which would bring discredit on the usurper, and which might be set off against the many

offences imputed by the Whigs to Claverhouse and Mackenzie. The zealous Presbyterians were not less

delighted at the prospect of being able to ruin the Master of Stair. They had never forgotten or forgiven the

service which he had rendered to the House of Stuart in the time of the persecution. They knew that, though

he had cordially concurred in the political revolution which had freed them from the hated dynasty, he had

seen with displeasure that ecclesiastical revolution which was, in their view, even more important. They

knew that church government was with him merely an affair of State, and that, looking at it as an affair of

State, he preferred the episcopal to the synodical model. They could not without uneasiness see so adroit and

eloquent an enemy of pure religion constantly attending the royal steps and constantly breathing counsel in

the royal ear. They were therefore impatient for an investigation, which, if one half of what was rumoured

were true, must produce revelations fatal to the power and fame of the minister whom they distrusted. Nor

could that minister rely on the cordial support of all who held office under the Crown. His genius and

influence had excited the jealousy of many less successful courtiers, and especially of his fellow secretary,

Thus, on the eve of the meeting of the Scottish Parliament, Glencoe was in the mouths of all Scotchmen of all

factions and of all sects. William, who was just about to start for the Continent, learned that, on this subject,

the Estates must have their way, and that the best thing that he could do would be to put himself at the head

of a movement which it was impossible for him to resist. A Commission authorising Tweedale and several

other privy councillors to examine fully into the matter about which the public mind was so strongly excited

was signed by the King at Kensington, was sent down to Edinburgh, and was there sealed with the Great Seal

of the realm. This was accomplished just in time.595 The Parliament had scarcely entered on business when a

member rose to move for an inquiry into the circumstances of the slaughter of Glencoe. Tweedale was able to

inform the Estates that His Majesty's goodness had prevented their desires, that a Commission of

Precognition had, a few hours before, passed in all the forms, and that the lords and gentlemen named in that

instrument would hold their first meeting before night.596 The Parliament unanimously voted thanks to the

King for this instance of his paternal care; but some of those who joined in the vote of thanks expressed a

very natural apprehension that the second investigation might end as unsatisfactorily as the first investigation

had ended. The honour of the country, they said, was at stake; and the Commissioners were bound to proceed

with such diligence that the result of the inquest might be known before the end of the session. Tweedale

gave assurances which, for a time, silenced the murmurers.597 But, when three weeks had passed away,

many members became mutinous and suspicious. On the fourteenth of June it was moved that the

Commissioners should be ordered to report. The motion was not carried; but it was renewed day after day. In

three successive sittings Tweedale was able to restrain the eagerness of the assembly. But, when he at length

announced that the report had been completed; and added that it would not be laid before the Estates till it

had been submitted to the King, there was a violent outcry. The public curiosity was intense; for the

examination had been conducted with closed doors; and both Commissioners and clerks had been sworn to

secrecy. The King was in the Netherlands. Weeks must elapse before his pleasure could he taken; and the

session could not last much longer. In a fourth debate there were signs which convinced the Lord High

It is a paper highly creditable to those who framed it, an excellent digest of evidence, clear, passionless, and

austerely just. No source from which valuable information was likely to be derived had been neglected.

Glengarry and Keppoch, though notoriously disaffected to the government, had been permitted to conduct the

case on behalf of their unhappy kinsmen. Several of the Macdonalds who had escaped from the havoc of that

night had been examined, and among them the reigning Mac Ian, the eldest son of the murdered Chief. The

correspondence of the Master of Stair with the military men who commanded in the Highlands had been

subjected to a strict but not unfair scrutiny. The conclusion to which the Commissioners came, and in which

every intelligent and candid inquirer will concur, was that the slaughter of Glencoe was a barbarous murder,

and that of this barbarous murder the letters of the Master of Stair were the sole warrant and cause.

That Breadalbane was an accomplice in the crime was not proved; but he did not come off quite clear. In the

course of the investigation it was incidentally discovered that he had, while distributing the money of

William among the Highland Chiefs, professed to them the warmest zeal for the interest of James, and

advised them to take what they could get from the usurper, but to be constantly on the watch for a favourable

opportunity of bringing back the rightful King. Breadalbane's defence was that he was a greater villain than

his accusers imagined, and that he had pretended to be a Jacobite only in order to get at the bottom of the

Jacobite plans. In truth the depths of this man's knavery were unfathomable. It was impossible to say which

of his treasons were, to borrow the Italian classification, single treasons, and which double treasons. On this

occasion the Parliament supposed him to have been guilty only of a single treason, and sent him to the Castle

of Edinburgh. The government, on full consideration, gave credit to his assertion that he had been guilty of a

The Report of the Commission was taken into immediate consideration by the Estates. They resolved,

without one dissentient voice, that the order signed by William did not authorise the slaughter of Glencoe.

They next resolved, but, it should seem, not unanimously, that the slaughter was a murder.600 They

proceeded to pass several votes, the sense of which was finally summed up in an address to the King. How

that part of the address which related to the Master of Stair should be framed was a question about which

there was much debate. Several of his letters were called for and read; and several amendments were put to

the vote. It should seem that the Jacobites and the extreme Presbyterians were, with but too good cause, on

the side of severity. The majority, under the skilful management of the Lord High Commissioner, acquiesced

in words which made it impossible for the guilty minister to retain his office, but which did not impute to him

such criminality as would have affected his life or his estate. They censured him, but censured him in terms

far too soft. They blamed his immoderate zeal against the unfortunate clan, and his warm directions about

performing the execution by surprise. His excess in his letters they pronounced to have been the original

cause of the massacre; but, instead of demanding that he should be brought to trial as a murderer, they

declared that, in consideration of his absence and of his great place, they left it to the royal wisdom to deal

The indulgence which was shown to the principal offender was not extended to his subordinates. Hamilton,

who had fled and had been vainly cited by proclamation at the City Cross to appear before the Estates, was

pronounced not to be clear of the blood of the Glencoe men. Glenlyon, Captain Drummond, Lieutenant

Lindsey, Ensign Lundie, and Serjeant Barbour, were still more distinctly designated as murderers; and the

The Parliament of Scotland was undoubtedly, on this occasion, severe in the wrong place and lenient in the

wrong place. The cruelty and baseness of Glenlyon and his comrades excite, even after the lapse of a hundred

and sixty years, emotions which make it difficult to reason calmly. Yet whoever can bring himself to look at

the conduct of these men with judicial impartiality will probably be of opinion that they could not, without

great detriment to the commonwealth, have been treated as assassins. They had slain nobody whom they had

not been positively directed by their commanding officer to slay. That subordination without which an army

is the worst of all rabbles would be at an end, if every soldier were to be held answerable for the justice of

every order in obedience to which he pulls his trigger. The case of Glencoe was, doubtless, an extreme case;

but it cannot easily be distinguished in principle from cases which, in war, are of ordinary occurrence. Very

terrible military executions are sometimes indispensable. Humanity itself may require them. Who then is to

decide whether there be an emergency such as makes severity the truest mercy? Who is to determine whether

it be or be not necessary to lay a thriving town in ashes, to decimate a large body of mutineers, to shoot a

whole gang of banditti? Is the responsibility with the commanding officer, or with the rank and file whom he

orders to make ready, present and fire? And if the general rule be that the responsibility is with the

commanding officer, and not with those who obey him, is it possible to find any reason for pronouncing the

case of Glencoe an exception to that rule? It is remarkable that no member of the Scottish Parliament

proposed that any of the private men of Argyle's regiment should be prosecuted for murder. Absolute

impunity was granted to everybody below the rank of Serjeant. Yet on what principle? Surely, if military

obedience was not a valid plea, every man who shot a Macdonald on that horrible night was a murderer. And,

if military obedience was a valid plea for the musketeer who acted by order of Serjeant Barbour, why not for

Barbour who acted by order of Glenlyon? And why not for Glenlyon who acted by order of Hamilton? It can

scarcely be maintained that more deference is due from a private to a noncommissioned officer than from a

It may be said that the orders given to Glenlyon were of so peculiar a nature that, if he had been a man of

virtue, he would have thrown up his commission, would have braved the displeasure of colonel, general, and

Secretary of State, would have incurred the heaviest penalty which a Court Martial could inflict, rather than

have performed the part assigned to him; and this is perfectly true; but the question is not whether he acted

like a virtuous man, but whether he did that for which he could, without infringing a rule essential to the

discipline of camps and to the security of nations, be hanged as a murderer. In this case, disobedience was

assuredly a moral duty; but it does not follow that obedience was a legal crime.

It seems therefore that the guilt of Glenlyon and his fellows was not within the scope of the penal law. The

only punishment which could properly be inflicted on them was that which made Cain cry out that it was

greater than he could bear; to be vagabonds on the face of the earth, and to carry wherever they went a mark

It was not so with the Master of Stair. He had been solemnly pronounced, both by the Commission of

Precognition and by the Estates of the Realm in full Parliament, to be the original author of the massacre.

That it was not advisable to make examples of his tools was the strongest reason for making an example of

him. Every argument which can be urged against punishing the soldier who executes the unjust and inhuman

orders of his superior is an argument for punishing with the utmost rigour of the law the superior who gives

unjust and inhuman orders. Where there can be no responsibility below, there should be double responsibility

above. What the Parliament of Scotland ought with one voice to have demanded was, not that a poor illiterate

serjeant, who was hardly more accountable than his own halbert for the bloody work which he had done,

should be hanged in the Grassmarket, but that the real murderer, the most politic, the most eloquent, the most

powerful, of Scottish statesmen, should be brought to a public trial, and should, if found guilty, die the death

of a felon. Nothing less than such a sacrifice could expiate such a crime. Unhappily the Estates, by

extenuating the guilt of the chief offender, and, at the same time, demanding that his humble agents should be

treated with a severity beyond the law, made the stain which the massacre had left on the honour of the nation

Nor is it possible to acquit the King of a great breach of duty. It is, indeed, highly probable that, till he

received the report of his Commissioners, he had been very imperfectly informed as to the circumstances of

the slaughter. We can hardly suppose that he was much in the habit of reading Jacobite pamphlets; and, if he

did read them, he would have found in them such a quantity of absurd and rancorous invective against

himself that he would have been very little inclined to credit any imputation which they might throw on his

servants. He would have seen himself accused, in one tract, of being a concealed Papist, in another of having

poisoned Jeffreys in the Tower, in a third of having contrived to have Talmash taken off at Brest. He would

have seen it asserted that, in Ireland, he once ordered fifty of his wounded English soldiers to be burned alive.

He would have seen that the unalterable affection which he felt from his boyhood to his death for three or

four of the bravest and most trusty friends that ever prince had the happiness to possess was made a ground

for imputing to him abominations as foul as those which are buried under the waters of the Dead Sea. He

might therefore naturally be slow to believe frightful imputations thrown by writers whom he knew to be

habitual liars on a statesman whose abilities he valued highly, and to whose exertions he had, on some great

occasions, owed much. But he could not, after he had read the documents transmitted to him from Edinburgh

by Tweedale, entertain the slightest doubt of the guilt of the Master of Stair. To visit that guilt with

exemplary punishment was the sacred duty of a Sovereign who had sworn, with his hand lifted up towards

heaven, that he would, in his kingdom of Scotland, repress, in all estates and degrees, all oppression, and

would do justice, without acceptance of persons, as he hoped for mercy from the Father of all mercies.

William contented himself with dismissing the Master from office. For this great fault, a fault amounting to a

crime, Burnet tried to frame, not a defence, but an excuse. He would have us believe that the King, alarmed

by finding how many persons had borne a part in the slaughter of Glencoe, thought it better to grant a general

amnesty than to punish one massacre by another. But this representation is the very reverse of the truth.

Numerous instruments had doubtless been employed in the work of death; but they had all received their

impulse, directly or indirectly, from a single mind. High above the crowd of offenders towered one offender,

preeminent in parts, knowledge, rank and power. In return for many victims immolated by treachery, only

one victim was demanded by justice; and it must ever be considered as a blemish on the fame of William that

On the seventeenth of July the session of the Parliament of Scotland closed. The Estates had liberally voted

such a supply as the poor country which they represented could afford. They had indeed been put into high

good humour by the notion that they had found out a way of speedily making that poor country rich. Their

attention had been divided between the inquiry into the slaughter of Glencoe and some specious commercial

projects of which the nature will be explained and the fate related in a future chapter.

Meanwhile all Europe was looking anxiously towards the Low Countries. The great warrior who had been

victorious at Fleurus, at Steinkirk and at Landen had not left his equal behind him. But France still possessed

Marshals well qualified for high command. Already Catinat and Boufflers had given proofs of skill, of

resolution, and of zeal for the interests of the state. Either of those distinguished officers would have been a

successor worthy of Luxemburg and an antagonist worthy of William; but their master, unfortunately for

himself, preferred to both the Duke of Villeroy. The new general had been Lewis's playmate when they were

both children, had then become a favourite, and had never ceased to be so. In those superficial graces for

which the French aristocracy was then renowned throughout Europe, Villeroy was preeminent among the

French aristocracy. His stature was tall, his countenance handsome, his manners nobly and somewhat

haughtily polite, his dress, his furniture, his equipages, his table, magnificent. No man told a story with more

vivacity; no man sate his horse better in a hunting party; no man made love with more success; no man staked

and lost heaps of gold with more agreeable unconcern; no man was more intimately acquainted with the

adventures, the attachments, the enmities of the lords and ladies who daily filled the halls of Versailles. There

were two characters especially which this fine gentleman had studied during many years, and of which he

knew all the plaits and windings, the character of the King, and the character of her who was Queen in every

thing but name. But there ended Villeroy's acquirements. He was profoundly ignorant both of books and of

business. At the Council Board he never opened his mouth without exposing himself. For war he had not a

single qualification except that personal courage which was common to him with the whole class of which he

was a member. At every great crisis of his political and of his military life he was alternately drunk with

arrogance and sunk in dejection. Just before he took a momentous step his selfconfidence was boundless; he

would listen to no suggestion; he would not admit into his mind the thought that failure was possible. On the

first check he gave up every thing for lost, became incapable of directing, and ran up and down in helpless

despair. Lewis however loved him; and he, to do him justice, loved Lewis. The kindness of the master was

proof against all the disasters which were brought on his kingdom by the rashness and weakness of the

servant; and the gratitude of the servant was honourably, though not judiciously, manifested on more than

Such was the general to whom the direction of the campaign in the Netherlands was confided. The Duke of

Maine was sent to learn the art of war under this preceptor. Maine, the natural son of Lewis by the Duchess of

Montespan, had been brought up from childhood by Madame de Maintenon, and was loved by Lewis with the

love of a father, by Madame de Maintenon with the not less tender love of a foster mother.

Grave men were scandalized by the ostentatious manner in which the King, while making a high profession

of piety, exhibited his partiality for this offspring of a double adultery. Kindness, they said, was doubtless due

from a parent to a child; but decency was also due from a Sovereign to his people. In spite of these murmurs

the youth had been publicly acknowledged, loaded with wealth and dignities, created a Duke and Peer,

placed, by an extraordinary act of royal power, above Dukes and Peers of older creation, married to a

Princess of the blood royal, and appointed Grand Master of the Artillery of the Realm. With abilities and

courage he might have played a great part in the world. But his intellect was small; his nerves were weak; and

the women and priests who had educated him had effectually assisted nature. He was orthodox in belief,

correct in morals, insinuating in address, a hypocrite, a mischiefmaker and a coward.

It was expected at Versailles that Flanders would, during this year, be the chief theatre of war. Here,

therefore, a great army was collected. Strong lines were formed from the Lys to the Scheld, and Villeroy

fixed his headquarters near Tournay. Boufflers, with about twelve thousand men, guarded the banks of the

On the other side the British and Dutch troops, who were under ` William's immediate command, mustered

in the neighbourhood of Ghent. The Elector of Bavaria, at the head of a great force, lay near Brussels. A

smaller army, consisting chiefly of Brandenburghers was encamped not far from Huy.

Early in June military operations commenced. The first movements of William were mere feints intended to

prevent the French generals from suspecting his real purpose. He had set his heart on retaking Namur. The

loss of Namur had been the most mortifying of all the disasters of a disastrous war. The importance of Namur

in a military point of view had always been great, and had become greater than ever during the three years

which had elapsed since the last siege. New works, the masterpieces of Vauban, had been added to the old

defences which had been constructed with the utmost skill of Cohorn. So ably had the two illustrious

engineers vied with each other and cooperated with nature that the fortress was esteemed the strongest in

Europe. Over one gate had been placed a vaunting inscription which defied the allies to wrench the prize

William kept his own counsel so well that not a hint of his intention got abroad. Some thought that Dunkirk,

some that Ypres was his object. The marches and skirmishes by which he disguised his design were

compared by Saint Simon to the moves of a skilful chess player. Feuquieres, much more deeply versed in

military science than Saint Simon, informs us that some of these moves were hazardous, and that such a game

could not have been safely played against Luxemburg; and this is probably true, but Luxemburg was gone;

While the King was thus employed, the Jacobites at home, being unable, in his absence, to prosecute their

design against his person, contented themselves with plotting against his government. They were somewhat

less closely watched than during the preceding year; for the event of the trials at Manchester had discouraged

Aaron Smith and his agents. Trenchard, whose vigilance and severity had made him an object of terror and

hatred, was no more, and had been succeeded, in what may be called the subordinate Secretaryship of State,

by Sir William Trumball, a learned civilian and an experienced diplomatist, of moderate opinions, and of

temper cautious to timidity.602 The malecontents were emboldened by the lenity of the administration.

William had scarcely sailed for the Continent when they held a great meeting at one of their favourite haunts,

the Old King's Head in Leadenhall Street. Charnock, Porter, Goodman, Parkyns and Fenwick were present.

The Earl of Aylesbury was there, a man whose attachment to the exiled house was notorious, but who always

denied that he had ever thought of effecting a restoration by immoral means. His denial would be entitled to

more credit if he had not, by taking the oaths to the government against which he was constantly intriguing,

forfeited the right to be considered as a man of conscience and honour. In the assembly was Sir John Friend,

a nonjuror who had indeed a very slender wit, but who had made a very large fortune by brewing, and who

spent it freely in sedition. After dinner,for the plans of the Jacobites were generally laid over wine, and

generally bore some trace of the conviviality in which they had originated,it was resolved that the time was

come for an insurrection and a French invasion, and that a special messenger should carry the sense of the

meeting to Saint Germains. Charnock was selected. He undertook the commission, crossed the Channel, saw

James, and had interviews with the ministers of Lewis, but could arrange nothing. The English malecontents

would not stir till ten thousand French troops were in the island; and ten thousand French troops could not,

without great risk, be withdrawn from the army which was contending against William in the Low Countries.

When Charnock returned to report that his embassy had been unsuccessful, he found some of his confederates

in gaol. They had during his absence amused themselves, after their fashion, by trying to raise a riot in

London on the tenth of June, the birthday of the unfortunate Prince of Wales. They met at a tavern in Drury

Lane, and, when hot with wine, sallied forth sword in hand, headed by Porter and Goodman, beat

kettledrums, unfurled banners, and began to light bonfires. But the watch, supported by the populace, was too

strong for the revellers. They were put to rout; the tavern where they had feasted was sacked by the mob; the

ringleaders were apprehended, tried, fined and imprisoned, but regained their liberty in time to bear a part in a

By this time all was ready for the execution of the plan which William had formed. That plan had been

communicated to the other chiefs of the allied forces, and had been warmly approved. Vaudemont was left in

Flanders with a considerable force to watch Villeroy. The King, with the rest of his army, marched straight on

Namur. At the same moment the Elector of Bavaria advanced towards the same point on one side, and the

Brandenburghers on another. So well had these movements been concerted, and so rapidly were they

performed, that the skilful and energetic Boufflers had but just time to throw himself into the fortress. He was

accompanied by seven regiments of dragoons, by a strong body of gunners, sappers and miners, and by an

officer named Megrigny, who was esteemed the best engineer in the French service with the exception of

Vauban. A few hours after Boufflers had entered the place the besieging forces closed round it on every side;

The news excited no alarm at the French Court. There it was not doubted that William would soon be

compelled to abandon his enterprise with grievous loss and ignominy. The town was strong; the castle was

believed to be impregnable; the magazines were filled with provisions and ammunition sufficient to last till

the time at which the armies of that age were expected to retire into winter quarters; the garrison consisted of

sixteen thousand of the best troops in the world; they were commanded by an excellent general; he was

assisted by an excellent engineer; nor was it doubted that Villeroy would march with his great army to the

assistance of Boufflers, and that the besiegers would then be in much more danger than the besieged.

These hopes were kept up by the despatches of Villeroy. He proposed, he said, first to annihilate the army of

Vaudemont, and then to drive William from Namur. Vaudemont might try to avoid an action; but he could

not escape. The Marshal went so far as to promise his master news of a complete victory within twentyfour

hours. Lewis passed a whole day in impatient expectation. At last, instead of an officer of high rank loaded

with English and Dutch standards, arrived a courier bringing news that Vaudemont had effected a retreat with

scarcely any loss, and was safe under the walls of Ghent. William extolled the generalship of his lieutenant in

the warmest terms. "My cousin," he wrote, "you have shown yourself a greater master of your art than if you

had won a pitched battle."604 In the French camp, however, and at the French Court it was universally held

that Vaudemont had been saved less by his own skill than by the misconduct of those to whom he was

opposed. Some threw the whole blame on Villeroy; and Villeroy made no attempt to vindicate himself. But it

was generally believed that he might, at least to a great extent, have vindicated himself, had he not preferred

royal favour to military renown. His plan, it was said, might have succeeded, had not the execution been

entrusted to the Duke of Maine. At the first glimpse of danger the bastard's heart had died within him. He had

not been able to conceal his poltroonery. He had stood trembling, stuttering, calling for his confessor, while

the old officers round him, with tears in their eyes, urged him to advance. During a short time the disgrace of

the son was concealed from the father. But the silence of Villeroy showed that there was a secret; the

pleasantries of the Dutch gazettes soon elucidated the mystery; and Lewis learned, if not the whole truth, yet

enough to make him miserable. Never during his long reign had he been so moved. During some hours his

gloomy irritability kept his servants, his courtiers, even his priests, in terror. He so far forgot the grace and

dignity for which he was renowned throughout the world that, in the sight of all the splendid crowd of

gentlemen and ladies who came to see him dine at Marli, he broke a cane on the shoulders of a lacquey, and

The siege of Namur meanwhile was vigorously pressed by the allies. The scientific part of their operations

was under the direction of Cohorn, who was spurred by emulation to exert his utmost skill. He had suffered,

three years before, the mortification of seeing the town, as he had fortified it, taken by his great master

Vauban. To retake it, now that the fortifications had received Vauban's last improvements, would be a noble

On the second of July the trenches were opened. On the eighth a gallant sally of French dragoons was

gallantly beaten back; and, late on the same evening, a strong body of infantry, the English footguards

leading the way, stormed, after a bloody conflict, the outworks on the Brussels side. The King in person

directed the attack; and his subjects were delighted to learn that, when the fight was hottest, he laid his hand

on the shoulder of the Elector of Bavaria, and exclaimed, "Look, look at my brave English!" Conspicuous in

bravery even among those brave English was Cutts. In that bulldog courage which flinches from no danger,

however terrible, he was unrivalled. There was no difficulty in finding hardy volunteers, German, Dutch and

British, to go on a forlorn hope; but Cutts was the only man who appeared to consider such an expedition as a

party of pleasure. He was so much at his ease in the hottest fire of the French batteries that his soldiers gave

On the seventeenth the first counterscarp of the town was attacked. The English and Dutch were thrice

repulsed with great slaughter, and returned thrice to the charge. At length, in spite of the exertions of the

French officers, who fought valiantly sword in hand on the glacis, the assailants remained in possession of the

disputed works. While the conflict was raging, William, who was giving his orders under a shower of bullets,

saw with surprise and anger, among the officers of his staff, Michael Godfrey the Deputy Governor of the

Bank of England. This gentleman had come to the King's headquarters in order to make some arrangements

for the speedy and safe remittance of money from England to the army in the Netherlands, and was curious to

see real war. Such curiosity William could not endure. "Mr. Godfrey," he said, "you ought not to run these

hazards; you are not a soldier; you can be of no use to us here." "Sir," answered Godfrey, "I run no more

hazard than Your Majesty." "Not so," said William; "I am where it is my duty to be; and I may without

presumption commit my life to God's keeping; but you" While they were talking a cannon ball from the

ramparts laid Godfrey dead at the King's feet. It was not found however that the fear of being

Godfreyed,such was during some time the cant phrase, sufficed to prevent idle gazers from coming to

the trenches.607 Though William forbade his coachmen, footmen and cooks to expose themselves, he

repeatedly saw them skulking near the most dangerous spots and trying to get a peep at the fighting. He was

sometimes, it is said, provoked into horsewhipping them out of the range of the French guns; and the story,

On the twentieth of July the Bavarians and Brandenburghers, under the direction of Cohorn, made themselves

masters, after a hard fight, of a line of works which Vauban had cut in the solid rock from the Sambre to the

Meuse. Three days later, the English and Dutch, Cutts, as usual, in the front, lodged themselves on the second

counterscarp. All was ready for a general assault, when a white flag was hung out from the ramparts. The

effective strength of the garrison was now little more than one half of what it had been when the trenches

were opened. Boufflers apprehended that it would be impossible for eight thousand men to defend the whole

circuit of the walls much longer; but he felt confident that such a force would be sufficient to keep the

stronghold on the summit of the rock. Terms of capitulation were speedily adjusted. A gate was delivered up

to the allies. The French were allowed forty eight hours to retire into the castle, and were assured that the

wounded men whom they left below, about fifteen hundred in number, should he well treated. On the sixth

the allies marched in. The contest for the possession of the town was over; and a second and more terrible

Villeroy had in the meantime made some petty conquests. Dixmuyde, which might have offered some

resistance, had opened its gates to him, not without grave suspicion of treachery on the part of the governor.

Deynse, which was less able to make any defence, had followed the example. The garrisons of both towns

were, in violation of a convention which had been made for the exchange of prisoners, sent into France. The

Marshal then advanced towards Brussels in the hope, as it should seem, that, by menacing that beautiful

capital, he might induce the allies to raise the siege of the castle of Namur. During thirtysix hours he rained

shells and redhot bullets on the city. The Electress of Bavaria, who was within the walls, miscarried from

terror. Six convents perished. Fifteen hundred houses were at once in flames. The whole lower town would

have been burned to the ground, had not the inhabitants stopped the conflagration by blowing up numerous

buildings. Immense quantities of the finest lace and tapestry were destroyed; for the industry and trade which

made Brussels famous throughout the world had hitherto been little affected by the war. Several of the stately

piles which looked down on the market place were laid in ruins. The Town Hall itself, the noblest of the

many noble senate houses reared by the burghers of the Netherlands, was in imminent peril. All this

devastation, however, produced no effect except much private misery. William was not to be intimidated or

provoked into relaxing the firm grasp with which he held Namur. The fire which his batteries kept up round

the castle was such as had never been known in war. The French gunners were fairly driven from their pieces

by the hail of balls, and forced to take refuge in vaulted galleries under the ground. Cohorn exultingly betted

the Elector of Bavaria four hundred pistoles that the place would fall by the thirtyfirst of August, New Style.

Boufflers now began to feel that his only hope was in Villeroy. Villeroy had proceeded from Brussels to

Enghien; he had there collected all the French troops that could be spared from the remotest fortresses of the

Netherlands; and he now, at the head of more than eighty thousand men, marched towards Namur.

Vaudemont meanwhile joined the besiegers. William therefore thought himself strong enough to offer battle

to Villeroy, without intermitting for a moment the operations against Boufflers. The Elector of Bavaria was

entrusted with the immediate direction of the siege. The King of England took up, on the west of the town, a

strong position strongly intrenched, and there awaited the French, who were advancing from Enghien. Every

thing seemed to indicate that a great day was at hand. Two of the most numerous and best ordered armies that

Europe had ever seen were brought face to face. On the fifteenth of August the defenders of the castle saw

from their watchtowers the mighty host of their countrymen. But between that host and the citadel was drawn

up in battle order the not less mighty host of William. Villeroy, by a salute of ninety guns, conveyed to

Boufflers the promise of a speedy rescue; and at night Boufflers, by fire signals which were seen far over the

vast plain of the Meuse and Sambre, urged Villeroy to fulfil that promise without delay. In the capitals both

of France and England the anxiety was intense. Lewis shut himself up in his oratory, confessed, received the

Eucharist, and gave orders that the host should be exposed in his chapel. His wife ordered all her nuns to their

knees.610 London was kept in a state of distraction by a succession of rumours fabricated some by Jacobites

and some by stockjobbers. Early one morning it was confidently averred that there had been a battle, that the

allies had been beaten, that the King had been killed, that the siege had been raised. The Exchange, as soon as

it was opened, was filled to overflowing by people who came to learn whether the bad news was true. The

streets were stopped up all day by groups of talkers and listeners. In the afternoon the Gazette, which had

been impatiently expected, and which was eagerly read by thousands, calmed the excitement, but not

completely; for it was known that the Jacobites sometimes received, by the agency of privateers and

smugglers who put to sea in all weathers, intelligence earlier than that which came through regular channels

to the Secretary of State at Whitehall. Before night, however, the agitation had altogether subsided; but it was

suddenly revived by a bold imposture. A horseman in the uniform of the Guards spurred through the City,

announcing that the King had been killed. He would probably have raised a serious tumult, had not some

apprentices, zealous for the Revolution and the Protestant religion, knocked him down and carried him to

Newgate. The confidential correspondent of the States General informed them that, in spite of all the stories

which the disaffected party invented and circulated, the general persuasion was that the allies would be

successful. The touchstone of sincerity in England, he said, was the betting. The Jacobites were ready enough

to prove that William must be defeated, or to assert that he had been defeated; but they would not give the

odds, and could hardly be induced to take any moderate odds. The Whigs, on the other hand, were ready to

The event justified the confidence of the Whigs and the backwardness of the Jacobites. On the sixteenth, the

seventeenth, and the eighteenth of August the army of Villeroy and the army of William confronted each

other. It was fully expected that the nineteenth would be the decisive day. The allies were under arms before

dawn. At four William mounted, and continued till eight at night to ride from post to post, disposing his own

troops and watching the movements of the enemy. The enemy approached his lines in several places, near

enough to see that it would not be easy to dislodge him; but there was no fighting. He lay down to rest,

expecting to be attacked when the sun rose. But when the sun rose he found that the French had fallen back

some miles. He immediately sent to request that the Elector would storm the castle without delay. While the

preparations were making, Portland was sent to summon the garrison for the last time. It was plain, he said to

Boufflers, that Villeroy had given up all hope of being able to raise the siege. It would therefore be an useless

waste of life to prolong the contest. Boufflers however thought that another day of slaughter was necessary to

Early in the afternoon the assault was made in four places at once by four divisions of the confederate army.

One point was assigned to the Brandenburghers, another to the Dutch, a third to the Bavarians, and a fourth to

the English. The English were at first less fortunate than they had hitherto been. The truth is that most of the

regiments which had seen service had marched with William to encounter Villeroy. As soon as the signal was

given by the blowing up of two barrels of powder, Cutts, at the head of a small body of grenadiers, marched

first out of the trenches with drums beating and colours flying. This gallant band was to be supported by four

battalions which had never been in action, and which, though full of spirit, wanted the steadiness which so

terrible a service required. The officers fell fast. Every Colonel, every Lieutenant Colonel, was killed or

severely wounded. Cutts received a shot in the head which for a time disabled him. The raw recruits, left

almost without direction, rushed forward impetuously till they found themselves in disorder and out of

breath, with a precipice before them, under a terrible fire, and under a shower, scarcely less terrible, of

fragments of rock and wall. They lost heart, and rolled back in confusion, till Cutts, whose wound had by this

time been dressed, succeeded in rallying them. He then led them, not to the place from which they had been

driven back, but to another spot where a fearful battle was raging. The Bavarians had made their onset

gallantly but unsuccessfully; their general had fallen; and they were beginning to waver when the arrival of

the Salamander and his men changed the fate of the day. Two hundred English volunteers, bent on retrieving

at all hazards the disgrace of the recent repulse, were the first to force a way, sword in hand, through the

palisades, to storm a battery which had made great havoc among the Bavarians, and to turn the guns against

the garrison. Meanwhile the Brandenburghers, excellently disciplined and excellently commanded, had

performed, with no great loss, the duty assigned to them. The Dutch had been equally successful. When the

evening closed in the allies had made a lodgment of a mile in extent on the outworks of the castle. The

And now Boufflers thought that he had done all that his duty required. On the morrow he asked for a truce of

fortyeight hours in order that the hundreds of corpses which choked the ditches and which would soon have

spread pestilence among both the besiegers and the besieged might be removed and interred. His request was

granted; and, before the time expired, he intimated that he was disposed to capitulate. He would, he said,

deliver up the castle in ten days, if he were not relieved sooner. He was informed that the allies would not

treat with him on such terms, and that he must either consent to an immediate surrender, or prepare for an

immediate assault. He yielded, and it was agreed that he and his men should be suffered to depart, leaving the

citadel, the artillery, and the stores to the conquerors. Three peals from all the guns of the confederate army

notified to Villeroy the fall of the stronghold which he had vainly attempted to succour. He instantly retreated

towards Mons, leaving William to enjoy undisturbed a triumph which was made more delightful by the

The twentysixth of August was fixed for an exhibition such as the oldest soldier in Europe had never seen,

and such as, a few weeks before, the youngest had scarcely hoped to see. From the first battle of Conde to the

last battle of Luxemburg, the tide of military success had run, without any serious interruption, in one

direction. That tide had turned. For the first time, men said, since France had Marshals, a Marshal of France

The allied forces, foot and horse, drawn up in two lines, formed a magnificent avenue from the breach which

had lately been so desperately contested to the bank of the Meuse. The Elector of Bavaria, the Landgrave of

Hesse, and many distinguished officers were on horseback in the vicinity of the castle. William was near

them in his coach. The garrison, reduced to about five thousand men, came forth with drums beating and

ensigns flying. Boufflers and his staff closed the procession. There had been some difficulty about the form

of the greeting which was to be exchanged between him and the allied Sovereigns. An Elector of Bavaria was

hardly entitled to be saluted by the Marshal with the sword. A King of England was undoubtedly entitled to

such a mark of respect; but France did not recognise William as King of England. At last Boufflers consented

to perform the salute without marking for which of the two princes it was intended. He lowered his sword.

William alone acknowledged the compliment. A short conversation followed. The Marshal, in order to avoid

the use of the words Sire and Majesty, addressed himself only to the Elector. The Elector, with every mark of

deference, reported to William what had been said; and William gravely touched his hat. The officers of the

garrison carried back to their country the news that the upstart who at Paris was designated only as Prince of

Orange, was treated by the proudest potentates of the Germanic body with a respect as profound as that which

The ceremonial was now over; and Boufflers passed on but he had proceeded but a short way when he was

stopped by Dykvelt who accompanied the allied army as deputy from the States General. "You must return to

the town, Sir," said Dykvelt. "The King of England has ordered me to inform you that you are his prisoner."

Boufflers was in transports of rage. His officers crowded round him and vowed to die in his defence. But

resistance was out of the question; a strong body of Dutch cavalry came up; and the Brigadier who

commanded them demanded the Marshal's sword. The Marshal uttered indignant exclamations: "This is an

infamous breach of faith. Look at the terms of the capitulation. What have I done to deserve such an affront?

Have I not behaved like a man of honour? Ought I not to be treated as such? But beware what you do,

gentlemen. I serve a master who can and will avenge me." "I am a soldier, Sir," answered the Brigadier, "and

my business is to obey orders without troubling myself about consequences." Dykvelt calmly and courteously

replied to the Marshal's indignant exclamations. "The King of England has reluctantly followed the example

set by your master. The soldiers who garrisoned Dixmuyde and Deynse have, in defiance of plighted faith,

been sent prisoners into France. The Prince whom they serve would be wanting in his duty to them if he did

not retaliate. His Majesty might with perfect justice have detained all the French who were in Namur. But he

will not follow to such a length a precedent which he disapproves. He has determined to arrest you and you

alone; and, Sir, you must not regard as an affront what is in truth a mark of his very particular esteem. How

can he pay you a higher compliment than by showing that he considers you as fully equivalent to the five or

six thousand men whom your sovereign wrongfully holds in captivity? Nay, you shall even now be permitted

to proceed if you will give me your word of honour to return hither unless the garrisons of Dixmuyde and

Deynse are released within a fortnight." "I do not at all know," answered Boufflers, "why the King my master

detains those men; and therefore I cannot hold out any hope that he will liberate them. You have an army at

your back; I am alone; and you must do your pleasure." He gave up his sword, returned to Namur, and was

sent thence to Huy, where he passed a few days in luxurious repose, was allowed to choose his own walks

and rides, and was treated with marked respect by those who guarded him. In the shortest time in which it

was possible to post from the place where he was confined to the French Court and back again, he received

full powers to promise that the garrisons of Dixmuyde and Deynse should be sent back. He was instantly

liberated; and he set off for Fontainebleau, where an honourable reception awaited him. He was created a

Duke and a Peer. That he might be able to support his new dignities a considerable sum of money was

bestowed on him; and, in the presence of the whole aristocracy of France, he was welcomed home by Lewis

In all the countries which were united against France the news of the fall of Namur was received with joy; but

here the exultation was greatest. During several generations our ancestors had achieved nothing considerable

by land against foreign enemies. We had indeed occasionally furnished to our allies small bands of auxiliaries

who had well maintained the honour of the nation. But from the day on which the two brave Talbots, father

and son, had perished in the vain attempt to reconquer Guienne, till the Revolution, there had been on the

Continent no campaign in which Englishmen had borne a principal part. At length our ancestors had again,

after an interval of near two centuries and a half, begun to dispute with the warriors of France the palm of

military prowess. The struggle had been hard. The genius of Luxemburg and the consummate discipline of

the household troops of Lewis had pervailed in two great battles; but the event of those battles had been long

doubtful; the victory had been dearly purchased, and the victor had gained little more than the honour of

remaining master of the field of slaughter. Meanwhile he was himself training his adversaries. The recruits

who survived his severe tuition speedily became veterans. Steinkirk and Landen had formed the volunteers

who followed Cutts through the palisades of Namur. The judgment of all the great warriors whom all the

nations of Western Europe had sent to the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse was that the English

subaltern was inferior to no subaltern and the English private soldier to no private soldier in Christendom.

The English officers of higher rank were thought hardly worthy to command such an army. Cutts, indeed, had

distinguished himself by his intrepidity. But those who most admired him acknowledged that he had neither

The joy of the conquerors was heightened by the recollection of the discomfiture which they had suffered,

three years before, on the same spot, and of the insolence with which their enemy had then triumphed over

them. They now triumphed in their turn. The Dutch struck medals. The Spaniards sang Te Deums. Many

poems, serious and sportive, appeared, of which one only has lived. Prior burlesqued, with admirable spirit

and pleasantry, the bombastic verses in which Boileau had celebrated the first taking of Namur. The two

odes, printed side by side, were read with delight in London; and the critics at Will's pronounced that, in wit

The fall of Namur was the great military event of this year. The Turkish war still kept a large part of the

forces of the Emperor employed in indecisive operations on the Danube. Nothing deserving to be mentioned

took place either in Piedmont or on the Rhine. In Catalonia the Spaniards obtained some slight advantages,

advantages due to their English and Dutch allies, who seem to have done all that could be done to help a

nation never much disposed to help itself. The maritime superiority of England and Holland was now fully

established. During the whole year Russell was the undisputed master of the Mediterranean, passed and

repassed between Spain and Italy, bombarded Palamos, spread terror along the whole shore of Provence, and

kept the French fleet imprisoned in the harbour of Toulon. Meanwhile Berkeley was the undisputed master of

the Channel, sailed to and fro in sight of the coasts of Artois, Picardy, Normandy and Brittany, threw shells

into Saint Maloes, Calais and Dunkirk, and burned Granville to the ground. The navy of Lewis, which, five

years before, had been the most formidable in Europe, which had ranged the British seas unopposed from the

Downs to the Land's End, which had anchored in Torbay and had laid Teignmouth in ashes, now gave no

sign of existence except by pillaging merchantmen which were unprovided with convoy. In this lucrative war

the French privateers were, towards the close of the summer, very successful. Several vessels laden with

sugar from Barbadoes were captured. The losses of the unfortunate East India Company, already surrounded

by difficulties and impoverished by boundless prodigality in corruption, were enormous. Five large ships

returning from the Eastern seas, with cargoes of which the value was popularly estimated at a million, fell

into the hands of the enemy. These misfortunes produced some murmuring on the Royal Exchange. But, on

the whole, the temper of the capital and of the nation was better than it had been during some years.

Meanwhile events which no preceding historian has condescended to mention, but which were of far greater

importance than the achievements of William's army or of Russell's fleet, were taking place in London. A

great experiment was making. A great revolution was in progress. Newspapers had made their appearance.

While the Licensing Act was in force there was no newspaper in England except the London Gazette, which

was edited by a clerk in the office of the Secretary of State, and which contained nothing but what the

Secretary of State wished the nation to know. There were indeed many periodical papers; but none of those

papers could be called a newspaper. Welwood, a zealous Whig, published a journal called the Observator; but

his Observator, like the Observator which Lestrange had formerly edited, contained, not the news, but merely

dissertations on politics. A crazy bookseller, named John Dunton, published the Athenian Mercury; but the

Athenian Mercury merely discussed questions of natural philosophy, of casuistry and of gallantry. A fellow

of the Royal Society, named John Houghton, published what he called a Collection for the Improvement of

Industry and Trade. But his Collection contained little more than the prices of stocks, explanations of the

modes of doing business in the City, puffs of new projects, and advertisements of books, quack medicines,

chocolate, spa water, civet cats, surgeons wanting ships, valets wanting masters and ladies wanting husbands.

If ever he printed any political news, he transcribed it from the Gazette. The Gazette was so partial and so

meagre a chronicle of events that, though it had no competitors, it had but a small circulation. Only eight

thousand copies were printed, much less than one to each parish in the kingdom. In truth a person who had

studied the history of his own time only in the Gazette would have been ignorant of many events of the

highest importance. He would, for example, have known nothing about the Court Martial on Torrington, the

Lancashire Trials, the burning of the Bishop of Salisbury's Pastoral Letter or the impeachment of the Duke of

Leeds. But the deficiencies of the Gazette were to a certain extent supplied in London by the coffeehouses,

On the third of May 1695 the law which had subjected the press to a censorship expired. Within a fortnight, a

stanch old Whig, named Harris, who had, in the days of the Exclusion Bill, attempted to set up a newspaper

entitled Intelligence Domestic and Foreign, and who had been speedily forced to relinquish that design,

announced that the Intelligence Domestic and Foreign, suppressed fourteen years before by tyranny, would

again appear. Ten days after the first number of the Intelligence Domestic and Foreign was printed the first

number of the English Courant. Then came the Packet Boat from Holland and Flanders, the Pegasus, the

London Newsletter, the London Post, the Flying Post, the Old Postmaster, the Postboy and the Postman. The

history of the newspapers of England from that time to the present day is a most interesting and instructive

part of the history of the country. At first they were small and meanlooking. Even the Postboy and the

Postman, which seem to have been the best conducted and the most prosperous, were wretchedly printed on

scraps of dingy paper such as would not now be thought good enough for street ballads. Only two numbers

came out in a week, and a number contained little more matter than may be found in a single column of a

daily paper of our time. What is now called a leading article seldom appeared, except when there was a

scarcity of intelligence, when the Dutch mails were detained by the west wind, when the Rapparees were

quiet in the Bog of Allen, when no stage coach had been stopped by highwaymen, when no nonjuring

congregation had been dispersed by constables, when no ambassador had made his entry with a long train of

coaches and six, when no lord or poet had been buried in the Abbey, and when consequently it was difficult

to fill up four scanty pages. Yet the leading articles, though inserted, as it should seem, only in the absence of

It is a remarkable fact that the infant newspapers were all on the side of King William and the Revolution.

This fact may be partly explained by the circumstance that the editors were, at first, on their good behaviour.

It was by no means clear that their trade was not in itself illegal. The printing of newspapers was certainly not

prohibited by any statute. But, towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, the judges had

pronounced that it was a misdemeanour at common law to publish political intelligence without the King's

license. It is true that the judges who laid down this doctrine were removable at the royal pleasure and were

eager on all occasions to exalt the royal prerogative. How the question, if it were again raised, would be

decided by Holt and Treby was doubtful; and the effect of the doubt was to make the ministers of the Crown

indulgent and to make the journalists cautious. On neither side was there a wish to bring the question of right

to issue. The government therefore connived at the publication of the newspapers; and the conductors of the

newspapers carefully abstained from publishing any thing that could provoke or alarm the government. It is

true that, in one of the earliest numbers of one of the new journals, a paragraph appeared which seemed

intended to convey an insinuation that the Princess Anne did not sincerely rejoice at the fall of Namur. But

the printer made haste to atone for his fault by the most submissive apologies. During a considerable time the

unofficial gazettes, though much more garrulous and amusing than the official gazette, were scarcely less

courtly. Whoever examines them will find that the King is always mentioned with profound respect. About

the debates and divisions of the two Houses a reverential silence is preserved. There is much invective; but it

is almost all directed against the Jacobites and the French. It seems certain that the government of William

gained not a little by the substitution of these printed newspapers, composed under constant dread of the

Attorney General, for the old newsletters, which were written with unbounded license.616

The pamphleteers were under less restraint than the journalists; yet no person who has studied with attention

the political controversies of that time can have failed to perceive that the libels on William's person and

government were decidedly less coarse and rancorous during the latter half of his reign than during the earlier

half. And the reason evidently is that the press, which had been fettered during the earlier half of his reign,

was free during the latter half. While the censorship existed, no tract blaming, even in the most temperate and

decorous language, the conduct of any public department, was likely to be printed with the approbation of the

licenser. To print such a tract without the approbation of the licenser was illegal. In general, therefore, the

respectable and moderate opponents of the Court, not being able to publish in the manner prescribed by law,

and not thinking it right or safe to publish in a manner prohibited by law, held their peace, and left the

business of criticizing the administration to two classes of men, fanatical nonjurors who sincerely thought

that the Prince of Orange was entitled to as little charity or courtesy as the Prince of Darkness, and Grub

Street hacks, coarseminded, badhearted and foulmouthed. Thus there was scarcely a single man of judgment,

temper and integrity among the many who were in the habit of writing against the government. Indeed the

habit of writing against the government had, of itself, an unfavourable effect on the character. For whoever

was in the habit of writing against the government was in the habit of breaking the law; and the habit of

breaking even an unreasonable law tends to make men altogether lawless. However absurd a tariff may be, a

smuggler is but too likely to be a knave and a ruffian. How ever oppressive a game law may be, the transition

is but too easy from a poacher to a murderer. And so, though little indeed can be said in favour of the statutes

which imposed restraints on literature, there was much risk that a man who was constantly violating those

statutes would not be a man of high honour and rigid uprightness. An author who was determined to print,

and could not obtain the sanction of the licenser, must employ the services of needy and desperate outcasts,

who, hunted by the peace officers, and forced to assume every week new aliases and new disguises, hid their

paper and their types in those dens of vice which are the pest and the shame of great capitals. Such wretches

as these he must bribe to keep his secret and to run the chance of having their backs flayed and their ears

clipped in his stead. A man stooping to such companions and to such expedients could hardly retain

unimpaired the delicacy of his sense of what was right and becoming. The emancipation of the press

produced a great and salutary change. The best and wisest men in the ranks of the opposition now assumed an

office which had hitherto been abandoned to the unprincipled or the hotheaded. Tracts against the

government were written in a style not misbecoming statesmen and gentlemen; and even the compositions of

the lower and fiercer class of malecontents became somewhat less brutal and less ribald than in the days of

Some weak men had imagined that religion and morality stood in need of the protection of the licenser. The

event signally proved that they were in error. In truth the censorship had scarcely put any restraint on

licentiousness or profaneness. The Paradise Lost had narrowly escaped mutilation; for the Paradise Lost was

the work of a man whose politics were hateful to the ruling powers. But Etherege's She Would If She Could,

Wycherley's Country Wife, Dryden's Translations from the Fourth Book of Lucretius, obtained the

Imprimatur without difficulty; for Dryden, Etherege and Wycherley were courtiers. From the day on which

the emancipation of our literature was accomplished, the purification of our literature began. That purification

was effected, not by the intervention of senates or magistrates, but by the opinion of the great body of

educated Englishmen, before whom good and evil were set, and who were left free to make their choice.

During a hundred and sixty years the liberty of our press has been constantly becoming more and more entire;

and during those hundred and sixty years the restraint imposed on writers by the general feeling of readers

has been constantly becoming more and more strict. At length even that class of works in which it was

formerly thought that a voluptuous imagination was privileged to disport itself, love songs, comedies, novels,

have become more decorous than the sermons of the seventeenth century. At this day foreigners, who dare

not print a word reflecting on the government under which they live, are at a loss to understand how it

On the tenth of October, the King, leaving his army in winter quarters, arrived in England, and was received

with unwonted enthusiasm. During his passage through the capital to his palace, the bells of every church

were ringing, and every street was lighted up. It was late before he made his way through the shouting crowds

to Kensington. But, late as it was, a council was instantly held. An important point was to be decided. Should

the House of Commons be permitted to sit again, or should there be an immediate dissolution? The King

would probably have been willing to keep that House to the end of his reign. But this was not in his power.

The Triennial Act had fixed the twentyfifth of March as the latest day of the existence of the Parliament. If

therefore there were not a general election in 1695, there must be a general election in 1696; and who could

say what might be the state of the country in 1696? There might be an unfortunate campaign. There might be,

indeed there was but too good reason to believe that there would be, a terrible commercial crisis. In either

case, it was probable that there would be much ill humour. The campaign of 1695 had been brilliant; the

nation was in an excellent temper; and William wisely determined to seize the fortunate moment. Two

proclamations were immediately published. One of them announced, in the ordinary form, that His Majesty

had determined to dissolve the old Parliament and had ordered writs to be issued for a new Parliament. The

other proclamation was unprecedented. It signified the royal pleasure to be that every regiment quartered in a

place where an election was to be held should march out of that place the day before the nomination, and

should not return till the people had made their choice. From this order, which was generally considered as

indicating a laudable respect for popular rights, the garrisons of fortified towns and castles were necessarily

But, though William carefully abstained from disgusting the constituent bodies by any thing that could look

like coercion or intimidation, he did not disdain to influence their votes by milder means. He resolved to

spend the six weeks of the general election in showing himself to the people of many districts which he had

never yet visited. He hoped to acquire in this way a popularity which might have a considerable effect on the

returns. He therefore forced himself to behave with a graciousness and affability in which he was too often

deficient; and the consequence was that he received, at every stage of his progress, marks of the good will of

his subjects. Before he set out he paid a visit in form to his sister in law, and was much pleased with his

reception. The Duke of Gloucester, only six years old, with a little musket on his shoulder, came to meet his

uncle, and presented arms. "I am learning my drill," the child said, "that I may help you to beat the French."

The King laughed much, and, a few days later, rewarded the young soldier with the Garter.617

On the seventeenth of October William went to Newmarket, now a place rather of business than of pleasure,

but, in the autumns of the seventeenth century, the gayest and most luxurious spot in the island. It was not

unusual for the whole Court and Cabinet to go down to the meetings. Jewellers and milliners, players and

fiddlers, venal wits and venal beauties followed in crowds. The streets were made impassable by coaches and

six. In the places of public resort peers flirted with maids of honour; and officers of the Life Guards, all

plumes and gold lace, jostled professors in trencher caps and black gowns. For the neighbouring University

of Cambridge always sent her highest functionaries with loyal addresses, and selected her ablest theologians

to preach before the Sovereign and his splendid retinue. In the wild days of the Restoration, indeed, the most

learned and eloquent divine might fail to draw a fashionable audience, particularly if Buckingham announced

his intention of holding forth; for sometimes His Grace would enliven the dulness of a Sunday morning by

addressing to the bevy of fine gentlemen and fine ladies a ribald exhortation which he called a sermon. But

the Court of William was more decent; and the Academic dignitaries were treated with marked respect. With

lords and ladies from Saint James's and Soho, and with doctors from Trinity College and King's College,

were mingled the provincial aristocracy, foxhunting squires and their rosycheeked daughters, who had come

in queerlooking family coaches drawn by carthorses from the remotest parishes of three or four counties to

see their Sovereign. The heath was fringed by a wild gipsylike camp of vast extent. For the hope of being

able to feed on the leavings of many sumptuous tables, and to pick up some of the guineas and crowns which

the spendthrifts of London were throwing about, attracted thousands of peasants from a circle of many

William, after holding his court a few days at this joyous place, and receiving the homage of Cambridgeshire,

Huntingdonshire and Suffolk, proceeded to Althorpe. It seems strange that he should, in the course of what

was really a canvassing tour, have honoured with such a mark of favour a man so generally distrusted and

hated as Sunderland. But the people were determined to be pleased. All Northamptonshire crowded to kiss

the royal hand in that fine gallery which had been embellished by the pencil of Vandyke and made classical

by the muse of Waller; and the Earl tried to conciliate his neighbours by feasting them at eight tables, all

blazing with plate. From Althorpe the King proceeded to Stamford. The Earl of Exeter, whose princely seat

was, and still is, one of the great sights of England, had never taken the oaths, and had, in order to avoid an

interview which must have been disagreeable, found some pretext for going up to London, but had left

directions that the illustrious guest should be received with fitting hospitality. William was fond of

architecture and of gardening; and his nobles could not flatter him more than by asking his opinion about the

improvement of their country seats. At a time when he had many cares pressing on his mind he took a great

interest in the building of Castle Howard; and a wooden model of that edifice, the finest specimen of a

vicious style, was sent to Kensington for his inspection. We cannot therefore wonder that he should have seen

Burleigh with delight. He was indeed not content with one view, but rose early on the following morning for

the purpose of examining the building a second time. From Stamford he went on to Lincoln, where he was

greeted by the clergy in full canonicals, by the magistrates in scarlet robes, and by a multitude of baronets,

knights and esquires, from all parts of the immense plain which lies between the Trent and the German

Ocean. After attending divine service in the magnificent cathedral, he took his departure, and journeyed

eastward. On the frontier of Nottinghamshire the Lord Lieutenant of the county, John Holles, Duke of

Newcastle, with a great following, met the royal carriages and escorted them to his seat at Welbeck, a

mansion surrounded by gigantic oaks which scarcely seem older now than on the day when that splendid

procession passed under their shade. The house in which William was then, during a few hours, a guest,

passed long after his death, by female descents, from the Holleses to the Harleys, and from the Harleys to the

Bentincks, and now contains the originals of those singularly interesting letters which passed between him

and his trusty friend and servant Portland. At Welbeck the grandees of the north were assembled. The Lord

Mayor of York came thither with a train of magistrates, and the Archbishop of York with a train of divines.

William hunted several times in that forest, the finest in the kingdom, which in old times gave shelter to

Robin Hood and Little John, and which is now portioned out into the princely domains of Welbeck,

Thoresby, Clumber and Worksop. Four hundred gentlemen on horseback partook of his sport. The

Nottinghamshire squires were delighted to hear him say at table, after a noble stag chase, that he hoped that

this was not the last run which he should have with them, and that he must hire a hunting box among their

delightful woods. He then turned southward. He was entertained during one day by the Earl of Stamford at

Bradgate, the place where Lady Jane Grey sate alone reading the last words of Socrates while the deer was

flying through the park followed by the whirlwind of hounds and hunters. On the morrow the Lord Brook

welcomed his Sovereign to Warwick Castle, the finest of those fortresses of the middle ages which have been

turned into peaceful dwellings. Guy's Tower was illuminated. A hundred and twenty gallons of punch were

drunk to His Majesty's health; and a mighty pile of faggots blazed in the middle of the spacious court

overhung by ruins green with the ivy of centuries. The next morning the King, accompanied by a multitude of

Warwickshire gentlemen on horseback, proceeded towards the borders of Gloucestershire. He deviated from

his route to dine with Shrewsbury at a secluded mansion in the Wolds, and in the evening went on to Burford.

The whole population of Burford met him, and entreated him to accept a small token of their love. Burford

was then renowned for its saddles. One inhabitant of the town, in particular, was said by the English to be the

best saddler in Europe. Two of his masterpieces were respectfully offered to William, who received them

At Oxford he was received with great pomp, complimented in a Latin oration, presented with some of the

most beautiful productions of the Academic press, entertained with music, and invited to a sumptuous feast in

the Sheldonian theatre. He departed in a few hours, pleading as an excuse for the shortness of his stay that he

had seen the colleges before, and that this was a visit, not of curiosity, but of kindness. As it was well known

that he did not love the Oxonians and was not loved by them, his haste gave occasion to some idle rumours

which found credit with the vulgar. It was said that he hurried away without tasting the costly banquet which

had been provided for him, because he had been warned by an anonymous letter, that, if he ate or drank in the

theatre, he was a dead man. But it is difficult to believe that a Prince who could scarcely be induced, by the

most earnest entreaties of his friends, to take the most common precautions against assassins of whose

designs he had trustworthy evidence, would have been scared by so silly a hoax; and it is quite certain that the

stages of his progress had been marked, and that he remained at Oxford as long as was compatible with

He was welcomed back to his capital by a splendid show, which had been prepared at great cost during his

absence. Sidney, now Earl of Romney and Master of the Ordnance, had determined to astonish London by an

exhibition which had never been seen in England on so large a scale. The whole skill of the pyrotechnists of

his department was employed to produce a display of fireworks which might vie with any that had been seen

in the gardens of Versailles or on the great tank at the Hague. Saint James's Square was selected as the place

for the spectacle. All the stately mansions on the northern, eastern and western sides were crowded with

people of fashion. The King appeared at a window of Romney's drawing room. The Princess of Denmark, her

husband and her court occupied a neighbouring house. The whole diplomatic body assembled at the dwelling

of the minister of the United Provinces. A huge pyramid of flame in the centre of the area threw out brilliant

cascades which were seen by hundreds of thousands who crowded the neighbouring streets and parks. The

States General were informed by their correspondent that, great as the multitude was, the night had passed

By this time the elections were almost completed. In every part of the country it had been manifest that the

constituent bodies were generally zealous for the King and for the war. The City of London, which had

returned four Tories in 1690, returned four Whigs in 1695. Of the proceedings at Westminster an account

more than usually circumstantial has come down to us. In 1690 the electors, disgusted by the Sacheverell

Clause, had returned two Tories. In 1695, as soon as it was known that a new Parliament was likely to be

called, a meeting was held, at which it was resolved that a deputation should be sent with an invitation to two

Commissioners of the Treasury, Charles Montague and Sir Stephen Fox. Sir Walter Clarges stood on the

Tory interest. On the day of nomination near five thousand electors paraded the streets on horseback. They

were divided into three bands; and at the head of each band rode one of the candidates. It was easy to

estimate at a glance the comparative strength of the parties. For the cavalcade which followed Clarges was

the least numerous of the three; and it was well known that the followers of Montague would vote for Fox,

and the followers of Fox for Montague. The business of the day was interrupted by loud clamours. The

Whigs cried shame on the Jacobite candidate who wished to make the English go to mass, eat frogs and wear

wooden shoes. The Tories hooted the two placemen who were raising great estates out of the plunder of the

poor overburdened nation. From words the incensed factions proceeded to blows; and there was a riot which

was with some difficulty quelled. The High Bailiff then walked round the three companies of horsemen, and

pronounced, on the view, that Montague and Fox were duly elected. A poll was demanded. The Tories

exerted themselves strenuously. Neither money nor ink was spared. Clarges disbursed two thousand pounds

in a few hours, a great outlay in times when the average income of a member of Parliament was not estimated

at more than eight hundred a year. In the course of the night which followed the nomination, broadsides filled

with invectives against the two courtly upstarts who had raised themselves by knavery from poverty and

obscurity to opulence and power were scattered all over the capital. The Bishop of London canvassed openly

against the government; for the interference of peers in elections had not yet been declared by the Commons

to be a breach of privilege. But all was vain. Clarges was at the bottom of the poll without hope of rising. He

withdrew; and Montague was carried on the shoulders of an immense multitude from Westminster Abbey to

The same feeling exhibited itself in many other places. The freeholders of Cumberland instructed their

representatives to support the King, and to vote whatever supplies might be necessary for the purpose of

carrying on the war with vigour; and this example was followed by several counties and towns.623 Russell

did not arrive in England till after the writs had gone out. But he had only to choose for what place he would

sit. His popularity was immense; for his villanies were secret, and his public services were universally

known. He had won the battle of La Hogue. He had commanded two years in the Mediterranean. He had

there shut up the French fleets in the harbour of Toulon, and had stopped and turned back the French armies

in Catalonia. He had taken many vessels, and among them two ships of the line; and he had not, during his

long absence in a remote sea, lost a single vessel either by war or by weather. He had made the red cross of

Saint George an object of terror to all the princes and commonwealths of Italy. The effect of his successes

was that embassies were on their way from Florence, Genoa and Venice, with tardy congratulations to

William on his accession. Russell's merits, artfully magnified by the Whigs, made such an impression that he

was returned to Parliament not only by Portsmouth where his official situation gave him great influence, and

by Cambridgeshire where his private property was considerable, but also by Middlesex. This last distinction,

indeed, he owed chiefly to the name which he bore. Before his arrival in England it had been generally

thought that two Tories would be returned for the metropolitan county. Somers and Shrewsbury were of

opinion that the only way to avert such a misfortune was to conjure with the name of the most virtuous of all

the martyrs of English liberty. They entreated Lady Russell to suffer her eldest son, a boy of fifteen, who was

about to commence his studies at Cambridge, to be put in nomination. He must, they said, drop, for one day,

his new title of Marquess of Tavistock, and call himself Lord Russell. There will be no expense. There will

be no contest. Thousands of gentlemen on horseback will escort him to the hustings; nobody will dare to

stand against him; and he will not only come in himself, but bring in another Whig. The widowed mother, in

a letter written with all the excellent sense and feeling which distinguished her, refused to sacrifice her son to

her party. His education, she said, would be interrupted; his head would be turned; his triumph would be his

undoing. Just at this conjuncture the Admiral arrived. He made his appearance before the freeholders of

Middlesex assembled on the top of Hampstead Hill, and was returned without opposition.624

Meanwhile several noted malecontents received marks of public disapprobation. John Knight, the most

factious and insolent of those Jacobites who had dishonestly sworn fealty to King William in order to qualify

themselves to sit in Parliament, ceased to represent the great city of Bristol. Exeter, the capital of the west,

was violently agitated. It had been long supposed that the ability, the eloquence, the experience, the ample

fortune, the noble descent of Seymour would make it impossible to unseat him. But his moral character,

which had never stood very high, had, during the last three or four years, been constantly sinking. He had

been virulent in opposition till he had got a place. While he had a place he had defended the most unpopular

acts of the government. As soon as he was out of place, he had again been virulent in opposition.

His saltpetre contract had left a deep stain on his personal honour. Two candidates were therefore brought

forward against him; and a contest, the longest and fiercest of that age, fixed the attention of the whole

kingdom, and was watched with interest even by foreign governments. The poll was open five weeks. The

expense on both sides was enormous. The freemen of Exeter, who, while the election lasted, fared

sumptuously every day, were by no means impatient for the termination of their luxurious carnival. They ate

and drank heartily; they turned out every evening with good cudgels to fight for Mother Church or for King

William; but the votes came in very slowly. It was not till the eve of the meeting of Parliament that the return

was made. Seymour was defeated, to his bitter mortification, and was forced to take refuge in the small

It is remarkable that, at this election as at the preceding election, John Hampden failed to obtain a seat. He

had, since he ceased to be a member of Parliament, been brooding over his evil fate and his indelible shame,

and occasionally venting his spleen in bitter pamphlets against the government. When the Whigs had become

predominant at the Court and in the House of Commons, when Nottingham had retired, when Caermarthen

had been impeached, Hampden, it should seem, again conceived the hope that he might play a great part in

public life. But the leaders of his party, apparently, did not wish for an ally of so acrimonious and turbulent a

spirit. He found himself still excluded from the House of Commons. He led, during a few months, a

miserable life, sometimes trying to forget his cares among the wellbred gamblers and frail beauties who filled

the drawingroom of the Duchess of Mazarine, and sometimes sunk in religious melancholy. The thought of

suicide often rose in his mind. Soon there was a vacancy in the representation of Buckinghamshire, the

county which had repeatedly sent himself and his progenitors to Parliament; and he expected that he should,

by the help of Wharton, whose dominion over the Buckinghamshire Whigs was absolute, be returned without

difficulty. Wharton, however, gave his interest to another candidate. This was a final blow. The town was

agitated by the news that John Hampden had cut his throat, that he had survived his wound a few hours, that

he had professed deep penitence for his sins, had requested the prayers of Burnet, and had sent a solemn

warning to the Duchess of Mazarine. A coroner's jury found a verdict of insanity. The wretched man had

entered on life with the fairest prospects. He bore a name which was more than noble. He was heir to an

ample estate and to a patrimony much more precious, the confidence and attachment of hundreds of

thousands of his countrymen. His own abilities were considerable, and had been carefully cultivated.

Unhappily ambition and party spirit impelled him to place himself in a situation full of danger. To that danger

his fortitude proved unequal. He stooped to supplications which saved him and dishonoured him. From that

moment, he never knew peace of mind. His temper became perverse; and his understanding was perverted by

his temper. He tried to find relief in devotion and in revenge, in fashionable dissipation and in political

turmoil. But the dark shade never passed away from his mind, till, in the twelfth year of his humiliation, his

The result of the general election proved that William had chosen a fortunate moment for dissolving. The

slumber of new members was about a hundred and sixty; and most of these were known to be thoroughly

It was of the highest importance that the House of Commons should, at that moment, be disposed to

cooperate cordially with the King. For it was absolutely necessary to apply a remedy to an internal evil which

had by slow degrees grown to a fearful magnitude. The silver coin, which was then the standard coin of the

realm, was in a state at which the boldest and most enlightened statesmen stood aghast.628

Till the reign of Charles the Second our coin had been struck by a process as old as the thirteenth century.

Edward the First had invited hither skilful artists from Florence, which, in his time, was to London what

London, in the time of William the Third, was to Moscow. During many generations, the instruments which

were then introduced into our mint continued to be employed with little alteration. The metal was divided

with shears, and afterwards shaped and stamped by the hammer. In these operations much was left to the

hand and eye of the workman. It necessarily happened that some pieces contained a little more and some a

little less than the just quantity of silver; few pieces were exactly round; and the rims were not marked. It was

therefore in the course of years discovered that to clip the coin was one of the easiest and most profitable

kinds of fraud. In the reign of Elizabeth it had been thought necessary to enact that the clipper should be, as

the coiner had long been, liable to the penalties of high treason.629 The practice of paring down money,

however, was far too lucrative to be so checked; and, about the time of the Restoration, people began to

observe that a large proportion of the crowns, halfcrowns and shillings which were passing from hand to hand

That was a time fruitful of experiments and inventions in all the departments of science. A great improvement

in the mode of shaping and striking the coin was suggested. A mill, which to a great extent superseded the

human hand, was set up in the Tower of London. This mill was worked by horses, and would doubtless be

considered by modern engineers as a rude and feeble machine. The pieces which it produced, however, were

among the best in Europe. It was not easy to counterfeit them; and, as their shape was exactly circular, and

their edges were inscribed with a legend, clipping was not to be apprehended.630 The hammered coins and

the milled coins were current together. They were received without distinction in public, and consequently in

private, payments. The financiers of that age seem to have expected that the new money, which was

excellent, would soon displace the old money which was much impaired. Yet any man of plain understanding

might have known that, when the State treats perfect coin and light coin as of equal value, the perfect coin

will not drive the light coin out of circulation, but will itself be driven out. A clipped crown, on English

ground, went as far in the payment of a tax or a debt as a milled crown. But the milled crown, as soon as it

had been flung into the crucible or carried across the Channel, became much more valuable than the clipped

crown. It might therefore have been predicted, as confidently as any thing can be predicted which depends on

the human will, that the inferior pieces would remain in the only market in which they could fetch the same

price as the superior pieces, and that the superior pieces would take some form or fly to some place in which

The politicians of that age, however, generally overlooked these very obvious considerations. They marvelled

exceedingly that every body should be so perverse as to use light money in preference to good money. In

other words, they marvelled that nobody chose to pay twelve ounces of silver when ten would serve the turn.

The horse in the Tower still paced his rounds. Fresh waggon loads of choice money still came forth from the

mill; and still they vanished as fast as they appeared. Great masses were melted down; great masses exported;

great masses hoarded; but scarcely one new piece was to be found in the till of a shop, or in the leathern bag

which the farmer carried home from the cattle fair. In the receipts and payments of the Exchequer the milled

money did not exceed ten shillings in a hundred pounds. A writer of that age mentions the case of a merchant

who, in a sum of thirtyfive pounds, received only a single halfcrown in milled silver. Meanwhile the shears

of the clippers were constantly at work. The comers too multiplied and prospered; for the worse the current

money became the more easily it was imitated. During more than thirty years this evil had gone on

increasing. At first it had been disregarded; but it had at length become an insupportable curse to the country.

It was to no purpose that the rigorous laws against coining and clipping were rigorously executed. At every

session that was held at the Old Bailey terrible examples were made. Hurdles, with four, five, six wretches

convicted of counterfeiting or mutilating the money of the realm, were dragged month after month up

Holborn Hill. On one morning seven men were hanged and a woman burned for clipping; But all was vain.

The gains were such as to lawless spirits seemed more than proportioned to the risks. Some clippers were said

to have made great fortunes. One in particular offered six thousand pounds for a pardon. His bribe was indeed

rejected; but the fame of his riches did much to counteract the effect which the spectacle of his death was

designed to produce.632 Nay the severity of the punishment gave encouragement to the crime. For the

practice of clipping, pernicious as it was, did not excite in the common mind a detestation resembling that

with which men regard murder, arson, robbery, nay, even theft. The injury done by the whole body of

clippers to the whole society was indeed immense; but each particular act of clipping was a trifle. To pass a

halfcrown, after paring a pennyworth of silver from it, seemed a minute, an almost imperceptible, fault. Even

while the nation was crying out most loudly under the distress which the state of the currency had produced,

every individual who was capitally punished for contributing to bring the currency into that state had the

general sympathy on his side. Constables were unwilling to arrest the offenders. Justices were unwilling to

commit. Witnesses were unwilling to tell the whole truth. Juries were unwilling to pronounce the word

Guilty. It was vain to tell the common people that the mutilators of the coin were causing far more misery

than all the highwaymen and housebreakers in the island. For, great as the aggregate of the evil was, only an

infinitesimal part of that evil was brought home to the individual malefactor. There was, therefore, a general

conspiracy to prevent the law from taking its course. The convictions, numerous as they might seem, were

few indeed when compared with the offences; and the offenders who were convicted looked on themselves as

murdered men, and were firm in the belief that their sin, if sin it were, was as venial as that of a schoolboy

who goes nutting in the wood of a neighbour. All the eloquence of the ordinary could seldom induce them to

conform to the wholesome usage of acknowledging in their dying speeches the enormity of their

The evil proceeded with constantly accelerating velocity. At length in the autumn of 1695 it could hardly be

said that the country possessed, for practical purposes, any measure of the value of commodities. It was a

mere chance whether what was called a shilling was really tenpence, sixpence or a groat. The results of some

experiments which were tried at that time deserve to be mentioned. The officers of the Exchequer weighed

fifty seven thousand two hundred pounds of hammered money which had recently been paid in. The weight

ought to have been above two hundred and twenty thousand ounces. It proved to be under one hundred and

fourteen thousand ounces.634 Three eminent London goldsmiths were invited to send a hundred pounds each

in current silver to be tried by the balance. Three hundred pounds ought to have weighed about twelve

hundred ounces. The actual weight proved to be six hundred and twentyfour ounces. The same test was

applied in various parts of the kingdom. It was found that a hundred pounds, which should have weighed

about four hundred ounces, did actually weigh at Bristol two hundred and forty ounces, at Cambridge two

hundred and three, at Exeter one hundred and eighty, and at Oxford only one hundred and sixteen.635 There

were, indeed, some northern districts into which the clipped money had only begun to find its way. An honest

Quaker, who lived in one of these districts, recorded, in some notes which are still extant, the amazement

with which, when he travelled southward, shopkeepers and innkeepers stared at the broad and heavy

halfcrowns with which he paid his way. They asked whence he came, and where such money was to be

found. The guinea which he purchased for twentytwo shillings at Lancaster bore a different value at every

stage of his journey. When he reached London it was worth thirty shillings, and would indeed have been

worth more had not the government fixed that rate as the highest at which gold should be received in the

The evils produced by this state of the currency were not such as have generally been thought worthy to

occupy a prominent place in history. Yet it may well be doubted whether all the misery which had been

inflicted on the English nation in a quarter of a century by bad Kings, bad Ministers, bad Parliaments and bad

judges, was equal to the misery caused in a single year by bad crowns and bad shillings. Those events which

furnish the best themes for pathetic or indignant eloquence are not always those which most affect the

happiness of the great body of the people. The misgovernment of Charles and James, gross as it had been,

had not prevented the common business of life from going steadily and prosperously on. While the honour

and independence of the State were sold to a foreign power, while chartered rights were invaded, while

fundamental laws were violated, hundreds of thousands of quiet, honest and industrious families laboured and

traded, ate their meals and lay down to rest, in comfort and security. Whether Whigs or Tories, Protestants or

Jesuits were uppermost, the grazier drove his beasts to market; the grocer weighed out his currants; the draper

measured out his broadcloth; the hum of buyers and sellers was as loud as ever in the towns; the harvest

home was celebrated as joyously as ever in the hamlets; the cream overflowed the pails of Cheshire; the apple

juice foamed in the presses of Herefordshire; the piles of crockery glowed in the furnaces of the Trent; and

the barrows of coal rolled fast along the timber railways of the Tyne. But when the great instrument of

exchange became thoroughly deranged, all trade, all industry, were smitten as with a palsy. The evil was felt

daily and hourly in almost every place and by almost every class, in the dairy and on the threshing floor, by

the anvil and by the loom, on the billows of the ocean and in the depths of the mine. Nothing could be

purchased without a dispute. Over every counter there was wrangling from morning to night. The workman

and his employer had a quarrel as regularly as the Saturday came round. On a fair day or a market day the

clamours, the reproaches, the taunts, the curses, were incessant; and it was well if no booth was overturned

and no head broken.637 No merchant would contract to deliver goods without making some stipulation about

the quality of the coin in which he was to be paid. Even men of business were often bewildered by the

confusion into which all pecuniary transactions were thrown. The simple and the careless were pillaged

without mercy by extortioners whose demands grew even more rapidly than the money shrank. The price of

the necessaries of life, of shoes, of ale, of oatmeal, rose fast. The labourer found that the bit of metal which

when he received it was called a shilling would hardly, when he wanted to purchase a pot of beer or a loaf of

rye bread, go as far as sixpence. Where artisans of more than usual intelligence were collected together in

great numbers, as in the dockyard at Chatham, they were able to make their complaints heard and to obtain

some redress.638 But the ignorant and helpless peasant was cruelly ground between one class which would

give money only by tale and another which would take it only by weight. Yet his sufferings hardly exceeded

those of the unfortunate race of authors. Of the way in which obscure writers were treated we may easily a

judgment from the letters, still extant, of Dryden to his bookseller Tonson. One day Tonson sends forty brass

shillings, to say nothing of clipped money. Another day he pays a debt with pieces so bad that none of them

will go. The great poet sends them all back, and demands in their place guineas at twentynine shillings each.

"I expect," he says in one letter, "good silver, not such as I have had formerly." "If you have any silver that

will go," he says in another letter, "my wife will be glad of it. I lost thirty shillings or more by the last

payment of fifty pounds." These complaints and demands, which have been preserved from destruction only

by the eminence of the writer, are doubtless merely a fair sample of the correspondence which filled all the

In the midst of the public distress one class prospered greatly, the bankers; and among the bankers none could

in skill or in luck bear a comparison with Charles Duncombe. He had been, not many years before, a

goldsmith of very moderate wealth. He had probably, after the fashion of his craft, plied for customers under

the arcades of the Royal Exchange, had saluted merchants with profound bows, and had begged to be allowed

the honour of keeping their cash. But so dexterously did he now avail himself of the opportunities of profit

which the general confusion of prices gave to a moneychanger, that, at the moment when the trade of the

kingdom was depressed to the lowest point, he laid down near ninety thousand pounds for the estate of

Helmsley in the North Riding of Yorkshire. That great property had, in a troubled time, been bestowed by the

Commons of England on their victorious general Fairfax, and had been part of the dower which Fairfax's

daughter had brought to the brilliant and dissolute Buckingham. Thither Buckingham, having wasted in mad

intemperance, sensual and intellectual, all the choicest bounties of nature and of fortune, had carried the

feeble ruins of his fine person and of his fine mind; and there he had closed his chequered life under that

humble roof and on that coarse pallet which the great satirist of the succeeding generation described in

immortal verse. The spacious domain passed to a new race; and in a few years a palace more splendid and

costly than had ever been inhabited by the magnificent Villiers rose amidst the beautiful woods and waters

Since the Revolution the state of the currency had been repeatedly discussed in Parliament. In 1689 a

committee of the Commons had been appointed to investigate the subject, but had made no report. In 1690

another committee had reported that immense quantities of silver were carried out of the country by Jews,

who, it was said, would do any thing for profit. Schemes were formed for encouraging the importation and

discouraging the exportation of the precious metals. One foolish bill after another was brought in and

dropped. At length, in the beginning of the year 1695, the question assumed so serious an aspect that the

Houses applied themselves to it in earnest. The only practical result of their deliberations, however, was a

new penal law which, it was hoped, would prevent the clipping of the hammered coin and the melting and

exporting of the milled coin. It was enacted that every person who informed against a clipper should be

entitled to a reward of forty pounds, that every clipper who informed against two clippers should be entitled

to a pardon, and that whoever should be found in possession of silver filings or parings should be burned in

the cheek with a redhot iron. Certain officers were empowered to search for bullion. If bullion were found in

a house or on board of a ship, the burden of proving that it had never been part of the money of the realm was

thrown on the owner. If he failed in making out a satisfactory history of every ingot he was liable to severe

penalties. This Act was, as might have been expected, altogether ineffective. During the following summer

and autumn, the coins went on dwindling, and the cry of distress from every county in the realm became

But happily for England there were among her rulers some who clearly perceived that it was not by halters

and branding irons that her decaying industry and commerce could be restored to health. The state of the

currency had during some time occupied the serious attention of four eminent men closely connected by

public and private ties. Two of them were politicians who had never, in the midst of official and

parliamentary business, ceased to love and honour philosophy; and two were philosophers, in whom habits of

abstruse meditation had not impaired the homely good sense without which even genius is mischievous in

politics. Never had there been an occasion which more urgently required both practical and speculative

abilities; and never had the world seen the highest practical and the highest speculative abilities united in an

alliance so close, so harmonious, and so honourable as that which bound Somers and Montague to Locke and

It is much to be lamented that we have not a minute history of the conferences of the men to whom England

owed the restoration of her currency and the long series of prosperous years which dates from that

restoration. It would be interesting to see how the pure gold of scientific truth found by the two philosophers

was mingled by the two statesmen with just that quantity of alloy which was necessary for the working. It

would be curious to study the many plans which were propounded, discussed and rejected, some as

inefficacious, some as unjust, some as too costly, some as too hazardous, till at length a plan was devised of

Newton has left to posterity no exposition of his opinions touching the currency. But the tracts of Locke on

this subject are happily still extant; and it may be doubted whether in any of his writings, even in those

ingenious and deeply meditated chapters on language which form perhaps the most valuable part of the Essay

on the Human Understanding, the force of his mind appears more conspicuously. Whether he had ever been

acquainted with Dudley North is not known. In moral character the two men bore little resemblance to each

other. They belonged to different parties. Indeed, had not Locke taken shelter from tyranny in Holland, it is

by no means impossible that he might have been sent to Tyburn by a jury which Dudley North had packed.

Intellectually, however, there was much in common between the Tory and the Whig. They had laboriously

thought out, each for himself, a theory of political economy, substantially the same with that which Adam

Smith afterwards expounded. Nay, in some respects the theory of Locke and North was more complete and

symmetrical than that of their illustrious successor. Adam Smith has often been justly blamed for

maintaining, in direct opposition to all his own principles, that the rate of interest ought to be regulated by the

State; and he is the more blamable because, long before he was born, both Locke and North had taught that it

was as absurd to make laws fixing the price of money as to make laws fixing the price of cutlery or of

Dudley North died in 1693. A short time before his death he published, without his name, a small tract which

contains a concise sketch of a plan for the restoration of the currency. This plan appears to have been

substantially the same with that which was afterwards fully developed and ably defended by Locke.

One question, which was doubtless the subject of many anxious deliberations, was whether any thing should

be done while the war lasted. In whatever way the restoration of the coin might be effected, great sacrifices

must be made, the whole community or by a part of the community. And to call for such sacrifices at a time

when the nation was already paying taxes such as, ten years before, no financier would have thought it

possible to raise, was undoubtedly a course full of danger. Timorous politicians were for delay; but the

deliberate conviction of the great Whig leaders was that something must be hazarded, or that every thing was

lost. Montague, in particular, is said to have expressed in strong language his determination to kill or cure. If

indeed there had been any hope that the evil would merely continue to be what it was, it might have been

wise to defer till the return of peace an experiment which must severely try the strength of the body politic.

But the evil was one which daily made progress almost visible to the eye. There might have been a recoinage

in 1691 with half the risk which must be run in 1696; and, great as would be the risk in 1696, that risk would

Those politicians whose voice was for delay gave less trouble than another set of politicians, who were for a

general and immediate recoinage, but who insisted that the new shilling should be worth only ninepence or

ninepence halfpenny. At the head of this party was William Lowndes, Secretary of the Treasury, and member

of Parliament for the borough of Seaford, a most respectable and industrious public servant, but much more

versed in the details of his office than in the higher parts of political philosophy. He was not in the least

aware that a piece of metal with the King's head on it was a commodity of which the price was governed by

the same laws which govern the price of a piece of metal fashioned into a spoon or a buckle, and that it was

no more in the power of Parliament to make the kingdom richer by calling a crown a pound than to make the

kingdom larger by calling a furlong a mile. He seriously believed, incredible as it may seem, that, if the ounce

of silver were divided into seven shillings instead of five, foreign nations would sell us their wines and their

silks for a smaller number of ounces. He had a considerable following, composed partly of dull men who

really believed what he told them, and partly of shrewd men who were perfectly willing to be authorised by

law to pay a hundred pounds with eighty. Had his arguments prevailed, the evils of a vast confiscation would

have been added to all the other evils which afflicted the nation; public credit, still in its tender and sickly

infancy, would have been destroyed; and there would have been much risk of a general mutiny of the fleet

and army. Happily Lowndes was completely refuted by Locke in a paper drawn up for the use of Somers.

Somers was delighted with this little treatise, and desired that it might be printed. It speedily became the text

book of all the most enlightened politicians in the kingdom, and may still be read with pleasure and profit.

The effect of Locke's forcible and perspicuous reasoning is greatly heightened by his evident anxiety to get at

the truth, and by the singularly generous and graceful courtesy with which he treats an antagonist of powers

far inferior to his own. Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, described the controversy well by saying that the

Thus far Somers and Montague entirely agreed with Locke; but as to the manner in which the restoration of

the currency ought to be effected there was some difference of opinion. Locke recommended, as Dudley

North had recommended, that the King should by proclamation fix a near day after which the hammered

money should in all payments pass only by weight. The advantages of this plan were doubtless great and

obvious. It was most simple, and, at the same time, most efficient. What searching, fining, branding, hanging,

burning, had failed to do would be done in an instant. The clipping of the hammered pieces, the melting of

the milled pieces would cease. Great quantities of good coin would come forth from secret drawers and from

behind the panels of wainscots. The mutilated silver would gradually flow into the mint, and would come

forth again in a form which would make mutilation impossible. In a short time the whole currency of the

realm would be in a sound state, and, during the progress of this great change, there would never at any

These were weighty considerations; and to the joint authority of North and Locke on such a question great

respect is due. Yet it must be owned that their plan was open to one serious objection, which did not indeed

altogether escape their notice, but of which they seem to have thought too lightly. The restoration of the

currency was a benefit to the whole community. On what principle then was the expense of restoring the

currency to be borne by a part of the community? It was most desirable doubtless that the words pound and

shilling should again have a fixed signification, that every man should know what his contracts meant and

what his property was worth. But was it just to attain this excellent end by means of which the effect would

be that every farmer who had put by a hundred pounds to pay his rent, every trader who had scraped together

a hundred pounds to meet his acceptances, would find his hundred pounds reduced in a moment to fifty or

sixty? It was not the fault of such a farmer or of such a trader that his crowns and halfcrowns were not of full

weight. The government itself was to blame. The evil which the State had caused the State was bound to

repair, and it would evidently have been wrong to throw the charge of the reparation on a particular class,

merely because that class was so situated that it could conveniently be pillaged. It would have been as

reasonable to require the timber merchants to bear the whole cost of fitting out the Channel fleet, or the

gunsmiths to bear the whole cost of supplying arms to the regiments in Flanders, as to restore the currency of

the kingdom at the expense of those individuals in whose hands the clipped sliver happened at a particular

Locke declared that he regretted the loss which, if his advice were taken, would fall on the holders of the

short money. But it appeared to him that the nation must make a choice between evils. And in truth it was

much easier to lay down the general proposition that the expenses of restoring the currency ought to be borne

by the public than to devise any mode in which they could without extreme inconvenience and danger be so

borne. Was it to be announced that every person who should within a term of a year or half a year carry to the

mint a clipped crown should receive in exchange for it a milled crown, and that the difference between the

value of the two pieces should be made good out of the public purse? That would be to offer a premium for

clipping. The shears would be more busy than ever. The short money would every day become shorter. The

difference which the taxpayers would have to make good would probably be greater by a million at the end of

the term than at the beginning; and the whole of this million would go to reward malefactors. If the time

allowed for the bringing in of the hammered coin were much shortened, the danger of further clipping would

be proportionally diminished; but another danger would be incurred. The silver would flow into the mint so

much faster than it could possibly flow out, that there must during some months be a grievous scarcity of

A singularly bold and ingenious expedient occurred to Somers and was approved by William. It was that a

proclamation should be prepared with great secresy, and published at once in all parts of the kingdom. This

proclamation was to announce that hammered coins would thenceforth pass only by weight. But every

possessor of such coins was to be invited to deliver them up within three days, in a sealed packet, to the

public authorities. The coins were to be examined, numbered, weighed, and returned to the owner with a

promissory note entitling him to receive from the Treasury at a future time the difference between the actual

quantity of silver in his pieces and the quantity of silver which, according to the standard, those pieces ought

to have contained.641 Had this plan been adopted an immediate stop would have been put to the clipping, the

melting and the exporting; and the expense of the restoration of the currency would have been borne, as was

right, by the public. The inconvenience arising from a scarcity of money would have been of very short

duration; for the mutilated pieces would have been detained only till they could be told and weighed; they

would then have been sent back into circulation, and the recoinage would have taken place gradually and

without any perceptible suspension or disturbance of trade. But against these great advantages were to be set

off hazards, which Somers was prepared to brave, but from which it is not strange that politicians of less

elevated character should have shrunk. The course which he recommended to his colleagues was indeed the

safest for the country, but was by no means the safest for themselves. His plan could not be successful unless

the execution were sudden; the execution could not be sudden if the previous sanction of Parliament were

asked and obtained; and to take a step of such fearful importance without the previous sanction of Parliament

was to run the risk of censure, impeachment, imprisonment, ruin. The King and the Lord Keeper were alone

in the Council. Even Montague quailed; and it was determined to do nothing without the authority of the

legislature. Montague undertook to submit to the Commons a scheme, which was not indeed without dangers

and inconveniences, but which was probably the best which he could hope to carry.

On the twentysecond of November the Houses met. Foley was on that day again chosen Speaker. On the

following day he was presented and approved. The King opened the session with a speech very skilfully

framed. He congratulated his hearers on the success of the campaign on the Continent. That success he

attributed, in language which must have gratified their feelings, to the bravery of the English army. He spoke

of the evils which had arisen from the deplorable state of the coin, and of the necessity of applying a speedy

remedy. He intimated very plainly his opinion that the expense of restoring the currency ought to be borne by

the State; but he declared that he referred the whole matter to the wisdom of his Great Council. Before he

concluded he addressed himself particularly to the newly elected House of Commons, and warmly expressed

his approbation of the excellent choice which his people had made. The speech was received with a low but

very significant hum of assent both from above and from below the bar, and was as favourably received by

the public as by the Parliament.642 In the Commons an address of thanks was moved by Wharton, faintly

opposed by Musgrave, adopted without a division, and carried up by the whole House to Kensington. At the

palace the loyalty of the crowd of gentlemen showed itself in a way which would now be thought hardly

consistent with senatorial gravity. When refreshments were handed round in the antechamber, the Speaker

filled his glass, and proposed two toasts, the health of King William, and confusion to King Lewis; and both

were drunk with loud acclamations. Yet near observers could perceive that, though the representatives of the

nation were as a body zealous for civil liberty and for the Protestant religion, and though they were prepared

to endure every thing rather than see their country again reduced to vassalage, they were anxious and

dispirited. All were thinking of the state of the coin; all were saying that something must be done; and all

acknowledged that they did not know what could be done. "I am afraid," said a member who expressed what

There was indeed a minority by which the difficulties and dangers of that crisis were seen with malignant

delight; and of that minority the keenest, boldest and most factious leader was Howe, whom poverty had

made more acrimonious than ever. He moved that the House should resolve itself into a Committee on the

State of the Nation; and the Ministry, for that word may now with propriety be used, readily consented.

Indeed the great question touching the currency could not be brought forward more conveniently than in such

a Committee. When the Speaker had left the chair, Howe harangued against the war as vehemently as he had

in former years harangued for it. He called for peace, peace on any terms. The nation, he said, resembled a

wounded man, fighting desperately on, with blood flowing in torrents. During a short time the spirit might

bear up the frame; but faintness must soon come on. No moral energy could long hold out against physical

exhaustion. He found very little support. The great majority of his hearers were fully determined to put every

thing to hazard rather than submit to France. It was sneeringly remarked that the state of his own finances had

suggested to him the image of a man bleeding to death, and that, if a cordial were administered to him in the

form of a salary, he would trouble himself little about the drained veins of the commonwealth. "We did not,"

said the Whig orators, "degrade ourselves by suing for peace when our flag was chased out of our own

Channel, when Tourville's fleet lay at anchor in Torbay, when the Irish nation was in arms against us, when

every post from the Netherlands brought news of some disaster, when we had to contend against the genius of

Louvois in the Cabinet and of Luxemburg in the field. And are we to turn suppliants now, when no hostile

squadron dares to show itself even in the Mediterranean, when our arms are victorious on the Continent,

when God has removed the great statesman and the great soldier whose abilities long frustrated our efforts,

and when the weakness of the French administration indicates, in a manner not to be mistaken, the

ascendency of a female favourite?" Howe's suggestion was contemptuously rejected; and the Committee

Meanwhile the newly liberated presses of the capital never rested a moment. Innumerable pamphlets and

broadsides about the coin lay on the counters of the booksellers, and were thrust into the hands of members of

Parliament in the lobby. In one of the most curious and amusing of these pieces Lewis and his ministers are

introduced, expressing the greatest alarm lest England should make herself the richest country in the world by

the simple expedient of calling ninepence a shilling, and confidently predicting that, if the old standard were

maintained, there would be another revolution. Some writers vehemently objected to the proposition that the

public should bear the expense of restoring the currency; some urged the government to take this opportunity

of assimilating the money of England to the money of neighbouring nations; one projector was for coining

Within the walls of Parliament the debates continued during several anxious days. At length Montague, after

defeating, first those who were for letting things remain unaltered till the peace, and then those who were for

the little shilling, carried eleven resolutions in which the outlines of his own plan were set forth. It was

resolved that the money of the kingdom should be recoined according to the old standard both of weight and

of fineness; that all the new pieces should be milled; that the loss on the clipped pieces should be borne by

the public; that a time should be fixed after which no clipped money should pass, except in payments to the

government; and that a later time should be fixed, after which no clipped money should pass at all. What

divisions took place in the Committee cannot be ascertained. When the resolutions were reported there was

one division. It was on the question whether the old standard of weight should be maintained. The Noes were

It was ordered that a bill founded on the resolutions should be brought in. A few days later the Chancellor of

the Exchequer explained to the Commons, in a Committee of Ways and Means, the plan by which he

proposed to meet the expense of the recoinage. It was impossible to estimate with precision the charge of

making good the deficiencies of the clipped money. But it was certain that at least twelve hundred thousand

pounds would be required. Twelve hundred thousand pounds the Bank of England undertook to advance on

good security. It was a maxim received among financiers that no security which the government could offer

was so good as the old hearth money had been. That tax, odious as it was to the great majority of those who

paid it, was remembered with regret at the Treasury and in the City. It occurred to the Chancellor of the

Exchequer that it might be possible to devise an impost on houses, which might be not less productive nor

less certain than the hearth money, but which might press less heavily on the poor, and might be collected by

a less vexatious process. The number of hearths in a house could not be ascertained without domiciliary

visits. The windows a collector might count without passing the threshold. Montague proposed that the

inhabitants of cottages, who had been cruelly harassed by the chimney men, should be altogether exempted

from the new duty. His plan was approved by the Committee of Ways and Means, and was sanctioned by the

House without a division. Such was the origin of the window tax, a tax which, though doubtless a great evil,

must be considered as a blessing when compared with the curse from which it rescued the nation.647

Thus far things had gone smoothly. But now came a crisis which required the most skilful steering. The news

that the Parliament and the government were determined on a reform of the currency produced an ignorant

panic among the common people. Every man wished to get rid of his clipped crowns and halfcrowns. No man

liked to take them. There were brawls approaching to riots in half the streets of London. The Jacobites,

always full of joy and hope in a day of adversity and public danger, ran about with eager looks and noisy

tongues. The health of King James was publicly drunk in taverns and on ale benches. Many members of

Parliament, who had hitherto supported the government, began to waver; and, that nothing might be wanting

to the difficulties of the conjuncture, a dispute on a point of privilege arose between the Houses. The

Recoinage Bill, framed in conformity with Montague's resolutions, had gone up to the Peers and had come

back with amendments, some of which, in the opinion of the Commons, their Lordships had no right to make.

The emergency was too serious to admit of delay. Montague brought in a new bill; which was in fact his

former bill modified in some points to meet the wishes of the Lords; the Lords, though not perfectly

contented with the new bill, passed it without any alteration; and the royal assent was immediately given. The

fourth of May, a date long remembered over the whole kingdom and especially in the capital, was fixed as the

day on which the government would cease to receive the clipped money in payment of taxes.648

The principles of the Recoinage Act are excellent. But some of the details, both of that Act and of a

supplementary Act which was passed at a later period of the session, seem to prove that Montague had not

fully considered what legislation can, and what it cannot, effect. For example, he persuaded the Parliament to

enact that it should be penal to give or take more than twenty two shillings for a guinea. It may be

confidently affirmed that this enactment was not suggested or approved by Locke. He well knew that the high

price of gold was not the evil which afflicted the State, but merely a symptom of that evil, and that a fall in

the price of gold would inevitably follow, and could by no human power or ingenuity be made to precede, the

recoinage of the silver. In fact, the penalty seems to have produced no effect whatever, good or bad. Till the

milled silver was in circulation, the guinea continued, in spite of the law, to pass for thirty shillings. When the

milled silver became plentiful, the guinea fell, not to twentytwo shillings, which was the highest price

Early in February the panic which had been caused by the first debates on the currency subsided; and, from

that time till the fourth of May, the want of money was not very severely felt. The recoinage began. Ten

furnaces were erected, in the garden behind the Treasury; and every day huge heaps of pared and defaced

crowns and shillings were turned into massy ingots which were instantly sent off to the mint in the

With the fate of the law which restored the currency was closely connected the fate of another law, which had

been several years under the consideration of Parliament, and had caused several warm disputes between the

hereditary and the elective branch of the legislature. The session had scarcely commenced when the Bill for

regulating Trials in cases of High Treason was again laid on the table of the Commons. Of the debates to

which it gave occasion nothing is known except one interesting circumstance which has been preserved by

tradition. Among those who supported the bill appeared conspicuous a young Whig of high rank, of ample

fortune, and of great abilities which had been assiduously improved by study. This was Anthony Ashley

Cooper, Lord Ashley, eldest son of the second Earl of Shaftesbury, and grandson of that renowned politician

who had, in the days of Charles the Second, been at one time the most unprincipled of ministers, and at

another the most unprincipled of demagogues. Ashley had just been returned to Parliament for the borough of

Poole, and was in his twentyfifth year. In the course of his speech he faltered, stammered and seemed to

lose the thread of his reasoning. The House, then, as now, indulgent to novices, and then, as now, well aware

that, on a first appearance, the hesitation which is the effect of modesty and sensibility is quite as promising a

sign as volubility of utterance and ease of manner, encouraged him to proceed. "How can I, Sir," said the

young orator, recovering himself, "produce a stronger argument in favour of this bill than my own failure?

My fortune, my character, my life, are not at stake. I am speaking to an audience whose kindness might well

inspire me with courage. And yet, from mere nervousness, from mere want of practice in addressing large

assemblies, I have lost my recollection; I am unable to go on with my argument. How helpless, then, must be

a poor man who, never having opened his lips in public, is called upon to reply, without a moment's

preparation, to the ablest and most experienced advocates in the kingdom, and whose faculties are paralysed

by the thought that, if he fails to convince his hearers, he will in a few hours die on a gallows, and leave

beggary and infamy to those who are dearest to him." It may reasonably be suspected that Ashley's confusion

and the ingenious use which he made of it had been carefully premeditated. His speech, however, made a

great impression, and probably raised expectations which were not fulfilled. His health was delicate; his taste

was refined even to fastidiousness; he soon left politics to men whose bodies and minds were of coarser

texture than his own, gave himself up to mere intellectual luxury, lost himself in the mazes of the old

Academic philosophy, and aspired to the glory of reviving the old Academic eloquence. His diction, affected

and florid, but often singularly beautiful and melodious, fascinated many young enthusiasts. He had not

merely disciples, but worshippers. His life was short; but he lived long enough to become the founder of a

new sect of English freethinkers, diametrically opposed in opinions and feelings to that sect of freethinkers of

which Hobbes was the oracle. During many years the Characteristics continued to be the Gospel of romantic

and sentimental unbelievers, while the Gospel of coldblooded and hardheaded unbelievers was the Leviathan.

The bill, so often brought in and so often lost, went through the Commons without a division, and was carried

up to the Lords. It soon came back with the long disputed clause altering the constitution of the Court of the

Lord High Steward. A strong party among the representatives of the people was still unwilling to grant any

new privilege to the nobility; but the moment was critical. The misunderstanding which had arisen beween

the Houses touching the Recoinage Bill had produced inconveniences which might well alarm even a bold

politician. It was necessary to purchase concession by concession. The Commons, by a hundred and

ninetytwo votes to a hundred and fifty, agreed to the amendment on which the Lords had, during four years,

so obstinately insisted; and the Lords in return immediately passed the Recoinage Bill without any

There had been much contention as to the time at which the new system of procedure in cases of high treason

should come into operation; and the bill had once been lost in consequence of a dispute on this point. Many

persons were of opinion that the change ought not to take place till the close of the war. It was notorious, they

said, that the foreign enemy was abetted by too many traitors at home; and, at such a time, the severity of the

laws which protected the commonwealth against the machinations of bad citizens ought not to be relaxed. It

was at last determined that the new regulations should take effect on the twentyfifth of March, the first day,

On the twentyfirst of January the Recoinage Bill and the Bill for regulating Trials in cases of High Treason

received the royal assent. On the following day the Commons repaired to Kensington on an errand by no

means agreeable either to themselves or to the King. They were, as a body, fully resolved to support him, at

whatever cost and at whatever hazard, against every foreign and domestic foe. But they were, as indeed every

assembly of five hundred and thirteen English gentlemen that could by any process have been brought

together must have been, jealous of the favour which he showed to the friends of his youth. He had set his

heart on placing the house of Bentinck on a level in wealth and splendour with the houses of Howard and

Some of the fairest hereditary domains of the Crown had been granted to Portland, not without murmuring on

the part both of Whigs and Tories. Nothing had been done, it is true, which was not in conformity with the

letter of the law and with a long series of precedents. Every English sovereign had from time immemorial

considered the lands to which he had succeeded in virtue of his office as his private property. Every family

that had been great in England, from the De Veres down to the Hydes, had been enriched by royal deeds of

gift. Charles the Second had carved ducal estates for his bastards out of his hereditary domain. Nor did the

Bill of Rights contain a word which could be construed to mean that the King was not at perfect liberty to

alienate any part of the estates of the Crown. At first, therefore, William's liberality to his countrymen,

though it caused much discontent, called forth no remonstrance from the Parliament. But he at length went

too far. In 1695 he ordered the Lords of the Treasury to make out a warrant granting to Portland a

magnificent estate in Denbighshire. This estate was said to be worth more than a hundred thousand pounds.

The annual income, therefore, can hardly have been less than six thousand pounds; and the annual rent which

was reserved to the Crown was only six and eightpence. This, however, was not the worst. With the property

were inseparably connected extensive royalties, which the people of North Wales could not patiently see in

the hands of any subject. More than a century before Elizabeth had bestowed a part of the same territory on

her favourite Leicester. On that occasion the population of Denbighshire had risen in arms; and, after much

tumult and several executions, Leicester had thought it advisable to resign his mistress's gift back to her. The

opposition to Portland was less violent, but not less effective. Some of the chief gentlemen of the principality

made strong representations to the ministers through whose offices the warrant had to pass, and at length

brought the subject under the consideration of the Lower House. An address was unanimously voted

requesting the King to stop the grant; Portland begged that he might not be the cause of a dispute between his

master and the Parliament; and the King, though much mortified, yielded to the general wish of the

This unfortunate affair, though it terminated without an open quarrel, left much sore feeling. The King was

angry with the Commons, and still more angry with the Whig ministers who had not ventured to defend his

grant. The loyal affection which the Parliament had testified to him during the first days of the session had

perceptibly cooled; and he was almost as unpopular as he had ever been, when an event took place which

suddenly brought back to him the hearts of millions, and made him for a time as much the idol of the nation

The plan of assassination which had been formed in the preceding spring had been given up in consequence

of William's departure for the Continent. The plan of insurrection which had been formed in the summer had

been given up for want of help from France. But before the end of the autumn both plans were resumed.

William had returned to England; and the possibility of getting rid of him by a lucky shot or stab was again

seriously discussed. The French troops had gone into winter quarters; and the force, which Charnock had in

vain demanded while war was raging round Namur, might now be spared without inconvenience. Now,

therefore, a plot was laid, more formidable than any that had yet threatened the throne and the life of William;

or rather, as has more than once happened in our history, two plots were laid, one within the other. The object

of the greater plot was an open insurrection, an insurrection which was to be supported by a foreign army. In

this plot almost all the Jacobites of note were more or less concerned. Some laid in arms; some bought

horses; some made lists of the servants and tenants in whom they could place firm reliance. The less warlike

members of the party could at least take off bumpers to the King over the water, and intimate by significant

shrugs and whispers that he would not be over the water long. It was universally remarked that the

malecontents looked wiser than usual when they were sober, and bragged more loudly than usual when they

were drunk.653 To the smaller plot, of which the object was the murder of William, only a few select traitors

Each of these plots was under the direction of a leader specially sent from Saint Germains. The more

honourable mission was entrusted to Berwick. He was charged to communicate with the Jacobite nobility and

gentry, to ascertain what force they could bring into the field, and to fix a time for the rising. He was

authorised to assure them that the French government was collecting troops and transports at Calais, and that,

as soon as it was known there that a rebellion had broken out in England, his father would embark with

A more hazardous part was assigned to an emissary of lower rank, but of great address, activity and courage.

This was Sir George Barclay, a Scotch gentleman who had served with credit under Dundee, and who, when

the war in the Highlands had ended, had retired to Saint Germains. Barclay was called into the royal closet,

and received his orders from the royal lips. He was directed to steal across the Channel and to repair to

London. He was told that a few select officers and soldiers should speedily follow him by twos and threes.

That they might have no difficulty in finding him, he was to walk, on Mondays and Thursdays, in the Piazza

of Covent Garden after nightfall, with a white handkerchief hanging from his coat pocket. He was furnished

with a considerable sum of money, and with a commission which was not only signed but written from

beginning to end by James himself. This commission authorised the bearer to do from time to time such acts

of hostility against the Prince of Orange and that Prince's adherents as should most conduce to the service of

the King. What explanation of these very comprehensive words was orally given by James we are not

Lest Barclay's absence from Saint Germains should cause any suspicion, it was given out that his loose way

of life had made it necessary for him to put himself under the care of a surgeon at Paris.654 He set out with

eight hundred pounds in his portmanteau, hastened to the coast, and embarked on board of a privateer which

was employed by the Jacobites as a regular packet boat between France and England. This vessel conveyed

him to a desolate spot in Romney Marsh. About half a mile from the landing place a smuggler named Hunt

lived on a dreary and unwholesome fen where he had no neighbours but a few rude shepherds. His dwelling

was singularly well situated for a contraband traffic in French wares. Cargoes of Lyons silk and Valenciennes

lace sufficient to load thirty packhorses had repeatedly been landed in that dismal solitude without attracting

notice. But, since the Revolution, Hunt had discovered that of all cargoes a cargo of traitors paid best. His

lonely abode became the resort of men of high consideration, Earls and Barons, Knights and Doctors of

Divinity. Some of them lodged many days under his roof while waiting for a passage. A clandestine post was

established between his house and London. The couriers were constantly going and returning; they performed

their journeys up and down on foot; but they appeared to be gentlemen, and it was whispered that one of them

was the son of a titled man. The letters from Saint Germains were few and small. Those directed to Saint

Germains were numerous and bulky; they were made up like parcels of millinery, and were buried in the

Here Barclay landed in January 1696; and hence he took the road to London. He was followed, a few days

later, by a tall youth, who concealed his name, but who produced credentials of the highest authority. This

youth too proceeded to London. Hunt afterwards discovered that his humble roof had had the honour of

The part which Barclay had to perform was difficult and hazardous; and he omitted no precaution. He had

been little in London; and his face was consequently unknown to the agents of the government. Nevertheless

he had several lodgings; he disguised himself so well that his oldest friends would not have known him by

broad daylight; and yet he seldom ventured into the streets except in the dark. His chief agent was a monk

who, under several names, heard confessions and said masses at the risk of his neck. This man intimated to

some of the zealots with whom he consorted a special agent of the royal family was to be spoken with in

Covent Garden, on certain nights, at a certain hour, and might be known by certain signs.656 In this way

Barclay became acquainted with several men fit for his purpose. The first persons to whom he fully opened

himself were Charnock and Parkyns. He talked with them about the plot which they and some of their friends

had formed in the preceding spring against the life of William. Both Charnock and Parkyns declared that the

scheme might easily be executed, that there was no want of resolute hearts among the Royalists, and that all

Then Barclay produced his commission. He showed his two accomplices that James had expressly

commanded all good Englishmen, not only to rise in arms, not only to make war on the usurping government,

not only to seize forts and towns, but also to do from time to time such other acts of hostility against the

Prince of Orange as might be for the royal service. These words, Barclay said, plainly authorised an attack on

the Prince's person. Charnock and Parkyns were satisfied. How in truth was it possible for them to doubt that

James's confidential agent correctly construed James's expressions? Nay, how was it possible for them to

understand the large words of the commission in any sense but one, even if Barclay had not been there to act

as commentator? If indeed the subject had never been brought under James's consideration, it might well be

thought that those words had dropped from his pen without any definite meaning. But he had been repeatedly

apprised that some of his friends in England meditated a deed of blood, and that they were waiting only for

his approbation. They had importuned him to speak one word, to give one sign. He had long kept silence;

and, now that he had broken silence, he merely told them to do what ever might be beneficial to himself and

prejudicial to the usurper. They had his authority as plainly given as they could reasonably expect to have it

All that remained was to find a sufficient number of courageous and trustworthy assistants, to provide horses

and weapons, and to fix the hour and the place of the slaughter. Forty or fifty men, it was thought, would be

sufficient. Those troopers of James's guard who had already followed Barclay across the Channel made up

nearly half that number. James had himself seen some of these men before their departure from Saint

Germains, had given them money for their journey, had told them by what name each of them was to pass in

England, had commanded them to act as they should be directed by Barclay, and had informed them where

Barclay was to be found and by what tokens he was to be known.658 They were ordered to depart in small

parties, and to assign different reasons for going. Some were ill; some were weary of the service; Cassels, one

of the most noisy and profane among them, announced that, since he could not get military promotion, he

should enter at the Scotch college and study for a learned profession. Under such pretexts about twenty

picked men left the palace of James, made their way by Romney Marsh to London, and found their captain

walking in the dim lamplight of the Piazza with the handkerchief hanging from his pocket. One of these men

was Ambrose Rockwood, who held the rank of Brigadier, and who had a high reputation for courage and

honour; another was Major John Bernardi, an adventurer of Genoese extraction, whose name has derived a

melancholy celebrity from a punishment so strangely prolonged that it at length shocked a generation which

It was in these adventurers from France that Barclay placed his chief trust. In a moment of elation he once

called them his Janissaries, and expressed a hope that they would get him the George and Garter. But twenty

more assassins at least were wanted. The conspirators probably expected valuable help from Sir John Friend,

who had received a Colonel's commission signed by James, and had been most active in enlisting men and

providing arms against the day when the French should appear on the coast of Kent. The design was imparted

to him; but he thought it so rash, and so likely to bring reproach and disaster on the good cause, that he would

lend no assistance to his friends, though he kept their secret religiously.660 Charnock undertook to find eight

brave and trusty fellows. He communicated the design to Porter, not with Barclay's entire approbation; for

Barclay appears to have thought that a tavern brawler, who had recently been in prison for swaggering drunk

about the streets and huzzaing in honour of the Prince of Wales, was hardly to be trusted with a secret of such

fearful import. Porter entered into the plot with enthusiasm, and promised to bring in others who would be

useful. Among those whose help he engaged was his servant Thomas Keyes. Keyes was a far more

formidable conspirator than might have been expected from his station in life. The household troops

generally were devoted to William; but there was a taint of disaffection among the Blues. The chief

conspirators had already been tampering with some Roman Catholics who were in that regiment; and Keyes

was excellently qualified to bear a part in this work; for he had formerly been trumpeter of the corps, and,

though he had quitted the service, he still kept up an acquaintaince with some of the old soldiers in whose

company he had lived at free quarter on the Somersetshire farmers after the battle of Sedgemoor.

Parkyns, who was old and gouty, could not himself take a share in the work of death. But he employed

himself in providing horses, saddles and weapons for his younger and more active accomplices. In this

department of business he was assisted by Charles Cranburne, a person who had long acted as a broker

between Jacobite plotters and people who dealt in cutlery and firearms. Special orders were given by Barclay

that the swords should be made rather for stabbing than for slashing. Barclay himself enlisted Edward

Lowick, who had been a major in the Irish army, and who had, since the capitulation of Limerick, been living

obscurely in London. The monk who had been Barclay's first confidant recommended two busy Papists,

Richard Fisher and Christopher Knightley; and this recommendation was thought sufficient. Knightley drew

in Edward King, a Roman Catholic gentleman of hot and restless temper; and King procured the assistance of

Meanwhile the heads of the conspiracy held frequent meetings at treason taverns, for the purpose of settling a

plan of operations. Several schemes were proposed, applauded, and, on full consideration, abandoned. At one

time it was thought that an attack on Kensington House at dead of night might probably be successful. The

outer wall might easily be scaled. If once forty armed men were in the garden, the palace would soon be

stormed or set on fire. Some were of opinion that it would be best to strike the blow on a Sunday as William

went from Kensington to attend divine service at the chapel of Saint James's Palace. The murderers might

assemble near the spot where Apsley House and Hamilton Place now stand. Just as the royal coach passed out

of Hyde Park, and was about to enter what has since been called the Green Park, thirty of the conspirators,

well mounted, might fall on the guards. The guards were ordinarily only five and twenty. They would be

taken completely by surprise; and probably half of them would be shot or cut down before they could strike a

blow. Meanwhile ten or twelve resolute men on foot would stop the carriage by shooting the horses, and

would then without difficulty despatch the King. At last the preference was given to a plan originally

sketched by Fisher and put into shape by Porter. William was in the habit of going every Saturday from

Kensington to hunt in Richmond Park. There was then no bridge over the Thames between London and

Kingston. The King therefore went, in a coach escorted by some of his body guards, through Turnham Green

to the river. There he took boat, crossed the water and found another coach and another set of guards ready to

receive him on the Surrey side. The first coach and the first set of guards awaited his return on the northern

bank. The conspirators ascertained with great precision the whole order of these journeys, and carefully

examined the ground on both sides of the Thames. They thought that they should attack the King with more

advantage on the Middlesex than on the Surrey bank, and when he was returning than when he was going.

For, when he was going, he was often attended to the water side by a great retinue of lords and gentlemen;

but on his return he had only his guards about him. The place and time were fixed. The place was to be a

narrow and winding lane leading from the landingplace on the north of the rover to Turnham Green. The spot

may still be easily found. The ground has since been drained by trenches. But in the seventeenth century it

was a quagmire, through which the royal coach was with difficulty tugged at a foot's pace. The time was to be

the afternoon of Saturday the fifteenth of February. On that day the Forty were to assemble in small parties at

public houses near the Green. When the signal was given that the coach was approaching they were to take

horse and repair to their posts. As the cavalcade came up this lane Charnock was to attack the guards in the

rear, Rockwood on one flank, Porter on the other. Meanwhile Barclay, with eight trusty men, was to stop the

coach and to do the deed. That no movement of the King might escape notice, two orderlies were appointed

to watch the palace. One of these men, a bold and active Fleming, named Durant, was especially charged to

keep Barclay well informed. The other, whose business was to communicate with Charnock, was a ruffian

named Chambers, who had served in the Irish army, had received a severe wound in the breast at the Boyne,

While Barclay was making all his arrangements for the assassination, Berwick was endeavouring to persuade

the Jacobite aristocracy to rise in arms. But this was no easy task. Several consultations were held; and there

was one great muster of the party under the pretence of a masquerade, for which tickets were distributed

among the initiated at one guinea each.663 All ended however in talking, singing and drinking. Many men of

rank and fortune indeed declared that they would draw their swords for their rightful Sovereign as soon as

their rightful Sovereign was in the island with a French army; and Berwick had been empowered to assure

there that a French army should be sent as soon as they had drawn the sword. But between what they asked

and what he was authorised to grant there was a difference which admitted of no compromise. Lewis, situated

as he was, would not risk ten or twelve thousand excellent soldiers on the mere faith of promises. Similar

promises had been made in 1690; and yet, when the fleet of Tourville had appeared on the coast of

Devonshire, the western counties had risen as one man in defence of the government, and not a single

malecontent had dared to utter a whisper in favour of the invaders. Similar promises had been made in 1692;

and to the confidence which had been placed in those promises was to be attributed the great disaster of La

Hogue. The French King would not be deceived a third time. He would gladly help the English royalists; but

he must first see them help themselves. There was much reason in this; and there was reason also in what the

Jacobites urged on the other side. If, they said, they were to rise, without a single disciplined regiment to back

them, against an usurper supported by a regular army, they should all be cut to pieces before the news that

they were up could reach Versailles. As Berwick could hold out no hope that there would be an invasion

before there was an insurrection, and as his English friends were immovable in their determination that there

should be no insurrection till there was an invasion, he had nothing more to do here, and became impatient to

He was the more impatient to depart because the fifteenth of February drew near. For he was in constant

communication with Barclay, and was perfectly apprised of all the details of the crime which was to be

perpetrated on that day. He was generally considered as a man of sturdy and even ungracious integrity. But to

such a degree had his sense of right and wrong been perverted by his zeal for the interests of his family, and

by his respect for the lessons of his priests, that he did not, as he has himself ingenuously confessed, think

that he lay under any obligation to dissuade the assassins from the execution of their purpose. He had indeed

only one objection to their design; and that objection he kept to himself. It was simply this, that all who were

concerned were very likely to be hanged. That, however, was their affair; and, if they chose to run such a risk

in the good cause, it was not his business to discourage them. His mission was quite distinct from theirs; he

was not to act with them; and he had no inclination to suffer with then. He therefore hastened down to

At Calais he found preparations making for a descent on Kent. Troops filled the town; transports filled the

port. Boufflers had been ordered to repair thither from Flanders, and to take the command. James himself was

daily expected. In fact he had already left Saint Germains. Berwick, however, would not wait. He took the

road to Paris, met his father at Clermont, and made a full report of the state of things in England. His embassy

had failed; the Royalist nobility and gentry seemed resolved not to rise till a French army was in the island;

but there was still a hope; news would probably come within a few days that the usurper was no more; and

such news would change the whole aspect of affairs. James determined to go on to Calais, and there to await

the event of Barclay's plot. Berwick hastened to Versailles for the purpose of giving explanations to Lewis.

What the nature of the explanations was we know from Berwick's own narrative. He plainly told the French

King that a small band of loyal men would in a short time make an attempt on the life of the great enemy of

France. The next courier might bring tidings of an event which would probably subvert the English

government and dissolve the European coalition. It might have been thought that a prince who ostentatiously

affected the character of a devout Christian and of a courteous knight would instantly have taken measures

for conveying to his rival a caution which perhaps might still arrive in time, and would have severely

reprimanded the guests who had so grossly abused his hospitality. Such, however, was not the conduct of

Lewis. Had he been asked to give his sanction to a murder he would probably have refused with indignation.

But he was not moved to indignation by learning that, without his sanction, a crime was likely to be

committed which would be far more beneficial to his interests than ten such victories as that of Landen. He

sent down orders to Calais that his fleet should be in such readiness as might enable him to take advantage of

the great crisis which he anticipated. At Calais James waited with still more impatience for the signal that his

nephew was no more. That signal was to be given by a fire, of which the fuel was already prepared on the

But a peculiar fate has, in our country, always attended such conspiracies as that of Barclay and Charnock.

The English regard assassination, and have during some ages regarded it, with a loathing peculiar to

themselves. So English indeed is this sentiment that it cannot even now be called Irish, and till a recent

period, it was not Scotch. In Ireland to this day the villain who shoots at his enemy from behind a hedge is

too often protected from justice by public sympathy. In Scotland plans of assassination were often, during the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, successfully executed, though known to great numbers of persons. The

murders of Beaton, of Rizzio, of Darnley, of Murray, of Sharpe, are conspicuous instances. The royalists who

murdered Lisle in Switzerland were Irishmen; the royalists who murdered Ascham at Madrid were Irishmen;

the royalists who murdered Dorislaus at the Hague were Scotchmen. In England, as soon as such a design

ceases to be a secret hidden in the recesses of one gloomy and ulcerated heart, the risk of detection and failure

becomes extreme. Felton and Bellingham reposed trust in no human being; and they were therefore able to

accomplish their evil purposes. But Babington's conspiracy against Elizabeth, Fawkes's conspiracy against

James, Gerard's conspiracy against Cromwell, the Rye House conspiracy, the Cato Street conspiracy, were all

discovered, frustrated and punished. In truth such a conspiracy is here exposed to equal danger from the good

and from the bad qualities of the conspirators. Scarcely any Englishman, not utterly destitute of conscience

and honour, will engage in a plot for slaying an unsuspecting fellow creature; and a wretch who has neither

conscience nor honour is likely to think much on the danger which he incurs by being true to his associates,

and on the rewards which he may obtain by betraying them. There are, it is true, persons in whom religious or

political fanaticism has destroyed all moral sensibility on one particular point, and yet has left that sensibility

generally unimpaired. Such a person was Digby. He had no scruple about blowing King, Lords and

Commons into the air. Yet to his accomplices he was religiously and chivalrously faithful; nor could even the

fear of the rack extort from him one word to their prejudice. But this union of depravity and heroism is very

rare. The vast majority of men are either not vicious enough or not virtuous enough to be loyal and devoted

members of treacherous and cruel confederacies; and, if a single member should want either the necessary

vice or the necessary virtue, the whole confederacy is in danger. To bring together in one body forty

Englishmen, all hardened cutthroats, and yet all so upright and generous that neither the hope of opulence nor

the dread of the gallows can tempt any one of them to be false to the rest, has hitherto been found, and will, it

There were among Barclay's followers both men too bad and men too good to be trusted with such a secret as

his. The first whose heart failed him was Fisher. Even before the time and place of the crime had been fixed,

he obtained an audience of Portland, and told that lord that a design was forming against the King's life.

Some days later Fisher came again with more precise intelligence. But his character was not such as entitled

him to much credit; and the knavery of Fuller, of Young, of Whitney and of Taffe, had made men of sense

slow to believe stories of plots. Portland, therefore, though in general very easily alarmed where the safety of

his master and friend was concerned, seems to have thought little about the matter. But, on the evening of the

fourteenth of February, he received a visit from a person whose testimony he could not treat lightly. This was

a Roman Catholic gentleman of known courage and honour, named Pendergrass. He had, on the preceding

day, come up to town from Hampshire, in consequence of a pressing summons from Porter, who, dissolute

and unprincipled as he was, had to Pendergrass been a most kind friend, indeed almost a father. In a Jacobite

insurrection Pendergrass would probably have been one of the foremost. But he learned with horror that he

was expected to bear a part in a wicked and shameful deed. He found himself in one of those situations which

most cruelly torture noble and sensitive natures. What was he to do? Was he to commit a murder? Was he to

suffer a murder which he could prevent to be committed? Yet was he to betray one who, however culpable,

had loaded him with benefits? Perhaps it might be possible to save William without harming Porter?

Pendergrass determined to make the attempt. "My Lord," he said to Portland, "as you value King William's

life, do not let him hunt tomorrow. He is the enemy of my religion; yet my religion constrains me to give him

this caution. But the names of the conspirators I am resolved to conceal; some of them are my friends; one of

Portland went instantly to the King; but the King received the intelligence very coolly, and seemed

determined not to be frightened out of a good day's sport by such an idle story. Portland argued and implored

in vain. He was at last forced to threaten that he would immediately make the whole matter public, unless His

Majesty would consent to remain within doors during the next day; and this threat was successful.666

Saturday the fifteenth came. The Forty were all ready to mount, when they received intelligence from the

orderlies who watched Kensington House that the King did not mean to hunt that morning. "The fox," said

Chambers, with vindictive bitterness, "keeps his earth." Then he opened his shirt; showed the great scar in his

The first thought of the conspirators was that their design had been detected. But they were soon reassured. It

was given out that the weather had kept the King at home; and indeed the day was cold and stormy. There

was no sign of agitation at the palace. No extraordinary precaution was taken. No arrest was made. No

ominous whisper was heard at the coffeehouses. The delay was vexatious; but Saturday the twentysecond

But, before Saturday the twentysecond arrived, a third informer, De la Rue, had presented himself at the

palace. His way of life did not entitle him to much respect; but his story agreed so exactly with what had been

said by Fisher and Pendergrass that even William began to believe that there was real danger.

Very late in the evening of Friday the twentyfirst, Pendergrass, who had as yet disclosed much less than

either of the other informers, but whose single word was worth much more than their joint oath, was sent for

to the royal closet. The faithful Portland and the gallant Cutts were the only persons who witnessed the

singular interview between the King and his generous enemy. William, with courtesy and animation which he

rarely showed, but which he never showed without making a deep impression, urged Pendergrass to speak

out. "You are a man of true probity and honour; I am deeply obliged to you; but you must feel that the same

considerations which have induced you to tell us so much ought to induce you to tell us something more. The

cautions which you have as yet given can only make me suspect every body that comes near me. They are

sufficient to embitter my life, but not sufficient to preserve it. You must let me know the names of these

men." During more than half an hour the King continued to entreat and Pendergrass to refuse. At last

Pendergrass said that he would give the information which was required, if he could be assured that it would

be used only for the prevention of the crime, and not for the destruction of the criminals. "I give you my word

of honour," said William, "that your evidence shall not be used against any person without your own free

consent." It was long past midnight when Pendergrass wrote down the names of the chief conspirators.

While these things were passing at Kensington, a large party of the assassins were revelling at a Jacobite

tavern in Maiden Lane. Here they received their final orders for the morrow. "Tomorrow or never," said

King. "Tomorrow, boys," cried Cassels with a curse, "we shall have the plunder of the field." The morrow

came. All was ready; the horses were saddled; the pistols were loaded; the swords were sharpened; the

orderlies were on the alert; they early sent intelligence from the palace that the King was certainly going a

hunting; all the usual preparations had been made; a party of guards had been sent round by Kingston Bridge

to Richmond; the royal coaches, each with six horses, had gone from the stables at Charing Cross to

Kensington. The chief murderers assembled in high glee at Porter's lodgings. Pendergrass, who, by the King's

command, appeared among them, was greeted with ferocious mirth. "Pendergrass," said Porter, "you are

named one of the eight who are to do his business. I have a musquetoon for you that will carry eight balls."

"Mr. Pendergrass," said King, "pray do not be afraid of smashing the glass windows." From Porter's lodgings

the party adjourned to the Blue Posts in Spring Gardens, where they meant to take some refreshment before

they started for Turnham Green. They were at table when a message came from an orderly that the King had

changed his mind and would not hunt; and scarcely had they recovered from their first surprise at this

ominous news, when Keyes, who had been out scouting among his old comrades, arrived with news more

ominous still. "The coaches have returned to Charing Cross. The guards that were sent round to Richmond

have just come back to Kensington at full gallop, the flanks of the horses all white with foam. I have had a

word with one of the Blues. He told me that strange things are muttered." Then the countenances of the

assassins fell; and their hearts died within them. Porter made a feeble attempt to disguise his uneasiness. He

took up an orange and squeezed it. "What cannot be done one day may be done another. Come, gentlemen,

before we part let us have one glass to the squeezing of the rotten orange." The squeezing of the rotten orange

A few hours elapsed before all the conspirators abandoned all hope. Some of them derived comfort from a

report that the King had taken physic, and that this was his only reason for not going to Richmond. If it were

so, the blow might still be struck. Two Saturdays had been unpropitious. But Sunday was at hand. One of the

plans which had formerly been discussed and abandoned might be resumed. The usurper might be set upon at

Hyde Park Corner on his way to his chapel. Charnock was ready for any enterprise however desperate. If the

hunt was up, it was better to die biting and scratching to the last than to be worried without resistance or

revenge. He assembled some of his accomplices at one of the numerous houses at which he had lodgings, and

plied there hard with healths to the King, to the Queen, to the Prince, and to the Grand Monarch, as they

called Lewis. But the terror and dejection of the gang were beyond the power of wine; and so many had

stolen away that those who were left could effect nothing. In the course of the afternoon it was known that the

guards had been doubled at the palace; and soon after nightfall messengers from the Secretary of State's

office were hurrying to and fro with torches through the streets, accompanied by files and musketeers. Before

the dawn of Sunday Charnock was in custody. A little later, Rockwood and Bernardi were found in bed at a

Jacobite alehouse on Tower Hill. Seventeen more traitors were seized before noon; and three of the Blues

were put under arrest. That morning a Council was held; and, as soon as it rose, an express was sent off to

call home some regiments from Flanders; Dorset set out for Sussex, of which he was Lord Lieutenant;

Romney, who was Warden of the Cinque Ports, started for the coast of Kent; and Russell hastened down the

Thames to take the command of the fleet. In the evening the Council sate again. Some of the prisoners were

examined and committed. The Lord Mayor was in attendance, was informed of what had been discovered,

On Monday morning all the trainbands of the City were under arms. The King went in state to the House of

Lords, sent for the Commons, and from the throne told the Parliament that, but for the protection of a

gracious Providence, he should at that moment have been a corpse, and the kingdom would have been

invaded by a French army. The danger of invasion, he added, was still great; but he had already given such

orders as would, he hoped, suffice for the protection of the realm. Some traitors were in custody; warrants

were out against others; he should do his part in this emergency; and he relied on the Houses to do theirs.669

The Houses instantly voted a joint address in which they thankfully acknowledged the divine goodness which

had preserved him to his people, and implored him to take more than ordinary care of his person. They

concluded by exhorting him to seize and secure all persons whom he regarded as dangerous.

On the same day two important bills were brought into the Commons. By one the Habeas Corpus Act was

suspended. The other provided that the Parliament should not be dissolved by the death of William. Sir

Rowland Gwyn, an honest country gentleman, made a motion of which he did not at all foresee the important

consequences. He proposed that the members should enter into an association for the defence of their

Sovereign and their country. Montague, who of all men was the quickest at taking and improving a hint, saw

how much such an association would strengthen the government and the Whig party.670 An instrument was

immediately drawn tip, by which the representatives of the people, each for himself, solemnly recognised

William as rightful and lawful King, and bound themselves to stand by him and by each other against James

and James's adherents. Lastly they vowed that, if His Majesty's life should be shortened by violence, they

would avenge him signally on his murderers, and would, with one heart, strenuously support the order of

succession settled by the Bill of Rights. It was ordered that the House should be called over the next

morning.671 The attendance was consequently great; the Association, engrossed on parchment, was on the

The King's speech, the joint address of both Houses, the Association framed by the Commons, and a

proclamation, containing a list of the conspirators and offering a reward of a thousand pounds for the

apprehension of any one of them, were soon cried in all the streets of the capital and carried out by all the

postbags. Wherever the news came it raised the whole country. Those two hateful words, assassination and

invasion, acted like a spell. No impressment was necessary. The seamen came forth from their hiding places

by thousands to man the fleet. Only three days after the King had appealed to the nation, Russell sailed out of

the Thames with one great squadron. Another was ready for action at Spithead. The militia of all the maritime

counties from the Wash to the Land's End was under arms. For persons accused of offences merely political

there was generally much sympathy. But Barclay's assassins were hunted like wolves by the whole

population. The abhorrence which the English have, through many generations, felt for domiciliary visits, and

for all those impediments which the police of continental states throws in the way of travellers, was for a time

suspended. The gates of the City of London were kept many hours closed while a strict search was made

within. The magistrates of almost every walled town in the kingdom followed the example of the capital. On

every highway parties of armed men were posted with orders to stop passengers of suspicious appearance.

During a few days it was hardly possible to perform a journey without a passport, or to procure posthorses

without the authority of a justice of the peace. Nor was any voice raised against these precautions. The

common people indeed were, if possible, more eager than the public functionaries to bring the traitors to

justice. This eagerness may perhaps be in part ascribed to the great rewards promised by the royal

proclamation. The hatred which every good Protestant felt for Popish cutthroats was not a little strengthened

by the songs in which the street poets celebrated the lucky hackney coachman who had caught his traitor, had

received his thousand pounds, and had set up as a gentleman.673 The zeal of the populace could in some

places hardly be kept within the limits of the law. At the country seat of Parkyns in Warwickshire, arms and

accoutrements sufficient to equip a troop of cavalry were found. As soon as this was known, a furious mob

assembled, pulled down the house and laid the gardens utterly waste.674 Parkyns himself was tracked to a

garret in the Temple. Porter and Keyes, who had fled into Surrey, were pursued by the hue and cry, stopped

by the country people near Leatherhead, and, after some show of resistance, secured and sent to prison.

Friend was found hidden in the house of a Quaker. Knightley was caught in the dress of a fine lady, and

recognised in spite of his patches and paint. In a few days all the chief conspirators were in custody except

At the same time some notorious malecontents were arrested, and were detained for a time on suspicion. Old

Roger Lestrange, now in his eightieth year, was taken up. Ferguson was found hidden under a bed in Gray's

Inn Lane, and was, to the general joy, locked up in Newgate.675 Meanwhile a special commission was issued

for the trial of the traitors. There was no want of evidence. For, of the conspirators who had been seized, ten

or twelve were ready to save themselves by bearing witness against their associates. None had been deeper in

guilt, and none shrank with more abject terror from death, than Porter. The government consented to spare

him, and thus obtained, not only his evidence, but the much more respectable evidence of Pendergrass.

Pendergrass was in no danger; he had committed no offence; his character was fair; and his testimony would

have far greater weight with a jury than the testimony of a crowd of approvers swearing for their necks. But

he had the royal word of honour that he should not be a witness without his own consent; and he was fully

determined not to be a witness unless he were assured of Porter's safety. Porter was now safe; and

Charnock, King and Keyes were set first to the bar. The Chiefs of the three Courts of Common Law and

several other judges were on the bench; and among the audience were many members of both Houses of

It was the eleventh of March. The new Act which regulated the procedure in cases of high treason was not to

come into force till the twentyfifth. The culprits urged that, as the Legislature had, by passing that Act,

recognised the justice of allowing them to see their indictment, and to avail themselves of the assistance of an

advocate, the tribunal ought either to grant them what the highest authority had declared to be a reasonable

indulgence, or to defer the trial for a fortnight. The judges, however, would consent to no delay. They have

therefore been accused by later writers of using the mere letter of the law in order to destroy men who, if that

law had been construed according to its spirit, might have had some chance of escape. This accusation is

unjust. The judges undoubtedly carried the real intention of the Legislature into effect; and, for whatever

injustice was committed, the Legislature, and not the judges, ought to be held accountable. The words,

"twentyfifth of March," had not slipped into the Act by mere inadvertence. All parties in Parliament had

long been agreed as to the principle of the new regulations. The only matter about which there was any

dispute was the time at which those regulations should take effect. After debates extending through several

sessions, after repeated divisions with various results, a compromise had been made; and it was surely not for

the Courts to alter the terms of that compromise. It may indeed be confidently affirmed that, if the Houses

had foreseen the Assassination Plot, they would have fixed, not an earlier, but a later day for the

commencement of the new system. Undoubtedly the Parliament, and especially the Whig party, deserved

serious blame. For, if the old rules of procedure gave no unfair advantage to the Crown, there was no reason

for altering them; and if, as was generally admitted, they did give an unfair advantage to the Crown, and that

against a defendant on trial for his life, they ought not to have been suffered to continue in force a single day.

But no blame is due to the tribunals for not acting in direct opposition both to the letter and to the spirit of the

The government might indeed have postponed the trials till the new Act came into force; and it would have

been wise, as well as right, to do so; for the prisoners would have gained nothing by the delay. The case

against them was one on which all the ingenuity of the Inns of Court could have made no impression. Porter,

Pendergrass, De la Rue and others gave evidence which admitted of no answer. Charnock said the very little

that he had to say with readiness and presence of mind. The jury found all the defendants guilty. It is not

much to the honour of that age that the announcement of the verdict was received with loud huzzas by the

crowd which surrounded the Courthouse. Those huzzas were renewed when the three unhappy men, having

Charnock had hitherto shown no sign of flinching; but when he was again in his cell his fortitude gave way.

He begged hard for mercy. He would be content, he said, to pass the rest of his days in an easy confinement.

He asked only for his life. In return for his life, he promised to discover all that he knew of the schemes of the

Jacobites against the government. If it should appear that he prevaricated or that he suppressed any thing, he

was willing to undergo the utmost rigour of the law. This offer produced much excitement, and some

difference of opinion, among the councillors of William. But the King decided, as in such cases he seldom

failed to decide, wisely and magnanimously. He saw that the discovery of the Assassination Plot had changed

the whole posture of affairs. His throne, lately tottering, was fixed on an immovable basis. His popularity had

risen impetuously to as great a height as when he was on his march from Torbay to London. Many who had

been out of humour with his administration, and who had, in their spleen, held some communication with

Saint Germains, were shocked to find that they had been, in some sense, leagued with murderers. He would

not drive such persons to despair. He would not even put them to the blush. Not only should they not be

punished; they should not undergo the humiliation of being pardoned. He would not know that they had

offended. Charnock was left to his fate.677 When he found that he had no chance of being received as a

deserter, he assumed the dignity of a martyr, and played his part resolutely to the close. That he might bid

farewell to the world with a better grace, he ordered a fine new coat to be hanged in, and was very particular

on his last day about the powdering and curling of his wig.678 Just before he was turned off, he delivered to

the Sheriffs a paper in which he avowed that he had conspired against the life of the Prince of Orange, but

solemnly denied that James had given any commission authorising assassination. The denial was doubtless

literally correct; but Charnock did not deny, and assuredly could not with truth have denied, that he had seen

a commission written and signed by James, and containing words which might without any violence be

construed, and which were, by all to whom they were shown, actually construed, to authorise the murderous

Indeed Charnock, in another paper, which is still in existence, but has never been printed, held very different

language. He plainly said that, for reasons too obvious to be mentioned, he could not tell the whole truth in

the paper which be had delivered to the Sheriffs. He acknowledged that the plot in which he had been

engaged seemed, even to many loyal subjects, highly criminal. They called him assassin and murderer. Yet

what had he done more than had been done by Mucius Scaevola? Nay, what had he done more than had been

done by every body who bore arms against the Prince of Orange? If an array of twenty thousand men had

suddenly landed in England and surprised the usurper, this would have been called legitimate war. Did the

difference between war and assassination depend merely on the number of persons engaged? What then was

the smallest number which could lawfully surprise an enemy? Was it five thousand, or a thousand, or a

hundred? Jonathan and his armourbearer were only two. Yet they made a great slaughter of the Philistines.

Was that assassination? It cannot, said Charnock, be the mere act, it must be the cause, that makes killing

assassination. It followed that it was not assassination to kill one,and here the dying man gave a loose to

all his hatred,who had declared a war of extermination against loyal subjects, who hung, drew and

quartered every man who stood up for the right, and who had laid waste England to enrich the Dutch.

Charnock admitted that his enterprise would have been unjustifiable if it had not been authorised by James;

but he maintained that it had been authorised, not indeed expressly, but by implication. His Majesty had

indeed formerly prohibited similar attempts; but had prohibited them, not as in themselves criminal, but

merely as inexpedient at this or that conjuncture of affairs. Circumstances had changed. The prohibition

might therefore reasonably be considered as withdrawn. His Majesty's faithful subjects had then only to look

to the words of his commission; and those words, beyond all doubt, fully warranted an attack on the person of

King and Keyes suffered with Charnock. King behaved with firmness and decency. He acknowledged his

crime, and said that he repented of it. He thought it due to the Church of which he was a member, and on

which his conduct had brought reproach, to declare that he had been misled, not by any casuistry about

tyrannicide, but merely by the violence of his own evil passions. Poor Keyes was in an agony of terror. His

tears and lamentations moved the pity of some of the spectators. It was said at the time, and it has often since

been repeated, that a servant drawn into crime by a master was a proper object of royal clemency. But those

who have blamed the severity with which Keyes was treated have altogether omitted to notice the important

circumstance which distinguished his case from that of every other conspirator. He had been one of the Blues.

He had kept up to the last an intercourse with his old comrades. On the very day fixed for the murder he had

contrived to mingle with them and to pick up intelligence from them. The regiment had been so deeply

infected with disloyalty that it had been found necessary to confine some men and to dismiss many more.

Surely, if any example was to be made, it was proper to make an example of the agent by whose

instrumentality the men who meant to shoot the King communicated with the men whose business was to

Friend was tried next. His crime was not of so black a dye as that of the three conspirators who had just

suffered. He had indeed invited foreign enemies to invade the realm, and had made preparations for joining

them. But, though he had been privy to the design of assassination, he had not been a party to it. His large

fortune however, and the use which he was well known to have made of it, marked him out as a fit object for

punishment. He, like Charnock, asked for counsel, and, like Charnock, asked in vain. The judges could not

relax the law; and the Attorney General would not postpone the trial. The proceedings of that day furnish a

strong argument in favour of the Act from the benefit of which Friend was excluded. It is impossible to read

them over at this distance of time without feeling compassion for a silly ill educated man, unnerved by

extreme danger, and opposed to cool, astute and experienced antagonists. Charnock had defended himself and

those who were tried with him as well as any professional advocate could have done. But poor Friend was as

helpless as a child. He could do little more than exclaim that he was a Protestant, and that the witnesses

against him were Papists, who had dispensations from their priests for perjury, and who believed that to

swear away the lives of heretics was a meritorious work. He was so grossly ignorant of law and history as to

imagine that the statute of treasons, passed in the reign of Edward the Third, at a time when there was only

one religion in Western Europe, contained a clause providing that no Papist should be a witness, and actually

forced the Clerk of the Court to read the whole Act from beginning to end. About his guilt it was impossible

that there could be a doubt in any rational mind. He was convicted; and he would have been convicted if he

Parkyns came next. He had been deeply concerned in the worst part of the plot, and was, in one respect, less

excusable than any of his accomplices; for they were all nonjurors; and he had taken the oaths to the existing

government. He too insisted that he ought to be tried according to the provisions of the new Act. But the

counsel for the Crown stood on their extreme right; and his request was denied. As he was a man of

considerable abilities, and had been bred to the bar, he probably said for himself all that counsel could have

said for him; and that all amounted to very little. He was found guilty, and received sentence of death on the

evening of the twentyfourth of March, within six hours of the time when the law of which he had vainly

The execution of the two knights was eagerly expected by the population of London. The States General were

informed by their correspondent that, of all sights, that in which the English most delighted was a hanging,

and that, of all hangings within the memory of the oldest man, that of Friend and Parkyns excited the greatest

interest. The multitude had been incensed against Friend by reports touching the exceeding badness of the

beer which he brewed. It was even rumoured that he had, in his zeal for the Jacobite cause, poisoned all the

casks which he had furnished to the navy. An innumerable crowd accordingly assembled at Tyburn.

Scaffolding had been put up which formed an immense amphitheatre round the gallows. On this scaffolding

the wealthier spectators stood, row above row; and expectation was at the height when it was announced that

the show was deferred. The mob broke up in bad humour, and not without many fights between those who

The cause of this severe disappointment was a resolution suddenly passed by the Commons. A member had

proposed that a Committee should be sent to the Tower with authority to examine the prisoners, and to hold

out to them the hope that they might, by a full and ingenuous confession, obtain the intercession of the

House. The debate appears, from the scanty information which has come down to us, to have been a very

curious one. Parties seemed to have changed characters. It might have been expected that the Whigs would

have been inexorably severe, and that, if there was any tenderness for the unhappy men, that tenderness

would have been found among the Tories. But in truth many of the Whigs hoped that they might, by sparing

two criminals who had no power to do mischief, be able to detect and destroy numerous criminals high in

rank and office. On the other hand, every man who had ever had any dealings direct or indirect with Saint

Germains, or who took an interest in any person likely to have had such dealings, looked forward with dread

to the disclosures which the captives might, under the strong terrors of death, be induced to make. Seymour,

simply because he had gone further in treason than almost any other member of the House, was louder than

any other member of the House in exclaiming against all indulgence to his brother traitors. Would the

Commons usurp the most sacred prerogative of the Crown? It was for His Majesty, and not for them, to judge

whether lives justly forfeited could be without danger spared. The Whigs however carried their point. A

Committee, consisting of all the Privy Councillors in the House, set off instantly for Newgate. Friend and

Parkyns were interrogated, but to no purpose. They had, after sentence had been passed on them, shown at

first some symptoms of weakness; but their courage had been fortified by the exhortations of nonjuring

divines who had been admitted to the prison. The rumour was that Parkyns would have given way but for the

entreaties of his daughter, who adjured him to suffer like a man for the good cause. The criminals

acknowledged that they had done the acts of which they had been convicted, but, with a resolution which is

the more respectable because it seems to have sprung, not from constitutional hardihood, but from sentiments

of honour and religion, refused to say any thing which could compromise others.682

In a few hours the crowd again assembled at Tyburn; and this time the sightseers were not defrauded of their

amusement. They saw indeed one sight which they had not expected, and which produced a greater sensation

than the execution itself. Jeremy Collier and two other nonjuring divines of less celebrity, named Cook and

Snatt, had attended the prisoners in Newgate, and were in the cart under the gallows. When the prayers were

over, and just before the hangman did his office, the three schismatical priests stood up, and laid their hands

on the heads of the dying men who continued to kneel. Collier pronounced a form of absolution taken from

This ceremony raised a great outcry; and the outcry became louder when, a few hours after the execution, the

papers delivered by the two traitors to the Sheriffs were made public. It had been supposed that Parkyns at

least would express some repentance for the crime which had brought him to the gallows. Indeed he had,

before the Committee of the Commons, owned that the Assassination Plot could not be justified. But, in his

last declaration, he avowed his share in that plot, not only without a word indicating remorse, but with

something which resembled exultation. Was this a man to be absolved by Christian divines, absolved before

the eyes of tens of thousands, absolved with rites evidently intended to attract public attention, with rites of

which there was no trace in the Book of Common Prayer or in the practice of the Church of England?

In journals, pamphlets and broadsides, the insolence of the three Levites, as they were called, was sharply

reprehended. Warrants were soon out. Cook and Snatt were taken and imprisoned; but Collier was able to

conceal himself, and, by the help of one of the presses which were at the service of his party, sent forth from

his hiding place a defence of his conduct. He declared that he abhorred assassination as much as any of those

who railed against him; and his general character warrants us in believing that this declaration was perfectly

sincere. But the rash act into which he had been hurried by party spirit furnished his adversaries with very

plausible reasons for questioning his sincerity. A crowd of answers to his defence appeared. Preeminent

among them in importance was a solemn manifesto signed by the two Archbishops and by all the Bishops

who were then in London, twelve in number. Even Crewe of Durham and Sprat of Rochester set their names

to this document. They condemned the proceedings of the three nonjuring divines, as in form irregular and in

substance impious. To remit the sins of impenitent sinners was a profane abuse of the power which Christ had

delegated to his ministers. It was not denied that Parkyns had planned an assassination. It was not pretended

that he had professed any repentance for planning an assassination. The plain inference was that the divines

who absolved him did not think it sinful to assassinate King William. Collier rejoined; but, though a

pugnacious controversialist, he on this occasion shrank from close conflict, and made his escape as well as he

could under a cloud of quotations from Tertullian, Cyprian and Jerome, Albaspinaeus and Hammond, the

Council of Carthage and the Council of Toledo. The public feeling was strongly against the three absolvers.

The government however wisely determined not to confer on them the honour of martyrdom. A bill was

found against them by the grand jury of Middlesex; but they were not brought to trial. Cook and Snatt were

set at liberty after a short detention; and Collier would have been treated with equal lenity if he would have

consented to put in bail. But he was determined to do no act which could be construed into a recognition of

the usurping government. He was therefore outlawed; and when he died, more than thirty years later, his

Parkyns was the last Englishman who was tried for high treason under the old system of procedure. The first

who was tried under the new system was Rockwood. He was defended by Sir Bartholomew Shower, who in

the preceding reign had made himself unenviably conspicuous as a servile and cruel sycophant, who had

obtained from James the Recordership of London when Holt honourably resigned it, and who had, as

Recorder, sent soldiers to the gibbet for breaches of military discipline. By his servile cruelty he had earned

the nickname of the Manhunter. Shower deserved, if any offender deserved, to be excepted from the Act of

Indemnity, and left to the utmost rigour of those laws which he had so shamelessly perverted. But he had

been saved by the clemency of William, and had requited that clemency by pertinacious and malignant

opposition.684 It was doubtless on account of Shower's known leaning towards Jacobitism that he was

employed on this occasion. He raised some technical objections which the Court overruled. On the merits of

the case he could make no defence. The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Cranburne and Lowick were then

tried and convicted. They suffered with Rookwood; and there the executions stopped.685

The temper of the nation was such that the government might have shed much more blood without incurring

the reproach of cruelty. The feeling which had been called forth by the discovery of the plot continued during

several weeks to increase day by day. Of that feeling the able men who were at the head of the Whig party

made a singularly skilful use. They saw that the public enthusiasm, if left without guidance, would exhaust

itself in huzzas, healths and bonfires, but might, if wisely guided, be the means of producing a great and

lasting effect. The Association, into which the Commons had entered while the King's speech was still in

their ears, furnished the means of combining four fifths of the nation in one vast club for the defence of the

order of succession with which were inseparably combined the dearest liberties of the English people, and of

establishing a test which would distinguish those who were zealous for that order of succession from those

who sullenly and reluctantly acquiesced in it. Of the five hundred and thirty members of the Lower House

about four hundred and twenty voluntarily subscribed the instrument which recognised William as rightful

and lawful King of England. It was moved in the Upper House that the same form should be adopted; but

objections were raised by the Tories. Nottingham, ever conscientious, honourable and narrow minded,

declared that he could not assent to the words "rightful and lawful." He still held, as he had held from the

first, that a prince who had taken the Crown, not by birthright, but by the gift of the Convention, could not

properly be so described. William was doubtless King in fact, and, as King in fact, was entitled to the

obedience of Christians. "No man," said Nottingham, "has served or will serve His Majesty more faithfully

than I. But to this document I cannot set my hand." Rochester and Normanby held similar language.

Monmouth, in a speech of two hours and a half, earnestly exhorted the Lords to agree with the Commons.

Burnet was vehement on the same side. Wharton, whose father had lately died, and who was now Lord

Wharton, appeared in the foremost rank of the Whig peers. But no man distinguished himself more in the

debate than one whose life, both public and private, had been one long series of faults and disasters, the

incestuous lover of Henrietta Berkeley, the unfortunate lieutenant of Monmouth. He had recently ceased to be

called by the tarnished name of Grey of Wark, and was now Earl of Tankerville. He spoke on that day with

great force and eloquence for the words, "rightful and lawful." Leeds, after expressing his regret that a

question about a mere phrase should have produced dissension among noble persons who were all equally

attached to the reigning Sovereign, undertook the office of mediator. He proposed that their Lordships,

instead of recognising William as rightful and lawful King, should declare that William had the right by law

to the English Crown, and that no other person had any right whatever to that Crown. Strange to say, almost

all the Tory peers were perfectly satisfied with what Leeds had suggested. Among the Whigs there was some

unwillingness to consent to a change which, slight as it was, might be thought to indicate a difference of

opinion between the two Houses on a subject of grave importance. But Devonshire and Portland declared

themselves content; their authority prevailed; and the alteration was made. How a rightful and lawful

possessor is to be distinguished from a possessor who has the exclusive right by law is a question which a

Whig may, without any painful sense of shame, acknowledge to be beyond the reach of his faculties, and

leave to be discussed by High Churchmen. Eightythree peers immediately affixed their names to the

amended form of association; and Rochester was among them. Nottingham, not yet quite satisfied, asked time

Beyond the walls of Parliament there was none of this verbal quibbling. The language of the House of

Commons was adopted by the whole country. The City of London led the way. Within thirty six hours after

the Association had been published under the direction of the Speaker it was subscribed by the Lord Mayor,

by the Aldermen, and by almost all the members of the Common Council. The municipal corporations all

over the kingdom followed the example. The spring assizes were just beginning; and at every county town

the grand jurors and the justices of the peace put down their names. Soon shopkeepers, artisans, yeomen,

farmers, husbandmen, came by thousands to the tables where the parchments were laid out. In Westminster

there were thirtyseven thousand associators, in the Tower Hamlets eight thousand, in Southwark eighteen

thousand. The rural parts of Surrey furnished seventeen thousand. At Ipswich all the freemen signed except

two. At Warwick all the male inhabitants who had attained the age of sixteen signed, except two Papists and

two Quakers. At Taunton, where the memory of the Bloody Circuit was fresh, every man who could write

gave in his adhesion to the government. All the churches and all the meeting houses in the town were

crowded, as they had never been crowded before, with people who came to thank God for having preserved

him whom they fondly called William the Deliverer. Of all the counties of England Lancashire was the most

Jacobitical. Yet Lancashire furnished fifty thousand signatures. Of all the great towns of England Norwich

was the most Jacobitical. The magistrates of that city were supposed to be in the interest of the exiled

dynasty. The nonjurors were numerous, and had, just before the discovery of the plot, seemed to be in

unusual spirits and ventured to take unusual liberties. One of the chief divines of the schism had preached a

sermon there which gave rise to strange suspicions. He had taken for his text the verse in which the Prophet

Jeremiah announced that the day of vengeance was come, that the sword would be drunk with blood, that the

Lord God of Hosts had a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates. Very soon it was known that, at

the time when this discourse was delivered, swords had actually been sharpening, under the direction of

Barclay and Parkyns, for a bloody sacrifice on the north bank of the river Thames. The indignation of the

common people of Norwich was not to be restrained. They came in multitudes, though discouraged by the

municipal authorities, to plight faith to William, rightful and lawful King. In Norfolk the number of

signatures amounted to fortyeight thousand, in Suffolk to seventy thousand. Upwards of five hundred rolls

went up to London from every part of England. The number of names attached to twentyseven of those rolls

appears from the London Gazette to have been three hundred and fourteen thousand. After making the largest

allowance for fraud, it seems certain that the Association included the great majority of the adult male

inhabitants of England who were able to sign their names. The tide of popular feeling was so strong that a

man who was known not to have signed ran considerable risk of being publicly affronted. In many places

nobody appeared without wearing in his hat a red riband on which were embroidered the words, "General

Association for King William." Once a party of Jacobites had the courage to parade a street in London with

an emblematic device which seemed to indicate their contempt for the new Solemn League and Covenant.

They were instantly put to rout by the mob, and their leader was well ducked. The enthusiasm spread to

secluded isles, to factories in foreign countries, to remote colonies. The Association was signed by the rude

fishermen of the Scilly Rocks, by the English merchants of Malaga, by the English merchants of Genoa, by

the citizens of New York, by the tobacco planters of Virginia and by the sugar planters of Barbadoes.687

Emboldened by success, the Whig leaders ventured to proceed a step further. They brought into the Lower

House a bill for the securing of the King's person and government. By this bill it was provided that whoever,

while the war lasted, should come from France into England without the royal license should incur the

penalties of treason, that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act should continue to the end of the year

1696, and that all functionaries appointed by William should retain their offices, notwithstanding his death,

till his successor should be pleased to dismiss them. The form of Association which the House of Commons

had adopted was solemnly ratified; and it was provided that no person should sit in that House or should hold

any office, civil or military, without signing. The Lords were indulged in the use of their own form; and

The Tories, headed by Finch and Seymour, complained bitterly of this new test, and ventured once to divide,

but were defeated. Finch seems to have been heard patiently; but, notwithstanding all Seymour's eloquence,

the contemptuous manner in which he spoke of the Association raised a storm against which he could not

stand. Loud cries of "the Tower, the Tower," were heard. Haughty and imperious as he was, he was forced to

explain away his words, and could scarcely, by apologizing in a manner to which he was little accustomed,

save himself from the humiliation of being called to the bar and reprimanded on his knees. The bill went up

to the Lords, and passed with great speed in spite of the opposition of Rochester and Nottingham.688

The nature and extent of the change which the discovery of the Assassination Plot had produced in the temper

of the House of Commons and of the nation is strikingly illustrated by the history of a bill entitled a Bill for

the further Regulation of Elections of Members of Parliament. The moneyed interest was almost entirely

Whig, and was therefore an object of dislike to the Tories. The rapidly growing power of that interest was

generally regarded with jealousy by landowners whether they were Whigs or Tories. It was something new

and monstrous to see a trader from Lombard Street, who had no tie to the soil of our island, and whose wealth

was entirely personal and movable, post down to Devonshire or Sussex with a portmanteau full of guineas,

offer himself as candidate for a borough in opposition to a neighbouring gentleman whose ancestors had been

regularly returned ever since the Wars of the Roses, and come in at the head of the poll. Yet even this was not

the worst. More than one seat in Parliament, it was said, had been bought and sold over a dish of coffee at

Garraway's. The purchaser had not been required even to go through the form of showing himself to the

electors. Without leaving his counting house in Cheapside, he had been chosen to represent a place which he

had never seen. Such things were intolerable. No man, it was said, ought to sit in the English legislature who

was not master of some hundreds of acres of English ground.689 A bill was accordingly brought in which

provided that every member of the House of Commons must have a certain estate in land. For a knight of a

shire the qualification was fixed at five hundred a year; for a burgess at two hundred a year. Early in February

this bill was read a second time and referred to a Select Committee. A motion was made that the Committee

should be instructed to add a clause enacting that all elections should be by ballot. Whether this motion

proceeded from a Whig or a Tory, by what arguments it was supported and on what grounds it was opposed,

we have now no means of discovering. We know only that it was rejected without a division.

Before the bill came back from the Committee, some of the most respectable constituent bodies in the

kingdom had raised their voices against the new restriction to which it was proposed to subject them. There

had in general been little sympathy between the commercial towns and the Universities. For the commercial

towns were the chief seats of Whiggism and Non conformity; and the Universities were zealous for the

Crown and the Church. Now, however, Oxford and Cambridge made common cause with London and

Bristol. It was hard, said the Academics, that a grave and learned man, sent by a large body of grave and

learned men to the Great Council of the nation, should be thought less fit to sit in that Council than a boozing

clown who had scarcely literature enough to entitle him to the benefit of clergy. It was hard, said the traders,

that a merchant prince, who had been the first magistrate of the first city in the world, whose name on the

back of a bill commanded entire confidence at Smyrna and at Genoa, at Hamburg and at Amsterdam, who

had at sea ships every one of which was worth a manor, and who had repeatedly, when the liberty and

religion of the kingdom were in peril, advanced to the government, at an hour's notice, five or ten thousand

pounds, should be supposed to have a less stake in the prosperity of the commonwealth than a squire who

sold his own bullocks and hops over a pot of ale at the nearest market town. On the report, it was moved that

the Universities should be excepted; but the motion was lost by a hundred and fiftyone votes to a hundred

and fortythree. On the third reading it was moved that the City of London should be excepted; but it was not

thought advisable to divide. The final question that the bill do pass, was carried by a hundred and

seventythree votes to a hundred and fifty on the day which preceded the discovery of the Assassination Plot.

William had to consider whether he would give or withhold his assent. The commercial towns of the

kingdom, and among them the City of London, which had always stood firmly by him, and which had

extricated him many times from great embarrassments, implored his protection. It was represented to him that

the Commons were far indeed from being unanimous on this subject; that, in the last stage, the majority had

been only twentythree in a full House; that the motion to except the Universities had been lost by a majority

of only eight. On full consideration he resolved not to pass the bill. Nobody, he said, could accuse him of

acting selfishly on this occasion; his prerogative was not concerned in the matter; and he could have no

objection to the proposed law except that it would be mischievous to his people.

On the tenth of April 1696, therefore, the Clerk of the Parliament was commanded to inform the Houses that

the King would consider of the Bill for the further Regulation of Elections. Some violent Tories in the House

of Commons flattered themselves that they might be able to carry a resolution reflecting on the King. They

moved that whoever had advised His Majesty to refuse his assent to their bill was an enemy to him and to the

nation. Never was a greater blunder committed. The temper of the House was very different from what it had

been on the day when the address against Portland's grant had been voted by acclamation. The detection of a

murderous conspiracy, the apprehension of a French invasion, had changed every thing. The King was

popular. Every day ten or twelve bales of parchment covered with the signatures of associators were laid at

his feet. Nothing could be more imprudent than to propose, at such a time, a thinly disguised vote of censure

on him. The moderate Tories accordingly separated themselves from their angry and unreasonable brethren.

The motion was rejected by two hundred and nineteen votes to seventy; and the House ordered the question

and the numbers on both sides to be published, in order that the world might know how completely the

The country gentlemen might perhaps have been more inclined to resent the loss of their bill, had they not

been put into high goodhumour by another bill which they considered as even more important. The project of

a Land Bank had been revived; not in the form in which it had, two years before, been brought under the

consideration of the House of Commons, but in a form much less shocking to common sense and less open to

ridicule. Chamberlayne indeed protested loudly against all modifications of his plan, and proclaimed, with

undiminished confidence, that he would make all his countrymen rich if they would only let him. He was not,

he said, the first great discoverer whom princes and statesmen had regarded as a dreamer. Henry the Seventh

had, in an evil hour, refused to listen to Christopher Columbus; the consequence had been that England had

lost the mines of Mexico and Peru; yet what were the mines of Mexico and Peru to the riches of a nation

blessed with an unlimited paper currency? But the united force of reason and ridicule had reduced the once

numerous sect which followed Chamberlayne to a small and select company of incorrigible fools. Few even

of the squires now believed in his two great doctrines; the doctrine that the State can, by merely calling a

bundle of old rags ten millions sterling, add ten millions sterling to the riches of the nation; and the doctrine

that a lease of land for a term of years may be worth many times the fee simple. But it was still the general

opinion of the country gentlemen that a bank, of which it should be the special business to advance money on

the security of land, might be a great blessing to the nation. Harley and the Speaker Foley now proposed that

such a bank should be established by Act of Parliament, and promised that, if their plan was adopted, the

The Whig leaders, and especially Montague, saw that the scheme was a delusion, that it must speedily fail,

and that, before it failed, it might not improbably ruin their own favourite institution, the Bank of England.

But on this point they had against them, not only the whole Tory party, but also their master and many of

their followers. The necessities of the State were pressing. The offers of the projectors were tempting. The

Bank of England had, in return for its charter, advanced to the State only one million at eight per cent. The

Land Bank would advance more than two millions and a half at seven per cent. William, whose chief object

was to procure money for the service of the year, was little inclined to find fault with any source from which

two millions and a half could be obtained. Sunderland, who generally exerted his influence in favour of the

Whig leaders, failed them on this occasion. The Whig country gentlemen were delighted by the prospect of

being able to repair their stables, replenish their cellars, and give portions to their daughters. It was

impossible to contend against such a combination of force. A bill was passed which authorised the

government to borrow two million five hundred and sixtyfour thousand pounds at seven per cent. A fund,

arising chiefly from a new tax on salt, was set apart for the payment of the interest. If, before the first of

August, the subscription for one half of this loan should have been filled, and if one half of the sum

subscribed should have been paid into the Exchequer, the subscribers were to become a corporate body,

under the name of the National Land Bank. As this bank was expressly intended to accommodate country

gentlemen, it was strictly interdicted from lending money on any private security other than a mortgage of

land, and was bound to lend on mortgage at least half a million annually. The interest on this half million was

not to exceed three and a half per cent., if the payments were quarterly, or four per cent., if the payments were

half yearly. At that time the market rate of interest on the best mortgages was full six per cent. The shrewd

observers at the Dutch Embassy therefore thought that capitalists would eschew all connection with what

must necessarily be a losing concern, and that the subscription would never be half filled up; and it seems

It was vain however to reason against the general infatuation. The Tories exultingly predicted that the Bank

of Robert Harley would completely eclipse the Bank of Charles Montague. The bill passed both Houses. On

the twentyseventh of April it received the royal assent; and the Parliament was immediately afterwards

Military Operations in the NetherlandsCommercial Crisis in EnglandFinancial CrisisEfforts to

restore the Currency Distress of the People; their Temper and ConductNegotiations with France; the

Duke of Savoy deserts the CoalitionSearch for Jacobite Conspirators in England; Sir John

FenwickCapture of FenwickFenwick's ConfessionReturn of William to England Meeting of

Parliament; State of the Country; Speech of William at the Commencement of the SessionResolutions of

the House of CommonsReturn of ProsperityEffect of the Proceedings of the House of Commons on

Foreign Governments731Restoration of the FinancesEffects of Fenwick's ConfessionResignation of

GodolphinFeeling of the Whigs about FenwickWilliam examines FenwickDisappearance of

GoodmanParliamentary Proceedings touching Fenwick's ConfessionBill for attainting Fenwick

Debates of the Commons on the Bill of AttainderThe Bill of Attainder carried up to the LordsArtifices

of MonmouthDebates of the Lords on the Bill of AttainderProceedings against MonmouthPosition

and Feelings of ShrewsburyThe Bill of Attainder passed; Attempts to save FenwickFenwick's

Execution; Bill for the Regulating of ElectionsBill for the Regulation of the PressBill abolishing the

Privileges of Whitefriars and the SavoyClose of the Session; Promotions and AppointmentsState of

IrelandState of ScotlandA Session of Parliament at Edinburgh; Act for the Settling of SchoolsCase of

Thomas AikenheadMilitary Operations in the NetherlandsTerms of Peace offered by FranceConduct

of Spain; Conduct of the Emperor Congress of RyswickWilliam opens a distinct Negotiation

Meetings of Portland and BoufflersTerms of Peace between France and England settledDifficulties

caused by Spain and the EmperorAttempts of James to prevent a general PacificationThe Treaty of

Ryswick signed; Anxiety in EnglandNews of the Peace arrives in EnglandDismay of the

ON the seventh of May 1696, William landed in Holland.692 Thence he proceeded to Flanders, and took the

command of the allied forces, which were collected in the neighbourhood of Ghent. Villeroy and Boufflers

were already in the field. All Europe waited impatiently for great news from the Netherlands, but waited in

vain. No aggressive movement was made. The object of the generals on both sides was to keep their troops

from dying of hunger; and it was an object by no means easily attained. The treasuries both of France and

England were empty. Lewis had, during the winter, created with great difficulty and expense a gigantic

magazine at Givet on the frontier of his kingdom. The buildings were commodious and of vast extent. The

quantity of provender laid up in them for horses was immense. The number of rations for men was commonly

estimated at from three to four millions. But early in the spring Athlone and Cohorn had, by a bold and

dexterous move, surprised Givet, and had utterly destroyed both storehouses and stores.693 France, already

fainting from exhaustion, was in no condition to repair such a loss. Sieges such as those of Mons and Namur

were operations too costly for her means. The business of her army now was, not to conquer, but to subsist.

The army of William was reduced to straits not less painful. The material wealth of England, indeed, had not

been very seriously impaired by the drain which the war had caused; but she was suffering severely from the

defective state of that instrument by which her material wealth was distributed.

Saturday, the second of May, had been fixed by Parliament as the last day on which the clipped crowns,

halfcrowns and shillings were to be received by tale in payment of taxes.694 The Exchequer was besieged

from dawn till midnight by an immense multitude. It was necessary to call in the guards for the purpose of

keeping order. On the following Monday began a cruel agony of a few months, which was destined to be

Most of the old silver had vanished. The new silver had scarcely made its appearance. About four millions

sterling, in ingots and hammered coin, were lying in the vaults of the Exchequer; and the milled money as yet

came forth very slowly from the Mint.696 Alarmists predicted that the wealthiest and most enlightened

kingdom in Europe would be reduced to the state of those barbarous societies in which a mat is bought with a

There were, indeed, some hammered pieces which had escaped mutilation; and sixpences not clipped within

the innermost ring were still current. This old money and the new money together made up a scanty stock of

silver, which, with the help of gold, was to carry the nation through the summer.697 The manufacturers

generally contrived, though with extreme difficulty, to pay their workmen in coin.698 The upper classes seem

to have lived to a great extent on credit. Even an opulent man seldom had the means of discharging the

weekly bills of his baker and butcher.699 A promissory note, however, subscribed by such a man, was readily

taken in the district where his means and character were well known. The notes of the wealthy

moneychangers of Lombard Street circulated widely.700 The paper of the Bank of England did much service,

and would have done more, but for the unhappy error into which the Parliament had recently been led by

Harley and Foley. The confidence which the public had felt in that powerful and opulent Company had been

shaken by the Act which established the Land Bank. It might well be doubted whether there would be room

for the two rival institutions; and of the two, the younger seemed to be the favourite of the government and of

the legislature. The stock of the Bank of England had gone rapidly down from a hundred and ten to

eightythree. Meanwhile the goldsmiths, who had from the first been hostile to that great corporation, were

plotting against it. They collected its paper from every quarter; and on the fourth of May, when the

Exchequer had just swallowed up most of the old money, and when scarcely any of the new money had been

issued, they flocked to Grocers' Hall, and insisted on immediate payment. A single goldsmith demanded

thirty thousand pounds. The Directors, in this extremity, acted wisely and firmly. They refused to cash the

notes which had been thus maliciously presented, and left the holders to seek a remedy in Westminster Hall.

Other creditors, who came in good faith to ask for their due, were paid. The conspirators affected to triumph

over the powerful body, which they hated and dreaded. The bank which had recently begun to exist under

such splendid auspices, which had seemed destined to make a revolution in commerce and in finance, which

had been the boast of London and the envy of Amsterdam, was already insolvent, ruined, dishonoured.

Wretched pasquinades were published, the Trial of the Land Bank for murdering the Bank of England, the

last Will and Testament of the Bank of England, the Epitaph of the Bank of England, the Inquest on the Bank

of England. But, in spite of all this clamour and all this wit, the correspondents of the States General reported,

that the Bank of England had not really suffered in the public esteem, and that the conduct of the goldsmiths

The Directors soon found it impossible to procure silver enough to meet every claim which was made on

them in good faith. They then bethought them of a new expedient. They made a call of twenty per cent. on

the proprietors, and thus raised a sum which enabled them to give every applicant fifteen per cent. in milled

money on what was due to him. They returned him his note, after making a minute upon it that part had been

paid.702 A few notes thus marked are still preserved among the archives of the Bank, as memorials of that

terrible year. The paper of the Corporation continued to circulate, but the value fluctuated violently from day

to day, and indeed from hour to hour; for the public mind was in so excitable a state that the most absurd lie

which a stockjobber could invent sufficed to send the price up or down. At one time the discount was only six

per cent., at another time twentyfour per cent. A tenpound note, which had been taken in the morning as

worth more than nine pounds, was often worth less than eight pounds before night.703

Another, and, at that conjuncture, a more effectual substitute for a metallic currency, owed its existence to the

ingenuity of Charles Montague. He had succeeded in engrafting on Harley's Land Bank Bill a clause which

empowered the government to issue negotiable paper bearing interest at the rate of threepence a day on a

hundred pounds. In the midst of the general distress and confusion appeared the first Exchequer Bills, drawn

for various amounts from a hundred pounds down to five pounds. These instruments were rapidly distributed

over the kingdom by the post, and were every where welcome. The Jacobites talked violently against them in

every coffeehouse, and wrote much detestable verse against them, but to little purpose. The success of the

plan was such, that the ministers at one time resolved to issue twentyshilling bills, and even fifteenshilling

bills, for the payment of the troops. But it does not appear that this resolution was carried into effect.704

It is difficult to imagine how, without the Exchequer Bills, the government of the country could have been

carried on during that year. Every source of revenue had been affected by the state of the currency; and one

source, on which the Parliament had confidently reckoned for the means of defraying more than half the

The sum expected from the Land Bank was near two million six hundred thousand pounds. Of this sum one

half was to be subscribed, and one quarter paid up by the first of August. The King, just before his departure,

had signed a warrant appointing certain commissioners, among whom Harley and Foley were the most

eminent, to receive the names of the contributors.705 A great meeting of persons interested in the scheme

was held in the Hall of the Middle Temple. One office was opened at Exeter Change, another at Mercers'

Hall. Forty agents went down into the country, and announced to the landed gentry of every shire the

approach of the golden age of high rents and low interest. The Council of Regency, in order to set an example

to the nation, put down the King's name for five thousand pounds; and the newspapers assured the world that

the subscription would speedily be filled.706 But when three weeks had passed away, it was found that only

fifteen hundred pounds had been added to the five thousand contributed by the King. Many wondered at this;

yet there was little cause for wonder. The sum which the friends of the project had undertaken to raise was a

sum which only the enemies of the project could furnish. The country gentlemen wished well to Harley's

scheme; but they wished well to it because they wanted to borrow money on easy terms; and, wanting to

borrow money, they of course were not able to lend it. The moneyed class alone could supply what was

necessary to the existence of the Land Bank; and the Land Bank was avowedly intended to diminish the

profits, to destroy the political influence and to lower the social position of the moneyed class. As the usurers

did not choose to take on themselves the expense of putting down usury, the whole plan failed in a manner

which, if the aspect of public affairs had been less alarming, would have been exquisitely ludicrous. The day

drew near. The neatly ruled pages of the subscription book at Mercers' Hall were still blank. The

Commissioners stood aghast. In their distress they applied to the government for indulgence. Many great

capitalists, they said, were desirous to subscribe, but stood aloof because the terms were too hard. There

ought to be some relaxation. Would the Council of Regency consent to an abatement of three hundred

thousand pounds? The finances were in such a state, and the letters in which the King represented his wants

were so urgent, that the Council of Regency hesitated. The Commissioners were asked whether they would

engage to raise the whole sum, with this abatement. Their answer was unsatisfactory. They did not venture to

say that they could command more than eight hundred thousand pounds. The negotiation was, therefore,

broken off. The first of August came; and the whole amount contributed by the whole nation to the

magnificent undertaking from which so much had been expected was two thousand one hundred pounds.707

Just at this conjuncture Portland arrived from the Continent. He had been sent by William with charge to

obtain money, at whatever cost and from whatever quarter. The King had strained his private credit in

Holland to procure bread for his army. But all was insufficient. He wrote to his Ministers that, unless they

could send him a speedy supply, his troops would either rise in mutiny or desert by thousands. He knew, he

said, that it would be hazardous to call Parliament together during his absence. But, if no other resource could

be devised, that hazard must be run.708 The Council of Regency, in extreme embarrassment, began to wish

that the terms, hard as they were, which had been offered by the Commissioners at Mercers' Hall had been

accepted. The negotiation was renewed. Shrewsbury, Godolphin and Portland, as agents for the King, had

several conferences with Harley and Foley, who had recently pretended that eight hundred thousand pounds

were ready to be subscribed to the Land Bank. The Ministers gave assurances, that, if, at this conjuncture,

even half that sum were advanced, those who had done this service to the State should, in the next session, be

incorporated as a National Land Bank. Harley and Foley at first promised, with an air of confidence, to raise

what was required. But they soon went back from their word; they showed a great inclination to be

punctilious and quarrelsome about trifles; at length the eight hundred thousand pounds dwindled to forty

thousand; and even the forty thousand could be had only on hard conditions.709 So ended the great delusion

And now the Council of Regency, almost in despair, had recourse to the Bank of England. Two hundred

thousand pounds was the very smallest sum which would suffice to meet the King's most pressing wants.

Would the Bank of England advance that sum? The capitalists who lead the chief sway in that corporation

were in bad humour, and not without reason. But fair words, earnest entreaties and large promises were not

spared; all the influence of Montague, which was justly great, was exerted; the Directors promised to do their

best; but they apprehended that it would be impossible for them to raise the money without making a second

call of twenty per cent. on their constituents. It was necessary that the question should be submitted to a

General Court; in such a court more than six hundred persons were entitled to vote; and the result might well

be doubted. The proprietors were summoned to meet on the fifteenth of August at Grocers' Hall. During the

painful interval of suspense, Shrewsbury wrote to his master in language more tragic than is often found in

official letters. "If this should not succeed, God knows what can be done. Any thing must be tried and

ventured rather than lie down and die."710 On the fifteenth of August, a great epoch in the history of the

Bank, the General Court was held. In the chair sate Sir John Houblon, the Governor, who was also Lord

Mayor of London, and, what would in our time be thought strange, a Commissioner of the Admiralty. Sir

John, in a speech, every word of which had been written and had been carefully considered by the Directors,

explained the case, and implored the assembly to stand by King William. There was at first a little

murmuring. "If our notes would do," it was said, "we should be most willing to assist His Majesty; but two

hundred thousand pounds in hard money at a time like this." The Governor announced explicitly that nothing

but gold or silver would supply the necessities of the army in Flanders. At length the question was put to the

vote; and every hand in the Hall was held up for sending the money. The letters from the Dutch Embassy

informed the States General that the events of that day had bound the Bank and the government together in

close alliance, and that several of the ministers had, immediately after the meeting, purchased stock merely in

order to give a pledge of their attachment to the body which had rendered so great a service to the State.711

Meanwhile strenuous exertions were making to hasten the recoinage. Since the Restoration the Mint had, like

every other public establishment in the kingdom, been a nest of idlers and jobbers. The important office of

Warden, worth between six and seven hundred a year, had become a mere sinecure, and had been filled by a

succession of fine gentlemen, who were well known at the hazard table of Whitehall, but who never

condescended to come near the Tower. This office had just become vacant, and Montague had obtained it for

Newton.712 The ability, the industry and the strict uprightness of the great philosopher speedily produced a

complete revolution throughout the department which was under his direction.713 He devoted himself to his

task with an activity which left him no time to spare for those pursuits in which he I had surpassed

Archimedes and Galileo. Till the great work was completely done, he resisted firmly, and almost angrily,

every attempt that was made by men of science, here or on the Continent, to draw him away from his official

duties.714 The old officers of the Mint had thought it a great feat to coin silver to the amount of fifteen

thousand pounds in a week. When Montague talked of thirty or forty thousand, these men of form and

precedent pronounced the thing impracticable. But the energy of the young Chancellor of the Exchequer and

of his friend the Warden accomplished far greater wonders. Soon nineteen mills were going at once in the

Tower. As fast as men could be trained to the work in London, bands of them were sent off to other parts of

the kingdom. Mints were established at Bristol, York, Exeter, Norwich and Chester. This arrangement was in

the highest degree popular. The machinery and the workmen were welcomed to the new stations with the

ringing of bells and the firing of guns. The weekly issue increased to sixty thousand pounds, to eighty

thousand, to a hundred thousand, and at length to a hundred and twenty thousand.715 Yet even this issue,

though great, not only beyond precedent, but beyond hope, was scanty when compared with the demands of

the nation. Nor did all the newly stamped silver pass into circulation; for during the summer and autumn

those politicians who were for raising the denomination of the coin were active and clamorous; and it was

generally expected that, as soon as the Parliament should reassemble, the standard would be lowered. Of

course no person who thought it probable that he should, at a day not far distant, be able to pay a debt of a

pound with three crown pieces instead of four, was willing to part with a crown piece, till that day arrived.

Most of the milled pieces were therefore hoarded.716 May, June and July passed away without any

perceptible increase in the quantity of good money. It was not till August that the keenest observer could

The distress of the common people was severe, and was aggravated by the follies of magistrates and by the

arts of malecontents. A squire who was one of the quorum would sometimes think it his duty to administer to

his neighbours, at this trying conjuncture, what seemed to him to be equity; and as no two of these rural

praetors had exactly the same notion of what was equitable, their edicts added confusion to confusion. In one

parish people were, in outrageous violation of the law, threatened with the stocks, if they refused to take

clipped shillings by tale. In the next parish it was dangerous to pay such shillings except by weight.718 The

enemies of the government, at the same time, laboured indefatigably in their vocation. They harangued in

every place of public resort, from the Chocolate House in Saint James's Street to the sanded kitchen of the

alehouse on the village green. In verse and prose they incited the suffering multitude to rise up in arms. Of

the tracts which they published at this time, the most remarkable was written by a deprived priest named

Grascombe, of whose ferocity and scurrility the most respectable nonjurors had long been ashamed. He now

did his best to persuade the rabble to tear in pieces those members of Parliament who had voted for the

restoration of the currency.719 It would be too much to say that the malignant industry of this man and of

men like him produced no effect on a population which was doubtless severely tried. There were riots in

several parts of the country, but riots which were suppressed with little difficulty, and, as far as can be

discovered, without the shedding of a drop of blood.720 In one place a crowd of poor ignorant creatures,

excited by some knavish agitator, besieged the house of a Whig member of Parliament, and clamorously

insisted on having their short money changed. The gentleman consented, and desired to know how much they

had brought. After some delay they were able to produce a single clipped halfcrown.721 Such tumults as this

were at a distance exaggerated into rebellions and massacres. At Paris it was gravely asserted in print that, in

an English town which was not named, a soldier and a butcher had quarrelled about a piece of money, that

the soldier had killed the butcher, that the butcher's man had snatched up a cleaver and killed the soldier, that

a great fight had followed, and that fifty dead bodies had been left on the ground.722 The truth was, that the

behaviour of the great body of the people was beyond all praise. The judges when, in September, they

returned from their circuits, reported that the temper of the nation was excellent.723 There was a patience, a

reasonableness, a good nature, a good faith, which nobody had anticipated. Every body felt that nothing but

mutual help and mutual forbearance could prevent the dissolution of society. A hard creditor, who sternly

demanded payment to the day in milled money, was pointed at in the streets, and was beset by his own

creditors with demands which soon brought him to reason. Much uneasiness had been felt about the troops. It

was scarcely possible to pay them regularly; if they were not paid regularly, it might well be apprehended that

they would supply their wants by rapine; and such rapine it was certain that the nation, altogether

unaccustomed to military exaction and oppression, would not tamely endure. But, strange to say, there was,

through this trying year, a better understanding than had ever been known between the soldiers and the rest of

the community. The gentry, the farmers, the shopkeepers supplied the redcoats with necessaries in a manner

so friendly and liberal that there was no brawling and no marauding. "Severely as these difficulties have been

felt," L'Hermitage writes, "they have produced one happy effect; they have shown how good the spirit of the

country is. No person, however favourable his opinion of the English may have been, could have expected

Men who loved to trace, in the strangely complicated maze of human affairs, the marks of more than human

wisdom, were of opinion that, but for the interference of a gracious Providence, the plan so elaborately

devised by great statesmen and great philosophers would have failed completely and ignominiously. Often,

since the Revolution, the English had been sullen and querulous, unreasonably jealous of the Dutch, and

disposed to put the worst construction on every act of the King. Had the fourth of May found our ancestors in

such a mood, it can scarcely be doubted that sharp distress, irritating minds already irritable, would have

caused an outbreak which must have shaken and might have subverted the throne of William. Happily, at the

moment at which the loyalty of the nation was put to the most severe test, the King was more popular than he

had ever been since the day on which the Crown was tendered to him in the Banqueting House. The plot

which had been laid against his life had excited general disgust and horror. His reserved manners, his foreign

attachments were forgotten. He had become an object of personal interest and of personal affection to his

people. They were every where coming in crowds to sign the instrument which bound them to defend and to

avenge him. They were every where carrying about in their hats the badges of their loyalty to him. They

could hardly be restrained from inflicting summary punishment on the few who still dared openly to question

his title. Jacobite was now a synonyme for cutthroat. Noted Jacobite laymen had just planned a foul murder.

Noted Jacobite priests had, in the face of day, and in the administration of a solemn ordinance of religion,

indicated their approbation of that murder. Many honest and pious men, who thought that their allegiance was

still due to James, had indignantly relinquished all connection with zealots who seemed to think that a

righteous end justified the most unrighteous means. Such was the state of public feeling during the summer

and autumn of 1696; and therefore it was that hardships which, in any of the seven preceding years, would

certainly have produced a rebellion, and might perhaps have produced a counterrevolution, did not produce a

Nevertheless, the effect of the commercial and financial crisis in England was felt through all the fleets and

armies of the coalition. The great source of subsidies was dry. No important military operation could any

where be attempted. Meanwhile overtures tending to peace had been made, and a negotiation had been

opened. Callieres, one of the ablest of the many able envoys in the service of France, had been sent to the

Netherlands, and had held many conferences with Dykvelt. Those conferences might perhaps have come to a

speedy and satisfactory close, had not France, at this time, won a great diplomatic victory in another quarter.

Lewis had, during seven years, been scheming and labouring in vain to break the great array of potentates

whom the dread of his might and of his ambition had brought together and kept together. But, during seven

years, all his arts had been baffled by the skill of William; and, when the eighth campaign opened, the

confederacy had not been weakened by a single desertion. Soon however it began to be suspected that the

Duke of Savoy was secretly treating with the enemy. He solemnly assured Galway, who represented England

at the Court of Turin, that there was not the slightest ground for such suspicions, and sent to William letters

filled with professions of zeal for the common cause, and with earnest entreaties for more money. This

dissimulation continued till a French army, commanded by Catinat, appeared in Piedmont. Then the Duke

threw off his disguise, concluded peace with France, joined his troops to those of Catinat, marched into the

Milanese, and informed the allies whom he had just abandoned that, unless they wished to have him for an

enemy, they must declare Italy neutral ground. The Courts of Vienna and Madrid, in great dismay, submitted

to the terms which he dictated. William expostulated and protested in vain. His influence was no longer what

it had been. The general opinion of Europe was, that the riches and the credit of England were completely

exhausted; and both her confederates and her enemies imagined that they might safely treat her with

indignity. Spain, true to her invariable maxim that every thing ought to be done for her and nothing by her,

had the effrontery to reproach the Prince to whom she owed it that she had not lost the Netherlands and

Catalonia, because he had not sent troops and ships to defend her possessions in Italy. The Imperial ministers

formed and executed resolutions gravely affecting the interests of the coalition without consulting him who

had been the author and the soul of the coalition.725 Lewis had, after the failure of the Assassination Plot,

made up his mind to the disagreeable necessity of recognising William, and had authorised Callieres to make

a declaration to that effect. But the defection of Savoy, the neutrality of Italy, the disunion among the allies,

and, above all, the distresses of England, exaggerated as they were in all the letters which the Jacobites of

Saint Germains received from the Jacobites of London, produced a change. The tone of Callieres became

high and arrogant; he went back from his word, and refused to give any pledge that his master would

acknowledge the Prince of Orange as King of Great Britain. The joy was great among the nonjurors. They

had always, they said, been certain that the Great Monarch would not be so unmindful of his own glory and

of the common interest of Sovereigns as to abandon the cause of his unfortunate guests, and to call an usurper

his brother. They knew from the best authority that His Most Christian Majesty had lately, at Fontainebleau,

given satisfactory assurances on this subject to King James. Indeed, there is reason to believe that the project

of an invasion of our island was again seriously discussed at Versailles.726 Catinat's army was now at liberty.

France, relieved from all apprehension on the side of Savoy, might spare twenty thousand men for a descent

on England; and, if the misery and discontent here were such as was generally reported, the nation might be

So gloomy was the prospect which lay before William, when, in the autumn of 1696, he quitted his camp in

the Netherlands for England. His servants here meanwhile were looking forward to his arrival with very

strong and very various emotions. The whole political world had been thrown into confusion by a cause

During his absence, the search for the Jacobites who had been concerned in the plots of the preceding winter

had not been intermitted; and of these Jacobites none was in greater peril than Sir John Fenwick. His birth,

his connections, the high situations which he had filled, the indefatigable activity with which he had, during

several years, laboured to subvert the government, and the personal insolence with which he had treated the

deceased Queen, marked him out as a man fit to be made an example. He succeeded, however, in concealing

himself from the officers of justice till the first heat of pursuit was over. In his hiding place he thought of an

ingenious device which might, as he conceived, save him from the fate of his friends Charnock and Parkyns.

Two witnesses were necessary to convict him. It appeared from what had passed on the trials of his

accomplices, that there were only two witnesses who could prove his guilt, Porter and Goodman. His life was

Fenwick was not the only person who had strong reason to wish that Porter or Goodman, or both, might be

induced to leave England. Aylesbury had been arrested, and committed to the Tower; and he well knew that,

if these men appeared against him, his head would be in serious danger. His friends and Fenwick's raised

what was thought a sufficient sum; and two Irishmen, or, in the phrase of the newspapers of that day,

bogtrotters, a barber named Clancy, and a disbanded captain named Donelagh, undertook the work of

The first attempt was made on Porter. Clancy contrived to fall in with him at a tavern, threw out significant

hints, and, finding that those hints were favourably received, opened a regular negotiation. The terms offered

were alluring; three hundred guineas down, three hundred more as soon as the witness should be beyond sea,

a handsome annuity for life, a free pardon from King James, and a secure retreat in France. Porter seemed

inclined, and perhaps was really inclined, to consent. He said that he still was what he had been, that he was

at heart attached to the good cause, but that he had been tried beyond his strength. Life was sweet. It was easy

for men who had never been in danger to say that none but a villain would save himself by hanging his

associates; but a few hours in Newgate, with the near prospect of a journey on a sledge to Tyburn, would

teach such boasters to be more charitable. After repeatedly conferring with Clancy, Porter was introduced to

Fenwick's wife, Lady Mary, a sister of the Earl of Carlisle. Every thing was soon settled. Donelagh made the

arrangements for the flight. A boat was in waiting. The letters which were to secure to the fugitive the

protection of King James were prepared by Fenwick. The hour and place were fixed at which Porter was to

receive the first instalment of the promised reward. But his heart misgave him. He had, in truth, gone such

lengths that it would have been madness in him to turn back. He had sent Charnock, King, Keyes, Friend,

Parkyns, Rookwood, Cranburne, to the gallows. It was impossible that such a Judas could ever be really

forgiven. In France, among the friends and comrades of those whom he had destroyed, his life would not be

worth one day's purchase. No pardon under the Great Seal would avert the stroke of the avenger of blood.

Nay, who could say that the bribe now offered was not a bait intended to lure the victim to the place where a

terrible doom awaited him? Porter resolved to be true to that government under which alone he could be safe;

he carried to Whitehall information of the whole intrigue; and he received full instructions from the ministers.

On the eve of the day fixed for his departure he had a farewell meeting with Clancy at a tavern. Three

hundred guineas were counted out on the table. Porter pocketed them, and gave a signal. Instantly several

messengers from the office of the Secretary of State rushed into the room, and produced a warrant. The

unlucky barber was carried off to prison, tried for his offence, convicted and pilloried.727

This mishap made Fenwick's situation more perilous than ever. At the next sessions for the City of London a

bill of indictment against him, for high treason, was laid before the grand jury. Porter and Goodman appeared

as witnesses for the Crown; and the bill was found. Fenwick now thought that it was high time to steal away

to the Continent. Arrangements were made for his passage. He quitted his hiding place, and repaired to

Romney Marsh. There he hoped to find shelter till the vessel which was to convey him across the Channel

should arrive. For, though Hunt's establishment had been broken up, there were still in that dreary region

smugglers who carried on more than one lawless trade. It chanced that two of these men had just been

arrested on a charge of harbouring traitors. The messenger who had taken them into custody was returning to

London with them, when, on the high road, he met Fenwick face to face. Unfortunately for Fenwick, no face

in England was better known than his. "It is Sir John," said the officer to the prisoners: "Stand by me, my

good fellows, and, I warrant you, you will have your pardons, and a bag of guineas besides." The offer was

too tempting to be refused; but Fenwick was better mounted than his assailants; he dashed through them,

pistol in hand, and was soon out of sight. They pursued him; the hue and cry was raised; the bells of all the

parish churches of the Marsh rang out the alarm; the whole country was up; every path was guarded; every

thicket was beaten; every hut was searched; and at length the fugitive was found in bed. Just then a bark, of

very suspicious appearance, came in sight; she soon approached the shore, and showed English colours; but

to the practised eyes of the Kentish fishermen she looked much like a French privateer. It was not difficult to

guess her errand. After waiting a short time in vain for her passenger, she stood out to sea.728

Fenwick, unluckily for himself, was able so far to elude the vigilance of those who had charge of him as to

scrawl with a lead pencil a short letter to his wife. Every line contained evidence of his guilt. All, he wrote,

was over; he was a dead man, unless, indeed, his friends could, by dint of solicitation, obtain a pardon for

him. Perhaps the united entreaties of all the Howards might succeed. He would go abroad; he would solemnly

promise never again to set foot on English ground, and never to draw sword against the government. Or

would it be possible to bribe a juryman or two to starve out the rest? "That," he wrote, "or nothing can save

me." This billet was intercepted in its way to the post, and sent up to Whitehall. Fenwick was soon carried to

London and brought before the Lords Justices. At first he held high language and bade defiance to his

accusers. He was told that he had not always been so confident; and his letter to his wife was laid before him.

He had not till then been aware that it had fallen into hands for which it was not intended. His distress and

confusion became great. He felt that, if he were instantly sent before a jury, a conviction was inevitable. One

chance remained. If he could delay his trial for a short time, the judges would leave town for their circuits; a

few weeks would be gained; and in the course of a few weeks something might be done.

He addressed himself particularly to the Lord Steward, Devonshire, with whom he had formerly had some

connection of a friendly kind. The unhappy man declared that he threw himself entirely on the royal mercy,

and offered to disclose all that he knew touching the plots of the Jacobites. That he knew much nobody could

doubt. Devonshire advised his colleagues to postpone the trial till the pleasure of William could be known.

This advice was taken. The King was informed of what had passed; and he soon sent an answer directing

Devonshire to receive the prisoner's confession in writing, and to send it over to the Netherlands with all

Fenwick had now to consider what he should confess. Had he, according to his promise, revealed all that he

knew, there can be no doubt that his evidence would have seriously affected many Jacobite noblemen,

gentlemen and clergymen. But, though he was very unwilling to die, attachment to his party was in his mind

a stronger sentiment than the fear of death. The thought occurred to him that he might construct a story,

which might possibly be considered as sufficient to earn his pardon, which would at least put off his trial

some months, yet which would not injure a single sincere adherent of the banished dynasty, nay, which

would cause distress and embarrassment to the enemies of that dynasty, and which would fill the Court, the

Council, and the Parliament of William with fears and animosities. He would divulge nothing that could

affect those true Jacobites who had repeatedly awaited, with pistols loaded and horses saddled, the landing of

the rightful King accompanied by a French army. But if there were false Jacobites who had mocked their

banished Sovereign year after year with professions of attachment and promises of service, and yet had, at

every great crisis, found some excuse for disappointing him, and who were at that moment among the chief

supports of the usurper's throne, why should they be spared? That there were such false Jacobites, high in

political office and in military command, Fenwick had good reason to believe. He could indeed say nothing

against them to which a Court of Justice would have listened; for none of them had ever entrusted him with

any message or letter for France; and all that he knew about their treachery he had learned at second hand and

third hand. But of their guilt he had no doubt. One of them was Marlborough. He had, after betraying James

to William, promised to make reparation by betraying William to James, and had, at last, after much

shuffling, again betrayed James and made peace with William. Godolphin had practised similar deception. He

had long been sending fair words to Saint Germains; in return for those fair words he had received a pardon;

and, with this pardon in his secret drawer, he had continued to administer the finances of the existing

government. To ruin such a man would be a just punishment for his baseness, and a great service to King

James. Still more desirable was it to blast the fame and to destroy the influence of Russell and Shrewsbury.

Both were distinguished members of that party which had, under different names, been, during three

generations, implacably hostile to the Kings of the House of Stuart. Both had taken a great part in the

Revolution. The names of both were subscribed to the instrument which had invited the Prince of Orange to

England. One of them was now his Minister for Maritime Affairs; the other his Principal Secretary of State;

but neither had been constantly faithful to him. Both had, soon after his accession, bitterly resented his wise

and magnanimous impartiality, which, to their minds, disordered by party spirit, seemed to be unjust and

ungrateful partiality for the Tory faction; and both had, in their spleen, listened to agents from Saint

Germains. Russell had vowed by all that was most sacred that he would himself bring back his exiled

Sovereign. But the vow was broken as soon as it had been uttered; and he to whom the royal family had

looked as to a second Monk had crushed the hopes of that family at La Hogue. Shrewsbury had not gone such

lengths. Yet he too, while out of humour with William, had tampered with the agents of James. With the

power and reputation of these two great men was closely connected the power and reputation of the whole

Whig party. That party, after some quarrels, which were in truth quarrels of lovers, was now cordially

reconciled to William, and bound to him by the strongest ties. If those ties could be dissolved, if he could be

induced to regard with distrust and aversion the only set of men which was on principle and with enthusiasm

With such views as these Fenwick delivered to Devonshire a paper so cunningly composed that it would

probably have brought some severe calamity on the Prince to whom it was addressed, had not that Prince

been a man of singularly clear judgment and singularly lofty spirit. The paper contained scarcely any thing

respecting those Jacobite plots in which the writer had been himself concerned, and of which he intimately

knew all the details. It contained nothing which could be of the smallest prejudice to any person who was

really hostile to the existing order of things. The whole narrative was made up of stories, too true for the most

part, yet resting on no better authority than hearsay, about the intrigues of some eminent warriors and

statesmen, who, whatever their former conduct might have been, were now at least hearty in support of

William. Godolphin, Fenwick averred, had accepted a seat at the Board of Treasury, with the sanction and for

the benefit of King James. Marlborough had promised to carry over the army, Russell to carry over the fleet.

Shrewsbury, while out of office, had plotted with Middleton against the government and King. Indeed the

Whigs were now the favourites at Saint Germains. Many old friends of hereditary right were moved to

jealousy by the preference which James gave to the new converts. Nay, he had been heard to express his

confident hope that the monarchy would be set up again by the very hands which had pulled it down.

Such was Fenwick's confession. Devonshire received it and sent it by express to the Netherlands, without

intimating to any of his fellow councillors what it contained. The accused ministers afterwards complained

bitterly of this proceeding. Devonshire defended himself by saying that he had been specially deputed by the

King to take the prisoner's information, and was bound, as a true servant of the Crown, to transmit that

The messenger sent by Devonshire found William at Loo. The King read the confession, and saw at once

with what objects it had been drawn up. It contained little more than what he had long known, and had long,

with politic and generous dissimulation, affected not to know. If he spared, employed and promoted men who

had been false to him, it was not because he was their dupe. His observation was quick and just; his

intelligence was good; and he had, during some years, had in his hands proofs of much that Fenwick had only

gathered from wandering reports. It has seemed strange to many that a Prince of high spirit and acrimonious

temper should have treated servants, who had so deeply wronged him, with a kindness hardly to be expected

from the meekest of human beings. But William was emphatically a statesman. Ill humour, the natural and

pardonable effect of much bodily and much mental suffering, might sometimes impel him to give a tart

answer. But never did he on any important occasion indulge his angry passions at the expense of the great

interests of which he was the guardian. For the sake of those interests, proud and imperious as he was by

nature, he submitted patiently to galling restraints, bore cruel indignities and disappointments with the

outward show of serenity, and not only forgave, but often pretended not to see, offences which might well

have moved him to bitter resentment. He knew that he must work with such tools as he had. If he was to

govern England he must employ the public men of England; and in his age, the public men of England, with

much of a peculiar kind of ability, were, as a class, lowminded and immoral. There were doubtless

exceptions. Such was Nottingham among the Tories, and Somers among the Whigs. But the majority, both of

the Tory and of the Whig ministers of William, were men whose characters had taken the ply in the days of

the Antipuritan reaction. They had been formed in two evil schools, in the most unprincipled of courts, and

the most unprincipled of oppositions, a court which took its character from Charles, an opposition headed by

Shaftesbury. From men so trained it would have been unreasonable to expect disinterested and stedfast

fidelity to any cause. But though they could not be trusted, they might be used and they might be useful. No

reliance could be placed on their principles but much reliance might be placed on their hopes and on their

fears; and of the two Kings who laid claim to the English crown, the King from whom there was most to hope

and most to fear was the King in possession. If therefore William had little reason to esteem these politicians

his hearty friends, he had still less reason to number them among his hearty foes. Their conduct towards him,

reprehensible as it was, might be called upright when compared with their conduct towards James. To the

reigning Sovereign they had given valuable service; to the banished Sovereign little more than promises and

professions. Shrewsbury might, in a moment of resentment or of weakness, have trafficked with Jacobite

agents; but his general conduct had proved that he was as far as ever from being a Jacobite. Godolphin had

been lavish of fair words to the dynasty which was out; but he had thriftily and skilfully managed the

revenues of the dynasty which was in. Russell had sworn that he would desert with the English fleet; but he

had burned the French fleet. Even Marlborough's known treasons,for his share in the disaster of Brest and

the death of Talmash was unsuspected, had not done so much harm as his exertions at Walcourt, at Cork

and at Kinsale had done good. William had therefore wisely resolved to shut his eyes to perfidy, which,

however disgraceful it might be, had not injured him, and still to avail himself, with proper precautions, of

the eminent talents which some of his unfaithful counsellors possessed, Having determined on this course,

and having long followed it with happy effect, he could not but be annoyed and provoked by Fenwick's

confession. Sir John, it was plain, thought himself a Machiavel. If his trick succeeded, the Princess, whom it

was most important to keep in good humour, would be alienated from the government by the disgrace of

Marlborough. The whole Whig party, the firmest support of the throne, would be alienated by the disgrace of

Russell and Shrewsbury. In the meantime not one of those plotters whom Fenwick knew to have been deeply

concerned in plans of insurrection, invasion, assassination, would be molested. This cunning schemer should

find that he had not to do with a novice. William, instead of turning his accused servants out of their places,

sent the confession to Shrewsbury, and desired that it might be laid before the Lords Justices. "I am

astonished," the King wrote, "at the fellow's effrontery. You know me too well to think that such stories as

his can make any impression on me. Observe this honest man's sincerity. He has nothing to say except against

my friends. Not a word about the plans of his brother Jacobites." The King concluded by directing the Lords

The effect produced by William's letter was remarkable. Every one of the accused persons behaved himself in

a manner singularly characteristic. Marlborough, the most culpable of all, preserved a serenity, mild, majestic

and slightly contemptuous. Russell, scarcely less criminal than Marlborough, went into a towering passion,

and breathed nothing but vengeance against the villanous informer. Godolphin, uneasy, but wary, reserved

and selfpossessed, prepared himself to stand on the defensive. But Shrewsbury, who of all the four was the

least to blame, was utterly overwhelmed. He wrote in extreme distress to William, acknowledged with warm

expressions of gratitude the King's rare generosity, and protested that Fenwick had malignantly exaggerated

and distorted mere trifles into enormous crimes. "My Lord Middleton,"such was the substance of the

letter,"was certainly in communication with me about the time of the battle of La Hogue. We are relations;

we frequently met; we supped together just before he returned to France; I promised to take care of his

interests here; he in return offered to do me good offices there; but I told him that I had offended too deeply

to be forgiven, and that I would not stoop to ask forgiveness." This, Shrewsbury averred, was the whole

extent of his offence.731 It is but too fully proved that this confession was by no means ingenuous; nor is it

likely that William was deceived. But he was determined to spare the repentant traitor the humiliation of

owning a fault and accepting a pardon. "I can see," the King wrote, "no crime at all in what you have

acknowledged. Be assured that these calumnies have made no unfavourable impression on me. Nay, you shall

find that they have strengthened my confidence in you."732 A man hardened in depravity would have been

perfectly contented with an acquittal so complete, announced in language so gracious. But Shrewsbury was

quite unnerved by a tenderness which he was conscious that he had not merited. He shrank from the thought

of meeting the master whom he had wronged, and by whom he had been forgiven, and of sustaining the gaze

of the peers, among whom his birth and his abilities had gained for him a station of which he felt that he was

unworthy. The campaign in the Netherlands was over. The session of Parliament was approaching. The King

was expected with the first fair wind. Shrewsbury left town and retired to the Wolds of Gloucestershire. In

that district, then one of the wildest in the south of the island, he had a small country seat, surrounded by

pleasant gardens and fishponds. William had, in his progress a year before, visited this dwelling, which lay

far from the nearest high road and from the nearest market town, and had been much struck by the silence and

loneliness of the retreat in which he found the most graceful and splendid of English courtiers.

At one in the morning of the sixth of October, the King landed at Margate. Late in the evening he reached

Kensington. The following morning a brilliant crowd of ministers and nobles pressed to kiss his hand; but he

missed one face which ought to have been there, and asked where the Duke of Shrewsbury was, and when he

was expected in town. The next day came a letter from the Duke, averring that he had just had a bad fall in

hunting. His side had been bruised; his lungs had suffered; he had spit blood, and could not venture to

travel.733 That he had fallen and hurt himself was true; but even those who felt most kindly towards him

suspected, and not without strong reason, that he made the most of his convenient misfortune, and, that if he

had not shrunk from appearing in public, he would have performed the journey with little difficulty. His

correspondents told him that, if he was really as ill as he thought himself, he would do well to consult the

physicians and surgeons of the capital. Somers, especially, implored him in the most earnest manner to come

up to London. Every hour's delay was mischievous. His Grace must conquer his sensibility. He had only to

face calumny courageously, and it would vanish.734 The King, in a few kind lines, expressed his sorrow for

the accident. "You are much wanted here," he wrote: "I am impatient to embrace you, and to assure you that

my esteem for you is undiminished."735 Shrewsbury answered that he had resolved to resign the seals.736

Somers adjured him not to commit so fatal an error. If at that moment His Grace should quit office, what

could the world think, except that he was condemned by his own conscience? He would, in fact, plead guilty;

he would put a stain on his own honour, and on the honour of all who lay under the same accusation. It would

no longer be possible to treat Fenwick's story as a romance. "Forgive me," Somers wrote, "for speaking after

this free manner; for I do own I can scarce be temperate in this matter."737 A few hours later William

himself wrote to the same effect. "I have so much regard for you, that, if I could, I would positively interdict

you from doing what must bring such grave suspicions on you. At any time, I should consider your

resignation as a misfortune to myself but I protest to you that, at this time, it is on your account more than on

mine that I wish you to remain in my service."738 Sunderland, Portland, Russell and Wharton joined their

entreaties to their master's; and Shrewsbury consented to remain Secretary in name. But nothing could induce

him to face the Parliament which was about to meet. A litter was sent down to him from London, but to no

purpose. He set out, but declared that he found it impossible to proceed, and took refuge again in his lonely

While these things were passing, the members of both Houses were from every part of the kingdom going up

to Westminster. To the opening of the session, not only England, but all Europe, looked forward with intense

anxiety. Public credit had been deeply injured by the failure of the Land Bank. The restoration of the

currency was not yet half accomplished. The scarcity of money was still distressing. Much of the milled

silver was buried in private repositories as fast as it came forth from the Mint. Those politicians who were

bent on raising the denomination of the coin had found too ready audience from a population suffering under

severe pressure; and, at one time, the general voice of the nation had seemed to be on their side.740 Of course

every person who thought it likely that the standard would be lowered, hoarded as much money as he could

hoard; and thus the cry for little shillings aggravated the pressure from which it had sprung.741 Both the

allies and the enemies of England imagined that her resources were spent, that her spirit was broken, that the

Commons, so often querulous and parsimonious even in tranquil and prosperous times, would now positively

refuse to bear any additional burden, and would, with an importunity not to be withstood, insist on having

But all these prognostications were confounded by the firmness and ability of the Whig leaders, and by the

steadiness of the Whig majority. On the twentieth of October the Houses met. William addressed to them a

speech remarkable even among all the remarkable speeches in which his own high thoughts and purposes

were expressed in the dignified and judicious language of Somers. There was, the King said, great reason for

congratulation. It was true that the funds voted in the preceding session for the support of the war had failed,

and that the recoinage had produced great distress. Yet the enemy had obtained no advantage abroad; the

State had been torn by no convulsion at home; the loyalty shown by the army and by the nation under severe

trials had disappointed all the hopes of those who wished evil to England. Overtures tending to peace had

been made. What might be the result of those overtures, was uncertain; but this was certain, that there could

be no safe or honourable peace for a nation which was not prepared to wage vigorous war. "I am sure we

shall all agree in opinion that the only way of treating with France is with our swords in our hands."

The Commons returned to their chamber; and Foley read the speech from the chair. A debate followed which

resounded through all Christendom. That was the proudest day of Montague's life, and one of the proudest

days in the history of the English Parliament. In 1798, Burke held up the proceedings of that day as an

example to the statesmen whose hearts had failed them in the conflict with the gigantic power of the French

republic. In 1822, Huskisson held up the proceedings of that day as an example to a legislature which, under

the pressure of severe distress, was tempted to alter the standard of value and to break faith with the public

creditor. Before the House rose the young Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose ascendency, since the

ludicrous failure of the Tory scheme of finance, was undisputed, proposed and carried three memorable

resolutions. The first, which passed with only one muttered No, declared that the Commons would support

the King against all foreign and domestic enemies, and would enable him to prosecute the war with vigour.

The second, which passed, not without opposition, but without a division, declared that the standard of

money should not be altered in fineness, weight or denomination. The third, against which not a single

opponent of the government dared to raise his voice, pledged the House to make good all the deficiencies of

all parliamentary fund's established since the King's accession. The task of framing an answer to the royal

speech was entrusted to a Committee exclusively composed of Whigs. Montague was chairman; and the

eloquent and animated address which he drew up may still be read in the journals with interest and pride.742

Within a fortnight two millions and a half were granted for the military expenditure of the approaching year,

and nearly as much for the maritime expenditure. Provision was made without any dispute for forty thousand

seamen. About the amount of the land force there was a division. The King asked for eightyseven thousand

soldiers; and the Tories thought that number too large. The vote was carried by two hundred and

The malecontents flattered themselves, during a short time, that the vigorous resolutions of the Commons

would be nothing more than resolutions, that it would be found impossible to restore public credit, to obtain

advances from capitalists, or to wring taxes out of the distressed population, and that therefore the forty

thousand seamen and the eightyseven thousand soldiers would exist only on paper. Howe, who had been

more cowed than was usual with him on the first day of the session, attempted, a week later, to make a stand

against the Ministry. "The King," he said, "must have been misinformed; or His Majesty never would have

felicitated Parliament on the tranquil state of the country. I come from Gloucestershire. I know that part of the

kingdom well. The people are all living on alms, or ruined by paying alms. The soldier helps himself, sword

in hand, to what he wants. There have been serious riots already; and still more serious riots are to be

apprehended." The disapprobation of the House was strongly expressed. Several members declared that in

their counties every thing was quiet. If Gloucestershire were in a more disturbed state than the rest of

England, might not the cause be that Gloucestershire was cursed with a more malignant and unprincipled

agitator than all the rest of England could show? Some Gloucestershire gentlemen took issue with Howe on

the facts. There was no such distress, they said, no such discontent, no such rioting as he had described. In

that county, as in every other county, the great body of the population was fully determined to support the

In fact the tide had already turned. From the moment at which the Commons notified their fixed

determination not to raise the denomination of the coin, the milled money began to come forth from a

thousand strong boxes and private drawers. There was still pressure; but that pressure was less and less felt

day by day. The nation, though still suffering, was joyful and grateful. Its feelings resembled those of a man

who, having been long tortured by a malady which has embittered his life, has at last made up his mind to

submit to the surgeon's knife, who has gone through a cruel operation with safety, and who, though still

smarting from the steel, sees before him many years of health and enjoyment, and thanks God that the worst

is over. Within four days after the meeting of Parliament there was a perceptible improvement in trade. The

discount on bank notes had diminished by one third. The price of those wooden tallies, which, according to

an usage handed to us from a rude age, were given as receipts for sums paid into the Exchequer, had risen.

The exchanges, which had during many months been greatly against England, had begun to turn.744 Soon the

effect of the magnanimous firmness of the House of Commons was felt at every Court in Europe. So high

indeed was the spirit of that assembly that the King had some difficulty in preventing the Whigs from moving

and carrying a resolution that an address should be presented to him, requesting him to enter into no

negotiation with France, till she should have acknowledged him as King of England.745 Such an address was

unnecessary. The votes of the Parliament had already forced on Lewis the conviction that there was no

chance of a counterrevolution. There was as little chance that he would be able to effect that compromise of

which he had, in the course of the negotiations, thrown out hints. It was not to be hoped that either William or

the English nation would ever consent to make the settlement of the English crown a matter of bargain with

France. And even had William and the English nation been disposed to purchase peace by such a sacrifice of

dignity, there would have been insuperable difficulties in another quarter. James could not endure to hear of

the expedient which Lewis had suggested. "I can bear," the exile said to his benefactor, "I can bear with

Christian patience to be robbed by the Prince of Orange; but I never will consent to be robbed by my own

son." Lewis never again mentioned the subject. Callieres received orders to make the concession on which

the peace of the civilised world depended. He and Dykvelt came together at the Hague before Baron

Lilienroth, the representative of the King of Sweden, whose mediation the belligerent powers had accepted.

Dykvelt informed Lilienroth that the Most Christian King had engaged, whenever the Treaty of Peace should

be signed, to recognise the Prince of Orange as King of Great Britain, and added, with a very intelligible

allusion to the compromise proposed by France, that the recognition would be without restriction, condition

or reserve. Callieres then declared that he confirmed, in the name of his master, what Dykvelt had said.746 A

letter from Prior, containing the good news, was delivered to James Vernon, the Under Secretary of State, in

the House of Commons. The tidings ran along the benchessuch is Vernon's expressionlike fire in a field

of stubble. A load was taken away from every heart; and all was joy and triumph.747 The Whig members

might indeed well congratulate each other. For it was to the wisdom and resolution which they had shown, in

a moment of extreme danger and distress, that their country was indebted for the near prospect of an

Meanwhile public credit, which had, in the autumn, sunk to the lowest point, was fast reviving. Ordinary

financiers stood aghast when they learned that more than five millions were required to make good the

deficiencies of past years. But Montague was not an ordinary financier. A bold and simple plan proposed by

him, and popularly called the General Mortgage, restored confidence. New taxes were imposed; old taxes

were augmented or continued; and thus a consolidated fund was formed sufficient to meet every just claim on

the State. The Bank of England was at the same time enlarged by a new subscription; and the regulations for

the payment of the subscription were framed in such a manner as to raise the value both of the notes of the

Meanwhile the mints were pouring forth the new silver faster than ever. The distress which began on the

fourth of May 1696, which was almost insupportable during the five succeeding months, and which became

lighter from the day on which the Commons declared their immutable resolution to maintain the old standard,

ceased to be painfully felt in March 1697. Some months were still to elapse before credit completely

recovered from the most tremendous shock that it has ever sustained. But already the deep and solid

foundation had been laid on which was to rise the most gigantic fabric of commercial prosperity that the

world had ever seen. The great body of the Whigs attributed the restoration of the health of the State to the

genius and firmness of their leader Montague. His enemies were forced to confess, sulkily and sneeringly,

that every one of his schemes had succeeded, the first Bank subscription, the second Bank subscription, the

Recoinage, the General Mortgage, the Exchequer Bills. But some Tories muttered that he deserved no more

praise than a prodigal who stakes his whole estate at hazard, and has a run of good luck. England had indeed

passed safely through a terrible crisis, and was the stronger for having passed through it. But she had been in

imminent danger of perishing; and the minister who had exposed her to that danger deserved, not to be

praised, but to be hanged. Others admitted that the plans which were popularly attributed to Montague were

excellent, but denied that those plans were Montague's. The voice of detraction, however, was for a time

drowned by the loud applauses of the Parliament and the City. The authority which the Chancellor of the

Exchequer exercised in the House of Commons was unprecedented and unrivalled. In the Cabinet his

influence was daily increasing. He had no longer a superior at the Board of Treasury. In consequence of

Fenwick's confession, the last Tory who held a great and efficient office in the State had been removed, and

It had been impossible to prevent reports about that confession from getting abroad. The prisoner, indeed, had

found means of communicating with his friends, and had doubtless given them to understand that he had said

nothing against them, and much against the creatures of the usurper. William wished the matter to be left to

the ordinary tribunals, and was most unwilling that it should be debated elsewhere. But his counsellors, better

acquainted than himself with the temper of large and divided assemblies, were of opinion that a parliamentary

discussion, though perhaps undesirable, was inevitable. It was in the power of a single member of either

House to force on such a discussion; and in both Houses there were members who, some from a sense of

duty, some from mere love of mischief, were determined to know whether the prisoner had, as it was

rumoured, brought grave charges against some of the most distinguished men in the kingdom. If there must

be an inquiry, it was surely desirable that the accused statesmen should be the first to demand it. There was,

however, one great difficulty. The Whigs, who formed the majority of the Lower House, were ready to vote,

as one man, for the entire absolution of Russell and Shrewsbury, and had no wish to put a stigma on

Marlborough, who was not in place, and therefore excited little jealousy. But a strong body of honest

gentlemen, as Wharton called them, could not, by any management, be induced to join in a resolution

acquitting Godolphin. To them Godolphin was an eyesore. All the other Tories who, in the earlier years of

William's reign, had borne a chief part in the direction of affairs, had, one by one, been dismissed.

Nottingham, Trevor, Leeds, were no longer in power. Pembroke could hardly be called a Tory, and had never

been really in power. But Godolphin still retained his post at Whitehall; and to the men of the Revolution it

seemed intolerable that one who had sate at the Council Board of Charles and James, and who had voted for a

Regency, should be the principal minister of finance. Those who felt thus had learned with malicious delight

that the First Lord of the Treasury was named in the confession about which all the world was talking; and

they were determined not to let slip so good an opportunity of ejecting him from office. On the other hand,

every body who had seen Fenwick's paper, and who had not, in the drunkenness of factious animosity, lost all

sense of reason and justice, must have felt that it was impossible to make a distinction between two parts of

that paper, and to treat all that related to Shrewsbury and Russell as false, and all that related to Godolphin as

true. This was acknowledged even by Wharton, who of all public men was the least troubled by scruples or

by shame.748 If Godolphin had stedfastly refused to quit his place, the Whig leaders would have been in a

most embarrassing position. But a politician of no common dexterity undertook to extricate them from their

difficulties. In the art of reading and managing the minds of men Sunderland had no equal; and he was, as he

had been during several years, desirous to see all the great posts in the kingdom filled by Whigs. By his

skilful management Godolphin was induced to go into the royal closet, and to request permission to retire

from office; and William granted that permission with a readiness by which Godolphin was much more

One of the methods employed by the Whig junto, for the purpose of instituting and maintaining through all

the ranks of the Whig party a discipline never before known, was the frequent holding of meetings of

members of the House of Commons. Some of those meetings were numerous; others were select. The larger

were held at the Rose, a tavern frequently mentioned in the political pasquinades of that time;750 the smaller

On the day on which Godolphin resigned his great office two select meetings were called. In the morning the

place of assembly was Russell's house. In the afternoon there was a fuller muster at the Lord Keeper's.

Fenwick's confession, which, till that time, had probably been known only by rumour to most of those who

were present, was read. The indignation of the hearers was strongly excited, particularly by one passage, of

which the sense seemed to be that not only Russell, not only Shrewsbury, but the great body of the Whig

party was, and had long been, at heart Jacobite. "The fellow insinuates," it was said, "that the Assassination

Plot itself was a Whig scheme." The general opinion was that such a charge could not be lightly passed over.

There must be a solemn debate and decision in Parliament. The best course would be that the King should

himself see and examine the prisoner, and that Russell should then request the royal permission to bring the

subject before the House of Commons. As Fenwick did not pretend that he had any authority for the stories

which he had told except mere hearsay, there could be no difficulty in carrying a resolution branding him as a

slanderer, and an address to the throne requesting that he might be forthwith brought to trial for high

The opinion of the meeting was conveyed to William by his ministers; and he consented, though not without

reluctance, to see the prisoner. Fenwick was brought into the royal closet at Kensington. A few of the great

officers of state and the Crown lawyers were present. "Your papers, Sir John," said the King, "are altogether

unsatisfactory. Instead of giving me an account of the plots formed by you and your accomplices, plots of

which all the details must be exactly known to you, you tell me stories, without authority, without date,

without place, about noblemen and gentlemen with whom you do not pretend to have had any intercourse. In

short your confession appears to be a contrivance intended to screen those who are really engaged in designs

against me, and to make me suspect and discard those in whom I have good reason to place confidence. If

you look for any favour from me, give me, this moment and on this spot, a full and straightforward account of

what you know of your own knowledge." Fenwick said that he was taken by surprise, and asked for time.

"No, Sir," said the King. "For what purpose can you want time? You may indeed want time if you mean to

draw up another paper like this. But what I require is a plain narrative of what you have yourself done and

seen; and such a narrative you can give, if you will, without pen and ink." Then Fenwick positively refused to

say any thing. "Be it so," said William. "I will neither hear you nor hear from you any more."752 Fenwick

was carried back to his prison. He had at this audience shown a boldness and determination which surprised

those who had observed his demeanour. He had, ever since he had been in confinement, appeared to be

anxious and dejected; yet now, at the very crisis of his fate, he had braved the displeasure of the Prince whose

clemency he had, a short time before, submissively implored. In a very few hours the mystery was explained.

Just before he had been summoned to Kensington, he had received from his wife intelligence that his life was

in no danger, that there was only one witness against him, that she and her friends had succeeded in

Goodman had been allowed a liberty which was afterwards, with some reason, made matter of charge against

the government. For his testimony was most important; his character was notoriously bad; the attempts which

had been made to seduce Porter proved that, if money could save Fenwick's life, money would not be spared;

and Goodman had not, like Porter, been instrumental in sending Jacobites to the gallows, and therefore was

not, like Porter, bound to the cause of William by an indissoluble tie. The families of the imprisoned

conspirators employed the agency of a cunning and daring adventurer named O'Brien. This man knew

Goodman well. Indeed they had belonged to the same gang of highwaymen. They met at the Dog in Drury

Lane, a tavern which was frequented by lawless and desperate men. O'Brien was accompanied by another

Jacobite of determined character. A simple choice was offered to Goodman, to abscond and to be rewarded

with an annuity of five hundred a year, or to have his throat cut on the spot. He consented, half from cupidity,

half from fear. O'Brien was not a man to be tricked as Clancy had been. He never parted company with

Goodman from the moment when the bargain was struck till they were at Saint Germains.754

On the afternoon of the day on which Fenwick was examined by the King at Kensington it began to be noised

abroad that Goodman was missing. He had been many hours absent from his house. He had not been seen at

his usual haunts. At first a suspicion arose that he had been murdered by the Jacobites; and this suspicion was

strengthened by a singular circumstance. Just after his disappearance, a human head was found severed from

the body to which it belonged, and so frightfully mangled that no feature could be recognised. The multitude,

possessed by the notion that there was no crime which an Irish Papist might not be found to commit, was

inclined to believe that the fate of Godfrey had befallen another victim. On inquiry however it seemed certain

that Goodman had designedly withdrawn himself. A proclamation appeared promising a reward of a thousand

This event exasperated the Whigs beyond measure. No jury could now find Fenwick guilty of high treason.

Was he then to escape? Was a long series of offences against the State to go unpunished merely because to

those offences had now been added the offence of bribing a witness to suppress his evidence and to desert his

bail? Was there no extraordinary method by which justice might strike a criminal who, solely because he was

worse than other criminals, was beyond the reach of the ordinary law? Such a method there was, a method

authorised by numerous precedents, a method used both by Papists and by Protestants during the troubles of

the sixteenth century, a method used both by Roundheads and by Cavaliers during the troubles of the

seventeenth century, a method which scarcely any leader of the Tory party could condemn without

condemning himself, a method of which Fenwick could not decently complain, since he had, a few years

before, been eager to employ it against the unfortunate Monmouth. To that method the party which was now

Soon after the Commons had met, on the morning of the sixth of November, Russell rose in his place and

requested to be heard. The task which he had undertaken required courage not of the most respectable kind;

but to him no kind of courage was wanting. Sir John Fenwick, he said, had sent to the King a paper in which

grave accusations were brought against some of His Majesty's servants; and His Majesty had, at the request

of his accused servants, graciously given orders that this paper should be laid before the House. The

confession was produced and read. The Admiral then, with spirit and dignity worthy of a better man,

demanded justice for himself and Shrewsbury. "If we are innocent, clear us. If we are guilty, punish us as we

deserve. I put myself on you as on my country, and am ready to stand or fall by your verdict."

It was immediately ordered that Fenwick should be brought to the bar with all speed. Cutts, who sate in the

House as member for Cambridgeshire, was directed to provide a sufficient escort, and was especially

enjoined to take care that the prisoner should have no opportunity of making or receiving any

communication, oral or written, on the road from Newgate to Westminster. The House then adjourned till the

At five o'clock, then a late hour, the mace was again put on the table; candles were lighted; and the House

and lobby were carefully cleared of strangers. Fenwick was in attendance under a strong guard. He was called

in, and exhorted from the chair to make a full and ingenuous confession. He hesitated and evaded. "I cannot

say any thing without the King's permission. His Majesty may be displeased if what ought to be known only

to him should be divulged to others." He was told that his apprehensions were groundless. The King well

knew that it was the right and the duty of his faithful Commons to inquire into whatever concerned the safety

of his person and of his government. "I may be tried in a few days," said the prisoner. "I ought not to be asked

to say any thing which may rise up in judgment against me." "You have nothing to fear," replied the Speaker,

"if you will only make a full and free discovery. No man ever had reason to repent of having dealt candidly

with the Commons of England." Then Fenwick begged for delay. He was not a ready orator; his memory was

bad; he must have time to prepare himself. He was told, as he had been told a few days before in the royal

closet, that, prepared or unprepared, he could not but remember the principal plots in which he had been

engaged, and the names of his chief accomplices. If he would honestly relate what it was quite impossible

that he could have forgotten, the House would make all fair allowances, and would grant him time to

recollect subordinate details. Thrice he was removed from the bar; and thrice he was brought back. He was

solemnly informed that the opportunity then given him of earning the favour of the Commons would

probably be the last. He persisted in his refusal, and was sent back to Newgate.

It was then moved that his confession was false and scandalous. Coningsby proposed to add that it was a

contrivance to create jealousies between the King and good subjects for the purpose of screening real traitors.

A few implacable and unmanageable Whigs, whose hatred of Godolphin had not been mitigated by his

resignation, hinted their doubts whether the whole paper ought to be condemned. But after a debate in which

Montague particularly distinguished himself the motion was carried. One or two voices cried "No;" but

Thus far all had gone smoothly; but in a few minutes the storm broke forth. The terrible words, Bill of

Attainder, were pronounced; and all the fiercest passions of both the great factions were instantly roused. The

Tories had been taken by surprise, and many of them had left the house. Those who remained were loud in

declaring that they never would consent to such a violation of the first principles of justice. The spirit of the

Whigs was not less ardent, and their ranks were unbroken. The motion for leave to bring in a bill attainting

Sir John Fenwick was carried very late at night by one hundred and seventynine votes to sixtyone; but it

In truth party spirit had seldom been more strongly excited. On both sides there was doubtless much honest

zeal; and on both sides an observant eye might have detected fear, hatred, and cupidity disguised under

specious pretences of justice and public good. The baleful heat of faction rapidly warmed into life poisonous

creeping things which had long been lying torpid, discarded spies and convicted false witnesses, the leavings

of the scourge, the branding iron and the shears. Even Fuller hoped that he might again find dupes to listen to

him. The world had forgotten him since his pillorying. He now had the effrontery to write to the Speaker,

begging to be heard at the bar and promising much important information about Fenwick and others. On the

ninth of November the Speaker informed the House that he had received this communication; but the House

very properly refused even to suffer the letter of so notorious a villain to be read.

On the same day the Bill of Attainder, having been prepared by the Attorney and Solicitor General, was

brought in and read a first time. The House was full and the debate sharp. John Manley, member for

Bossiney, one of those stanch Tories who, in the preceding session, had long refused to sign the Association,

accused the majority, in no measured terms, of fawning on the Court and betraying the liberties of the people.

His words were taken down; and, though he tried to explain them away, he was sent to the Tower. Seymour

spoke strongly against the bill, and quoted the speech which Caesar made in the Roman Senate against the

motion that the accomplices of Catiline should be put to death in an irregular manner. A Whig orator keenly

remarked that the worthy Baron had forgotten that Caesar was grievously suspected of having been himself

concerned in Catiline's plot.757 In this stage a hundred and ninetysix members voted for the bill, a hundred

and four against it. A copy was sent to Fenwick, in order that he might be prepared to defend himself. He

begged to be heard by counsel; his request was granted; and the thirteenth was fixed for the hearing.

Never within the memory of the oldest member had there been such a stir round the House as on the morning

of the thirteenth. The approaches were with some difficulty cleared; and no strangers, except peers, were

suffered to come within the doors. Of peers the throng was so great that their presence had a perceptible

influence on the debate. Even Seymour, who, having formerly been Speaker, ought to have been peculiarly

mindful of the dignity of the Commons, so strangely forgot himself as once to say "My Lords." Fenwick,

having been formally given up by the Sheriffs of London to the Serjeant at Arms, was put to the bar, attended

by two barristers who were generally employed by Jacobite culprits, Sir Thomas Powis and Sir Bartholomew

The examination of the witnesses and the arguments of the advocates occupied three days. Porter was called

in and interrogated. It was established, not indeed by legal proof, but by such moral proof as determines the

conduct of men in the affairs of common life, that Goodman's absence was to be attributed to a scheme

planned and executed by Fenwick's friends with Fenwick's privity. Secondary evidence of what Goodman, if

he had been present, would have been able to prove, was, after a warm debate, admitted. His confession,

made on oath and subscribed by his hand, was put in. Some of the grand jurymen who had found the bill

against Sir John gave an account of what Goodman had sworn before them; and their testimony was

confirmed by some of the petty jurymen who had convicted another conspirator. No evidence was produced

in behalf of the prisoner. After counsel for him and against him had been heard, he was sent back to his

cell.758 Then the real struggle began. It was long and violent. The House repeatedly sate from daybreak till

near midnight. Once the Speaker was in the chair fifteen hours without intermission. Strangers were freely

admitted; for it was felt that, since the House chose to take on itself the functions of a court of justice, it

ought, like a court of justice, to sit with open doors.759 The substance of the debates has consequently been

preserved in a report, meagre, indeed, when compared with the reports of our time, but for that age unusually

full. Every man of note in the House took part in the discussion. The bill was opposed by Finch with that

fluent and sonorous rhetoric which had gained him the name of Silvertongue, and by Howe with all the

sharpness both of his wit and of his temper, by Seymour with characteristic energy, and by Harley with

characteristic solemnity. On the other side Montague displayed the powers of a consummate debater, and was

zealously supported by Littleton. Conspicuous in the front ranks of the hostile parties were two distinguished

Both were gentlemen of honourable descent; both were distinguished by their fine persons and graceful

manners; both were renowned for eloquence; and both loved learning and learned men. It may be added that

both had early in life been noted for prodigality and love of pleasure. Dissipation had made them poor;

poverty had made them industrious; and though they were still, as age is reckoned at the Inns of Court, very

young men, Harcourt only thirtysix, Cowper only thirtytwo, they already had the first practice at the bar.

They were destined to rise still higher, to be the bearers of the great seal of the realm, and the founders of

patrician houses. In politics they were diametrically opposed to each other. Harcourt had seen the Revolution

with disgust, had not chosen to sit in the Convention, had with difficulty reconciled his conscience to the

oaths, and had tardily and unwillingly signed the Association. Cowper had been in arms for the Prince of

Orange and a free Parliament, and had, in the short and tumultuary campaign which preceded the flight of

James, distinguished himself by intelligence and courage. Since Somers had been removed to the Woolsack,

the law officers of the Crown had not made a very distinguished figure in the Lower House, or indeed any

where else; and their deficiencies had been more than once supplied by Cowper. His skill had, at the trial of

Parkyns, recovered the verdict which the mismanagement of the Solicitor General had, for a moment, put in

jeopardy. He had been chosen member for Hertford at the general election of 1695, and had scarcely taken

his seat when he attained a high place among parliamentary speakers. Chesterfield many years later, in one of

his letters to his son, described Cowper as an orator who never spoke without applause, but who reasoned

feebly, and who owed the influence which he long exercised over great assemblies to the singular charm of

his style, his voice and his action. Chesterfield was, beyond all doubt, intellectually qualified to form a

correct judgment on such a subject. But it must be remembered that the object of his letters was to exalt good

taste and politeness in opposition to much higher qualities. He therefore constantly and systematically

attributed the success of the most eminent persons of his age to their superiority, not in solid abilities and

acquirements, but in superficial graces of diction and manner. He represented even Marlborough as a man of

very ordinary capacity, who, solely because he was extremely well bred and well spoken, had risen from

poverty and obscurity to the height of power and glory. It may confidently be pronounced that both to

Marlborough and to Cowper Chesterfield was unjust. The general who saved the Empire and conquered the

Low Countries was assuredly something more than a fine gentleman; and the judge who presided during nine

years in the Court of Chancery with the approbation of all parties must have been something more than a fine

Whoever attentively and impartially studies the report of the debates will be of opinion that, on many points

which were discussed at great length and with great animation, the Whigs had a decided superiority in

It was true that the crime of high treason was brought home to Fenwick by proofs which could leave no doubt

on the mind of any man of common sense, and would have been brought home to him according to the strict

rules of law, if he had not, by committing another crime, eluded the justice of the ordinary tribunals. It was

true that he had, in the very act of professing repentance and imploring mercy, added a new offence to his

former offences, that, while pretending to make a perfectly ingenuous confession, he had, with cunning

malice, concealed every thing which it was for the interest of the government that he should divulge, and

proclaimed every thing which it was for the interest of the government to bury in silence. It was a great evil

that he should be beyond the reach of punishment; it was plain that he could be reached only by a bill of pains

and penalties; and it could not be denied, either that many such bills had passed, or that no such bill had ever

All these propositions the Whigs seem to have fully established. They had also a decided advantage in the

dispute about the rule which requires two witnesses in cases of high treason. The truth is that the rule is

absurd. It is impossible to understand why the evidence which would be sufficient to prove that a man has

fired at one of his fellow subjects should not be sufficient to prove that he has fired at his Sovereign. It can by

no means be laid down as a general maxim that the assertion of two witnesses is more convincing to the mind

than the assertion of one witness. The story told by one witness may be in itself probable. The story told by

two witnesses may be extravagant. The story told by one witness may be uncontradicted. The story told by

two witnesses may be contradicted by four witnesses. The story told by one witness may be corroborated by a

crowd of circumstances. The story told by two witnesses may have no such corroboration. The one witness

The chiefs of the Tory party, however, vehemently maintained that the law which required two witnesses was

of universal and eternal obligation, part of the law of nature, part of the law of God. Seymour quoted the book

of Numbers and the book of Deuteronomy to prove that no man ought to be condemned to death by the

mouth of a single witness. "Caiaphas and his Sanhedrim," said Harley, "were ready enough to set up the plea

of expediency for a violation of justice; they said,and we have heard such things said,'We must slay this

man, or the Romans will come and take away our place and nation.' Yet even Caiaphas and his Sanhedrim, in

that foulest act of judicial murder, did not venture to set aside the sacred law which required two witnesses."

"Even Jezebel," said another orator, "did not dare to take Naboth's vineyard from him till she had suborned

two men of Belial to swear falsely." "If the testimony of one grave elder had been sufficient," it was asked,

"what would have become of the virtuous Susannah?" This last allusion called forth a cry of "Apocrypha,

Over these arguments, which in truth can scarcely have imposed on those who condescended to use them,

Montague obtained a complete and easy victory. "An eternal law! Where was this eternal law before the reign

of Edward the Sixth? Where is it now, except in statutes which relate only to one very small class of offences.

If these texts from the Pentateuch and these precedents from the practice of the Sanhedrim prove any thing,

they prove the whole criminal jurisprudence of the realm to be a mass of injustice and impiety. One witness is

sufficient to convict a murderer, a burglar, a highwayman, an incendiary, a ravisher. Nay, there are cases of

high treason in which only one witness is required. One witness can send to Tyburn a gang of clippers and

comers. Are you, then, prepared to say that the whole law of evidence, according to which men have during

ages been tried in this country for offences against life and property, is vicious and ought to be remodelled? If

you shrink from saying this, you must admit that we are now proposing to dispense, not with a divine

ordinance of universal and perpetual obligation, but simply with an English rule of procedure, which applies

to not more than two or three crimes, which has not been in force a hundred and fifty years, which derives all

its authority from an Act of Parliament, and which may therefore be by another, Act abrogated or suspended

It was much less easy to answer the chiefs of the opposition when they set forth the danger of breaking down

the partition which separates the functions of the legislator from those of the judge. "This man," it was said,

"may be a bad Englishman; and yet his cause may be the cause of all good Englishmen. Only last year we

passed an Act to regulate the procedure of the ordinary courts in cases of treason. We passed that Act because

we thought that, in those courts, the life of a subject obnoxious to the government was not then sufficiently

secured. Yet the life of a subject obnoxious to the government was then far more secure than it will be if this

House takes on itself to be the supreme criminal judicature in political cases." Warm eulogies were

pronounced on the ancient national mode of trial by twelve good men and true; and indeed the advantages of

that mode of trial in political cases are obvious. The prisoner is allowed to challenge any number of jurors

with cause, and a considerable number without cause. The twelve, from the moment at which they are

invested with their short magistracy, till the moment when they lay it down, are kept separate from the rest of

the community. Every precaution is taken to prevent any agent of power from soliciting or corrupting them.

Every one of them must hear every word of the evidence and every argument used on either side. The case is

then summed up by a judge who knows that, if he is guilty of partiality, he may be called to account by the

great inquest of the nation. In the trial of Fenwick at the bar of the House of Commons all these securities

were wanting. Some hundreds of gentlemen, every one of whom had much more than half made up his mind

before the case was opened, performed the functions both of judge and jury. They were not restrained, as a

judge is restrained, by the sense of responsibility; for who was to punish a Parliament? They were not

selected, as a jury is selected, in a manner which enables the culprit to exclude his personal and political

enemies. The arbiters of his fate came in and went out as they chose. They heard a fragment here and there of

what was said against him, and a fragment here and there of what was said in his favour. During the progress

of the bill they were exposed to every species of influence. One member was threatened by the electors of his

borough with the loss of his seat; another might obtain a frigate for his brother from Russell; the vote of a

third might be secured by the caresses and Burgundy of Wharton. In the debates arts were practised and

passions excited which are unknown to well constituted tribunals, but from which no great popular assembly

divided into parties ever was or ever will be free. The rhetoric of one orator called forth loud cries of "Hear

him." Another was coughed and scraped down. A third spoke against time in order that his friends who were

supping might come in to divide.761 If the life of the most worthless man could be sported with thus, was the

The opponents of the bill did not, indeed, venture to say that there could be no public danger sufficient to

justify an Act of Attainder. They admitted that there might be cases in which the general rule must bend to an

overpowering necessity. But was this such a case? Even if it were granted, for the sake of argument, that

Strafford and Monmouth were justly attainted, was Fenwick, like Strafford, a great minister who had long

ruled England north of Trent, and all Ireland, with absolute power, who was high in the royal favour, and

whose capacity, eloquence and resolution made him an object of dread even in his fall? Or was Fenwick, like

Monmouth, a pretender to the Crown and the idol of the common people? Were all the finest youths of three

counties crowding to enlist under his banners? What was he but a subordinate plotter? He had indeed once

had good employments; but he had long lost them. He had once had a good estate; but he had wasted it.

Eminent abilities and weight of character he had never had. He was, no doubt, connected by marriage with a

very noble family; but that family did not share his political prejudices. What importance, then, had he,

except that importance which his persecutors were most unwisely giving him by breaking through all the

fences which guard the lives of Englishmen in order to destroy him? Even if he were set at liberty, what could

he do but haunt Jacobite coffeehouses, squeeze oranges, and drink the health of King James and the Prince of

Wales? If, however, the government, supported by the Lords and the Commons, by the fleet and the army, by

a militia one hundred and sixty thousand strong, and by the half million of men who had signed the

Association, did really apprehend danger from this poor ruined baronet, the benefit of the Habeas Corpus Act

might be withheld from him. He might be kept within four walls as long as there was the least chance of his

doing mischief. It could hardly be contended that he was an enemy so terrible that the State could be safe

It was acknowledged that precedents might be found for this bill, or even for a bill far more objectionable.

But it was said that whoever reviewed our history would be disposed to regard such precedents rather as

warnings than as examples. It had many times happened that an Act of Attainder, passed in a fit of servility or

animosity, had, when fortune had changed, or when passion had cooled, been repealed and solemnly

stigmatized as unjust. Thus, in old times, the Act which was passed against Roger Mortimer, in the paroxysm

of a resentment not unprovoked, had been, at a calmer moment, rescinded on the ground that, however guilty

he might have been, he had not had fair play for his life. Thus, within the memory of the existing generation,

the law which attainted Strafford had been annulled, without one dissentient voice. Nor, it was added, ought it

to be left unnoticed that, whether by virtue of the ordinary law of cause and effect, or by the extraordinary

judgment of God, persons who had been eager to pass bills of pains and penalties, had repeatedly perished by

such bills. No man had ever made a more unscrupulous use of the legislative power for the destruction of his

enemies than Thomas Cromwell; and it was by an unscrupulous use of the legislative power that he was

himself destroyed. If it were true that the unhappy gentleman whose fate was now trembling in the balance

had himself formerly borne a part in a proceeding similar to that which was now instituted against him, was

not this a fact which ought to suggest very serious reflections? Those who tauntingly reminded Fenwick that

he had supported the bill which attainted Monmouth might perhaps themselves be tauntingly reminded, in

some dark and terrible hour, that they had supported the bill which had attainted Fenwick. "Let us remember

what vicissitudes we have seen. Let us, from so many signal examples of the inconstancy of fortune, learn

moderation in prosperity. How little we thought, when we saw this man a favourite courtier at Whitehall, a

general surrounded with military pomp at Hounslow, that we should live to see him standing at our bar, and

awaiting his doom from our lips! And how far is it from certain that we may not one day, in the bitterness of

our souls, vainly invoke the protection of those mild laws which we now treat so lightly! God forbid that we

should ever again be subject to tyranny! But God forbid, above all, that our tyrants should ever be able to

plead, in justification of the worst that they can inflict upon us, precedents furnished by ourselves!"

These topics, skilfully handled, produced a great effect on many moderate Whigs. Montague did his best to

rally his followers. We still possess the rude outline of what must have been a most effective peroration.

"Gentlemen warn us"this, or very nearly this, seems to have been what he said"not to furnish King

James with a precedent which, if ever he should be restored, he may use against ourselves. Do they really

believe that, if that evil day shall ever come, this just and necessary law will be the pattern which he will

imitate? No, Sir, his model will be, not our bill of attainder, but his own; not our bill, which, on full proof,

and after a most fair hearing, inflicts deserved retribution on a single guilty head; but his own bill, which,

without a defence, without an investigation, without an accusation, doomed near three thousand people,

whose only crimes were their English blood and their Protestant faith, the men to the gallows and the women

to the stake. That is the precedent which he has set, and which he will follow. In order that he never may be

able to follow it, in order that the fear of a righteous punishment may restrain those enemies of our country

who wish to see him ruling in London as he ruled at Dublin, I give my vote for this bill."

In spite of all the eloquence and influence of the ministry, the minority grew stronger and stronger as the

debates proceeded. The question that leave should be given to bring in the bill had been carried by nearly

three to one. On the question that the bill should be committed, the Ayes were a hundred and eightysix, the

Noes a hundred and twentyeight. On the question that the bill should pass, the Ayes were a hundred and

On the twentysixth of November the bill was carried up to the Lords. Before it arrived, the Lords had made

preparations to receive it. Every peer who was absent from town had been summoned up: every peer who

disobeyed the summons and was unable to give a satisfactory explanation of his disobedience was taken into

custody by Black Rod. On the day fixed for the first reading, the crowd on the benches was unprecedented.

The whole number of temporal Lords, exclusive of minors, Roman Catholics and nonjurors, was about a

hundred and forty. Of these a hundred and five were in their places. Many thought that the Bishops ought to

have been permitted, if not required, to withdraw; for, by an ancient canon, those who ministered at the altars

of God were forbidden to take any part in the infliction of capital punishment. On the trial of a peer

impeached of high treason, the prelates always retire, and leave the culprit to be absolved or condemned by

laymen. And surely, if it be unseemly that a divine should doom his fellow creatures to death as a judge, it

must be still more unseemly that he should doom them to death as a legislator. In the latter case, as in the

former, he contracts that stain of blood which the Church regards with horror; and it will scarcely be denied

that there are some grave objections to the shedding of blood by Act of Attainder which do not apply to the

shedding of blood in the ordinary course of justice. In fact, when the bill for taking away the life of Strafford

was under consideration, all the spiritual peers withdrew. Now, however, the example of Cranmer, who had

voted for some of the most infamous acts of attainder that ever passed, was thought more worthy of imitation;

and there was a great muster of lawn sleeves. It was very properly resolved that, on this occasion, the

privilege of voting by proxy should be suspended, that the House should be called over at the beginning and

at the end of every sitting, and that every member who did not answer to his name should be taken into

Meanwhile the unquiet brain of Monmouth was teeming with strange designs. He had now reached a time of

life at which youth could no longer be pleaded as an excuse for his faults; but he was more wayward and

eccentric than ever. Both in his intellectual and in his moral character there was an abundance of those fine

qualities which may be called luxuries, and a lamentable deficiency of those solid qualities which are of the

first necessity. He had brilliant wit and ready invention without common sense, and chivalrous generosity and

delicacy without common honesty. He was capable of rising to the part of the Black Prince; and yet he was

capable of sinking to the part of Fuller. His political life was blemished by some most dishonourable actions;

yet he was not under the influence of those motives to which most of the dishonourable actions of politicians

are to be ascribed. He valued power little and money less. Of fear he was utterly insensible. If he sometimes

stooped to be a villain,for no milder word will come up to the truth,it was merely to amuse himself and

to astonish other people. In civil as in military affairs, he loved ambuscades, surprises, night attacks. He now

imagined that he had a glorious opportunity of making a sensation, of producing a great commotion; and the

He knew, or at least strongly suspected, that the stories which Fenwick had told on hearsay, and which King,

Lords and Commons, Whigs and Tories, had agreed to treat as calumnies, were, in the main, true. Was it

impossible to prove that they were true, to cross the wise policy of William, to bring disgrace at once on

some of the most eminent men of both parties, to throw the whole political world into inextricable confusion?

Nothing could be done without the help of the prisoner; and with the prisoner it was impossible to

communicate directly. It was necessary to employ the intervention of more than one female agent. The

Duchess of Norfolk was a Mordaunt, and Monmouth's first cousin. Her gallantries were notorious; and her

husband had, some years before, tried to induce his brother nobles to pass a bill for dissolving his marriage;

but the attempt had been defeated, in consequence partly of the zeal with which Monmouth had fought the

battle of his kinswoman. The lady, though separated from her lord, lived in a style suitable to her rank, and

associated with many women of fashion, among others, with Lady Mary Fenwick, and with a relation of

Lady Mary, named Elizabeth Lawson. By the instrumentality of the Duchess, Monmouth conveyed to the

prisoner several papers containing suggestions framed with much art. Let Sir John,such was the substance

of these suggestions,boldly affirm that his confession is true, that he has brought accusations, on hearsay

indeed, but not on common hearsay, that he has derived his knowledge of the facts which he has asserted

from the highest quarters; and let him point out a mode in which his veracity may be easily brought to the

test. Let him pray that the Earls of Portland and Romney, who are well known to enjoy the royal confidence,

may be called upon to declare whether they are not in possession of information agreeing with what he has

related. Let him pray that the King may be requested to lay before Parliament the evidence which caused the

sudden disgrace of Lord Marlborough, and any letters which may have been intercepted while passing

between Saint Germains and Lord Godolphin. "Unless," said Monmouth to his female agents, "Sir John is

under a fate, unless he is out of his mind, he will take my counsel. If he does, his life and honour are safe. If

he does not, he is a dead man." Then this strange intriguer, with his usual license of speech, reviled William

for what was in truth one of William's best titles to glory. "He is the worst of men. He has acted basely. He

pretends not to believe these charges against Shrewsbury, Russell, Marlborough, Godolphin. And yet he

knows,"and Monmouth confirmed the assertion by a tremendous oath,"he knows that every word of the

The papers written by Monmouth were delivered by Lady Mary to her husband. If the advice which they

contained had been followed, there can be little doubt that the object of the adviser would have been attained.

The King would have been bitterly mortified; there would have been a general panic among public men of

every party; even Marlborough's serene fortitude would have been severely tried; and Shrewsbury would

probably have shot himself. But that Fenwick would have put himself in a better situation is by no means

clear. Such was his own opinion. He saw that the step which he was urged to take was hazardous. He knew

that he was urged to take that step, not because it was likely to save himself, but because it was certain to

On the first of December the bill went through the earliest stage without a division. Then Fenwick's

confession, which had, by the royal command, been laid on the table, was read; and then Marlborough stood

up. "Nobody can wonder," he said, "that a man whose head is in danger should try to save himself by

accusing others. I assure Your Lordships that, since the accession of his present Majesty, I have had no

intercourse with Sir John on any subject whatever; and this I declare on my word of honour."763

Marlborough's assertion may have been true; but it was perfectly compatible with the truth of all that

Fenwick had said. Godolphin went further. "I certainly did," he said, "continue to the last in the service of

King James and of his Queen. I was esteemed by them both. But I cannot think that a crime. It is possible that

they and those who are about them may imagine that I am still attached to their interest. That I cannot help.

But it is utterly false that I have had any such dealings with the Court of Saint Germains as are described in

Fenwick was then brought in, and asked whether he had any further confession to make. Several peers

interrogated him, but to no purpose. Monmouth, who could not believe that the papers which he had sent to

Newgate had produced no effect, put, in a friendly and encouraging manner, several questions intended to

bring out answers which would have been by no means agreeable to the accused Lords. No such answer

however was to be extracted from Fenwick. Monmouth saw that his ingenious machinations had failed.

Enraged and disappointed, he suddenly turned round, and became more zealous for the bill than any other

peer in the House. Every body noticed the rapid change in his temper and manner; but that change was at first

On the eighth of December the bill was again taken into consideration; and on that day Fenwick,

accompanied by his counsel, was in attendance. But, before he was called in, a previous question was raised.

Several distinguished Tories, particularly Nottingham, Rochester, Normanby and Leeds, said that, in their

opinion, it was idle to inquire whether the prisoner was guilty or not guilty, unless the House was of opinion

that he was a person so formidable that, if guilty, he ought to be attainted by Act of Parliament. They did not

wish, they said, to hear any evidence. For, even on the supposition that the evidence left no doubt of his

criminality, they should still think it better to leave him unpunished than to make a law for punishing him.

The general sense, however, was decidedly for proceeding.765 The prisoner and his counsel were allowed

another week to prepare themselves; and, at length, on the fifteenth of December, the struggle commenced in

The debates were the longest and the hottest, the divisions were the largest, the protests were the most

numerously signed that had ever been known in the whole history of the House of Peers. Repeatedly the

benches continued to be filled from ten in the morning till past midnight.766 The health of many lords

suffered severely; for the winter was bitterly cold; but the majority was not disposed to be indulgent. One

evening Devonshire was unwell; he stole away and went to bed; but Black Rod was soon sent to bring him

back. Leeds, whose constitution was extremely infirm, complained loudly. "It is very well," he said, "for

young gentlemen to sit down to their suppers and their wine at two o'clock in the morning; but some of us old

men are likely to be of as much use here as they; and we shall soon be in our graves if we are forced to keep

such hours at such a season.767 So strongly was party spirit excited that this appeal was disregarded, and the

House continued to sit fourteen or fifteen hours a day. The chief opponents of the bill were Rochester,

Nottingham, Normanby and Leeds. The chief orators on the other side were Tankerville, who, in spite of the

deep stains which a life singularly unfortunate had left on his public and private character, always spoke with

an eloquence which riveted the attention of his hearers; Burnet, who made a great display of historical

learning; Wharton, whose lively and familiar style of speaking, acquired in the House of Commons,

sometimes shocked the formality of the Lords; and Monmouth, who had always carried the liberty of debate

to the verge of licentiousness, and who now never opened his lips without inflicting a wound on the feelings

of some adversary. A very few nobles of great weight, Devonshire, Dorset, Pembroke and Ormond, formed a

third party. They were willing to use the Bill of Attainder as an instrument of torture for the purpose of

wringing a full confession out of the prisoner. But they were determined not to give a final vote for sending

The first division was on the question whether secondary evidence of what Goodman could have proved

should be admitted. On this occasion Burnet closed the debate by a powerful speech which none of the Tory

orators could undertake to answer without premeditation. A hundred and twentysix lords were present, a

number unprecedented in our history. There were seventythree Contents, and fiftythree Not Contents.

The next great trial of strength was on the question whether the bill should be read a second time. The debate

was diversified by a curious episode. Monmouth, in a vehement declamation, threw some severe and well

merited reflections on the memory of the late Lord Jeffreys. The title and part of the ill gotten wealth of

Jeffreys had descended to his son, a dissolute lad, who had lately come of age, and who was then sitting in

the House. The young man fired at hearing his father reviled. The House was forced to interfere, and to make

both the disputants promise that the matter should go no further. On this day a hundred and twentyeight

peers were present. The second reading was carried by seventythree to fiftyfive; and fortynine of the

It was now thought by many that Fenwick's courage would give way. It was known that he was very

unwilling to die. Hitherto he might have flattered himself with hopes that the bill would miscarry. But now

that it had passed one House, and seemed certain to pass the other, it was probable that he would save himself

by disclosing all that he knew. He was again put to the bar and interrogated. He refused to answer, on the

ground that his answers might be used against him by the Crown at the Old Bailey. He was assured that the

House would protect him; but he pretended that this assurance was not sufficient; the House was not always

sitting; he might be brought to trial during a recess, and hanged before their Lordships met again. The royal

word alone, he said, would be a complete guarantee. The Peers ordered him to be removed, and immediately

resolved that Wharton should go to Kensington, and should entreat His Majesty to give the pledge which the

prisoner required. Wharton hastened to Kensington, and hastened back with a gracious answer. Fenwick was

again placed at the bar. The royal word, he was told, had been passed that nothing which he might say there

should be used against him in any other place. Still he made difficulties. He might confess all that he knew,

and yet might be told that he was still keeping something back. In short, he would say nothing till he had a

pardon. He was then, for the last time, solemnly cautioned from the Woolsack. He was assured that, if he

would deal ingenuously with the Lords, they would be intercessors for him at the foot of the throne, and that

their intercession would not be unsuccessful. If he continued obstinate, they would proceed with the bill. A

short interval was allowed him for consideration; and he was then required to give his final answer. "I have

given it," he said; "I have no security. "If I had, I should be glad to satisfy the House." He was then carried

At noon they met again. The third reading was moved. Tenison spoke for the bill with more ability than was

expected from him, and Monmouth with as much sharpness as in the previous debates. But Devonshire

declared that he could go no further. He had hoped that fear would induce Fenwick to make a frank

confession; that hope was at an end; the question now was simply whether this man should be put to death by

an Act of Parliament; and to that question Devonshire said that he must answer, "Not Content." It is not easy

to understand on what principle he can have thought himself justified in threatening to do what he did not

think himself justified in doing. He was, however, followed by Dorset, Ormond, Pembroke, and two or three

others. Devonshire, in the name of his little party, and Rochester, in the name of the Tories, offered to waive

all objections to the mode of proceeding, if the penalty were reduced from death to perpetual imprisonment.

But the majority, though weakened by the defection of some considerable men, was still a majority, and

would hear of no terms of compromise. The third reading was carried by only sixtyeight votes to sixtyone.

Fiftythree Lords recorded their dissent; and fortyone subscribed a protest, in which the arguments against

the bill were ably summed up.771 The peers whom Fenwick had accused took different sides. Marlborough

steadily voted with the majority, and induced Prince George to do the same. Godolphin as steadily voted with

the minority, but, with characteristic wariness, abstained from giving any reasons for his votes. No part of his

life warrants us in ascribing his conduct to any exalted motive. It is probable that, having been driven from

office by the Whigs and forced to take refuge among the Tories, he thought it advisable to go with his

As soon as the bill had been read a third time, the attention of the Peers was called to a matter which deeply

concerned the honour of their order. Lady Mary Fenwick had been, not unnaturally, moved to the highest

resentment by the conduct of Monmouth. He had, after professing a great desire to save her husband,

suddenly turned round, and become the most merciless of her husband's persecutors; and all this solely

because the unfortunate prisoner would not suffer himself to be used as an instrument for the accomplishing

of a wild scheme of mischief. She might be excused for thinking that revenge would be sweet. In her rage she

showed to her kinsman the Earl of Carlisle the papers which she had received from the Duchess of Norfolk.

Carlisle brought the subject before the Lords. The papers were produced. Lady Mary declared that she had

received them from the Duchess. The Duchess declared that she had received them from Monmouth.

Elizabeth Lawson confirmed the evidence of her two friends. All the bitter things which the petulant Earl had

said about William were repeated. The rage of both the great factions broke forth with ungovernable

violence. The Whigs were exasperated by discovering that Monmouth had been secretly labouring to bring to

shame and ruin two eminent men with whose reputation the reputation of the whole party was bound up. The

Tories accused him of dealing treacherously and cruelly by the prisoner and the prisoner's wife. Both among

the Whigs and among the Tories Monmouth had, by his sneers and invectives, made numerous personal

enemies, whom fear of his wit and of his sword had hitherto kept in awe.773 All these enemies were now

openmouthed against him. There was great curiosity to know what he would be able to say in his defence. His

eloquence, the correspondent of the States General wrote, had often annoyed others. He would now want it

all to protect himself.774 That eloquence indeed was of a kind much better suited to attack than to defence.

Monmouth spoke near three hours in a confused and rambling manner, boasted extravagantly of his services

and sacrifices, told the House that he had borne a great part in the Revolution, that he had made four voyages

to Holland in the evil times, that he had since refused great places, that he had always held lucre in contempt.

"I," he said, turning significantly to Nottingham, "have bought no great estate; I have built no palace; I am

twenty thousand pounds poorer than when I entered public life. My old hereditary mansion is ready to fall

about my ears. Who that remembers what I have done and suffered for His Majesty will believe that I would

speak disrespectfully of him?" He solemnly declared,and this was the most serious of the many serious

faults of his long and unquiet life,that he had nothing to do with the papers which had caused so much

scandal. The Papists, he said, hated him; they had laid a scheme to ruin him; his ungrateful kinswoman had

consented to be their implement, and had requited the strenuous efforts which he had made in defence of her

honour by trying to blast his. When he concluded there was a long silence. He asked whether their Lordships

wished him to withdraw. Then Leeds, to whom he had once professed a strong attachment, but whom he had

deserted with characteristic inconstancy and assailed with characteristic petulance, seized the opportunity of

revenging himself. "It is quite unnecessary," the shrewd old statesman said, "that the noble Earl should

withdraw at present. The question which we have now to decide is merely whether these papers do or do not

deserve our censure. Who wrote them is a question which may be considered hereafter." It was then moved

and unanimously resolved that the papers were scandalous, and that the author had been guilty of a high

crime and misdemeanour. Monmouth himself was, by these dexterous tactics, forced to join in condemning

his own compositions.775 Then the House proceeded to consider the charge against him. The character of his

cousin the Duchess did not stand high; but her testimony was confirmed both by direct and by circumstantial

evidence. Her husband said, with sour pleasantry, that he gave entire faith to what she had deposed. "My

Lord Monmouth thought her good enough to be wife to me; and, if she is good enough to be wife to me, I am

sure that she is good enough to be a witness against him." In a House of near eighty peers only eight or ten

seemed inclined to show any favour to Monmouth. He was pronounced guilty of the act of which he had, in

the most solemn manner, protested that he was innocent; he was sent to the Tower; he was turned out of all

his places; and his name was struck out of the Council Book.776 It might well have been thought that the ruin

of his fame and of his fortunes was irreparable. But there was about his nature an elasticity which nothing

could subdue. In his prison, indeed, he was as violent as a falcon just caged, and would, if he had been long

detained, have died of mere impatience. His only solace was to contrive wild and romantic schemes for

extricating himself from his difficulties and avenging himself on his enemies. When he regained his liberty,

he stood alone in the world, a dishonoured man, more hated by the Whigs than any Tory, and by the Tories

than any Whig, and reduced to such poverty that he talked of retiring to the country, living like a farmer, and

putting his Countess into the dairy to churn and to make cheeses. Yet even after this fall, that mounting spirit

rose again, and rose higher than ever. When he next appeared before the world, he had inherited the earldom

of the head of his family; he had ceased to be called by the tarnished name of Monmouth; and he soon added

new lustre to the name of Peterborough. He was still all air and fire. His ready wit and his dauntless courage

made him formidable; some amiable qualities which contrasted strangely with his vices, and some great

exploits of which the effect was heightened by the careless levity with which they were performed, made him

popular; and his countrymen were willing to forget that a hero of whose achievements they were proud, and

who was not more distinguished by parts and valour than by courtesy and generosity, had stooped to tricks

It is interesting and instructive to compare the fate of Shrewsbury with the fate of Peterborough. The honour

of Shrewsbury was safe. He had been triumphantly acquitted of the charges contained in Fenwick's

confession. He was soon afterwards still more triumphantly acquitted of a still more odious charge. A

wretched spy named Matthew Smith, who thought that he had not been sufficiently rewarded, and was bent

on being revenged, affirmed that Shrewsbury had received early information of the Assassination Plot, but

had suppressed that information, and had taken no measures to prevent the conspirators from accomplishing

their design. That this was a foul calumny no person who has examined the evidence can doubt. The King

declared that he could himself prove his minister's innocence; and the Peers, after examining Smith,

pronounced the accusation unfounded. Shrewsbury was cleared as far as it was in the power of the Crown and

of the Parliament to clear him. He had power and wealth, the favour of the King and the favour of the people.

No man had a greater number of devoted friends. He was the idol of the Whigs; yet he was not personally

disliked by the Tories. It should seem that his situation was one which Peterborough might well have envied.

But happiness and misery are from within. Peterborough had one of those minds of which the deepest

wounds heal and leave no scar. Shrewsbury had one of those minds in which the slightest scratch may fester

to the death. He had been publicly accused of corresponding with Saint Germains; and, though King, Lords

and Commons had pronounced him innocent, his conscience told him that he was guilty. The praises which

he knew that he had not deserved sounded to him like reproaches. He never regained his lost peace of mind.

He left office; but one cruel recollection accompanied him into retirement. He left England; but one cruel

recollection pursued him over the Alps and the Apennines. On a memorable day, indeed, big with the fate of

his country, he again, after many inactive and inglorious years, stood forth the Shrewsbury of 1688. Scarcely

any thing in history is more melancholy than that late and solitary gleam, lighting up the close of a life which

had dawned so splendidly, and which had so early become hopelessly troubled and gloomy.

On the day on which the Lords passed the Bill of Attainder, they adjourned over the Christmas holidays. The

fate of Fenwick consequently remained during more than a fortnight in suspense. In the interval plans of

escape were formed; and it was thought necessary to place a strong military guard round Newgate.777 Some

Jacobites knew William so little as to send him anonymous letters, threatening that he should be shot or

stabbed if he dared to touch a hair of the prisoner's head.778 On the morning of the eleventh of January he

passed the bill. He at the same time passed a bill which authorised the government to detain Bernardi and

some other conspirators in custody during twelve months. On the evening of that day a deeply mournful

event was the talk of all London. The Countess of Aylesbury had watched with intense anxiety the

proceedings against Sir John. Her lord had been as deep as Sir John in treason, was, like Sir John, in

confinement, and had, like Sir John, been a party to Goodman's flight. She had learned with dismay that there

was a method by which a criminal who was beyond the reach of the ordinary law might be punished. Her

terror had increased at every stage in the progress of the Bill of Attainder. On the day on which the royal

assent was to be given, her agitation became greater than her frame could support. When she heard the sound

of the guns which announced that the King was on his way to Westminster, she fell into fits, and died in a

Even after the bill had become law, strenuous efforts were made to save Fenwick. His wife threw herself at

William's feet, and offered him a petition. He took the petition, and said, very gently, that it should be

considered, but that the matter was one of public concern, and that he must deliberate with his ministers

before he decided.780 She then addressed herself to the Lords. She told them that her husband had not

expected his doom, that he had not had time to prepare himself for death, that he had not, during his long

imprisonment, seen a divine. They were easily induced to request that he might be respited for a week. A

respite was granted; but, fortyeight hours before it expired, Lady Mary presented to the Lords another

petition, imploring them to intercede with the King that her husband's punishment might be commuted to

banishment. The House was taken by surprise; and a motion to adjourn was with difficulty carried by two

votes.781 On the morrow, the last day of Fenwick's life, a similar petition was presented to the Commons.

But the Whig leaders were on their guard; the attendance was full; and a motion for reading the Orders of the

Day was carried by a hundred and fiftytwo to a hundred and seven.782 In truth, neither branch of the

legislature could, without condemning itself, request William to spare Fenwick's life. Jurymen, who have, in

the discharge of a painful duty, pronounced a culprit guilty, may, with perfect consistency, recommend him

to the favourable consideration of the Crown. But the Houses ought not to have passed the Bill of Attainder

unless they were convinced, not merely that Sir John had committed high treason, but also that he could not,

without serious danger to the Commonwealth, be suffered to live. He could not be at once a proper object of

On the twentyeighth of January the execution took place. In compliment to the noble families with which

Fenwick was connected, orders were given that the ceremonial should be in all respects the same as when a

peer of the realm suffers death. A scaffold was erected on Tower Hill and hung with black. The prisoner was

brought from Newgate in the coach of his kinsman the Earl of Carlisle, which was surrounded by a troop of

the Life Guards. Though the day was cold and stormy, the crowd of spectators was immense; but there was

no disturbance, and no sign that the multitude sympathized with the criminal. He behaved with a firmness

which had not been expected from him. He ascended the scaffold with steady steps, and bowed courteously to

the persons who were assembled on it, but spoke to none, except White, the deprived Bishop of

Peterborough. White prayed with him during about half an hour. In the prayer the King was commended to

the Divine protection; but no name which could give offence was pronounced. Fenwick then delivered a

sealed paper to the Sheriffs, took leave of the Bishop, knelt down, laid his neck on the block, and exclaimed,

"Lord Jesus, receive my soul." His head was severed from his body at a single blow. His remains were placed

in a rich coffin, and buried that night, by torchlight, under the pavement of Saint Martin's Church. No person

Meanwhile an important question, about which public feeling was much excited, had been under discussion.

As soon as the Parliament met, a Bill for Regulating Elections, differing little in substance from the bill

which the King had refused to pass in the preceding session, was brought into the House of Commons, was

eagerly welcomed by the country gentlemen, and was pushed through every stage. On the report it was

moved that five thousand pounds in personal estate should be a sufficient qualification for the representative

of a city or borough. But this amendment was rejected. On the third reading a rider was added, which

permitted a merchant possessed of five thousand pounds to represent the town in which he resided; but it was

provided that no person should be considered as a merchant because he was a proprietor of Bank Stock or

East India Stock. The fight was hard. Cowper distinguished himself among the opponents of the bill. His

sarcastic remarks on the hunting, hawking boors, who wished to keep in their own hands the whole business

of legislation, called forth some sharp rustic retorts. A plain squire, he was told, was as likely to serve the

country well as the most fluent gownsman, who was ready, for a guinea, to prove that black was white. On

the question whether the bill should pass, the Ayes were two hundred, the Noes a hundred and sixty.784

The Lords had, twelve months before, readily agreed to a similar bill; but they had since reconsidered the

subject and changed their opinion. The truth is that, if a law requiring every member of the House of

Commons to possess an estate of some hundreds of pounds a year in land could have been strictly enforced,

such a law would have been very advantageous to country gentlemen of moderate property, but would have

been by no means advantageous to the grandees of the realm. A lord of a small manor would have stood for

the town in the neighbourhood of which his family had resided during centuries, without any apprehension

that he should be opposed by some alderman of London, whom the electors had never seen before the day of

nomination, and whose chief title to their favour was a pocketbook full of bank notes. But a great nobleman,

who had an estate of fifteen or twenty thousand pounds a year, and who commanded two or three boroughs,

would no longer be able to put his younger son, his younger brother, his man of business, into Parliament, or

to earn a garter or a step in the peerage by finding a seat for a Lord of the Treasury or an Attorney General.

On this occasion therefore the interest of the chiefs of the aristocracy, Norfolk and Somerset, Newcastle and

Bedford, Pembroke and Dorset, coincided with that of the wealthy traders of the City and of the clever young

aspirants of the Temple, and was diametrically opposed to the interest of a squire of a thousand or twelve

hundred a year. On the day fixed for the second reading the attendance of lords was great. Several petitions

from constituent bodies, which thought it hard that a new restriction should be imposed on the exercise of the

elective franchise, were presented and read. After a debate of some hours the bill was rejected by sixtytwo

votes to thirtyseven.785 Only three days later, a strong party in the Commons, burning with resentment,

proposed to tack the bill which the Peers had just rejected to the Land Tax Bill. This motion would probably

have been carried, had not Foley gone somewhat beyond the duties of his place, and, under pretence of

speaking to order, shown that such a tack would be without a precedent in parliamentary history. When the

question was put, the Ayes raised so loud a cry that it was believed that they were the majority; but on a

division they proved to be only a hundred and thirtyfive. The Noes were a hundred and sixtythree.786

Other parliamentary proceedings of this session deserve mention. While the Commons were busily engaged

in the great work of restoring the finances, an incident took place which seemed, during a short time, likely to

be fatal to the infant liberty of the press, but which eventually proved the means of confirming that liberty.

Among the many newspapers which had been established since the expiration of the censorship, was one

called the Flying Post. The editor, John Salisbury, was the tool of a band of stockjobbers in the City, whose

interest it happened to be to cry down the public securities. He one day published a false and malicious

paragraph, evidently intended to throw suspicion on the Exchequer Bills. On the credit of the Exchequer Bills

depended, at that moment, the political greatness and the commercial prosperity of the realm. The House of

Commons was in a flame. The Speaker issued his warrant against Salisbury. It was resolved without a

division that a bill should be brought in to prohibit the publishing of news without a license. Fortyeight

hours later the bill was presented and read. But the members had now had time to cool. There was scarcely

one of them whose residence in the country had not, during the preceding summer, been made more

agreeable by the London journals. Meagre as those journals may seem to a person who has the Times daily

on his breakfast table, they were to that generation a new and abundant source of pleasure. No Devonshire or

Yorkshire gentleman, Whig or Tory, could bear the thought of being again dependent, during seven months

of every year, for all information about what was doing in the world, on newsletters. If the bill passed, the

sheets, which were now so impatiently expected twice a week at every country seat in the kingdom, would

contain nothing but what it suited the Secretary of State to make public; they would be, in fact, so many

London Gazettes; and the most assiduous reader of the London Gazette might be utterly ignorant of the most

important events of his time. A few voices, however, were raised in favour of a censorship. "These papers," it

was said, "frequently contain mischievous matter." "Then why are they not prosecuted?" was the answer.

"Has the AttorneyGeneral filed an information against any one of them? And is it not absurd to ask us to

give a new remedy by statute, when the old remedy afforded by the common law has never been tried?" On

the question whether the bill should be read a second time, the Ayes were only sixteen, the Noes two

Another bill, which fared better, ought to be noticed as an instance of the slow, but steady progress of

civilisation. The ancient immunities enjoyed by some districts of the capital, of which the largest and the

most infamous was Whitefriars, had produced abuses which could no longer be endured. The Templars on

one side of Alsatia, and the citizens on the other, had long been calling on the government and the legislature

to put down so monstrous a nuisance. Yet still, bounded on the west by the great school of English

jurisprudence, and on the east by the great mart of English trade, stood this labyrinth of squalid, tottering

houses, close packed, every one, from cellar to cockloft, with outcasts whose life was one long war with

society. The best part of the population consisted of debtors who were in fear of bailiffs. The rest were

attorneys struck off the roll, witnesses who carried straw in their shoes as a sign to inform the public where a

false oath might be procured for half a crown, sharpers, receivers of stolen goods, clippers of coin, forgers of

bank notes, and tawdry women, blooming with paint and brandy, who, in their anger, made free use of their

nails and their scissors, yet whose anger was less to be dreaded than their kindness. With these wretches the

narrow alleys of the sanctuary swarmed. The rattling of dice, the call for more punch and more wine, and the

noise of blasphemy and ribald song never ceased during the whole night. The benchers of the Inner Temple

could bear the scandal and the annoyance no longer. They ordered the gate leading into Whitefriars to be

bricked up. The Alsatians mustered in great force, attacked the workmen, killed one of them, pulled down the

wall, knocked down the Sheriff who came to keep the peace, and carried off his gold chain, which, no doubt,

was soon in the melting pot. The riot was not suppressed till a company of the Foot Guards arrived. This

outrage excited general indignation. The City, indignant at the outrage offered to the Sheriff, cried loudly for

justice. Yet, so difficult was it to execute any process in the dens of Whitefriars, that near two years elapsed

The Savoy was another place of the same kind, smaller indeed, and less renowned, but inhabited by a not less

lawless population. An unfortunate tailor, who ventured to go thither for the purpose of demanding payment

of a debt, was set upon by the whole mob of cheats, ruffians and courtesans. He offered to give a full

discharge to his debtor and a treat to the rabble, but in vain. He had violated their franchises; and this crime

was not to be pardoned. He was knocked down, stripped, tarred, feathered. A rope was tied round his waist.

He was dragged naked up and down the streets amidst yells of "A bailiff! A bailiff!" Finally he was

compelled to kneel down and to curse his father and mother. Having performed this ceremony he was

permitted,and the permission was blamed by many of the Savoyards,to limp home without a rag upon

him.789 The Bog of Allen, the passes of the Grampians, were not more unsafe than this small knot of lanes,

surrounded by the mansions of the greatest nobles of a flourishing and enlightened kingdom.

At length, in 1697, a bill for abolishing the franchises of these places passed both Houses, and received the

royal assent. The Alsatians and Savoyards were furious. Anonymous letters, containing menaces of

assassination, were received by members of Parliament who had made themselves conspicuous by the zeal

with which they had supported the bill; but such threats only strengthened the general conviction that it was

high time to destroy these nests of knaves and ruffians. A fortnight's grace was allowed; and it was made

known that, when that time had expired, the vermin who had been the curse of London would be unearthed

and hunted without mercy. There was a tumultuous flight to Ireland, to France, to the Colonies, to vaults and

garrets in less notorious parts of the capital; and when, on the prescribed day, the Sheriff's officers ventured

to cross the boundary, they found those streets where, a few weeks before, the cry of "A writ!" would have

drawn together a thousand raging bullies and vixens, as quiet as the cloister of a cathedral.790

On the sixteenth of April, the King closed the session with a speech, in which he returned warm and well

merited thanks to the Houses for the firmness and wisdom which had rescued the nation from commercial

and financial difficulties unprecedented in our history. Before he set out for the Continent, he conferred some

new honours, and made some new ministerial arrangements. Every member of the Whig junto was

distinguished by some conspicuous mark of royal favour. Somers delivered up the seal, of which he was

Keeper; he received it back again with the higher title of Chancellor, and was immediately commanded to

affix it to a patent, by which he was created Baron Somers of Evesham.791 Russell became Earl of Orford

and Viscount Barfleur. No English title had ever before been taken from a place of battle lying within a

foreign territory. But the precedent then set has been repeatedly followed; and the names of Saint Vincent,

Trafalgar, Camperdown, and Douro are now borne by the successors of great commanders. Russell seems to

have accepted his earldom, after his fashion, not only without gratitude, but grumblingly, and as if some great

wrong had been done him. What was a coronet to him? He had no child to inherit it. The only distinction

which he should have prized was the garter; and the garter had been given to Portland. Of course, such things

were for the Dutch; and it was strange presumption in an Englishman, though he might have won a victory

which had saved the State, to expect that his pretensions would be considered till all the Mynheers about the

Wharton, still retaining his place of Comptroller of the Household, obtained the lucrative office of Chief

Justice in Eyre, South of Trent; and his brother, Godwin Wharton, was made a Lord of the Admiralty.793

Though the resignation of Godolphin had been accepted in October, no new commission of Treasury was

issued till after the prorogation. Who should be First Commissioner was a question long and fiercely

disputed. For Montague's faults had made him many enemies, and his merits many more, Dull formalists

sneered at him as a wit and poet, who, no doubt, showed quick parts in debate, but who had already been

raised far higher than his services merited or than his brain would bear. It would be absurd to place such a

young coxcomb, merely because he could talk fluently and cleverly, in an office on which the wellbeing of

the kingdom depended. Surely Sir Stephen Fox was, of all the Lords of the Treasury, the fittest to be at the

head of the Board. He was an elderly man, grave, experienced, exact, laborious; and he had never made a

verse in his life. The King hesitated during a considerable time between the two candidates; but time was all

in Montague's favour; for, from the first to the last day of the session, his fame was constantly rising. The

voice of the House of Commons and of the City loudly designated him as preeminently qualified to be the

chief minister of finance. At length Sir Stephen Fox withdrew from the competition, though not with a very

good grace. He wished it to be notified in the London Gazette that the place of First Lord had been offered to

him, and declined by him. Such a notification would have been an affront to Montague; and Montague,

flushed with prosperity and glory, was not in a mood to put up with affronts. The dispute was compromised.

Montague became First Lord of the Treasury; and the vacant seat at the Board was filled by Sir Thomas

Littleton, one of the ablest and most consistent Whigs in the House of Commons. But, from tenderness to

Dorset resigned the office of Chamberlain, but not in ill humour, and retired loaded with marks of royal

favour. He was succeeded by Sunderland, who was also appointed one of the Lords Justices, not without

much murmuring from various quarters.795 To the Tories Sunderland was an object of unmixed detestation.

Some of the Whig leaders had been unable to resist his insinuating address; and others were grateful for the

services which he had lately rendered to the party. But the leaders could not restrain their followers. Plain

men, who were zealous for civil liberty and for the Protestant religion, who were beyond the range of

Sunderland's irresistible fascination, and who knew that he had sate in the High Commission, concurred in

the Declaration of Indulgence, borne witness against the Seven Bishops, and received the host from a Popish

priest, could not, without indignation and shame, see him standing, with the staff in his hand, close to the

throne. Still more monstrous was it that such a man should be entrusted with the administration of the

government during the absence of the Sovereign. William did not understand these feelings. Sunderland was

able; he was useful; he was unprincipled indeed; but so were all the English politicians of the generation

which had learned, under the sullen tyranny of the Saints, to disbelieve in virtue, and which had, during the

wild jubilee of the Restoration, been utterly dissolved in vice. He was a fair specimen of his class, a little

worse, perhaps, than Leeds or Godolphin, and about as bad as Russell or Marlborough. Why he was to be

Notwithstanding the discontent which was caused by Sunderland's elevation, England was, during this

summer, perfectly quiet and in excellent temper. All but the fanatical Jacobites were elated by the rapid

revival of trade and by the near prospect of peace. Nor were Ireland and Scotland less tranquil.

In Ireland nothing deserving to be minutely related had taken place since Sidney had ceased to be Lord

Lieutenant. The government had suffered the colonists to domineer unchecked over the native population;

and the colonists had in return been profoundly obsequious to the government. The proceedings of the local

legislature which sate at Dublin had been in no respect more important or more interesting than the

proceedings of the Assembly of Barbadoes. Perhaps the most momentous event in the parliamentary history

of Ireland at this time was a dispute between the two Houses which was caused by a collision between the

coach of the Speaker and the coach of the Chancellor. There were, indeed, factions, but factions which sprang

merely from personal pretensions and animosities. The names of Whig and Tory had been carried across

Saint George's Channel, but had in the passage lost all their meaning. A man who was called a Tory at Dublin

would have passed at Westminster for as stanch a Whig as Wharton. The highest Churchmen in Ireland

abhorred and dreaded Popery so much that they were disposed to consider every Protestant as a brother. They

remembered the tyranny of James, the robberies, the burnings, the confiscations, the brass money, the Act of

Attainder, with bitter resentment. They honoured William as their deliverer and preserver. Nay, they could

not help feeling a certain respect even for the memory of Cromwell; for, whatever else he might have been,

he had been the champion and the avenger of their race. Between the divisions of England, therefore, and the

divisions of Ireland, there was scarcely any thing in common. In England there were two parties, of the same

race and religion, contending with each other. In Ireland there were two castes, of different races and

Scotland too was quiet. The harvest of the last year had indeed been scanty; and there was consequently much

suffering. But the spirit of the nation was buoyed up by wild hopes, destined to end in cruel disappointment.

A magnificent daydream of wealth and empire so completely occupied the minds of men that they hardly felt

the present distress. How that dream originated, and by how terrible an awakening it was broken, will be

In the autumn of 1696 the Estates of Scotland met at Edinburgh. The attendance was thin; and the session

lasted only five weeks. A supply amounting to little more than a hundred thousand pounds sterling was voted.

Two Acts for the securing of the government were passed. One of those Acts required all persons in public

trust to sign an Association similar to the Association which had been so generally subscribed in the south of

the island. The other Act provided that the Parliament of Scotland should not be dissolved by the death of the

King. But by far the most important event of this short session was the passing of the Act for the settling of

Schools. By this memorable law it was, in the Scotch phrase, statuted and ordained that every parish in the

realm should provide a commodious schoolhouse and should pay a moderate stipend to a schoolmaster. The

effect could not be immediately felt. But, before one generation had passed away, it began to be evident that

the common people of Scotland were superior in intelligence to the common people of any other country in

Europe. To whatever land the Scotchman might wander, to whatever calling he might betake himself, in

America or in India, in trade or in war, the advantage which he derived from his early training raised him

above his competitors. If he was taken into a warehouse as a porter, he soon became foreman. If he enlisted in

the army, he soon became a serjeant. Scotland, meanwhile, in spite of the barrenness of her soil and the

severity of her climate, made such progress in agriculture, in manufactures, in commerce, in letters, in

science, in all that constitutes civilisation, as the Old World had never seen equalled, and as even the New

This wonderful change is to be attributed, not indeed solely, but principally, to the national system of

education. But to the men by whom that system was established posterity owes no gratitude. They knew not

what they were doing. They were the unconscious instruments of enlightening the understandings and

humanising the hearts of millions. But their own understandings were as dark and their own hearts as

obdurate as those of the Familiars of the Inquisition at Lisbon. In the very month in which the Act for the

settling of Schools was touched with the sceptre, the rulers of the Church and State in Scotland began to carry

on with vigour two persecutions worthy of the tenth century, a persecution of witches and a persecution of

infidels. A crowd of wretches, guilty only of being old and miserable, were accused of trafficking with the

devil. The Privy Council was not ashamed to issue a Commission for the trial of twentytwo of these poor

creatures.796 The shops of the booksellers of Edinburgh were strictly searched for heretical works. Impious

books, among which the sages of the Presbytery ranked Thomas Burnet's Sacred Theory of the Earth, were

strictly suppressed.797 But the destruction of mere paper and sheepskin would not satisfy the bigots. Their

hatred required victims who could feel, and was not appeased till they had perpetrated a crime such as has

A student of eighteen, named Thomas Aikenhead, whose habits were studious and whose morals were

irreproachable, had, in the course of his reading, met with some of the ordinary arguments against the Bible.

He fancied that he had lighted on a mine of wisdom which had been hidden from the rest of mankind, and,

with the conceit from which half educated lads of quick parts are seldom free, proclaimed his discoveries to

four or five of his companions. Trinity in unity, he said, was as much a contradiction as a square circle. Ezra

was the author of the Pentateuch. The Apocalypse was an allegorical book about the philosopher's stone.

Moses had learned magic in Egypt. Christianity was a delusion which would not last till the year 1800. For

this wild talk, of which, in all probability, he would himself have been ashamed long before he was five and

twenty, he was prosecuted by the Lord Advocate. The Lord Advocate was that James Stewart who had been

so often a Whig and so often a Jacobite that it is difficult to keep an account of his apostasies. He was now a

Whig for the third if not for the fourth time. Aikenhead might undoubtedly have been, by the law of Scotland,

punished with imprisonment till he should retract his errors and do penance before the congregation of his

parish; and every man of sense and humanity would have thought this a sufficient punishment for the prate of

a forward boy. But Stewart, as cruel as he was base, called for blood. There was among the Scottish statutes

one which made it a capital crime to revile or curse the Supreme Being or any person of the Trinity. Nothing

that Aikenhead had said could, without the most violent straining, be brought within the scope of this statute.

But the Lord Advocate exerted all his subtlety. The poor youth at the bar had no counsel. He was altogether

unable to do justice to his own cause. He was convicted, and sentenced to be hanged and buried at the foot of

the gallows. It was in vain that he with tears abjured his errors and begged piteously for mercy. Some of those

who saw him in his dungeon believed that his recantation was sincere; and indeed it is by no means

improbable that in him, as in many other pretenders to philosophy who imagine that they have completely

emancipated themselves from the religion of their childhood, the near prospect of death may have produced

an entire change of sentiment. He petitioned the Privy Council that, if his life could not be spared, he might

be allowed a short respite to make his peace with the God whom he had offended. Some of the Councillors

were for granting this small indulgence. Others thought that it ought not to be granted unless the ministers of

Edinburgh would intercede. The two parties were evenly balanced; and the question was decided against the

prisoner by the casting vote of the Chancellor. The Chancellor was a man who has been often mentioned in

the course of this history, and never mentioned with honour. He was that Sir Patrick Hume whose

disputatious and factious temper had brought ruin on the expedition of Argyle, and had caused not a little

annoyance to the government of William. In the Club which had braved the King and domineered over the

Parliament there had been no more noisy republican. But a title and a place had produced a wonderful

conversion. Sir Patrick was now Lord Polwarth; he had the custody of the Great Seal of Scotland; he presided

in the Privy Council; and thus he had it in his power to do the worst action of his bad life.

It remained to be seen how the clergy of Edinburgh would act. That divines should be deaf to the entreaties of

a penitent who asks, not for pardon, but for a little more time to receive their instructions and to pray to

Heaven for the mercy which cannot be extended to him on earth, seems almost incredible. Yet so it was. The

ministers demanded, not only the poor boy's death, but his speedy death, though it should be his eternal death.

Even from their pulpits they cried out for cutting him off. It is probable that their real reason for refusing him

a respite of a few days was their apprehension that the circumstances of his case might be reported at

Kensington, and that the King, who, while reciting the Coronation Oath, had declared from the throne that he

would not be a persecutor, might send down positive orders that the sentence should not be executed.

Aikenhead was hanged between Edinburgh and Leith. He professed deep repentance, and suffered with the

Bible in his hand. The people of Edinburgh, though assuredly not disposed to think lightly of his offence,

were moved to compassion by his youth, by his penitence, and by the cruel haste with which he was hurried

out of the world. It seems that there was some apprehension of a rescue; for a strong body of fusileers was

under arms to support the civil power. The preachers who were the boy's murderers crowded round him at the

gallows, and, while he was struggling in the last agony, insulted Heaven with prayers more blasphemous than

any thing that he had ever uttered. Wodrow has told no blacker story of Dundee.798

On the whole, the British islands had not, during ten years, been so free from internal troubles as when

William, at the close of April 1697, set out for the Continent. The war in the Netherlands was a little, and but

a little, less languid than in the preceding year. The French generals opened the campaign by taking the small

town of Aeth. They then meditated a far more important conquest. They made a sudden push for Brussels,

and would probably have succeeded in their design but for the activity of William. He was encamped on

ground which lies within sight of the Lion of Waterloo, when he received, late in the evening, intelligence

that the capital of the Netherlands was in danger. He instantly put his forces in motion, marched all night,

and, having traversed the field destined to acquire, a hundred and eighteen years later, a terrible renown, and

threaded the long defiles of the Forest of Soignies, he was at ten in the morning on the spot from which

Brussels had been bombarded two years before, and would, if he had been only three hours later, have been

bombarded again. Here he surrounded himself with entrenchments which the enemy did not venture to attack.

This was the most important military event which, during that summer, took place in the Low Countries. In

both camps there was an unwillingness to run any great risk on the eve of a general pacification.

Lewis had, early in the spring, for the first time during his long reign, spontaneously offered equitable and

honourable conditions to his foes. He had declared himself willing to relinquish the conquests which he had

made in the course of the war, to cede Lorraine to its own Duke, to give back Luxemburg to Spain, to give

back Strasburg to the Empire and to acknowledge the existing government of England.799

Those who remembered the great woes which his faithless and merciless ambition had brought on Europe

might well suspect that this unwonted moderation was not to be ascribed to sentiments of justice or humanity.

But, whatever might be his motive for proposing such terms, it was plainly the interest and the duty of the

Confederacy to accept them. For there was little hope indeed of wringing from him by war concessions larger

than those which he now tendered as the price of peace. The most sanguine of his enemies could hardly

expect a long series of campaigns as successful as the campaign of 1695. Yet in a long series of campaigns,

as successful as that of 1695, the allies would hardly be able to retake all that he now professed himself ready

to restore. William, who took, as usual, a clear and statesmanlike view of the whole situation, now gave his

voice as decidedly for concluding peace as he had in former years given it for vigorously prosecuting the war;

and he was backed by the public opinion both of England and of Holland. But, unhappily, just at the time

when the two powers which alone, among the members of the coalition, had manfully done their duty in the

long struggle, were beginning to rejoice in the near prospect of repose, some of those governments which had

never furnished their full contingents, which had never been ready in time, which had been constantly

sending excuses in return for subsidies, began to raise difficulties such as seemed likely to make the miseries

Spain had, as William, in the bitterness of his spirit, wrote to Heinsius, contributed nothing to the common

cause but rodomontades. She had made no vigorous effort even to defend her own territories against invasion.

She would have lost Flanders and Brabant but for the English and Dutch armies. She would have lost

Catalonia but for the English and Dutch fleets. The Milanese she had saved, not by arms, but by concluding,

in spite of the remonstrances of the English and Dutch governments, an ignominious treaty of neutrality. She

had not a ship of war able to weather a gale. She had not a regiment that was not ill paid and ill disciplined,

ragged and famished. Yet repeatedly, within the last two years, she had treated both William and the States

General with an impertinence which showed that she was altogether ignorant of her place among states. She

now became punctilious, demanded from Lewis concessions which the events of the war gave her no right to

expect, and seemed to think it hard that allies, whom she was constantly treating with indignity, were not

The conduct of Spain is to be attributed merely to arrogance and folly. But the unwillingness of the Emperor

to consent even to the fairest terms of accommodation was the effect of selfish ambition. The Catholic King

was childless; he was sickly; his life was not worth three years' purchase; and when he died, his dominions

would be left to be struggled for by a crowd of competitors. Both the House of Austria and the House of

Bourbon had claims to that immense heritage. It was plainly for the interest of the House of Austria that the

important day, come when it might, should find a great European coalition in arms against the House of

Bourbon. The object of the Emperor therefore was that the war should continue to be carried on, as it had

hitherto been carried on, at a light charge to him and a heavy charge to England and Holland, not till just

conditions of peace could be obtained, but simply till the King of Spain should die. "The ministers of the

Emperor," William wrote to Heinsius, "ought to be ashamed of their conduct. It is intolerable that a

government which is doing every thing in its power to make the negotiations fail, should contribute nothing

It is not strange that in such circumstances the work of pacification should have made little progress.

International law, like other law, has its chicanery, its subtle pleadings, its technical forms, which may too

easily be so employed as to make its substance inefficient. Those litigants therefore who did not wish the

litigation to come to a speedy close had no difficulty in interposing delays. There was a long dispute about

the place where the conferences should be held. The Emperor proposed Aix la Chapelle. The French

objected, and proposed the Hague. Then the Emperor objected in his turn. At last it was arranged that the

ministers of the Allied Powers should meet at the Hague, and that the French plenipotentiaries should take up

their abode five miles off at Delft.801 To Delft accordingly repaired Harlay, a man of distinguished wit and

good breeding, sprung from one of the great families of the robe; Crecy, a shrewd, patient and laborious

diplomatist; and Cailleres, who, though he was named only third in the credentials, was much better informed

than either of his colleagues touching all the points which were likely to be debated.802 At the Hague were

the Earl of Pembroke and Edward, Viscount Villiers, who represented England. Prior accompanied them with

the rank of Secretary. At the head of the Imperial Legation was Count Kaunitz; at the head of the Spanish

Legation was Don Francisco Bernardo de Quiros; the ministers of inferior rank it would be tedious to

Half way between Delft and the Hague is a village named Ryswick; and near it then stood, in a rectangular

garden, which was bounded by straight canals, and divided into formal woods, flower beds and melon beds, a

seat of the Princes of Orange. The house seemed to have been built expressly for the accommodation of such

a set of diplomatists as were to meet there. In the centre was a large hall painted by Honthorst. On the right

hand and on the left were wings exactly corresponding to each other. Each wing was accessible by its own

bridge, its own gate and its own avenue. One wing was assigned to the Allies, the other to the French, the hall

in the centre to the mediator.804 Some preliminary questions of etiquette were, not without difficulty,

adjusted; and at length, on the ninth of May, many coaches and six, attended by harbingers, footmen and

pages, approached the mansion by different roads. The Swedish Minister alighted at the grand entrance. The

procession from the Hague came up the side alley on the right. The procession from Delft came up the side

alley on the left. At the first meeting, the full powers of the representatives of the belligerent governments

were delivered to the mediator. At the second meeting, fortyeight hours later, the mediator performed the

ceremony of exchanging these full powers. Then several meetings were spent in settling how many carriages,

how many horses, how many lacqueys, how many pages, each minister should be entitled to bring to

Ryswick; whether the serving men should carry canes; whether they should wear swords; whether they

should have pistols in their holsters; who should take the upper hand in the public walks, and whose carriage

should break the way in the streets. It soon appeared that the mediator would have to mediate, not only

between the coalition and the French, but also between the different members of the coalition. The Imperial

Ambassadors claimed a right to sit at the head of the table. The Spanish Ambassador would not admit this

pretension, and tried to thrust himself in between two of them. The Imperial Ambassadors refused to call the

Ambassadors of Electors and Commonwealths by the title of Excellency. "If I am not called Excellency,"

said the Minister of the Elector of Brandenburg, "my master will withdraw his troops from Hungary." The

Imperial Ambassadors insisted on having a room to themselves in the building, and on having a special place

assigned to their carriages in the court. All the other Ministers of the Confederacy pronounced this a most

unjustifiable demand, and a whole sitting was wasted in this childish dispute. It may easily be supposed that

allies who were so punctilious in their dealings with each other were not likely to be very easy in their

intercourse with the common enemy. The chief business of Earlay and Kaunitz was to watch each other's

legs. Neither of them thought it consistent with the dignity of the Crown which he served to advance towards

the other faster than the other advanced towards him. If therefore one of them perceived that he had

inadvertently stepped forward too quick, he went back to the door, and the stately minuet began again. The

ministers of Lewis drew up a paper in their own language. The German statesmen protested against this

innovation, this insult to the dignity of the Holy Roman Empire, this encroachment on the rights of

independent nations, and would not know any thing about the paper till it had been translated from good

French into bad Latin. In the middle of April it was known to every body at the Hague that Charles the

Eleventh, King of Sweden, was dead, and had been succeeded by his son; but it was contrary to etiquette that

any of the assembled envoys should appear to be acquainted with this fact till Lilienroth had made a formal

announcement; it was not less contrary to etiquette that Lilienroth should make such an announcement till his

equipages and his household had been put into mourning; and some weeks elapsed before his coachmakers

and tailors had completed their task. At length, on the twelfth of June, he came to Ryswick in a carriage lined

with black and attended by servants in black liveries, and there, in full congress, proclaimed that it had

pleased God to take to himself the most puissant King Charles the Eleventh. All the Ambassadors then

condoled with him on the sad and unexpected news, and went home to put off their embroidery and to dress

themselves in the garb of sorrow. In such solemn trifling week after week passed away. No real progress was

made. Lilienroth had no wish to accelerate matters. While the congress lasted, his position was one of great

dignity. He would willingly have gone on mediating for ever; and he could not go on mediating, unless the

In June the hope of peace began to grow faint. Men remembered that the last war had continued to rage, year

after year, while a congress was sitting at Nimeguen. The mediators had made their entrance into that town in

February 1676. The treaty had not been signed till February 1679. Yet the negotiation of Nimeguen had not

proceeded more slowly than the negotiation of Ryswick. It seemed but too probable that the eighteenth

century would find great armies still confronting each other on the Meuse and the Rhine, industrious

populations still ground down by taxation, fertile provinces still lying waste, the ocean still made impassable

by corsairs, and the plenipotentiaries still exchanging notes, drawing up protocols, and wrangling about the

place where this minister should sit, and the title by which that minister should be called.

But William was fully determined to bring this mummery to a speedy close. He would have either peace or

war. Either was, in his view, better than this intermediate state which united the disadvantages of both. While

the negotiation was pending there could be no diminution of the burdens which pressed on his people; and yet

he could expect no energetic action from his allies. If France was really disposed to conclude a treaty on fair

terms, that treaty should be concluded in spite of the imbecility of the Catholic King and in spite of the selfish

cunning of the Emperor. If France was insecure, the sooner the truth was known, the sooner the farce which

was acting at Ryswick was over, the sooner the people of England and Holland,for on them every thing

depended,were told that they must make up their minds to great exertions and sacrifices, the better.

Pembroke and Villiers, though they had now the help of a veteran diplomatist, Sir Joseph Williamson, could

do little or nothing to accelerate the proceedings of the Congress. For, though France had promised that,

whenever peace should be made, she would recognise the Prince of Orange as King of Great Britain and

Ireland, she had not yet recognised him. His ministers had therefore had no direct intercourse with Harlay,

Crecy and Cailleres. William, with the judgment and decision of a true statesman, determined to open a

communication with Lewis through one of the French Marshals who commanded in the Netherlands. Of

those Marshals Villeroy was the highest in rank. But Villeroy was weak, rash, haughty, irritable. Such a

negotiator was far more likely to embroil matters than to bring them to an amicable settlement. Boufflers was

a man of sense and temper; and fortunately he had, during the few days which he had passed at Huy after the

fall of Namur, been under the care of Portland, by whom he had been treated with the greatest courtesy and

kindness. A friendship had sprung up between the prisoner and his keeper. They were both brave soldiers,

honourable gentlemen, trusty servants. William justly thought that they were far more likely to come to an

understanding than Harlay and Kaunitz even with the aid of Lilienroth. Portland indeed had all the essential

qualities of an excellent diplomatist. In England, the people were prejudiced against him as a foreigner; his

earldom, his garter, his lucrative places, his rapidly growing wealth, excited envy; his dialect was not

understood; his manners were not those of the men of fashion who had been formed at Whitehall; his abilities

were therefore greatly underrated; and it was the fashion to call him a blockhead, fit only to carry messages.

But, on the Continent, where he was judged without malevolence, he made a very different impression. It is a

remarkable fact that this man, who in the drawingrooms and coffeehouses of London was described as an

awkward, stupid, Hogan Mogan,such was the phrase at that time,was considered at Versailles as an

eminently polished courtier and an eminently expert negotiator.806 His chief recommendation however was

his incorruptible integrity. It was certain that the interests which were committed to his care would be as dear

to him as his own life, and that every report which he made to his master would be literally exact.

Towards the close of June Portland sent to Boufflers a friendly message, begging for an interview of half an

hour. Boufflers instantly sent off an express to Lewis, and received an answer in the shortest time in which it

was possible for a courier to ride post to Versailles and back again. Lewis directed the Marshal to comply

with Portland's request, to say as little as possible, and to learn as much as possible.807

On the twentyeighth of June, according to the Old Style, the meeting took place in the neighbourhood of

Hal, a town which lies about ten miles from Brussels, on the road to Mons. After the first civilities had been

exchanged, Boufflers and Portland dismounted; their attendants retired; and the two negotiators were left

alone in an orchard. Here they walked up and down during two hours, and, in that time, did much more

business than the plenipotentiaries at Ryswick were able to despatch in as many months.808

Till this time the French government had entertained a suspicion, natural indeed, but altogether erroneous,

that William was bent on protracting the war, that he had consented to treat merely because he could not

venture to oppose himself to the public opinion both of England and of Holland, but that he wished the

negotiation to be abortive, and that the perverse conduct of the House of Austria and the difficulties which

had arisen at Ryswick were to be chiefly ascribed to his machinations. That suspicion was now removed.

Compliments, cold, austere and full of dignity, yet respectful, were exchanged between the two great princes

whose enmity had, during a quarter of a century, kept Europe in constant agitation. The negotiation between

Boufflers and Portland proceeded as fast as the necessity of frequent reference to Versailles would permit.

Their first five conferences were held in the open air; but, at their sixth meeting, they retired into a small

house in which Portland had ordered tables, pens, ink and paper to be placed; and here the result of their

The really important points which had been in issue were four. William had at first demanded two

William's first demand was that France should bind herself to give no help or countenance, directly or

indirectly, to any attempt which might be made by James, or by James's adherents, to disturb the existing

William's second demand was that James should no longer be suffered to reside at a place so dangerously

To the first of these demands Lewis replied that he was perfectly ready to bind himself by the most solemn

engagements not to assist or countenance, in any manner, any attempt to disturb the existing order of things

in England; but that it was inconsistent with his honour that the name of his kinsman and guest should appear

To the second demand Lewis replied that he could not refuse his hospitality to an unfortunate king who had

taken refuge in his dominions, and that he could not promise even to indicate a wish that James would quit

Saint Germains. But Boufflers, as if speaking his own thoughts, though doubtless saying nothing but what he

knew to be in conformity to his master's wishes, hinted that the matter would probably be managed, and

named Avignon as a place where the banished family might reside without giving any umbrage to the English

Lewis, on the other side, demanded, first, that a general amnesty should be granted to the Jacobites; and

secondly, that Mary of Modena should receive her jointure of fifty thousand pounds a year.

With the first of these demands William peremptorily refused to comply. He should always be ready, of his

own free will, to pardon the offences of men who showed a disposition to live quietly for the future under his

government; but he could not consent to make the exercise of his prerogative of mercy a matter of stipulation

with any foreign power. The annuity claimed by Mary of Modena he would willingly pay, if he could only be

satisfied that it would not be expended in machinations against his throne and his person, in supporting, on

the coast of Kent, another establishment like that of Hunt, or in buying horses and arms for another enterprise

like that of Turnham Green. Boufflers had mentioned Avignon. If James and his Queen would take up their

At length all the questions in dispute were settled. After much discussion an article was framed by which

Lewis pledged his word of honour that he would not favour, in any manner, any attempt to subvert or disturb

the existing government of England. William, in return, gave his promise not to countenance any attempt

against the government of France. This promise Lewis had not asked, and at first seemed inclined to consider

as an affront. His throne, he said, was perfectly secure, his title undisputed. There were in his dominions no

nonjurors, no conspirators; and he did not think it consistent with his dignity to enter into a compact which

seemed to imply that he was in fear of plots and insurrections such as a dynasty sprung from a revolution

might naturally apprehend. On this point, however, he gave way; and it was agreed that the covenants should

be strictly reciprocal. William ceased to demand that James should be mentioned by name; and Lewis ceased

to demand that an amnesty should be granted to James's adherents. It was determined that nothing should be

said in the treaty, either about the place where the banished King of England should reside, or about the

jointure of his Queen. But William authorised his plenipotentiaries at the Congress to declare that Mary of

Modena should have whatever, on examination, it should appear that she was by law entitled to have. What

she was by law entitled to have was a question which it would have puzzled all Westminster Hall to answer.

But it was well understood that she would receive, without any contest, the utmost that she could have any

pretence for asking as soon as she and her husband should retire to Provence or to Italy.809

Before the end of July every thing was settled, as far as France and England were concerned. Meanwhile it

was known to the ministers assembled at Ryswick that Boufflers and Portland had repeatedly met in Brabant,

and that they were negotiating in a most irregular and indecorous manner, without credentials, or mediation,

or notes, or protocols, without counting each other's steps, and without calling each other Excellency. So

barbarously ignorant were they of the rudiments of the noble science of diplomacy that they had very nearly

accomplished the work of restoring peace to Christendom while walking up and down an alley under some

apple trees. The English and Dutch loudly applauded William's prudence and decision. He had cut the knot

which the Congress had only twisted and tangled. He had done in a month what all the formalists and pedants

assembled at the Hague would not have done in ten years. Nor were the French plenipotentiaries ill pleased.

"It is curious," said Harlay, a man of wit and sense, "that, while the Ambassadors are making war, the

generals should be making peace."810 But Spain preserved the same air of arrogant listlessness; and the

ministers of the Emperor, forgetting apparently that their master had, a few months before, concluded a treaty

of neutrality for Italy without consulting William, seemed to think it most extraordinary that William should

presume to negotiate without consulting their master. It became daily more evident that the Court of Vienna

was bent on prolonging the war. On the tenth of July the French ministers again proposed fair and honourable

terms of peace, but added that, if those terms were not accepted by the twentyfirst of August, the Most

Christian King would not consider himself bound by his offer.811 William in vain exhorted his allies to be

reasonable. The senseless pride of one branch of the House of Austria and the selfish policy of the other were

proof to all argument. The twentyfirst of August came and passed; the treaty had not been signed.

France was at liberty to raise her demands; and she did so. For just at this time news arrived of two great

blows which had fallen on Spain, one in the Old and one in the New World. A French army, commanded by

Vendome, had taken Barcelona. A French squadron had stolen out of Brest, had eluded the allied fleets, had

crossed the Atlantic, had sacked Carthagena, and had returned to France laden with treasure.812 The Spanish

government passed at once from haughty apathy to abject terror, and was ready to accept any conditions

which the conqueror might dictate. The French plenipotentiaries announced to the Congress that their master

was determined to keep Strasburg, and that, unless the terms which he had offered, thus modified, were

accepted by the tenth of September, he should hold himself at liberty to insist on further modifications. Never

had the temper of William been more severely tried. He was provoked by the perverseness of his allies; he

was provoked by the imperious language of the enemy. It was not without a hard struggle and a sharp pang

that he made up his mind to consent to what France now proposed. But he felt that it would be utterly

impossible, even if it were desirable, to prevail on the House of Commons and on the States General to

continue the war for the purpose of wresting from France a single fortress, a fortress in the fate of which

neither England nor Holland had any immediate interest, a fortress, too, which had been lost to the Empire

solely in consequence of the unreasonable obstinacy of the Imperial Court. He determined to accept the

modified terms, and directed his Ambassadors at Ryswick to sign on the prescribed day. The Ambassadors of

Spain and Holland received similar instructions. There was no doubt that the Emperor, though he murmured

and protested, would soon follow the example of his confederates. That he might have time to make up his

mind, it was stipulated that he should be included in the treaty if he notified his adhesion by the first of

Meanwhile James was moving the mirth and pity of all Europe by his lamentations and menaces. He had in

vain insisted on his right to send, as the only true King of England, a minister to the Congress.813 He had in

vain addressed to all the Roman Catholic princes of the Confederacy a memorial in which he adjured them to

join with France in a crusade against England for the purpose of restoring him to his inheritance, and of

annulling that impious Bill of Rights which excluded members of the true Church from the throne.814 When

he found that this appeal was disregarded, he put forth a solemn protest against the validity of all treaties to

which the existing government of England should be a party. He pronounced all the engagements into which

his kingdom had entered since the Revolution null and void. He gave notice that he should not, if he should

regain his power, think himself bound by any of those engagements. He admitted that he might, by breaking

those engagements, bring great calamities both on his own dominions and on all Christendom. But for those

calamities he declared that he should not think himself answerable either before God or before man. It seems

almost incredible that even a Stuart, and the worst and dullest of the Stuarts, should have thought that the first

duty, not merely of his own subjects, but of all mankind, was to support his rights; that Frenchmen, Germans,

Italians, Spaniards, were guilty of a crime if they did not shed their blood and lavish their wealth, year after

year, in his cause; that the interests of the sixty millions of human beings to whom peace would be a blessing

In spite of his protests the day of peace drew nigh. On the tenth of September the Ambassadors of France,

England, Spain and the United Provinces, met at Ryswick. Three treaties were to be signed, and there was a

long dispute on the momentous question which should be signed first. It was one in the morning before it was

settled that the treaty between France and the States General should have precedence; and the day was

breaking before all the instruments had been executed. Then the plenipotentiaries, with many bows,

congratulated each other on having had the honour of contributing to so great a work.816

A sloop was in waiting for Prior. He hastened on board, and on the third day, after weathering an equinoctial

Very seldom had there been greater excitement in London than during the month which preceded his arrival.

When the west wind kept back the Dutch packets, the anxiety of the people became intense. Every morning

hundreds of thousands rose up hoping to hear that the treaty was signed; and every mail which came in

without bringing the good news caused bitter disappointment. The malecontents, indeed, loudly asserted that

there would be no peace, and that the negotiation would, even at this late hour, be broken off. One of them

had seen a person just arrived from Saint Germains; another had had the privilege of reading a letter in the

handwriting of Her Majesty; and all were confident that Lewis would never acknowledge the usurper. Many

of those who held this language were under so strong a delusion that they backed their opinion by large

wagers. When the intelligence of the fall of Barcelona arrived, all the treason taverns were in a ferment with

nonjuring priests laughing, talking loud, and shaking each other by the hand.818

At length, in the afternoon of the thirteenth of September, some speculators in the City received, by a private

channel, certain intelligence that the treaty had been signed before dawn on the morning of the eleventh. They

kept their own secret, and hastened to make a profitable use of it; but their eagerness to obtain Bank stock,

and the high prices which they offered, excited suspicion; and there was a general belief that on the next day

something important would be announced. On the next day Prior, with the treaty, presented himself before

the Lords justices at Whitehall. Instantly a flag was hoisted on the Abbey, another on Saint Martin's Church.

The Tower guns proclaimed the glad tidings. All the spires and towers from Greenwich to Chelsea made

answer. It was not one of the days on which the newspapers ordinarily appeared; but extraordinary numbers,

with headings in large capitals, were, for the first time, cried about the streets. The price of Bank stock rose

fast from eightyfour to ninetyseven. In a few hours triumphal arches began to rise in some places. Huge

bonfires were blazing in others. The Dutch ambassador informed the States General that he should try to

show his joy by a bonfire worthy of the commonwealth which he represented; and he kept his word; for no

such pyre had ever been seen in London. A hundred and forty barrels of pitch roared and blazed before his

house in Saint James's Square, and sent up a flame which made Pall Mall and Piccadilly as bright as at

Among the Jacobites the dismay was great. Some of those who had betted deep on the constancy of Lewis

took flight. One unfortunate zealot of divine right drowned himself. But soon the party again took heart. The

treaty had been signed; but it surely would never be ratified. In a short time the ratification came; the peace

was solemnly proclaimed by the heralds; and the most obstinate nonjurors began to despair. Some divines,

who had during eight years continued true to James, now swore allegiance to William. They were probably

men who held, with Sherlock, that a settled government, though illegitimate in its origin, is entitled to the

obedience of Christians, but who had thought that the government of William could not properly be said to be

settled while the greatest power in Europe not only refused to recognise him, but strenuously supported his

competitor.820 The fiercer and more determined adherents of the banished family were furious against

Lewis. He had deceived, he had betrayed his suppliants. It was idle to talk about the misery of his people. It

was idle to say that he had drained every source of revenue dry, and that, in all the provinces of his kingdom,

the peasantry were clothed in rags, and were unable to eat their fill even of the coarsest and blackest bread.

His first duty was that which he owed to the royal family of England. The Jacobites talked against him, and

wrote against him, as absurdly, and almost as scurrilously, as they had long talked and written against

William. One of their libels was so indecent that the Lords justices ordered the author to be arrested and held

But the rage and mortification were confined to a very small minority. Never, since the year of the

Restoration, had there been such signs of public gladness. In every part of the kingdom where the peace was

proclaimed, the general sentiment was manifested by banquets, pageants, loyal healths, salutes, beating of

drums, blowing of trumpets, breaking up of hogsheads. At some places the whole population, of its own

accord, repaired to the churches to give thanks. At others processions of girls, clad all in white, and crowned

with laurels, carried banners inscribed with "God bless King William." At every county town a long

cavalcade of the principal gentlemen, from a circle of many miles, escorted the mayor to the market cross.

Nor was one holiday enough for the expression of so much joy. On the fourth of November, the anniversary

of the King's birth, and on the fifth, the anniversary of his landing at Torbay, the bellringing, the shouting,

and the illuminations were renewed both in London and all over the country.822 On the day on which he

returned to his capital no work was done, no shop was opened, in the two thousand streets of that immense

mart. For that day the chiefs streets had, mile after mile, been covered with gravel; all the Companies had

provided new banners; all the magistrates new robes. Twelve thousand pounds had been expended in

preparing fireworks. Great multitudes of people from all the neighbouring shires had come up to see the

show. Never had the City been in a more loyal or more joyous mood. The evil days were past. The guinea

had fallen to twentyone shillings and sixpence. The bank note had risen to par. The new crowns and

halfcrowns, broad, heavy and sharply milled, were ringing on all the counters. After some days of impatient

expectation it was known, on the fourteenth of November, that His Majesty had landed at Margate. Late on

the fifteenth he reached Greenwich, and rested in the stately building which, under his auspices, was turning

from a palace into a hospital. On the next morning, a bright and soft morning, eighty coaches and six, filled

with nobles, prelates, privy councillors and judges, came to swell his train. In Southwark he was met by the

Lord Mayor and the Aldermen in all the pomp of office. The way through the Borough to the bridge was

lined by the Surrey militia; the way from the bridge to Walbrook by three regiments of the militia of the City.

All along Cheapside, on the right hand and on the left, the livery were marshalled under the standards of their

trades. At the east end of Saint Paul's churchyard stood the boys of the school of Edward the Sixth, wearing,

as they still wear, the garb of the sixteenth century. Round the Cathedral, down Ludgate Hill and along Fleet

Street, were drawn up three more regiments of Londoners. From Temple Bar to Whitehall gate the trainbands

of Middlesex and the Foot Guards were under arms. The windows along the whole route were gay with

tapestry, ribands and flags. But the finest part of the show was the innumerable crowd of spectators, all in

their Sunday clothing, and such clothing as only the upper classes of other countries could afford to wear. "I

never," William wrote that evening to Heinsius, "I never saw such a multitude of welldressed people." Nor

was the King less struck by the indications of joy and affection with which he was greeted from the beginning

to the end of his triumph. His coach, from the moment when he entered it at Greenwich till he alighted from it

in the court of Whitehall, was accompanied by one long huzza. Scarcely had he reached his palace when

addresses of congratulation, from all the great corporations of his kingdom, were presented to him. It was

remarked that the very foremost among those corporations was the University of Oxford. The eloquent

composition in which that learned body extolled the wisdom, the courage and the virtue of His Majesty, was

The rejoicings were not yet over. At a council which was held a few hours after the King's public entry, the

second of December was appointed to be the day of thanksgiving for the peace. The Chapter of Saint Paul's

resolved that, on that day, their noble Cathedral, which had been long slowly rising on the ruins of a

succession of pagan and Christian temples, should be opened for public worship. William announced his

intention of being one of the congregation. But it was represented to him that, if he persisted in that intention,

three hundred thousand people would assemble to see him pass, and all the parish churches of London would

be left empty. He therefore attended the service in his own chapel at Whitehall, and heard Burnet preach a

sermon, somewhat too eulogistic for the place.824 At Saint Paul's the magistrates of the City appeared in all

their state. Compton ascended, for the first time, a throne rich with the sculpture of Gibbons, and thence

exhorted a numerous and splendid assembly. His discourse has not been preserved; but its purport may be

easily guessed; for he preached on that noble Psalm: "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the

house of the Lord." He doubtless reminded his hearers that, in addition to the debt which was common to

them with all Englishmen, they owed as Londoners a peculiar debt of gratitude to the divine goodness, which

had permitted them to efface the last trace of the ravages of the great fire, and to assemble once more, for

prayer and praise, after so many years, on that spot consecrated by the devotions of thirty generations.

Throughout London, and in every part of the realm, even to the remotest parishes of Cumberland and

Cornwall, the churches were filled on the morning of that day; and the evening was an evening of

These was indeed reason for joy and thankfulness. England had passed through severe trials, and had come

forth renewed in health and vigour. Ten years before, it had seemed that both her liberty and her

independence were no more. Her liberty she had vindicated by a just and necessary revolution. Her

independence she had reconquered by a not less just and necessary war. She had successfully defended the

order of things established by the Bill of Rights against the mighty monarchy of France, against the

aboriginal population of Ireland, against the avowed hostility of the nonjurors, against the more dangerous

hostility of traitors who were ready to take any oath, and whom no oath could bind. Her open enemies had

been victorious on many fields of battle. Her secret enemies had commanded her fleets and armies, had been

in charge of her arsenals, had ministered at her altars, had taught at her Universities, had swarmed in her

public offices, had sate in her Parliament, had bowed and fawned in the bedchamber of her King. More than

once it had seemed impossible that any thing could avert a restoration which would inevitably have been

followed, first by proscriptions and confiscations, by the violation of fundamental laws, and the persecution

of the established religion, and then by a third rising up of the nation against that House which two

depositions and two banishments had only made more obstinate in evil. To the dangers of war and the

dangers of treason had recently been added the dangers of a terrible financial and commercial crisis. But all

those dangers were over. There was peace abroad and at home. The kingdom, after many years of

ignominious vassalage, had resumed its ancient place in the first rank of European powers. Many signs

justified the hope that the Revolution of 1688 would be our last Revolution. The ancient constitution was

adapting itself, by a natural, a gradual, a peaceful development, to the wants of a modern society. Already

freedom of conscience and freedom of discussion existed to an extent unknown in any preceding age. The

currency had been restored. Public credit had been reestablished. Trade had revived. The Exchequer was

overflowing. There was a sense of relief every where, from the Royal Exchange to the most secluded hamlets

among the mountains of Wales and the fens of Lincolnshire. The ploughmen, the shepherds, the miners of the

Northumbrian coalpits, the artisans who toiled at the looms of Norwich and the anvils of Birmingham, felt

the change, without understanding it; and the cheerful bustle in every seaport and every market town

FN 1 Relation de la Voyage de Sa Majeste Britannique en Hollande, enrichie de planches tres curieuses,

FN 2 The names of these two great scholars are associated in a very interesting letter of Bentley to Graevius,

dated April 29. 1698. "Sciunt omnes qui me norunt, et si vitam mihi Deus O.M. prorogaverit, scient etiam

posteri, ut te et ton panu Spanhemium, geminos hujus aevi Dioscuros, lucida literarum sidera, semper

FN 3 Relation de la Voyage de Sa Majeste Britannique en Hollande 1692; London Gazette, Feb. 2. 1691,; Le

Triomphe Royal ou l'on voit descrits les Arcs de Triomphe, Pyramides, Tableaux et Devises an Nombre de

65, erigez a la Haye a l'hounneur de Guillaume Trois, 1692; Le Carnaval de la Haye, 1691. This last work is a

FN 4 London Gazette, Feb. 5. 1693; His Majesty's Speech to the Assembly of the States General of the

United Provinces at the Hague the 7th of February N.S., together with the Answer of their High and Mighty

Lordships, as both are extracted out of the Register of the Resolutions of the States General, 1691.

FN 5 Relation de la Voyage de Sa Majeste Britannique en Hollande; Burnet, ii. 72.; London Gazette, Feb. 12.

FN 6 Wagenaar, lxii.; Le Carnaval de la Haye, Mars 1691; Le Tabouret des Electeurs, April 1691;

Ceremonial de ce qui s'est passe a la Haye entre le Roi Guillaume et les Electeurs de Baviere et de

Brandebourg. This last tract is a MS. presented to the British Museum by George IV,

FN 8 The secret article by which the Duke of Savoy bound himself to grant toleration to the Waldenses is in

FN 9 London Gazette from March 26. to April 13. 1691; Monthly Mercuries of March and April; William's

Letters to Heinsius of March 18. and 29., April 7. 9.; Dangeau's Memoirs; The Siege of Mons, a

tragicomedy, 1691. In this drama the clergy, who are in the interest of France, persuade the burghers to

FN 10 Trial of Preston in the Collection of State Trials. A person who was present gives the following

account of Somers's opening speech: "In the opening the evidence, there was no affected exaggeration of

matters, nor ostentation of a putid eloquence, one after another, as in former trials, like so many geese

cackling in a row. Here was nothing besides fair matter of fact, or natural and just reflections from thence

arising." The pamphlet from which I quote these words is entitled, An Account of the late horrid Conspiracy

FN 12 Paper delivered by Mr. Ashton, at his execution, to Sir Francis Child, Sheriff of London; Answer to

the Paper delivered by Mr. Ashton. The Answer was written by Dr. Edward Fowler, afterwards Bishop of

Gloucester. Burnet, ii. 70.; Letter from Bishop Lloyd to Dodwell, in the second volume of Gutch's

FN 17 That this account of what passed is true in substance is sufficiently proved by the Life of James, ii.

443. I have taken one or two slight circumstances from Dalrymple, who, I believe, took them from papers,

FN 18 The success of William's "seeming clemency" is admitted by the compiler of the Life of James. The

Prince of Orange's method, it is acknowledged, "succeeded so well that, whatever sentiments those Lords

which Mr. Penn had named night have had at that time, they proved in effect most bitter enemies to His

FN 19 See his Diary; Evelyn's Diary, Mar. 25., April 22., July 11. 1691; Burnet, ii. 71.; Letters of Rochester

FN 21 Burnet, ii. 71; Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 4. and 18. 1690,; Letter from Turner to Sancroft, Jan. 19. 1690/1;

Letter from Sancroft to Lloyd of Norwich April 2. 1692. These two letters are among the Tanner MSS. in the

Bodleian, and are printed in the Life of Ken by a Layman. Turner's escape to France is mentioned in

Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for February 1690. See also a Dialogue between the Bishop of Ely and his

Conscience, 16th February 1690/1. The dialogue is interrupted by the sound of trumpets. The Bishop hears

FN 22 For a specimen of his visions, see his Journal, page 13; for his casting out of devils, page 26. I quote

FN 25 What they know, they know naturally, who turn from the command and err from the spirit, whose fruit

withers, who saith that Hebrew, Greek, and Latine is the original: before Babell was, the earth was of one

language; and Nimrod the cunning hunter, before the Lord which came out of cursed Ham's stock, the

original and builder of Babell, whom God confounded with many languages, and this they say is the original

who erred from the spirit and command; and Pilate had his original Hebrew, Greek and Latine, which

crucified Christ and set over him."A message from the Lord to the Parliament of England by G. Fox, 1654.

The same argument will be found in the journals, but has been put by the editor into a little better English.

"Dost thou think to make ministers of Christ by these natural confused languages which sprung from Babell,

are admired in Babylon, and set atop of Christ, the Life, by a persecutor?"Page 64.

FN 26 His journal, before it was published, was revised by men of more sense and knowledge than himself,

and therefore, absurd as it is, gives us no notion of his genuine style. The following is a fair specimen. It is

the exordium of one of his manifestoes. "Them which the world who are without the fear of God calls

Quakers in scorn do deny all opinions, and they do deny all conceivings, and they do deny all sects, and they

do deny all imaginations, and notions, and judgments which riseth out of the will and the thoughts, and do

deny witchcraft and all oaths, and the world and the works of it, and their worships and their customs with the

light, and do deny false ways and false worships, seducers and deceivers which are now seen to be in the

world with the light, and with it they are condemned, which light leadeth to peace and life from death which

now thousands do witness the new teacher Christ, him by whom the world was made, who raigns among the

children of light, and with the spirit and power of the living God, doth let them see and know the chaff from

the wheat, and doth see that which must be shaken with that which cannot be shaken nor moved, what gives

to see that which is shaken and moved, such as live in the notions, opinions, conceivings, and thoughts and

fancies these be all shaken and comes to be on heaps, which they who witness those things before mentioned

shaken and removed walks in peace not seen and discerned by them who walks in those things unremoved

and not shaken."A Warning to the World that are Groping in the Dark, by G. Fox, 1655.

FN 27 See the piece entitled, Concerning Good morrow and Good even, the World's Customs, but by the

Light which into the World is come by it made manifest to all who be in the Darkness, by G. Fox, 1657.

FN 32 See, for example, the Epistle to Sawkey, a justice of the peace, in the journal, page 86.; the Epistle to

William Larnpitt, a clergyman, which begins, "The word of the Lord to thee, oh Lampitt," page 80.; and the

FN 37 "Especially of late," says Leslie, the keenest of all the enemies of the sect, "some of them have made

nearer advances towards Christianity than ever before; and among them the ingenious Mr. Penn has of late

refined some of their gross notions, and brought them into some form, and has made them speak sense and

English, of both which George Fox, their first and great apostle, was totally ignorant . . . . . They endeavour

all they can to make it appear that their doctrine was uniform from the beginning, and that there has been no

alteration; and therefore they take upon them to defend all the writings of George Fox, and others of the first

Quakers, and turn and wind them to make them (but it is impossible) agree with what they teach now at this

day." (The Snake in the Grass, 3rd ed. 1698. Introduction.) Leslie was always more civil to his brother

Jacobite Penn than to any other Quaker. Penn himself says of his master, "As abruptly and brokenly as

sometimes his sentences would fall from him about divine things; it is well known they were often as texts to

many fairer declarations." That is to say, George Fox talked nonsense and some of his friends paraphrased it

FN 38 In the Life of Penn which is prefixed to his works, we are told that the warrants were issued on the

16th of January 1690, in consequence of an accusation backed by the oath of William Fuller, who is truly

designated as a wretch, a cheat and. an impostor; and this story is repeated by Mr. Clarkson. It is, however,

certainly false. Caermarthen, writing to William on the 3rd of February, says that there was then only one

witness against Penn, and that Preston was that one witness. It is therefore evident that Fuller was not the

informer on whose oath the warrant against Penn was issued. In fact Fuller appears from his Life of himself,

to have been then at the Hague. When Nottingham wrote to William on the 26th of June, another witness had

FN 39 Sidney to William, Feb. 27. 1690,. The letter is in Dalrymple's Appendix, Part II. book vi. Narcissus

Luttrell in his Diary for September 1691, mentions Penn's escape from Shoreham to France. On the 5th of

December 1693 Narcissus made the following entry: "William Penn the Quaker, having for some time

absconded, and having compromised the matters against him, appears now in public, and, on Friday last, held

forth at the Bull and Month, in Saint Martin's." On December 18/28. 1693 was drawn up at Saint Germains,

under Melfort's direction, a paper containing a passage of which the following is a translation

"Mr. Penn says that Your Majesty has had several occasions, but never any so favourable, as the present; and

he hopes that Your Majesty will be earnest with the most Christian King not to neglect it: that a descent with

thirty thousand men will not only reestablish Your Majesty, but according to all appearance break the

FN 41 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, August �691; Letter from Vernon to Wharton, Oct. 17. 1691, in the

FN 42 The opinion of the Jacobites appears from a letter which is among the archives of the French War

FN 43 Welwood's Mercurius Reformatus, April 11. 24. 1691; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, April 1691;

L'Hermitage to the States General, June 19/29 1696; Calamy's Life. The story of Fenwick's rudeness to Mary

is told in different ways. I have followed what seems to me the most authentic, and what is certainly the last

FN 45 Lloyd to Sancroft, Jan. 24. 1691. The letter is among the Tanner MSS., and is printed in the Life of

FN 46 London Gazette, June 1. 1691; Birch's Life of Tillotson; Congratulatory Poem to the Reverend Dr.

Tillotson on his Promotion, 1691; Vernon to Wharton, May 28. and 30. 1691. These letters to Wharton are in

the Bodleian Library, and form part of a highly curious collection, which was kindly pointed out to me by Dr.

FN 47 Birch's Life of Tillotson; Leslie's Charge of Socinianism against Dr. Tillotson considered, by a True

Son of the Church 1695; Hickes's Discourses upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, 1695; Catalogue of Books of

the Newest Fashion to be Sold by Auction at the Whigs Coffee House, evidently printed in 1693. Afore than

sixty years later Johnson described a sturdy Jacobite as firmly convinced that Tillotson died an Atheist; Idler,

FN 49 Birch's Life of Tillotson; Memorials of Tillotson by his pupil John Beardmore; Sherlock's sermon

FN 51 Wharton's Collectanea quoted in D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 52 The Lambeth MS. quoted in D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Vernon to Wharton,

FN 53 See a letter of R. Nelson, dated Feb. 21. 1709/10, in the appendix to N. Marshall's Defence of our

Constitution in Church and State, 1717; Hawkins's Life of Ken; Life of Ken by a Layman.

FN 54 See a paper dictated by him on the 15th Nov. 1693, in Wagstaffe's letter from Suffolk.

FN 56 See D'Oyly's Life of Sancroft, Hallam's Constitutional History, and Dr. Lathbury's History of the

FN 57 See the autobiography of his descendant and namesake the dramatist. See also Onslow's note on

FN 58 A vindication of their Majesties' authority to fill the sees of the deprived Bishops, May 20. 1691;

London Gazette, April 27. and June 15. 1691; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, May 1691. Among the Tanner MSS.

are two letters from Jacobites to Beveridge, one mild and decent, the other scurrilous even beyond the

ordinary scurrility of the nonjurors. The former will be found in the Life of Ken by a Layman.

FN 59 It does not seem quite clear whether Sharp's scruple about the deprived prelates was a scruple of

FN 60 See Overall's Convocation Book, chapter 28. Nothing can be clearer or more to the purpose than his

"When, having attained their ungodly desires, whether ambitious kings by bringing any country into their

subjection, or disloyal subjects by rebellious rising against their natural sovereigns, they have established any

of the said degenerate governments among their people, the authority either so unjustly established, or wrung

by force from the true and lawful possessor, being always God's authority, and therefore receiving no

impeachment by the wickedness of those that have it, is ever, when such alterations are thoroughly settled, to

be reverenced and obeyed; and the people of all sorts, as well of the clergy as of the laity, are to be subject

"If any man shall affirm that, when any such new forms of government, begun by rebellion, are after

thoroughly settled, the authority in them is not of God, or that any who live within the territories of any such

new governments are not bound to be subject to God's authority which is there executed, but may rebel

FN 61 A list of all the pieces which I have read relating to Sherlock's apostasy would fatigue the reader. I will

mention a few of different kinds. Parkinson's Examination of Dr. Sherlock's Case of Allegiance, 1691;

Answer to Dr. Sherlock's Case of Allegiance, by a London Apprentice, 1691; the Reasons of the New

Converts taking the Oaths to the present Government, 1691; Utrum horum? or God's ways of disposing of

Kingdoms and some Clergymen's ways of disposing of them, 1691; Sherlock and Xanthippe 1691; Saint

Paul's Triumph in his Sufferings for Christ, by Matthew Bryan, LL.D., dedicated Ecclesim sub cruce

gementi; A Word to a wavering Levite; The Trimming Court Divine; Proteus Ecclesiasticus, or observations

on Dr. Sh's late Case of Allegiance; the Weasil Uncased; A Whip for the Weasil; the AntiWeasils.

Numerous allusions to Sherlock and his wife will be found in the ribald writings of Tom Brown, Tom

Durfey, and Ned Ward. See Life of James, ii. 318. Several curious letters about Sherlock's apostasy are

among the Tanner MSS. I will give two or three specimens of the rhymes which the Case of Allegiance

"when Eve the fruit had tasted, She to her husband hasted, And chuck'd him on the china. Dear Bud, quoth

she, come taste this fruit; 'Twill finly with your palate suit, To eat it is no sina."

"As moody Job, in shirtless ease, With collyflowers all o'er his face, Did on the dunghill languish, His spouse

thus whispers in his ear, Swear, husband, as you love me, swear, 'Twill ease you of your anguish."

"At first he had doubt, and therefore did pray That heaven would instruct him in the right way, Whether

"The pass at the Boyne determin'd that case; And precept to Providence then did give place; To change his

"But this with the Scripture can never agree, As by Hosea the eighth and the fourth you may see; 'They have

FN 62 The chief authority for this part of my history is the Life of James, particularly the highly important

and interesting passage which begins at page 444. and ends at page 450. of the second volume.

FN 63 Russell to William, May 10 1691, in Dalrymple's Appendix, Part II. Book vii. See also the Memoirs of

FN 68 Story's Continuation; Proclamation of February 21. 1690/1; the London Gazette of March 12.

FN 71 Story's Impartial History. The year 1684 had been considered as a time of remarkable prosperity, and

the revenue from the Customs had been unusually large. But the receipt from all the ports of Ireland, during

the whole year, was only a hundred and twentyseven thousand pounds. See Clarendon's Memoirs.

FN 72 Story's History and Continuation; London Gazettes of September 29. 1690, and Jan. 8. and Mar. 12.

FN 73 See the Lords' Journals of March 2. and 4. 1692/3 and the Commons' Journals of Dec. 16. 1693, and

Jan. 29. 1695/4. The story, bad enough at best, was told by the personal and political enemies of the Lords

justices with additions which the House of Commons evidently considered as calumnious, and which I really

believe to have been so. See the Gallienus Redivivus. The narrative which Colonel Robert Fitzgerald, a Privy

Councillor and an eyewitness delivered in writing to the House of Lords, under the sanction of an oath, seems

to me perfectly trustworthy. It is strange that Story, though he mentions the murder of the soldiers, says

FN 75 Macariae Excidium; Fumeron to Louvois Jan 31/Feb 10 1691. It is to be observed that Kelly, the

author of the Macariae Excidium and Fumeron, the French intendant, are most unexceptionable witnesses.

They were both, at this time, within the walls of Limerick. There is no reason to doubt the impartiality of the

FN 76 Story's Impartial History and Continuation and the London Gazettes of December, January, February,

FN 77 It is remarkable that Avaux, though a very shrewd judge of men, greatly underrated Berwick. In a

letter to Louvois, dated Oct. 15/25. 1689, Avaux says: "Je ne puis m'empescher de vous dire qu'il est brave de

sa personne, a ce que l'on dit mais que c'est un aussy mechant officie, qu'il en ayt, et qu'il n'a pas le sens

FN 84 Life of James, ii. 438.; Light to the Blind; Fumeron to Louvois, April 22/May 2 1691.

FN 86 Macariae Excidium; Burnet, ii. 78.; Dangeau; The Mercurius Reformatus, June 5. 1691.

FN 87 An exact journal of the victorious progress of their Majesties' forces under the command of General

FN 88 London Gazette, June 18. 22. 1691; Story's Continuation; Life of James, ii. 452. The author of the Life

FN 89 London Gazette, June 22. 25. July 2. 1691; Story's Continuation; Exact Journal.

FN 91 Macariae Excidium. I may observe that this is one of the many passages which lead me to believe the

Latin text to be the original. The Latin is: "Oppidum ad Salaminium amnis latus recentibus ac

sumptuosioribus aedificiis attollebatur; antiquius et ipsa vetustate in cultius quod in Paphiis finibus

exstructum erat." The English version is: "The town on Salaminia side was better built than that in Paphia."

Surely there is in the Latin the particularity which we might expect from a person who had known Athlone

before the war. The English version is contemptibly bad, I need hardly say that the Paphian side is

FN 92 I have consulted several contemporary maps of Athlone. One will be found in Story's Continuation.

FN 93 Diary of the Siege of Athlone, by an Engineer of the Army, a Witness of the Action, licensed July 11.

1691; Story's Continuation; London Gazette, July 2. 1691; Fumeron to Louvois, June 28/July 8. 1691. The

account of this attack in the Life of James, ii. 453., is an absurd romance. It does not appear to have been

FN 94 Macariae Excidium. Here again I think that I see clear proof that the English version of this curious

work is only a bad translation from the Latin. The English merely says: "Lysander," Sarsfield,"accused

him, a few days before, in the general's presence," without intimating what the accusation was. The Latin

original runs thus: "Acriter Lysander, paucos ante dies, coram praefecto copiarum illi exprobraverat nescio

quid, quod in aula Syriaca in Cypriorum opprobrium effutivisse dicebatur." The English translator has, by

omitting the most important words, and by using the aorist instead of the preterpluperfect tense, made the

FN 95 Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; Daniel Macneal to Sir Arthur Rawdon, June 28. 1691, in

FN 96 London Gazette, July 6. 1691; Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; Light to the Blind.

FN 99 Story's Continuation; Mackay's Memoirs; Exact Journal; Diary of the Siege of Athlone.

FN 100 Story's Continuation.; Macariae Excid.; Burnet, ii. 78, 79.; London Gaz. 6. 13. 1689; Fumeron to

FN 101 Story's Continuation; Life of James, ii. 455. Fumeron to Louvois June 30/July 10 1691; London

FN 102 The story, as told by the enemies of Tyrconnel, will be found in the Macariae Excidium, and in a

letter written by Felix O'Neill to the Countess of Antrim on the 10th of July 1691. The letter was found on the

corpse of Felix O'Neill after the battle of Aghrim. It is printed in the Rawdon Papers. The other story is told

FN 107 "They maintained their ground much longer than they had been accustomed to do," says Burnet.

"They behaved themselves like men of another nation," says Story. "The Irish were never known to fight with

FN 108 Story's Continuation; London Gazette, July 20. 23. 1691; Memoires de Berwick; Life of James, ii.

456.; Burnet, ii. 79.; Macariae Excidium; Light to the Blind; Letter from the English camp to Sir Arthur

The narratives to which I have referred differ very widely from each other. Nor can the difference be ascribed

solely or chiefly to partiality. For no two narratives differ more widely than that which will be found in the

In consequence, I suppose, of the fall of Saint Ruth, and of the absence of D'Usson, there is at the French War

FN 110 Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 464.; London Gazette, July 30., Aug. 17.

FN 111 Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 459; London Gazette, July 30., Aug. 3.

FN 112 He held this language in a letter to Louis XIV., dated the 5/15th of August. This letter, written in a

hand which it is not easy to decipher, is in the French War Office. Macariae Excidium; Light to the Blind.

FN 114 Macariae Excidium; Life of James, ii. 459. 462.; London Gazette, Aug. 31 1691; Light to the Blind;

FN 115 Story's Continuation; D'Usson and Tesse to Barbesieux Aug. 169r. An unpublished letter from Nagle

to Lord Merion of Auk. 15. This letter is quoted by Mr. O'Callaghan in a note on Macariae Excidium.

FN 117 Story's Continuation; London Gazette, Sept. 28. 1691; Life of James, ii. 463.; Diary of the Siege of

Lymerick, 1692; Light to the Blind. In the account of the siege which is among the archives of the French

FN 118 Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium; R. Douglas to Sir A. Rawdon, Sept. 2S. 1691, in the

Rawdon Papers; London Gazette, October 8.; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick; Light to the Blind; Account of

The account of this affair in the Life of James, ii. 464., deserves to be noticed merely for its preeminent

absurdity. The writer tells us that seven hundred of the Irish held out some time against a much larger force,

and warmly praises their heroism. He did not know, or did not choose to mention, one fact which is essential

to the right understanding of the story; namely, that these seven hundred men were in a fort. That a garrison

should defend a fort during a few hours against superior numbers is surely not strange. Forts are built because

FN 119 Account of the Siege of Limerick in the archives of the French War Office; Story's Continuation.

FN 123 London Gazette, Oct. S. 1691; Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick.

FN 126 Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick; Burnet, ii. 81.; London Gazette, Oct. 12. 1691.

FN 127 Story's Continuation; Diary of the Siege of Lymerick; London Gazette, Oct. 15. 1691.

FN 131 Story's Continuation. His narrative is confirmed by the testimony which an Irish Captain who was

present has left us in bad Latin. "Hic apud sacrum omnes advertizantur a capellanis ire potius in Galliam."

FN 133 That there was little sympathy between the Celts of Ulster and those of the Southern Provinces is

evident from the curious memorial which the agent of Baldearg O'Donnel delivered to Avaux.

FN 134 Treasury Letter Book, June 19. 1696; Journals of the Irish House of Commons Nov. 7. 1717.

FN 135 This I relate on Mr. O'Callaghan's authority. History of the Irish Brigades Note 47.

FN 136 There is, Junius wrote eighty years after the capitulation of Limerick, "a certain family in this country

on which nature seems to have entailed a hereditary baseness of disposition. As far as their history has been

known, the son has regularly improved upon the vices of the father, and has taken care to transmit them pure

and undiminished into the bosom of his successors." Elsewhere he says of the member for Middlesex, "He

has degraded even the name of Luttrell." He exclaims, in allusion to the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland

and Mrs. Horton who was born a Luttrell: "Let Parliament look to it. A Luttrell shall never succeed to the

Crown of England." It is certain that very few Englishmen can have sympathized with Junius's abhorrence of

the Luttrells, or can even have understood it. Why then did he use expressions which to the great majority of

his readers must have been unintelligible? My answer is that Philip Francis was born, and passed the first ten

FN 137 Story's Continuation; London Gazette, Oct. 22. 1691; D'Usson and Tesse to Lewis, Oct. 4/14., and to

FN 139 Story's Continuation; Macariae Excidium, and Mr. O'Callaghan's note; London Gazette, Jan. 4.

FN 140 Some interesting facts relating to Wall, who was minister of Ferdinand the Sixth and Charles the

Third, will be found in the letters of Sir Benjamin Keene and Lord Bristol, published in Coxe's Memoirs of

FN 141 This is Swift's language, language held not once, but repeatedly and at long intervals. In the Letter on

the Sacramental Test, written in 1708, he says: "If we (the clergy) were under any real fear of the Papists in

this kingdom, it would be hard to think us so stupid as not to be equally apprehensive with others, since we

are likely to be the greater and more immediate sufferers; but, on the contrary, we look upon them to be

altogether as inconsiderable as the women and children . . . . The common people without leaders, without

discipline, or natural courage, being little better than hewers of wood and drawers of water, are out of all

capacity of doing any mischief, if they were ever so well inclined." In the Drapier's Sixth Letter, written in

1724, he says: "As to the people of this kingdom, they consist either of Irish Papists, who are as

inconsiderable, in point of power, as the women and children, or of English Protestants." Again, in the

"The estates of Papists are very few, crumbling into small parcels, and daily diminishing; their common

people are sunk in poverty, ignorance and cowardice, and of as little consequence as women and children.

Their nobility and gentry are at least one half ruined, banished or converted. They all soundly feel the smart

of what they suffered in the last Irish war. Some of them are already retired into foreign countries; others, as I

am told, intend to follow them; and the rest, I believe to a man, who still possess any lands, are absolutely

resolved never to hazard them again for the sake of establishing their superstition."

I may observe that, to the best of my belief, Swift never, in any thing that he wrote, used the word Irishman to

denote a person of Anglosaxon race born in Ireland. He no more considered himself as an Irishman than an

FN 142 In 1749 Lucas was the idol of the democracy of his own caste. It is curious to see what was thought

of him by those who were not of his own caste. One of the chief Pariah, Charles O'Connor, wrote thus: "I am

by no means interested, nor is any of our unfortunate population, in this affair of Lucas. A true patriot would

not have betrayed such malice to such unfortunate slaves as we." He adds, with too much truth, that those

FN 143 On this subject Johnson was the most liberal politician of his time. "The Irish," he said with great

warmth, "are in a most unnatural state for we see there the minority prevailing over the majority." I suspect

that Alderman Beckford and Alderman Sawbridge would have been far from sympathizing with him. Charles

O'Connor, whose unfavourable opinion of the Whig Lucas I have quoted, pays, in the Preface to the

Dissertations on Irish History, a high compliment to the liberality of the Tory Johnson.

FN 145 Burnet, ii. 78, 79.; Burchett's Memoirs of Transactions at Sea; Journal of the English and Dutch fleet

in a Letter from an Officer on board the Lennox, at Torbay, licensed August 21. 1691. The writer says: "We

attribute our health, under God, to the extraordinary care taken in the well ordering of our provisions, both

FN 147 This appears from a letter written by Lowther, after he became Lord Lonsdale, to his son. A copy of

FN 148 See Commons' Journals, Dec. 3. 1691; and Grey's Debates. It is to be regretted that the Report of the

Commissioners of Accounts has not been preserved. Lowther, in his letter to his son, alludes to the badgering

of this day with great bitterness. "What man," he asks, "that hath bread to eat, can endure, after having served

with all the diligence and application mankind is capable of, and after having given satisfaction to the King

from whom all officers of State derive their authoritie, after acting rightly by all men, to be hated by men who

FN 150 Commons' Journals, Feb. 15. 1690/1; Baden to the States General, Jan 26/Feb 5

FN 151 Stat. 3 W. M. c. 2., Lords' Journals; Lords' Journals, 16 Nov. 1691; Commons' Journals, Dec. 1. 9. 5.

FN 152 The Irish Roman Catholics complained, and with but too much reason, that, at a later period, the

Treaty of Limerick was violated; but those very complaints are admissions that the Statute 3 W. M. c. 2. was

not a violation of the Treaty. Thus the author of A Light to the Blind speaking of the first article, says: "This

article, in seven years after, was broken by a Parliament in Ireland summoned by the Prince of Orange,

wherein a law was passed for banishing the Catholic bishops, dignitaries, and regular clergy." Surely he never

would have written thus, if the article really had, only two months after it was signed, been broken by the

English Parliament. The Abbe Mac Geoghegan, too, complains that the Treaty was violated some years after

it was made. But he does not pretend that it was violated by Stat. 3 W. M. c. 2.

FN 154 See particularly Two Letters by a Barrister concerning the East India Company (1676), and an

Answer to the Two Letters published in the same year. See also the judgment of Lord Jeffreys concerning the

Great Case of Monopolies. This judgment was published in 1689, after the downfall of Jeffreys. It was

thought necessary to apologize in the preface for printing anything that bore so odious a name. "To commend

this argument," says the editor, "I'll not undertake because of the author. But yet I may tell you what is told

me, that it is worthy any gentleman's perusal." The language of Jeffreys is most offensive, sometimes

scurrilous, sometimes basely adulatory; but his reasoning as to the mere point of law is certainly able, if not

FN 155 Addison's Clarinda, in the week of which she kept a journal, read nothing but Aurengzebe; Spectator,

323. She dreamed that Mr. Froth lay at her feet, and called her Indamora. Her friend Miss Kitty repeated,

without book, the eight best lines of the play; those, no doubt, which begin, "Trust on, and think to morrow

FN 156 A curious engraving of the India House of the seventeenth century will be found in the Gentleman's

FN 159 Anderson's Dictionary; G. White's Account of the Trade to the East Indies, 1691; Treatise on the East

FN 160 Reasons for constituting a New East India Company in London, 1681; Some Remarks upon the

FN 165 Some Remarks on the Present State of the East India Company's Affairs, 1690; Hamilton's New

FN 166 White's Account of the East India Trade, 1691; Pierce Butler's Tale, 1691.

FN 167 White's Account of the Trade to the East Indies, 1691; Hamilton's New Account of the East Indies;

FN 170 Papillon was of course reproached with his inconsistency. Among the pamphlets of that time is one

entitled "A Treatise concerning the East India Trade, wrote at the instance of Thomas Papillon, Esquire, and

in his House, and printed in the year 1680, and now reprinted for the better Satisfaction of himself and

FN 172 Among the pamphlets in which Child is most fiercely attacked are Some Remarks on the Present

State of the East India Company's Affairs, 1690; fierce Butler's Tale, 1691; and White's Account of the Trade

FN 173 Discourse concerning the East India Trade, showing it to be unprofitable to the Kingdom, by Mr.

Cary; pierce Butler's Tale, representing the State of the Wool Case, or the East India Case truly stated, 1691.

Several petitions to the same effect will be found in the Journals of the House of Commons.

FN 174 Reasons against establishing an East India Company with a joint Stock, exclusive to all others, 1691.

FN 175 The engagement was printed, and has been several times reprinted. As to Skinners' Hall, see

FN 179 Rowe, in the Biter, which was damned, and deserved to be so, introduced an old gentleman

haranguing his daughter thus: "Thou hast been bred up like a virtuous and a sober maiden; and wouldest thou

take the part of a profane wretch who sold his stock out of the Old East India Company?"

FN 181 Hop mentions the length and warmth of the debates; Nov. 12/22. 1691. See the Commons' Journals,

FN 184 The history of this bill is to be collected from the bill itself, which is among the Archives of the

Upper House, from the Journals of the two Houses during November and December 1690, and January 1691;

particularly from the Commons' Journals of December 11. and January 13. and 25., and the Lords' Journals of

FN 186 Burnet, ii. 85.; and Burnet MS. Harl. 6584. See also a memorial signed by Holmes, but consisting of

intelligence furnished by Ferguson, among the extracts from the Nairne Papers, printed by Macpherson. It

bears date October 1691. "The Prince of Orange," says Holmes, "is mortally hated by the English. They see

very fairly that he hath no love for them; neither doth he confide in them, but all in his Dutch. . . It's not

doubted but the Parliament will not be for foreigners to ride them with a caveson."

FN 187 Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 24.; Hop to States General, Jan 22/Feb 1 1691; Bader to States General, Feb.

FN 188 The words of James are these; they were written in November 1692: Mes amis, l'annee passee,

avoient dessein de me rappeler par le Parlement. La maniere etoit concertee; et Milord Churchill devoit

proposer dans le Parlement de chasser tous les etrangers tant des conseils et de l'armee que du royaume. Si le

Prince d'Orange avoit consenti a cette proposition ils l'auroient eu entre leurs mains. S'il l'avoit refusee, il

auroit fait declarer le Parlement contre lui; et en meme temps Milord Churchill devoir se declarer avec

l'armee pour le Parlement; et la flotte devoit faire de meme; et l'on devoit me rappeler. L'on avoit deja

commence d'agir dans ce projet; et on avoit gagne un gros parti, quand quelques fideles sujets indiscrets,

croyant me servir, et s'imaginant que ce que Milord Churchill faisoit n'etoit pas pour moi, mais pour la

Princesse de Danemarck, eurent l'imprudence de decouvrir le tout a Benthing, et detournerent ainsi le coup."

A translation of this most remarkable passage, which at once solves many interesting and perplexing

problems, was published eighty years ago by Macpherson. But, strange to say, it attracted no notice, and has

The narrative of James requires no confirmation; but it is strongly confirmed by the Burnet MS. Harl. 6584.

"Marleburrough," Burnet wrote in September 1693, "set himself to decry the King's conduct and to lessen

him in all his discourses, and to possess the English with an aversion to the Dutch, who, as he pretended, had

a much larger share of the King's favour and confidence than they,"the English, I suppose,"had. This

was a point on which the English, who are too apt to despise all other nations, and to overvalue themselves,

were easily enough inflamed. So it grew to be the universal subject of discourse, and was the constant

entertainment at Marleburrough's, where there was a constant randivous of the English officers." About the

dismission of Marlborough, Burnet wrote at the same time: "The King said to myself upon it that he had very

good reason to believe that he had made his peace with King James and was engaged in a correspondence

with France. It is certain he was doing all he could to set on a faction in the army and the nation against the

It is curious to compare this plain tale, told while the facts were recent, with the shuffling narrative which

Burnet prepared for the public eye many years later, when Marlborough was closely united to the Whigs, and

The Duchess of Marlborough, in her Vindication, had the effrontery to declare that she "could never learn

what cause the King assigned for his displeasure." She suggests that Young's forgery may have been the

cause. Now she must have known that Young's forgery was not committed till some months after her

husband's disgrace. She was indeed lamentably deficient in memory, a faculty which is proverbially said to

be necessary to persons of the class to which she belonged. Her own volume convicts her of falsehood. She

gives us a letter from Mary to Anne, in which Mary says, "I need not repeat the cause my Lord Marlborough

has given the King to do what he has done." These words plainly imply that Anne had been apprised of the

cause. If she had not been apprised of the cause would she not have said so in her answer? But we have her

answer; and it contains not a word on the subject. She was then apprised of the cause; and is it possible to

FN 189 My account of these transactions I have been forced to take from the narrative of the Duchess of

Marlborough, a narrative which is to be read with constant suspicion, except when, as is often the case, she

FN 190 The Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication; Dartmouth's Note on Burnet, ii. 92.; Verses of the Night

Bellman of Piccadilly and my Lord Nottingham's Order thereupon, 1691. There is a bitter lampoon on Lady

Marlborough of the same date, entitled The Universal Health, a true Union to the Queen and Princess.

FN 191 It must not be supposed that Anne was a reader of Shakspeare. She had no doubt, often seen the

Enchanted Island. That miserable rifacimento of the Tempest was then a favourite with the town, on account

FN 193 The history of an abortive attempt to legislate on this subject may be studied in the Commons'

FN 195 North's Examen; Ward's London Spy; Crosby's English Baptists, vol. iii. chap. 2.

FN 196 The history of this part of Fuller's life I have taken from his own narrative.

FN 200 Fuller's Original Letters of the late King James and others to his greatest Friends in England.

FN 201 Burnet, ii. 86. Burnet had evidently forgotten what the bill contained. Ralph knew nothing about it

but what he had learned from Burnet. I have scarcely seen any allusion to the subject in any of the numerous

Jacobite lampoons of that day. But there is a remarkable passage in a pamphlet which appeared towards the

close of William's reign, and which is entitled The Art of Governing by Parties. The writer says, "We still

want an Act to ascertain some fund for the salaries of the judges; and there was a bill, since the Revolution,

past both Houses of Parliament to this purpose; but whether it was for being any way defective or otherwise

that His Majesty refused to assent to it, I cannot remember. But I know the reason satisfied me at that time.

And I make no doubt but he'll consent to any good bill of this nature whenever 'tis offered." These words

convinced me that the bill was open to some grave objection which did not appear in the title, and which no

historian had noticed. I found among the archives of the House of Lords the original parchment, endorsed

with the words "Le Roy et La Royne s'aviseront." And it was clear at the first glance what the objection was.

There is a hiatus in that part of Narcissus Luttrell's Diary which relates to this matter. "The King," he wrote,

As to the present practice of the House of Commons in such cases, see Hatsell's valuable work, ii. 356. I

quote the edition of 1818. Hatsell says that many bills which affect the interest of the Crown may be brought

in without any signification of the royal consent, and that it is enough if the consent be signified on the

second reading, or even later; but that, in a proceeding which affects the hereditary revenue, the consent must

FN 202 The history of these ministerial arrangements I have taken chiefly from the London Gazette of March

3. and March 7. 1691/2 and from Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for that month. Two or three slight touches are

FN 204 See the preface to the Leven and Melville Papers. I have given what I believe to be a true explanation

of Burnet's hostility to Melville. Melville's descendant who has deserved well of all students of history by the

diligence and fidelity with which he has performed his editorial duties, thinks that Burnet's judgment was

blinded by zeal for Prelacy and hatred of Presbyterianism. This accusation will surprise and amuse English

FN 208 Crawford to Melville, July 23. 1689; The Master of Stair to Melville, Aug. 16. 1689; Cardross to

Melville, Sept. 9. 1689; Balcarras's Memoirs; Annandale's Confession, Aug. i4. 1690.

FN 210 The Master of Stair to Hamilton, Aug. 17/27. 1691; Hill to Melville, June 26. 1691; The Master of

FN 211 The real truth is, they were a branch of the Macdonalds (who were a brave courageous people

always), seated among the Campbells, who (I mean the Glencoe men) are all Papists, if they have any

religion, were always counted a people much given to rapine and plunder, or sorners as we call it, and much

of a piece with your highwaymen in England. Several governments desired to bring them to justice; but their

country was inaccessible to small parties." See An impartial Account of some of the Transactions in Scotland

concerning the Earl of Breadalbane, Viscount and Master of Stair, Glenco Men, London, 1695.

FN 217 Burnet, ii. 8, 9.; Report of the Glencoe Commission. The authorities quoted in this part of the Report

were the depositions of Hill, of Campbell of Ardkinglass, and of Mac Ian's two sons.

FN 219 Proclamation of the Privy Council of Scotland, Feb. q. 1589. I give this reference on the authority of

FN 222 "What under heaven was the Master's byass in this matter? I can imagine none." Impartial Account,

1695. "Nor can any man of candour and ingenuity imagine that the Earl of Stair, who had neither estate,

friendship nor enmity in that country, nor so much as knowledge of these persons, and who was never noted

for cruelty in his temper, should have thirsted after the blood of these wretches." Complete History of Europe,

FN 223 Dalrymple, in his Memoirs, relates this story, without referring to any authority. His authority

probably was family tradition. That reports were current in 1692 of horrible crimes committed by the

Macdonalds of Glencoe, is certain from the Burnet MS. Marl. 6584. "They had indeed been guilty of many

black murthers," were Burnet's words, written in 1693. He afterwards softened down this expression.

FN 224 That the plan originally framed by the Master of Stair was such as I have represented it, is clear from

parts of his letters which are quoted in the Report of 1695; and from his letters to Breadalbane of October 27.,

December 2., and December 3. 1691. Of these letters to Breadalbane the last two are in Dalrymple's

Appendix. The first is in the Appendix to the first volume of Mr. Burtons valuable History of Scotland. "It

appeared," says Burnet (ii. 157.), "that a black design was laid, not only to cut off the men of Glencoe, but a

FN 227 "I could have wished the Macdonalds had not divided; and I am sorry that Keppoch and Mackian of

Glenco are safe."Letter of the Master of Stair to Levingstone, Jan. 9. 1691/2 quoted in the Report of 1695.

FN 228 Letter of the Master of Stair to Levingstone, Jan. 11 1692, quoted in the Report of 1695.

FN 229 Burnet, in 1693, wrote thus about William:"He suffers matters to run till there is a great heap of

papers; and then he signs them as much too fast as he was before too slow in despatching them." Burnet MS.

Harl. 6584. There is no sign either of procrastination or of undue haste in William's correspondence with

Heinsius. The truth is, that the King understood Continental politics thoroughly, and gave his whole mind to

them. To English business he attended less, and to Scotch business least of all.

FN 231 See his letters quoted in the Report of 1695, and in the Memoirs of the Massacre of Glencoe.

FN 233 Deposition of Ronald Macdonald in the Report of 1695; Letters from the Mountains, May 17. I773. I

quote Mrs. Grant's authority only for what she herself heard and saw. Her account of the massacre was

written apparently without the assistance of books, and is grossly incorrect. Indeed she makes a mistake of

FN 234 I have taken the account of the Massacre of Glencoe chiefly from the Report of 1695, and from the

Gallienus Redivivus. An unlearned, and indeed a learned, reader may be at a loss to guess why the Jacobites

should have selected so strange a title for a pamphlet on the massacre of Glencoe. The explanation will be

found in a letter of the Emperor Gallienus, preserved by Trebellius Pollio in the Life of Ingenuus. Ingenuus

had raised a rebellion in Moesia. He was defeated and killed. Gallienus ordered the whole province to be laid

waste, and wrote to one of his lieutenants in language to which that of the Master of Stair bore but too much

resemblance. "Non mihi satisfacies si tantum armatos occideris, quos et fors belli interimere potuisset.

Perimendus est omnis sexus virilis. Occidendus est quicunque maledixit. Occidendus est quicunque male

FN 235 What I have called the Whig version of the story is given, as well as the Jacobite version, in the Paris

FN 236 I believe that the circumstances which give so peculiar a character of atrocity to the Massacre of

Glencoe were first published in print by Charles Leslie in the Appendix to his answer to King. The date of

Leslie's answer is 1692. But it must be remembered that the date of 1692 was then used down to what we

should call the 25th of March 1693. Leslie's book contains some remarks on a sermon by Tillotson which was

FN 243 Burnet (ii. 93.) says that the King was not at this time informed of the intentions of the French

Government. Ralph contradicts Burnet with great asperity. But that Burnet was in the right is proved beyond

dispute, by William's correspondence with Heinsius. So late as April 24/May 4 William wrote thus: "Je ne

puis vous dissimuler que je commence a apprehender une descente en Angleterre, quoique je n'aye pu le

croire d'abord: mais les avis sont si multiplies de tous les cotes, et accompagnes de tant de particularites, qu'il

n'est plus guere possible d'en douter." I quote from the French translation among the Mackintosh MSS.

FN 244 Burnet, ii. 95. and Onslow's note; Memoires de Saint Simon; Memoires de Dangeau.

FN 246 Memoires de Dangeau; Memoires de Saint Simon. Saint Simon was on the terrace and, young as he

FN 247 Memoires de Saint Simon; Burnet, ii. 95.; Guardian No. 48. See the excellent letter of Lewis to the

FN 248 In the Nairne papers printed by Macpherson are two memorials from James urging Lewis to invade

FN 252 Life of James, ii. 479. 524. Memorials furnished by Ferguson to Holmes in the Nairne Papers.

FN 255 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for April and May 1692; London Gazette, May 9. and 12.

FN 258 James told Sheridan that the Declaration was written by Melfort. Sheridan MS.

FN 259 A Letter to a Friend concerning a French Invasion to restore the late King James to his Throne, and

what may be expected from him should he be successful in it, 1692; A second Letter to a Friend concerning a

French Invasion, in which the Declaration lately dispersed under the Title of His Majesty's most gracious

Declaration to all his loving Subjects, commanding their Assistance against the P. of O. and his Adherents, is

entirely and exactly published according to the dispersed Copies, with some short Observations upon it,

1692; The Pretences of the French Invasion examined, 1692; Reflections on the late King James's

Declaration, 1692. The two Letters were written, I believe, by Lloyd Bishop of Saint Asaph. Sheridan says,

"The King's Declaration pleas'd none, and was turn'd into ridicule burlesque lines in England." I do not

believe that a defence of this unfortunate Declaration is to be found in any Jacobite tract. A virulent Jacobite

writer, in a reply to Dr. Welwood, printed in 1693, says, "As for the Declaration that was printed last year. . .

I assure you that it was as much misliked by many, almost all, of the King's friends, as it can be exposed by

FN 267 Russell's Letter to Nottingham, May 20. 1692, in the London Gazette of May 23.; Particulars of

Another Letter from the Fleet published by authority; Burchett; Burnet, ii. 93.; Life of James, ii. 493, 494.;

Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Memoires de Berwick. See also the contemporary ballad on the battle one of the

FN 268 See Delaval's Letter to Nottingham, dated Cherburg, May 22., in the London Gazette of May 26.

FN 269 London Gaz., May 26. 1692; Burchett's Memoirs of Transactions at Sea; Baden to the States General,

May 24/June 3; Life of James, ii. 494; Russell's Letters in the Commons' Journals of Nov. 28. 1692; An

Account of the Great Victory, 1692; Monthly Mercuries for June and July 1692; Paris Gazette, May 28/June

7; Van Almonde's despatch to the States General, dated May 24/June 3. 1692. The French official account

will be found in the Monthly Mercury for July. A report drawn up by Foucault, Intendant of the province of

FN 270 An Account of the late Great Victory, 1692; Monthly Mercury for June; Baden to the States General,

FN 271 London Gazette, June 2. 1692; Monthly Mercury; Baden to the States General, June 14/24. Narcissus

FN 279 I give one short sentence as a specimen: "O fie that ever it should be said that a clergyman have

FN 281 My account of this plot is chiefly taken from Sprat's Relation of the late Wicked Contrivance of

Stephen Blackhead and Robert Young, 1692. There are very few better narratives in the language.

FN 283 Postman, April 13. and 20. 1700; Postboy, April 18.; Flying Post, April 20.

FN 285 The Swedes came, it is true, but not till the campaign was over. London Gazette, Sept, 10 1691,

FN 295 See the Letters from Rome among the Nairne Papers. Those in 1692 are from Lytcott; those in 1693

from Cardinal Howard; those in 1694 from Bishop Ellis; those in 1695 from Lord Perth. They all tell the

FN 296 William's correspondence with Heinsius; London Gazette, Feb. 4. 1691. In a pasquinade published in

1693, and entitled "La Foire d'Ausbourg, Ballet Allegorique," the Elector of Saxony is introduced saying

"Moy, je diray naivement, Qu'une jartiere d'Angleterre Feroit tout Mon empressement; Et je ne vois rien sur

FN 297 William's correspondence with Heinsius. There is a curious account of Schoening in the Memoirs of

FN 300 Monthly Mercuries of January and April 1693; Burnet, ii. 84. In the Burnet MS. Hail. 6584, is a

warm eulogy on the Elector of Bavaria. When the MS. was written he was allied with England against

France. In the History, which was prepared for publication when he was allied with France against England,

FN 302 Memoires de Saint Simon; Dangeau; Racine's Letters, and Narrative entitled Relation de ce qui s'est

FN 306 Monthly Mercuries of June and July 1692; London Gazettes of June; Gazette de Paris; Memoires de

Saint Simon; Journal de Dangeau; William to Heinsius, May 30/June 9 June 2/12 June 11/21; Vernon's

Letters to Colt, printed in Tindal's History; Racine's Narrative, and Letters to Boileau of June 15. and 24.

FN 308 London Gazette, May 30. 1692; Memoires de Saint Simon; Journal de Dangeau; Boyer's History of

FN 309 Memoires de Saint Simon; Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. Voltaire speaks with a contempt which is

probably just of the account of this affair in the Causes Celebres. See also the Letters of Madame de Sevigne

during the months of January and February 1680. In several English lampoons Luxemburg is nicknamed

Aesop, from his deformity, and called a wizard, in allusion to his dealings with La Voisin. In one Jacobite

allegory he is the necromancer Grandorsio. In Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for June 1692 he is called a conjuror.

FN 310 Memoires de Saint Simon; Memoires de Villars; Racine to Boileau, May 21. 1692.

FN 312 London Gazette Aug. 4. 8. 11. 1692; Gazette de Paris, Aug. 9. 16.; Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV.;

Burnet, ii. 97; Memoires de Berwick; Dykvelt's Letter to the States General dated August 4. 1692. See also

the very interesting debate which took place in the House of Commons on Nov. 21. 1692. An English

translation of Luxemburg's very elaborate and artful despatch will be found in the Monthly Mercury for

September 1692. The original has recently been printed in the new edition of Dangeau. Lewis pronounced it

the best despatch that he had ever seen. The editor of the Monthly Mercury maintains that it was

manufactured at Paris. "To think otherwise," he says, "is mere folly; as if Luxemburg could be at so much

leisure to write such a long letter, more like a pedant than a general, or rather the monitor of a school, giving

an account to his master how the rest of the boys behaved themselves." In the Monthly Mercury will be found

also the French official list of killed and wounded. Of all the accounts of the battle that which seems to me

the best is in the Memoirs of Feuquieres. It is illustrated by a map. Feuquieres divides his praise and blame

very fairly between the generals. The traditions of the English mess tables have been preserved by Sterne,

who was brought up at the knees of old soldiers of William. "'There was Cutts's' continued the Corporal,

clapping the forefinger of his right hand upon the thumb of his left, and counting round his hand; 'there was

Cutts's, Mackay's Angus's, Graham's and Leven's, all cut to pieces; and so had the English Lifeguards too,

had it not been for some regiments on the right, who marched up boldly to their relief, and received the

enemy's fire in their faces before any one of their own platoons discharged a musket. They'll go to heaven for

FN 314 Langhorne, the chief lay agent of the Jesuits in England, always, as he owned to Tillotson, selected

FN 315 I have taken the history of Grandval's plot chiefly from Grandval's own confession. I have not

mentioned Madame de Maintenon, because Grandval, in his confession, did not mention her. The accusation

brought against her rests solely on the authority of Dumont. See also a True Account of the horrid Conspiracy

against the Life of His most Sacred Majesty William III. 1692; Reflections upon the late horrid Conspiracy

contrived by some of the French Court to murder His Majesty in Flanders 1692: Burnet, ii. 92.; Vernon's

letters from the camp to Colt, published by Tindal; the London Gazette, Aug, 11. The Paris Gazette contains

FN 318 London Gazette, July 28. 1692. See the resolutions of the Council of War in Burchett. In a letter to

Nottingham, dated July 10, Russell says, "Six weeks will near conclude what we call summer." Lords

FN 320 Evelyn's Diary, July 25. 1692; Burnet, ii. 94, 95., and Lord Dartmouth's Note. The history of the

quarrel between Russell and Nottingham will be best learned from the Parliamentary Journals and Debates of

FN 321 Commons' Journals, Nov. 19. 1692; Burnet, ii. 95.; Grey's Debates, Nov. 21. 1692; Paris Gazettes of

FN 322 See Bart's Letters of Nobility, and the Paris Gazettes of the autumn of 1692.

FN 324 London Gazette, Aug. 11. 1692; Evelyn's Diary, Aug. 10.; Monthly Mercury for September; A Full

Account of the late dreadful Earthquake at Port Royal in Jamaica, licensed Sept. 9. 1692.

FN 325 Evelyn's Diary, June 25. Oct. 1. 1690; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, June 1692, May 1693; Monthly

Mercury, April, May, and June 1693; Tom Brown's Description of a Country Life, 1692.

FN 331 Evelyn's Diary, Nov. 20. 1692: Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; London Gazette, Nov. 24.; Hop to the

FN 336 Hop to the Greffier of the States General, Dec 23/Jan 2 1693. The Dutch despatches of this year are

FN 337 Hop to the Greffier of the States General, Dec 23/Jan 2 1693; Historical Records of the Queen's

FN 339 Ibid. Dec. 1692; Hop, Jan. 3/13 Hop calls Whitney, "den befaamsten roover in Engelandt."

FN 343 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, January and February; Hop Jan 31/Feb 10 and Feb 3/13 1693; Letter to

Secretary Trenchard, 1694; New Court Contrivances or more Sham Plots still, 1693.

FN 346 See the Lords' Journals from Nov. 7. to Nov. 18. 1692; Burnet, ii. 102. Tindall's account of these

proceedings was taken from letters addressed by Warre, Under Secretary of State, to Colt, envoy at Hanover.

FN 351 Colt Papers in Tindal; Lords' Journals from Dec. 6. to Dec. 19. 1692; inclusive,

FN 352 As to the proceedings of this day in the House of Commons, see the Journals, Dec. 20, and the letter

of Robert Wilmot, M.P. for Derby, to his colleague Anchitel Grey, in Grey's Debates.

FN 354 Colt Papers in Tindal; Commons' Journals, Dec. 16. 1692, Jan. 11 1692; Burnet ii. 104.

FN 355 The peculiar antipathy of the English nobles to the Dutch favourites is mentioned in a highly

interesting note written by Renaudot in 1698, and preserved among the Archives of the French Foreign

FN 356 Colt Papers in Tindal; Lords' Journals, Nov. 28. and 29. 1692, Feb. 18. and 24. 1692/3.

FN 359 See Cibber's Apology, Tom Brown's Works, and indeed the works of every man of wit and pleasure

FN 360 The chief source of information about this case is the report of the trial, which will be found in

Howell's Collection. See Evelyn's Diary, February 4. 1692/3. I have taken some circumstances from

Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, from a letter to Sancroft which is among the Tanner MSS in the Bodleian Library,

and from two letters addressed by Brewer to Wharton, which are also in the Bodleian Library.

FN 362 Commons' Journals of the Session, particularly of Nov. 17., Dec. 10., Feb. 25., March 3.; Colt Papers

FN 364 See Coke's Institutes, part iv. chapter 1. In 1566 a subsidy was 120,000L.; in 1598, 78,000L.; when

Coke wrote his Institutes, about the end of the reign of James I. 70,000L. Clarendon tells us that, in 1640,

FN 365 See the old Land Tax Acts, and the debates on the Land Tax Redemption Bill of 1798.

FN 366 Lords' Journals Jan. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.; Commons' Journals, Jan. 17, 18. 20. 1692; Tindal, from the

Colt Papers; Burnet, ii. 104, 105. Burnet has used an incorrect expression, which Tindal, Ralph and others

have copied. He says that the question was whether the Lords should tax themselves. The Lords did not claim

any right to alter the amount of taxation laid on them by the bill as it came up to them. They only demanded

that their estates should be valued, not by the ordinary commissioners, but by special commissioners of

FN 368 For this account of the origin of stockjobbing in the City of London I am chiefly indebted to a most

curious periodical paper, entitled, "Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, by J. Houghton,

F.R.S." It is in fact a weekly history of the commercial speculations of that time. I have looked through the

files of several years. In No. 33., March 17. 1693, Houghton says: "The buying and selling of Actions is one

of the great trades now on foot. I find a great many do not understand the affair." On June 13. and June 22.

1694, he traces the whole progress of stockjobbing. On July 13. of the same year he makes the first mention

of time bargains. Whoever is desirous to know more about the companies mentioned in the text may consult

Houghton's Collection and a pamphlet entitled Anglia Tutamen, published in 1695.

FN 377 Introduction to the Copies and Extracts of some Letters written to and from the Earl of Danby, now

FN 378 Commons' Journals; Grey's Debates. The bill itself is among the archives of the House of Lords.

FN 379 Dunton's Life and Errors; Autobiography of Edmund Bohun, privately printed in 1853. This

FN 381 Bohun was the author of the History of the Desertion, published immediately after the Revolution. In

that work he propounded his favourite theory. "For my part," he says, "I am amazed to see men scruple the

submitting to the present King; for, if ever man had a just cause of war, he had; and that creates a right to the

thing gained by it. The King by withdrawing and disbanding his army yielded him the throne; and if he had,

without any more ceremony, ascended it, he had done no more than all other princes do on the like

FN 383 Dryden, in his Life of Lucian, speaks in too high terms of Blount's abilities. But Dryden's judgment

was biassed; for Blount's first work was a pamphlet in defence of the Conquest of Granada.

FN 384 See his Appeal from the Country to the City for the Preservation of His Majesty's Person, Liberty,

FN 385 See the article on Apollonius in Bayle's Dictionary. I say that Blount made his translation from the

Latin; for his works contain abundant proofs that he was not competent to translate from the Greek.

FN 387 Wood's Athenae Oxonienses under the name Henry Blount (Charles Blount's father); Lestrange's

FN 389 That the plagiarism of Blount should have been detected by few of his contemporaries is not

wonderful. But it is wonderful that in the Biographia Britannica his just Vindication should be warmly

extolled, without the slightest hint that every thing good in it is stolen. The Areopagitica is not the only work

which he pillaged on this occasion. He took a noble passage from Bacon without acknowledgment.

FN 390 I unhesitatingly attribute this pamphlet to Blount, though it was not reprinted among his works by

Gildon. If Blount did not actually write it he must certainly have superintended the writing. That two men of

letters, acting without concert, should bring out within a very short time two treatises, one made out of one

half of the Areopagitica and the other made out of the other half, is incredible. Why Gildon did not choose to

FN 394 Oldmixon; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, Nov. and Dec. 1692; Burnet, ii. 334; Bohun's Autobiography.

FN 395 Grey's Debates; Commons' Journals Jan. 21. 23. 1692/3.; Bohun's Autobiography; Kennet's Life and

FN 397 The vote of the Commons is mentioned, with much feeling in the memoirs which Burnet wrote at the

time. "It look'd," he says, "somewhat extraordinary that I, who perhaps was the greatest assertor of publick

liberty, from my first setting out, of any writer of the age, should be so severely treated as an enemy to it. But

the truth was the Toryes never liked me, and the Whiggs hated me because I went not into their notions and

passions. But even this, and worse things that may happen to me shall not, I hope, be able to make me depart

from moderate principles and the just asserting the liberty of mankind."Burnet MS. Harl. 6584.

FN 400 In the article on Blount in the Biographia Britannica he is extolled as having borne a principal share

in the emancipation of the press. But the writer was very imperfectly informed as to the facts.

It is strange that the circumstances of Blount's death should be so uncertain. That he died of a wound inflicted

by his own hand, and that he languished long, are undisputed facts. The common story was that he shot

himself; and Narcissus Luttrell at the time, made an entry to this effect in his Diary. On the other hand, Pope,

who had the very best opportunities of obtaining accurate information, asserts that Blount, "being in love with

a near kinswoman of his, and rejected, gave himself a stab in the arm, as pretending to kill himself, of the

consequence of which he really died."Note on the Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue I. Warburton, who had

lived first with the heroes of the Dunciad, and then with the most eminent men of letters of his time ought to

have known the truth; and Warburton, by his silence, confirms Pope's assertion. Gildon's rhapsody about the

FN 401 The charges brought against Coningsby will be found in the journals of the two Houses of the

English Parliament. Those charges were, after the lapse of a quarter of a century, versified by Prior, whom

Coningsby had treated with great insolence and harshness. I will quote a few stanzas.

It will be seen that the poet condescended to imitate the style of the street ballads.

"Of Nero tyrant, petty king, Who heretofore did reign In famed Hibernia, I will sing, And in a ditty plain.

"The articles recorded stand Against this peerless peer; Search but the archives of the land, You'll find them

The story of Gaffney is then related. Coningsby's speculations are described thus:

"Vast quantities of stores did he Embezzle and purloin Of the King's stores he kept a key, Converting them to

"The forfeited estates also, Both real and personal, Did with the stores together go. Fierce Cerberas swallow'd

"Nero, without the least disguise, The Papists at all times Still favour'd, and their robberies Look'd on as

"The Protestants whom they did rob During his government, Were forced with patience, like good Job, To

"For he did basely them refuse All legal remedy; The Romans still he well did use, Still screen'd their

FN 403 The Poynings Act is 10 H. 7. c. 4. It was explained by another Act, 3M.c.4.

FN 404 The history of this session I have taken from the journals of the Irish Lords and Commons, from the

narratives laid in writing before the English Lords and Commons by members of the Parliament of Ireland

and from a pamphlet entitled a Short Account of the Sessions of Parliament in Ireland, 1692, London, 1693.

Burnet seems to me to have taken a correct view of the dispute, ii. 118. "The English in Ireland thought the

government favoured the Irish too much; some said this was the effect of bribery, whereas others thought it

was necessary to keep them safe from the prosecutions of the English, who hated them, and were much

sharpened against them . . . . There were also great complaints of an ill administration, chiefly in the revenue,

FN 405 As to Swift's extraction and early life, see the Anecdotes written by himself.

FN 411 Burnet, ii. 108, and Speaker Onslow's Note; Sprat's True Account of the Horrid Conspiracy; Letter to

FN 413 These rumours are more than once mentioned in Narcissus Luttrell's Diary.

FN 416 Register of the Actings or Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at

Edinburgh, Jan. 15. 1692, collected and extracted from the Records by the Clerk thereof. This interesting

FN 419 The editor of the Carstairs Papers was evidently very desirous, from whatever motive, to disguise this

most certain and obvious truth. He has therefore prefixed to some of Johnstone's letters descriptions which

may possibly impose on careless readers. For example Johnstone wrote to Carstairs on the 18th of April,

before it was known that the session would be a quiet one, "All arts have been used and will be used to

embroil matters." The editor's account of the contents of this letter is as follows

"Arts used to embroil matters with reference to the affair of Glencoe." Again, Johnstone, in a letter written

some weeks later, complained that the liberality and obsequiousness of the Estates had not been duly

appreciated." Nothing, he says, "is to be done to gratify the Parliament, I mean that they would have reckoned

a gratification." The editor's account of the contents of this letter is as follows: "Complains that the

FN 422 A View of the Court of St. Germains from the Year 1690 to 1695, 1696; Ratio Ultima, 1697. In the

Nairne Papers is a letter in which the nonjuring bishops are ordered to send a Protestant divine to Saint

Germains. This letter was speedily followed by another letter revoking the order. Both letters will he found in

Macpherson's collection. They both bear date Oct. 16. 1693. I suppose that the first letter was dated according

FN 424 View of the Court of Saint Germains from 1690 to 1695. That Dunfermline was grossly ill used is

FN 425 So early as the year 1690, that conclave of the leading Jacobites which gave Preston his instructions

made a strong representation to James on this subject. "He must overrule the bigotry of Saint Germains; and

dispose their minds to think of those methods that are more likely to gain the nation. For there is one silly

thing or another daily done there, that comes to our notice here which prolongs what they so passionately

desire." See also A Short and True Relation of Intrigues transacted both at Home and Abroad to restore the

FN 426 View of the Court of Saint Germains. The account given in this View is confirmed by a remarkable

paper, which is among the Nairne MSS. Some of the heads of the Jacobite party in England made a

representation to James, one article of which is as follows: "They beg that Your Majesty would be pleased to

admit of the Chancellor of England into your Council; your enemies take advantage of his not being in it."

James's answer is evasive. "The King will be, on all occasions, ready to express the just value and esteem he

FN 428 See the paper headed "For my Son the Prince of Wales, 1692." It is printed at the end of the Life of

FN 430 As to this change of ministry at Saint Germains see the very curious but very confused narrative in

the Life of James, ii. 498575.; Burnet, ii. 219.; Memoires de Saint Simon; A French Conquest neither

desirable nor practicable, 1693; and the Letters from the Nairne MSS. printed by Macpherson.

FN 431 Life of James, ii. 509. Bossuet's opinion will be found in the Appendix to M. Mazure's history. The

Bishop sums up his arguments thus "Je dirai done volontiers aux Catholiques, s'il y en a qui n'approuvent

point la declaration dont il s'agit; Noli esse justus multum; neque plus sapias quam necesse est, ne

obstupescas." In the Life of James it is asserted that the French Doctors changed their opinion, and that

Bossuet, though he held out longer than the rest, saw at last that he had been in error, but did not choose

formally to retract. I think much too highly of Bossuet's understanding to believe this.

FN 433 "En fin celle cyj'entends la declarationn'est que pour rentrer: et l'on peut beaucoup mieux

disputer des affaires des Catholiques a Whythall qu'a Saint Germain."Mazure, Appendix.

FN 434 Baden to the States General, June 2/12 1693. Four thousand copies, wet from the press, were found in

FN 435 Baden's Letters to the States General of May and June 1693; An Answer to the Late King James's

FN 436 James, ii. 514. I am unwilling to believe that Ken was among those who blamed the Declaration of

FN 437 Among the Nairne Papers is a letter sent on this occasion by Middleton to Macarthy, who was then

serving in Germany. Middleton tries to soothe Macarthy and to induce Macarthy to soothe others. Nothing

more disingenuous was ever written by a Minister of State. "The King," says the Secretary, "promises in the

foresaid Declaration to restore the Settlement, but at the same time, declares that he will recompense all those

who may suffer by it by giving them equivalents." Now James did not declare that he would recompense any

body, but merely that he would advise with his Parliament on the subject. He did not declare that he would

even advise with his Parliament about recompensing all who might suffer, but merely about recompensing

such as had followed him to the last. Finally he said nothing about equivalents. Indeed the notion of giving an

equivalent to every body who suffered by the Act of Settlement, in other words, of giving an equivalent for

the fee simple of half the soil of Ireland, was obviously absurd. Middleton's letter will be found in

Macpherson's collection. I will give a sample of the language held by the Whigs on this occasion. "The

Roman Catholics of Ireland," says one writer, "although in point of interest and profession different from us

yet, to do them right, have deserved well from the late King, though ill from us; and for the late King to leave

them and exclude them in such an instance of uncommon ingratitude that Protestants have no reason to stand

by a Prince that deserts his own party, and a people that have been faithful to him and his interest to the very

FN 438 The edict of creation was registered by the Parliament of Paris on the 10th of April 1693.

FN 439 The letter is dated the 19th of April 1693. It is among the Nairne MSS., and was printed by

FN 440 "Il ne me plait nullement que M. Middleton est alle en France. Ce n'est pas un homme qui voudroit

faire un tel pas sans quelque chose d'importance, et de bien concerte, sur quoy j'ay fait beaucoup de

reflections que je reserve a vous dire avostre heureuse arrivee."William to Portland from Loo. April 18/28

FN 441 The best account of William's labours and anxieties at this time is contained in his letters to

FN 442 He speaks very despondingly in his letter to Heinsius of the 30th of May, Saint Simon says: "On a su

depuis que le Prince d'Orange ecrivit plusieurs fois au prince de Vaudmont son ami intime, qu'il etait perdu et

FN 446 Saint Simon's words are remarkable. "Leur cavalerie," he says, "y fit d'abord plier des troupes d'elite

jusqu'alors invincibles. He adds, "Les gardes du Prince d'Orange, ceux de M. de Vaudemont, et deux

FN 447 Berwick; Saint Simon; Burnet, i. 112, 113.; Feuquieres; London Gazette, July 27. 31. Aug. 3. 1693;

French Official Relation; Relation sent by the King of Great Britain to their High Mightinesses, Aug. 2. 1693;

Extract of a Letter from the Adjutant of the King of England's Dragoon Guards, Aug. 1.; Dykvelt's Letter to

the States General dated July 30. at noon. The last four papers will be found in the Monthly Mercuries of July

and August 1693. See also the History of the Last Campaign in the Spanish Netherlands by Edward

D'Auvergne, dedicated to the Duke of Ormond, 1693. The French did justice to William. "Le Prince

d'Orange," Racine wrote to Boileau, "pensa etre pris, apres avoir fait des merveilles." See also the glowing

description of Sterne, who, no doubt, had many times heard the battle fought over by old soldiers. It was on

this occasion that Corporal Trim was left wounded on the field, and was nursed by the Beguine.

FN 449 Saint Simon mentions the reflections thrown on the Marshal. Feuquieres, a very good judge, tells us

that Luxemburg was unjustly blamed, and that the French army was really too much crippled by its losses to

FN 450 This account of what would have taken place, if Luxemburg had been able and willing to improve his

victory, I have taken from what seems to have been a very manly and sensible speech made by Talmash in

FN 454 Burchett's Memoirs of Transactions at Sea; Burnet, ii. 114, 115, 116.; the London Gazette, July 17.

FN 455 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Baden to the States General, Jul 14/24, July 25/Aug 4. Among the Tanner

MSS. in the Bodleian Library are letters describing the agitation in the City. "I wish," says one of Sancroft's

Jacobite correspondents, "it may open our eyes and change our minds. But by the accounts I have seen, the

Turkey Company went from the Queen and Council full of satisfaction and good humour."

FN 456 London Gazette, August 21 1693; L'Hermitage to the States General, July 28/Aug 7 As I shall, in this

and the following chapters, make large use of the despatches of L'Hermitage, it may be proper to say

something about him. He was a French refugee, and resided in London as agent for the Waldenses. One of his

employments had been to send newsletters to Heinsius. Some interesting extracts from those newsletters will

be found in the work of the Baron Sirtema de Grovestins. It was probably in consequence of the Pensionary's

recommendation that the States General, by a resolution dated July 24/Aug 3 1693, desired L'Hermitage to

collect and transmit to them intelligence of what was passing in England. His letters abound with curious and

valuable information which is nowhere else to be found. His accounts of parliamentary proceedings are of

Copies of the despatches of L'Hermitage, and, indeed of the despatches of all the ministers and agents

employed by the States General in England from the time of Elizabeth downward, now are or will soon be in

the library of the British Museum. For this valuable addition to the great national storehouse of knowledge,

the country is chiefly indebted to Lord Palmerston. But it would be unjust not to add that his instructions

were most zealously carried into effect by the late Sir Edward Disbrowe, with the cordial cooperation of the

enlightened men who have charge of the noble collection of Archives at the Hague.

FN 457 It is strange that the indictment should not have been printed in Howell's State Trials. The copy

FN 458 Most of the information which has come down to us about Anderton's case will be found in Howell's

FN 462 There are still extant a handbill addressed to All Gentlemen Seamen that are weary of their Lives;

"To robbers, thieves, and felons, they Freely grant pardons every day. Only poor seamen, who alone Do keep

FN 465 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. In a pamphlet published at this time, and entitled A Dialogue between

Whig and Tory, the Whig alludes to "the public insolences at the Bath upon the late defeat in Flanders." The

Tory answers, "I know not what some hotheaded drunken men may have said and done at the Bath or

elsewhere." In the folio Collection of State Tracts, this Dialogue is erroneously said to have been printed

FN 466 The Paper to which I refer is among the Nairne MSS., and will be found in Macpherson's collection.

That excellent writer Mr. Hallam has, on this subject, fallen into an error of a kind very rare with him. He

says that the name of Caermarthen is perpetually mentioned among those whom James reckoned as his

friends. I believe that the evidence against Caermarthen will be found to begin and to end with the letter of

Melfort which I have mentioned. There is indeed, among the Nairne MSS, which Macpherson printed, an

undated and anonymous letter in which Caermarthen is reckoned among the friends of James. But this letter

is altogether undeserving of consideration. The writer was evidently a silly hotheaded Jacobite, who knew

nothing about the situation or character of any of the public men who m he mentioned. He blunders grossly

about Marlborough, Godolphin, Russell, Shrewsbury and the Beaufort family. Indeed the whole composition

It ought to be remarked that, in the Life of James compiled from his own Papers, the assurances of support

which he received from Marlborough, Russell, Godolphin Shrewsbury, and other men of note are mentioned

with very copious details. But there is not a word indicating that any such assurances were ever received from

FN 467 A Journal of several Remarkable Passages relating to the East India Trade, 1693.

FN 468 See the Monthly Mercuries and London Gazettes of September, October, November and December

1693; Dangeau, Sept. 5. 27., Oct. 21., Nov. 21.; the Price of the Abdication, 1693.

FN 469 Correspondence of William and Heinsius; Danish Note, dated Dec 11/21 1693. The note delivered by

Avaux to the Swedish government at this time will be found in Lamberty's Collection and in the Memoires et

FN 470 "Sir John Lowther says, nobody can know one day what a House of Commons would do the next; in

which all agreed with him." These remarkable words were written by Caermarthen on the margin of a paper

FN 471 See Sunderland's celebrated Narrative which has often been printed, and his wife's letters, which are

FN 476 It is amusing to see how Johnson's Toryism breaks out where we should hardly expect to find it.

"Let us be back'd with God and with the seas Which He hath given for fence impregnable, And with their

"This," says Johnson in a note, "has been the advice of every man who, in any age, understood and favoured

FN 477 Swift, in his Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's last Ministry, mentions Somers as a person of

great abilities, who used to talk in so frank a manner that he seemed to discover the bottom of his heart. In the

Memoirs relating to the Change in the Queen's Ministry, Swift says that Somers had one and only one

unconversable fault, formality. It is not very easy to understand how the same man can be the most

unreserved of companions and yet err on the side of formality. Yet there may be truth in both the

descriptions. It is well known that Swift loved to take rude liberties with men of high rank and fancied that,

by doing so, he asserted his own independence. He has been justly blamed for this fault by his two illustrious

biographers, both of them men of spirit at least as independent as his, Samuel Johnson and Walter Scott. I

suspect that he showed a disposition to behave with offensive familiarity to Somers, and that Somers, not

choosing to submit to impertinence, and not wishing to be forced to resent it, resorted, in selfdefence, to a

ceremonious politeness which he never would have practised towards Locke or Addison.

FN 478 The eulogies on Somers and the invectives against him are innumerable. Perhaps the best way to

come to a just judgment would be to collect all that has been said about him by Swift and by Addison. They

were the two keenest observers of their time; and they both knew him well. But it ought to be remarked that,

till Swift turned Tory, he always extolled Somers not only as the most accomplished, but as the most virtuous

of men. In the dedication of the Tale of a Tub are these words, "There is no virtue, either of a public or

private life, which some circumstances of your own have not often produced upon the stage of the world;"

and again, "I should be very loth the bright example of your Lordship's virtues should be lost to other eyes,

both for their sake and your own." In the Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions at Athens and Rome,

Somers is the just Aristides. After Swift had ratted he described Somers as a man who "possessed all

FN 481 This account of Montague and Wharton I have collected from innumerable sources. I ought,

however, to mention particularly the very curious Life of Wharton published immediately after his death.

FN 482 Much of my information about the Harleys I have derived from unpublished memoirs written by

Edward Harley, younger brother of Robert. A copy of these memoirs is among the Mackintosh MSS.

FN 483 The only writer who has praised Harley's oratory, as far as I remember, is Mackay, who calls him

eloquent. Swift scribbled in the margin, "A great lie." And certainly Swift was inclined to do more than

justice to Harley. "That lord," said Pope, "talked of business in so confused a manner that you did not know

what he was about; and every thing he went to tell you was in the epic way; for he always began in the

FN 484 "He used," said Pope, "to send trifling verses from Court to the Scriblerus Club almost every day, and

would come and talk idly with them almost every night even when his all was at stake." Some specimens of

Harley's poetry are in print. The best, I think, is a stanza which he made on his own fall in 1714; and bad is

"To serve with love, And shed your blood, Approved is above; But here below The examples show 'Tis fatal

FN 485 The character of Harley is to be collected from innumerable panegyrics and lampoons; from the

works and the private correspondence of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Prior and Bolingbroke, and from multitudes

of such works as Ox and Bull, the High German Doctor, and The History of Robert Powell the Puppet

FN 486 In a letter dated Sept. 12. 1709 a short time before he was brought into power on the shoulders of the

High Church mob, he says: "My soul has been among Lyons, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears

and arrows, and their tongues sharp swords. But I learn how good it is to wait on the Lord, and to possess

one's soul in peace." The letter was to Carstairs. I doubt whether Harley would have canted thus if he had

FN 487 The anomalous position which Harley and Foley at this time occupied is noticed in the Dialogue

between a Whig and a Tory, 1693. "Your great P. Foy," says the Tory, "turns cadet and carries arms under

the General of the West Saxons. The two Har ys, father and son, are engineers under the late Lieutenant of

the Ordnance, and bomb any bill which he hath once resolv'd to reduce to ashes." Seymour is the General of

the West Saxons. Musgrave had been Lieutenant of the Ordnance in the reign of Charles the Second.

FN 494 See the Journal to Stella, lii. liii. lix. lxi.; and Lady Orkney's Letters to Swift.

FN 495 See the letters written at this time by Elizabeth Villiers, Wharton, Russell and Shrewsbury, in the

FN 499 The bill I found in the Archives of the Lords. Its history I learned from the journals of the two

Houses, from a passage in the Diary of Narcissus Luttrell, and from two letters to the States General, both

dated on Feb 27/March 9 1694 the day after the debate in the Lords. One of these letters is from Van Citters;

FN 500 Commons' Journals, Nov. 28. 1693; Grey's Debates. L'Hermitage expected that the bill would pas;,

and that the royal assent would not be withheld. On November. he wrote to the States General, "Il paroist

dans toute la chambre beaucoup de passion a faire passer ce bil." On Nov 28/Dec 8 he says that the division

on the passing "n'a pas cause une petite surprise. Il est difficile d'avoir un point fixe sur les idees qu'on peut se

former des emotions du parlement, car il paroist quelquefois de grander chaleurs qui semblent devoir tout

enflammer, et qui, peu de tems apres, s'evaporent." That Seymour was the chief manager of the opposition to

FN 501 Commons' Journals; Grey's Debates. The engrossed copy of this Bill went down to the House of

Commons and is lost. The original draught on paper is among the Archives of the Lords. That Monmouth

brought in the bill I learned from a letter of L'Hermitage to the States General Dec. 13. 1693. As to the

numbers on the division, I have followed the journals. But in Grey's Debates and in the letters of Van Citters

502 The bill is in the Archives of the Lords. Its history I have collected from the journals, from Grey's

Debates, and from the highly interesting letters of Van Citters and L'Hermitage. I think it clear from Grey's

Debates that a speech which L'Hermitage attributes to a nameless "quelq'un" was made by Sir Thomas

FN 505 Of the Naturalisation Bill no copy, I believe exists. The history of that bill will be found in the

Journals. From Van Citters and L'Hermitage we learn less than might have been expected on a subject which

must have been interesting to Dutch statesmen. Knight's speech will be found among the Somers Papers. He

is described by his brother Jacobite, Roger North, as "a gentleman of as eminent integrity and loyalty as ever

FN 507 Commons' Journals, Dec. 20. and 22. 1693/4. The journals did not then contain any notice of the

divisions which took place when the House was in committee. There was only one division on the army

estimates of this year, when the mace was on the table. That division was on the question whether 60,000L.

or 147,000L. should be granted for hospitals and contingencies. The Whigs carried the larger sum by 184

FN 513 Stat. 5 W. M. c. 7.; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 5, Nov. 22. 1694; A Poem on Squire Neale's Projects;

Malcolm's History of London. Neale's functions are described in several editions of Chamberlayne's State of

England. His name frequently appears in the London Gazette, as, for example, on July 28. 1684.

FN 514 See, for example, the Mystery of the Newfashioned Goldsmiths or Brokers, 1676; Is not the Hand of

Joab in all this? 1676; and an answer published in the same year. See also England's Glory in the great

FN 516 See a pamphlet entitled Corporation Credit; or a Bank of Credit, made Current by Common Consent

FN 517 A proposal by Dr. Hugh Chamberlayne, in Essex Street, for a Bank, of Secure Current Credit to be

founded upon Land, in order to the General Good of Landed Men, to the great Increase in the Value of Land,

and the no less Benefit of Trade and Commerce, 1695; Proposals for the supplying their Majesties with

Money on Easy Terms, exempting the Nobility, Gentry, from Taxes enlarging their Yearly Estates, and

enriching all the Subjects of the Kingdom by a National Land Bank; by John Briscoe. "O fortunatos nimium

bona si sua norint Anglicanos." Third Edition, 1696. Briscoe seems to have been as much versed in Latin

FN 518 In confirmation of what is said in the text, I extract a single paragraph from Briscoe's proposals.

"Admit a gentleman hath barely 100L. per annum estate to live on, and hath a wife and four children to

provide for; this person, supposing no taxes were upon his estates must be a great husband to be able to keep

his charge, but cannot think of laying up anything to place out his children in the world; but according to this

proposed method he may give his children 500l. a piece and have 90l. per annum left for himself and his

wife to live upon, the which he may also leave to such of his children as he pleases after his and his wife's

decease. For first having settled his estate of 100l. per annum, as in proposals 1. 3., he may have bills of

credit for 2000L. for his own proper use, for 10s per cent. per annum as in proposal 22., which is but 10L. per

annum for the 2000L., which being deducted out of his estate of 100L. per annum, there remains 90L. per

annum clear to himself." It ought to be observed that this nonsense reached a third edition.

FN 519 See Chamberlayne's Proposal, his Positions supported by the Reasons explaining the Office of Land

Credit, and his Bank Dialogue. See also an excellent little tract on the other side entitled "A Bank Dialogue

between Dr. H. C. and a Country Gentleman, 1696," and "Some Remarks upon a nameless and scurrilous

Libel entitled a Bank Dialogue between Dr. H. C. and a Country Gentleman, in a Letter to a Person of

FN 520 Commons' Journals Dec. 7. 1693. I am afraid that I may be suspected of exaggerating the absurdity

of this scheme. I therefore transcribe the most important part of the petition. "In consideration of the

freeholders bringing their lands into this bank, for a fund of current credit, to be established by Act of

Parliament, it is now proposed that, for every 150L per annum, secured for 150 years, for but one hundred

yearly payments of 100L per annum, free from all manner of taxes and deductions whatsoever, every such

freeholder shall receive 4000L in the said current credit, and shall have 2000L more put into the fishery stock

for his proper benefit; and there may be further 2000L reserved at the Parliament's disposal towards the

carrying on this present war . . . . . The free holder is never to quit the possession of his said estate unless the

FN 523 See the Lords' Journals of April 23, 24, 25. 1694, and the letter of L'Hermitage to the States General

FN 525 Heath's Account of the Worshipful Company of Grocers; Francis's History of the Bank of England.

FN 529 Life of James ii. 520.; Floyd's (Lloyd's) Account in the Nairne Papers, under the date of May 1. 1694;

FN 531 London Gazette, April 30. May 7. 1694; Shrewsbury to William, May 11/21; William to Shrewsbury,

FN 532 L'Hermitage, May 15/25. After mentioning the various reports, he says, "De tous ces divers projets

qu'on s'imagine aucun n'est venu a la cognoissance du public." This is important; for it has often been said, in

excuse for Marlborough, that he communicated to the Court of Saint Germains only what was the talk of all

FN 533 London Gazette, June 14. 18. 1694; Paris Gazette June 16/July 3; Burchett; Journal of Lord

FN 534 Shrewsbury to William, June 15/25. 1694. William to Shrewsbury, July 1; Shrewsbury to William,

FN 535 This account of Russell's expedition to the Mediterranean I have taken chiefly from Burchett.

FN 540 Kingston. For the fact that a bribe was given to Taaffe, Kingston cites the evidence taken on oath by

FN 542 As to Dyer's newsletter, see Narcissus Luttrell's Diary for June and August 1693, and September

FN 543 The Whig narrative is Kingston's; the Jacobite narrative, by an anonymous author, has lately been

printed by the Chetham Society. See also a Letter out of Lancashire to a Friend in London, giving some

FN 544 Birch's Life of Tillotson; the Funeral Sermon preached by Burnet; William to Heinsius, Nov 23/Dec

FN 545 See the Journals of the two Houses. The only account that we have of the debates is in the letters of

FN 546 Commons' Journals, Feb. 20. 1693/4 As this bill never reached the Lords, it is not to be found among

their archives. I have therefore no means of discovering whether it differed in any respect from the bill of the

FN 547 The history of this bill may be read in the Journals of the Houses. The contest, not a very vehement

FN 548 "The Commons," says Narcissus Luttrell, "gave a great hum." "Le murmure qui est la marque

d'applaudissement fut si grand qu'on pent dire qu'il estoit universel. "L'Hermitage, Dec. 25/Jan. 4.

FN 551 Burnet, ii. 136. 138.; Narcissus Luttrell's Dairy; Van Citters, Dec 28/Jan 7 1694/5; L'Hermitage, Dec

25/Jan 4, Dec 28/Jan 7 Jan. 1/11; Vernon to Lord Lexington, Dec. 21. 25. 28., Jan. 1.; Tenison's Funeral

FN 552 Evelyn's Dairy; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Commons' Journals, Dec. 28. 1694; Shrewsbury to

Lexington, of the same date; Van Citters of the same date; L'Hermitage, Jan. 1/11 1695. Among the sermons

on Mary's death, that of Sherlock, preached in the Temple Church, and those of Howe and Bates, preached to

FN 554 Remarks on some late Sermons, 1695; A Defence of the Archbishop's Sermon, 1695.

FN 556 L'Hermitage, March 1/11, 6/16 1695; London Gazette, March 7,; Tenison's Funeral Sermon; Evelyn's

FN 558 Prior to Lord and Lady Lexington, Jan. 14/24 1695. The letter is among the Lexington papers, a

FN 559 Monthly Mercury for January 1695. An orator who pronounced an eulogium on the Queen at Utrecht

was so absurd as to say that she spent her last breath in prayers for the prosperity of the United

Provinces:"Valeant et Batavi;"these are her last words"sint incolumes; sint florentes; sint beati; stet

in sternum, stet immota praeclarissima illorum civitas hospitium aliquando mihi gratissimum, optime de me

meritum." See also the orations of Peter Francius of Amsterdam, and of John Ortwinius of Delft.

FN 562 L'Hermitage, Jan. 1/11. 1695; Vernon to Lord Lexington Jan. I. 4.; Portland to Lord Lexington, Jan

FN 563 See the Commons' Journals of Feb. 11, April 12. and April 27., and the Lords' Journals of April 8.

and April is. 1695. Unfortunately there is a hiatus in the Commons' Journal of the 12th of April, so that it is

now impossible to discover whether there was a division on the question to agree with the amendment made

FN 565 An Essay upon Taxes, calculated for the present Juncture of Affairs, 1693.

FN 566 Commons' Journals, Jan. 12 Feb. 26. Mar. 6.; A Collection of the Debates and Proceedings in

Parliament in 1694 and 1695 upon the Inquiry into the late Briberies and Corrupt Practices, 1695;

L'Hermitage to the States General, March 8/18; Van Citters, Mar. 15/25; L'Hermitage says

"Si par cette recherche la chambre pouvoit remedier au desordre qui regne, elle rendroit un service tres utile

FN 567 Commons' Journals, Feb. 16, 1695; Collection of the Debates and Proceedings in Parliament in 1694

FN 568 Speaker Onslow's note on Burnet ii. 583.; Commons' Journals, Mar 6, 7. 1695. The history of the

FN 569 Commons' Journals, March 8. 1695; Exact Collection of Debates and Proceedings in Parliament in

FN 571 L'Hermitage, March 8/18. 1695. L'Hermitage's narrative is confirmed by the journals, March 7.

1694/5. It appears that just before the committee was appointed, the House resolved that letters should not be

FN 574 Commons' Journals, March 12 13, 14 15, 16, 1694/5; Vernon to Lexington, March 15.; L'Hermitage,

FN 575 On vit qu'il etoit impossible de le poursuivre en justice, chacun toutefois demeurant convaincu que

c'etoit un marche fait a la main pour lui faire present de la somme de 10,000l et qu'il avoit ete plus habile que

les autres novices que n'avoient pas su faire si finement leure affaires. L'Hermitage, March 29/April 8;

FN 581 L'Hermitage (April 30/May 10 1695) justly remarks, that the way in which the money was sent back

FN 582 There can, I think, be no doubt, that the member who is called D in the Exact Collection was

FN 583 As to the proceedings of this eventful day, April 27. 1695, see the Journals of the two Houses, and

FN 584 Exact Collection; Lords' Journals, May 3. 1695; Commons' Journals, May 2, 3.; L'Hermitage, May

FN 587 Letter from Mrs. Burnet to the Duchess of Marlborough, 1704, quoted by Coxe; Shrewsbury to

FN 591 Life of James ii. 545., Orig. Mem. Of course James does not use the word assassination. He talks of

FN 592 Every thing bad that was known or rumoured about Porter came out on the State Trials of 1696.

FN 593 As to Goodman see the evidence on the trial of Peter Cook; Cleverskirke, Feb 28/March 9 1696;

L'Hermitage, April 10/20 1696; and a pasquinade entitled the Duchess of Cleveland's Memorial.

FN 602 Some curious traits of Trumball's character will be found in Pepys's Tangier Diary.

FN 603 Postboy, June 13., July 9. 11., 1695; Intelligence Domestic and Foreign, June 14.; Pacquet Boat from

FN 604 Vaudemont's Despatch and William's Answer are in the Monthly Mercury for July 1695.

FN 606 London Gazette July 22. 1695; Monthly Mercury of August, 1695. Swift ten years later, wrote a

lampoon on Cutts, so dull and so nauseously scurrilous that Ward or Gildon would have been ashamed of it,

FN 607 London Gazette, July 29. 1695; Monthly Mercury for August 1695; Stepney to Lord Lexington, Aug.

16/26; Robert Fleming's Character of King William, 1702. It was in the attack of July 17/27 that Captain

FN 608 London Gazette, Aug. r. 5. 1695; Monthly Mercury of August 1695, containing the Letters of

FN 610 Monthly Mercury for August 1695; Letter from Paris, Aug 26/Sept 5 1695, among the Lexington

FN 612 London Gazette, Aug. 26. 1695; Monthly Mercury, Stepney to Lexington, Aug. 20/30.

FN 613 Boyer's History of King William III, 1703; London Gazette, Aug. 29. 1695; Stepney to Lexington,

FN 614 Postscript to the Monthly Mercury for August 1695; London Gazette, Sept. 9.; Saint Simon;

FN 615 Boyer, History of King William III, 2703; Postscript to the Monthly Mercury, Aug. 1695; London

FN 616 There is a noble, and I suppose, unique Collection of the newspapers of William's reign in the British

Museum. I have turned over every page of that Collection. It is strange that neither Luttrell nor Evelyn should

have noticed the first appearance of the new journals. The earliest mention of those journals which I have

found, is in a despatch of L'Hermitage, dated July 12/22, 1695. I will transcribe his words:"Depuis quelque

tems on imprime ici plusieurs feuilles volantes en forme de gazette, qui sont remplies de toutes series de

nouvelles. Cette licence est venue de ce que le parlement n'a pas acheve le bill ou projet d'acte qui avoit ete

porte dans la Chambre des Communes pour regler l'imprimerie et empecher que ces sortes de choses

n'arrivassent. Il n'y avoit cidevant qu'un des commis des Secretaires d'Etat qui eut le pouvoir de faire des

gazettes: mais aujourdhui il s'en fait plusieurs sons d'autres noms." L'Hermitage mentions the paragraph

FN 618 London Gazette, Oct. 24. 1695. See Evelyn's Account of Newmarket in 1671, and Pepys, July 18.

1668. From Tallard's despatches written after the Peace of Ryswick it appears that the autumn meetings were

not less numerous or splendid in the days of William than in those of his uncles.

FN 619 I have taken this account of William's progress chiefly from the London Gazettes, from the

despatches of L'Hermitage, from Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, and from the letters of Vernon, Yard and

FN 620 See the letter of Yard to Lexington, November 8. 1695, and the note by the editor of the Lexington

FN 624 L'Hermitage, Nov. 15/25 1695; Sir James Forbes to Lady Russell, Oct. 3. 1695; Lady Russell to Lord

FN 625 There is a highly curious account of this contest in the despatches of L'Hermitage.

FN 626 Postman, Dec. 15. 17. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec. 13. 15.; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; Burnet,

FN 628 I have derived much valuable information on this subject from a MS. in the British Museum,

Lansdowne Collection, No. 801. It is entitled Brief Memoires relating to the Silver and Gold Coins of

England, with an Account of the Corruption of the Hammered Money, and of the Reform by the late Grand

Coinage at the Tower and the Country Mints, by Hopton Haynes, Assay Master of the Mint.

FN 631 The first writer who noticed the fact that, where good money and bad money are thown into

circulation together, the bad money drives out the good money, was Aristophanes. He seems to have thought

that the preference which his fellow citizens gave to light coins was to be attributed to a depraved taste such

as led them to entrust men like Cleon and Hyperbolus with the conduct of great affairs. But, though his

pollakis g' emin edoksen e polis peponthenai tauton es te ton politon tous kalous te kagathous es te tarkhaion

nomisma Kai to kainon khrusion. oute gar toutoisin ousin ou kekibdeleumenios alla kallistois apanton, us

dokei, nomismaton, kai monois orthos kopeisi, kai kekodonismenois en te tois Ellisim kai tois barbarioisi

pantahkou khrometh' ouden, alla toutois tois ponerois khalkiois, khthes te kai proen kopeisi to kakistu

kommati. ton politon th' ous men ismen eugeneis kai sophronas andras ontas, kai dikaious, kai kalous te

kagathous, kai traphentas en palaistrais, kai khorois kai mousiki prouseloumen tois de khalkois, kai ksenois,

FN 632 Narcissus Luttrell's Diary is filled with accounts of these executions. "Le metier de rogneur de

monnoye," says L'Hermitage, "est si lucratif et paroit si facile que, quelque chose qu'on fasse pour les

detruire, il s'en trouve toujours d'autres pour prendre leur place. Oct 1/11. 1695."

FN 633 As to the sympathy of the public with the clippers, see the very curious sermon which Fleetwood

afterwards Bishop of Ely, preached before the Lord Mayor in December 1694. Fleetwood says that "a soft

pernicious tenderness slackened the care of magistrates, kept back the under officers, corrupted the juries, and

withheld the evidence." He mentions the difficulty of convincing the criminals themselves that they had done

wrong. See also a Sermon preached at York Castle by George Halley, a clergyman of the Cathedral, to some

clippers who were to be hanged the next day. He mentions the impenitent ends which clippers generally

made, and does his best to awaken the consciences of his bearers. He dwells on one aggravation of their

crime which I should not have thought of. "If," says he, "the same question were to be put in this age, as of

old, 'Whose is this image and superscription?' we could not answer the whole. We may guess at the image;

but we cannot tell whose it is by the superscription; for that is all gone." The testimony of these two divines is

confirmed by that of Tom Brown, who tells a facetious story, which I do not venture to quote, about a

FN 636 The Memoirs of this Lancashire Quaker were printed a few years ago in a most respectable

FN 639 It ought always to be remembered, to Adam Smith's honour, that he was entirely converted by

Bentham's Defence of Usury, and acknowledged, with candour worthy of a true philosopher, that the doctrine

FN 640 Lowndes's Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins; Locke's Further Considerations concerning

raising the Value of Money; Locke to Molyneux, Nov. 20. 1695; Molyneux to Locke, Dec. 24. 1695.

FN 643 Commons' Journals, Nov. 26, 27, 28, 29. 1695; L'Hermitage, Nov 26./Dec 6 Nov. 29/Dec 9 Dec 3/13

FN 645 L'Hermitage, Nov 22/Dec 2, Dec 6/16 1695; An Abstract of the Consultations and Debates between

the French King and his Council concerning the new Coin that is intended to be made in England, privately

sent by a Friend of the Confederates from the French Court to his Brother at Brussels, Dec. 12. 1695; A

Discourse of the General Notions of Money, Trade and Exchanges, by Mr. Clement of Bristol; A Letter from

an English Merchant at Amsterdam to his Friend in London; A Fund for preserving and supplying our Coin;

An Essay for regulating the Coin, by A. V.; A Proposal for supplying His Majesty with 1,200,000L, by

mending the Coin, and yet preserving the ancient Standard of the Kingdom. These are a few of the tracts

FN 648 Stat. 7 Gul. 3.c.1.; Lords' and Commons' Journals; L'Hermitage, Dec 31/Jan 10 Jan 7/17 10/20 14/24

1696. L'Hermitage describes in strong language the extreme inconvenience caused by the dispute between the

Houses:"La longueur qu'il y a dans cette affaire est d'autant plus desagreable qu'il n'y a point (le sujet sur

lequel le peuple en general puisse souffrir plus d'incommodite, puisqu'il n'y a personne qui, a tous moments,

FN 649 That Locke was not a party to the attempt to make gold cheaper by penal laws, I infer from a passage

in which he notices Lowndes's complaints about the high price of guineas. "The only remedy," says Locke,

"for that mischief, as well as a great many others, is the putting an end to the passing of clipp'd money by

tale." Locke's Further Considerations. That the penalty proved, as might have been expected, inefficacious,

appears from several passages in the despatches of L'Hermitage, and even from Haynes's Brief Memoires,

FN 651 Commons' Journals, Jan. 14. 17. 23. 1696; L'Hermitage, Jan. 14/24; Gloria Cambriae, or Speech of a

Bold Briton against a Dutch Prince of Wales 1702; Life of the late Honourable Robert Price, 1734. Price was

the bold Briton whose speechnever, I believe, spokenwas printed in 1702. He would have better

deserved to be called bold, if he had published his impertinence while William was living. The Life of Price

FN 652 L'Hermitage mentions the unfavourable change in the temper of the Commons; and William alludes

FN 653 The gaiety of the Jacobites is said by Van Cleverskirke to have been noticed during some time; Feb

FN 657 Barclay's narrative, in the Life of James, ii. 548.; Paper by Charnock among the MSS. in the Bodleian

FN 661 Fisher's deposition; Knightley's deposition; Cranburne's trial; De la Rue's deposition.

FN 665 Van Cleverskirke, Feb 25/March 6 1696. I am confident that no sensible and impartial person, after

attentively reading Berwick's narrative of these transactions and comparing it with the narrative in the Life of

James (ii. 544.) which is taken, word for word, from the Original Memoirs, can doubt that James was

FN 667 My account of these events is taken chiefly from the trials and depositions. See also Burnet, ii. 165,

166, 167, and Blackmore's True and Impartial History, compiled under the direction of Shrewsbury and

FN 668 Portland to Lexington, March 3/13. 1696; Van Cleverskirke, Feb 25/Mar 6 L'Hermitage, same date.

FN 672 Ibid. Feb. 25. 1695/6; Van Cleverskirke, Feb 28/March 9; L'Hermitage, of the same date.

FN 673 According to L'Hermitage, Feb 27/Mar 8,there were two of these fortunate hackney coachmen. A

shrewd and vigilant hackney coachman indeed was from the nature of his calling, very likely to be successful

in this sort of chase. The newspapers abound with proofs of the general enthusiasm.

FN 676 Postman, March 12. 1696; Vernon to Lexington, March 13; Van Cleverskirke, March 13/23 The

FN 677 Burnet, ii. 171.; The Present Disposition of England considered; The answer entitled England's

Enemies Exposed, 1701; L'Hermitage, March 17/27. 1696. L'Hermitage says, "Charnock a fait des grandes

instances pour avoir sa grace, et a offert de tout declarer: mais elle lui a este refusee."

FN 679 This most curious paper is among the Nairne MSS. in the Bodleian Library. A short, and not

perfectly ingenuous abstract of it will be found in the Life of James, ii. 555. Why Macpherson, who has

printed many less interesting documents did not choose to print this document, it is easy to guess. I will

transcribe two or three important sentences. "It may reasonably be presumed that what, in one juncture His

Majesty had rejected he might in another accept, when his own and the public good necessarily required it.

For I could not understand it in such a manner as if he had given a general prohibition that at no time the

Prince of Orange should be touched. . . Nobody that believes His Majesty to be lawful King of England can

doubt but that in virtue of his commission to levy war against the Prince of Orange and his adherents, the

setting upon his person is justifiable, as well by the laws of the land duly interpreted and explained as by the

FN 680 The trials of Friend and Parkyns will be found, excellently reported, among the State Trials.

FN 682 Commons' Journals, April 1, 2. 1696; L'Hermitage, April 3/13. 1696; Van Cleverskirke, of the same

FN 683 L'Hermitage, April 7/17. 1696. The Declaration of the Bishops, Collier's Defence, and Further

Defence, and a long legal argument for Cook and Snatt will be found in the Collection of State Trials.

FN 686 The best, indeed the only good, account of these debates is given by L'Hermitage, Feb 28/March 9

1696. He says, very truly; "La difference n'est qu'une dispute de mots, le droit qu'on a a une chose selon les

FN 687 See the London Gazettes during several weeks; L'Hermitage, March 24/April 3 April 14/24. 1696;

FN 689 See the Freeholder's Plea against Stockjobbing Elections of Parliament Men, and the Considerations

upon Corrupt Elections of Members to serve in Parliament. Both these pamphlets were published in 1701.

FN 690 The history of this bill will be found in the Journals of the Commons, and in a very interesting

FN 694 The Act provided that the clipped money must be brought in before the fourth of May. As the third

FN 695 L'Hermitage, May 5/15 1696; London Newsletter, May 4., May 6. In the Newsletter the fourth of

May is mentioned as "the day so much taken notice of for the universal concern people had in it."

FN 696 London Newsletter, May 21. 1696; Old Postmaster, June 25.; L'Hermitage, May 19/29.

FN 698 See the petition from Birmingham in the Commons' Journals, Nov. 12. 1696; and the petition from

FN 699 "Money exceeding scarce, so that none was paid or received; but all was on trust."Evelyn, May 13.

And again, on June 11.: "Want of current money to carry on the smallest concerns, even for daily provisions

FN 700 L'Hermitage, May 22/June 1; See a Letter of Dryden to Tonson, which Malone, with great

FN 701 L'Hermitage to the States General May 8/18.; Paris Gazette, June 2/12.; Trial and Condemnation of

the Land Bank at Exeter Change for murdering the Bank of England at Grocers' Hall, 1696. The Will and the

FN 703 On this subject see the Short History of the Last Parliament, 1699; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; the

newspapers of 1696 passim, and the letters of L'Hermitage passim. See also the petition of the Clothiers of

Gloucester in the Commons' Journal, Nov. 27. 1696. Oldmixon, who had been himself a sufferer, writes on

FN 704 See L'Hermitage, June 12/22, June 23/July, 3 June 30/July 10, Aug 1/11 Aug 28/Sept 7 1696. The

Postman of August 15. mentions the great benefit derived from the Exchequer Bills. The Pegasus of Aug. 24.

says: "The Exchequer Bills do more and more obtain with the public; and 'tis no wonder." The Pegasus of

Aug. 28. says: "They pass as money from hand to hand; 'tis observed that such as cry them down are ill

affected to the government." "They are found by experience," says the Postman of the seventh of May

following, "to be of extraordinary use to the merchants and traders of the City of London, and all other parts

of the kingdom." I will give one specimen of the unmetrical and almost unintelligible doggrel which the

"Pray, Sir, did you hear of the late proclamation, Of sending paper for payment quite thro' the nation? Yes,

Sir, I have: they're your Montague's notes, Tinctured and coloured by your Parliament votes. But 'tis plain on

FN 706 L'Hermitage, June 2/12. 1696; Commons' Journals, Nov. 25.; Postman, May 5., June 4., July 2.

FN 707 L'Hermitage, July.3/13 10/20 1696; Commons' Journals, Nov. 25.; Paris Gazette, June 30., Aug. 25.;

FN 708 William to Heinsius, July 30. 1696; William to Shrewsbury, July 23. 30. 31.

FN 709 Shrewsbury to William, July 28. 31., Aug. 4. 1696; L'Hermitage, Aug. 1/11

FN 710 Shrewsbury to William, Aug 7. 1696; L'Hermitage, Aug 14/24.; London Gazette, Aug. 13.

FN 711 L'Hermitage, Aug.18/28. 1696. Among the records of the Bank is a resolution of the Directors

prescribing the very words which Sir John Houblon was to use. William's sense of the service done by the

Bank on this occasion is expressed in his letter to Shrewsbury, of Aug. 24/Sept 3. One of the Directors, in a

letter concerning the Bank, printed in 1697, says: "The Directors could not have answered it to their

members, had it been for any less occasion than the preservation of the kingdom."

FN 712 Haynes's Brief Memoires; Lansdowne MSS. 801. Montague's friendly letter to Newton, announcing

FN 713 I have very great pleasure in quoting the words of Haynes, an able, experienced and practical man,

who had been in the habit of transacting business with Newton. They have never I believe, been printed. "Mr.

Isaac Newton, public Professor of the Mathematicks in Cambridge, the greatest philosopher, and one of the

best men of this age, was, by a great and wise statesman, recommended to the favour of the late King for

Warden of the King's Mint and Exchanges, for which he was peculiarly qualified, because of his

extraordinary skill in numbers, and his great integrity, by the first of which he could judge correctly of the

Mint accounts and transactions as soon as he entered upon his office; and by the latterI mean his

integrityhe set a standard to the conduct and behaviour of every officer and clerk in the Mint. Well had it

been for the publick, had he acted a few years sooner in that situation." It is interesting to compare this

testimony, borne by a man who thoroughly understood the business of the Mint, with the childish talk of

Pope. "Sir Isaac Newton," said Pope, "though so deep in algebra and fluxions, could not readily make up a

common account; and, whilst he was Master of the Mint, used to get somebody to make up the accounts for

him." Some of the statesmen with whom Pope lived might have told him that it is not always from ignorance

of arithmetic that persons at the head of great departments leave to clerks the business of casting up pounds,

FN 714 "I do not love, he wrote to Flamsteed, "to be printed on every occasion, much less to be dunned and

teased by foreigners about mathematical things, or to be thought by our own people to be trifling away my

FN 715 Hopton Haynes's Brief Memoires; Lansdowne MSS. 801.; the Old Postmaster, July 4. 1696; the

Postman May 30., July 4 , September 12. 19., October 8,; L'Hermitage's despatches of this summer and

FN 717 On the 7th of August L'Hermitage remarked for the first time that money seemed to be more

FN 718 Compare Edmund Bohn's Letter to Carey of the 31st of July 1696 with the Paris Gazette of the same

date. Bohn's description of the state of Norfolk is coloured, no doubt, by his constitutionally gloomy temper,

and by the feeling with which he, not unnaturally, regarded the House of Commons. His statistics are not to

be trusted; and his predictions were signally falsified. But he may be believed as to plain facts which

FN 719 As to Grascombe's character, and the opinion entertained of him by the most estimable Jacobites, see

the Life of Kettlewell, part iii., section 55. Lee the compiler of the Life of Kettlewell mentions with just

censure some of Grascombe's writings, but makes no allusion to the worst of them, the Account of the

Proceedings in the House of Commons in relation to the Recoining of the Clipped Money, and falling the

price of Guineas. That Grascombe was the author, was proved before a Committee of the House of

FN 725 The Monthly Mercuries; Correspondence between Shrewsbury and Galway; William to Heinsius,

FN 726 William to Heinsius, Aug 27/Sept 6, Nov 15/25 Nov. 17/27 1696; Prior to Lexington, Nov. 17/27;

FN 727 My account of the attempt to corrupt Porter is taken from his examination before the House of

Commons on Nov. 16. 1696, and from the following sources: Burnet, ii. 183.; L'Hermitage to the States

General, May 8/18. 12/22 1696; the Postboy, May 9.; the Postman, May 9.; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary;

FN 728 London Gazette; Narcissus Luttrell; L'Hermitage, June 12/22; Postman, June 11.

FN 729 Life of William III. 1703; Vernon's evidence given in his place in the House of Commons, Nov. 16.

FN 733 London Gazette, Oct. 8. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, October 8. Shrewsbury to Portland, Oct. 11.

FN 739 Vernon to Shrewsbury, Oct. 13. 15.; Portland to Shrewsbury, Oct, 20, 1696.

FN 742 I take my account of these proceedings from the Commons' Journals, from the despatches of Van

Cleverskirke and L'Hermitage to the States General, and from Vernon's letter to Shrewsbury of the 27th of

October 1696. "I don't know," says Vernon "that the House of Commons ever acted with greater concert than

FN 743 Vernon to Shrewsbury, Oct. 29. 1696; L'Hermitage, Oct 30/Nov 9 L'Hermitage calls Howe Jaques

FN 744 Postman, October 24. 1696; L'Hermitage, Oct 23/Nov 2. L'Hermitage says: "On commence deja a

ressentir des effets avantageux des promptes et favorables resolutions que la Chambre des Communes prit

Mardy. Le discomte des billets de banque, qui estoit le jour auparavant a 18, est revenu a douze, et les actions

FN 746 Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick, 1707; Villiers to Shrewsbury Dec. 1.11.

4/14. 1696; Letter of Heinsius quoted by M. Sirtema de Grovestins. Of this letter I have not a copy.

FN 749 Somers to Shrewsbury, Oct. 27. 31. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Oct. 31.; Wharton to Shrewsbury,

Nov. 10. "I am apt to think," says Wharton, "there never was more management than in bringing that about."

FN 750 See for example a poem on the last Treasury day at Kensington, March 1696/7.

FN 751 Somers to Shrewsbury, Oct 31. 1696; Wharton to Shrewsbury, of the same date.

FN 752 Somers to Shrewsbury, Nov. 3. 1696. The King's unwillingness to see Fenwick is mentioned in

FN 754 The circumstances of Goodman's flight were ascertained three years later by the Earl of Manchester,

when Ambassador at Paris, and by him communicated to Jersey in a letter dated Sept 25/Oct 5 1699.

FN 755 London Gazette Nov. 9. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Nov. 3.; Van Cleverskirke and L'Hermitage of

FN 756 The account of the events of this day I have taken from the Commons' Journals; the valuable work

entitled Proceedings in Parliament against Sir John Fenwick, Bart. upon a Bill of Attainder for High Treason,

1696; Vernon's Letter to Shrewsbury, November 6. 1696, and Somers's Letter to Shrewsbury, November 7.

From both these letters it is plain that the Whig leaders had much difficulty in obtaining the absolution of

FN 757 Commons' Journals, Nov. 9. 1696 Vernon to Shrewsbury, Nov. 10. The editor of the State Trials is

mistaken in supposing that the quotation from Caesar's speech was made in the debate of the 13th.

FN 758 Commons' Journals, Nov. 13. 16, 17.; Proceedings against Sir John Fenwick.

FN 759 A Letter to a Friend in Vindication of the Proceedings against Sir John Fenwick, 1697.

FN 768 Lords' Journals, Dec. 15. 1696; L'Hermitage, Dec.18/28; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec. 15. About the

numbers there is a slight difference between Vernon and L'Hermitage. I have followed Vernon.

FN 769 Lords' Journals, Dec. 18. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec. 19.; L'Hermitage, Dec 22/Jan 1. I take

FN 770 Lords' Journals, Dec. 25 1696; L'Hermitage, Dec 26/Jan 4. In the Vernon Correspondence there is a

letter from Vernon to Shrewsbury giving an account of the transactions of this day; but it is erroneously dated

Dec. 2., and is placed according to that date. This is not the only blunder of the kind. A letter from Vernon to

Shrewsbury, evidently written on the 7th of November 1696, is dated and placed as a letter of the 7th of

January 1697. A letter of June 14. 1700 is dated and placed as a letter of June 15. 1698. The Vernon

Correspondence is of great value; but it is so ill edited that it cannot be safely used without much caution, and

FN 771 Lords' Journals, Dec. 23. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Dec. 24; L'Hermitage, Dec 25/Jan 4.

FN 773 Dohna, who knew Monmouth well, describes him thus: "Il avoit de l'esprit infiniment, et meme du

plus agreable; mais il y avoir un peu trop de haut et de bas dans son fait. Il ne savoit ce que c'etoit que de

menager les gens; et il turlupinoit a l'outrance ceux qui ne lui plaisoient pas."

FN 775 Lords' Journals, Jan. 9. 1696/7; Vernon to Shrewsbury, of the same date; L'Hermitage, Jan. 12/22.

FN 776 Lords' Journals, Jan. 15. 1691; Vernon to Shrewsbury, of the same date; L'Hermitage, of the same

FN 782 Commons' Journals, Jan. 27. 169. The entry in the journals, which might easily escape notice, is

FN 783 L'Hermitage, Jan 29/Feb 8; 1697; London Gazette, Feb. 1.; Paris Gazette; Vernon to Shrewsbury;

FN 784 Commons' Journals, December 19. 1696; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Nov. 28. 1696.

FN 785 Lords' Journals, Jan. 23. 1696/7; Vernon to Shrewsbury, Jan. 23.; L'Hermitage, Jan 26/Feb 5.

FN 786 Commons' Journals, Jan. 26. 1696/7; Vernon to Shrewsbury and Van Cleverskirke to the States

General of the same date. It is curious that the King and the Lords should have made so strenuous a fight

against the Commons in defence of one of the five points of the Peoples Charter.

FN 787 Commons' Journals, April1. 3. 1697; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary; L'Hermitage, April 2/12 As

L'Hermitage says, "La plupart des membres, lorsqu'ils sont a la campagne, estant bien aises d'estre informez

par plus d'un endroit de ce qui se passe, et s'imaginant que la Gazette qui se fait sous la direction d'un des

Secretaires d'Etat, ne contiendroit pas autant de choses que fait cellecy, ne sont pas fichez que d'autres les

instruisent." The numbers on the division I take from L'Hermitage. They are not to be found in the Journals.

FN 794 What the opinion of the public was we learn from a letter written by L'Hermitage immediately after

Godolphin's resignation, Nov 3/13. 1696, "Le public tourne plus la veue sur le Sieur Montegu, qui a la

seconde charge de la Tresorerie que sur aucun autre." The strange silence of the London Gazette is explained

FN 799 See the Protocol of February 10 1697, in the Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de

FN 800 William to Heinsius, Dec. 11/21 1696. There are similar expressions in other letters written by the

FN 801 See the papers drawn up at Vienna, and dated Sept. 16. 1696, and March 14 1697. See also the

protocol drawn up at the Hague, March 14. 1697. These documents will be found in the Actes et Memoires

FN 804 An engraving and ground plan of the mansion will be found in the Actes et Memoires.

FN 805 Whoever wishes to be fully informed as to the idle controversies and mummeries in which the

FN 806 Saint Simon was certainly as good a judge of men as any of those English grumblers who called

Portland a dunce and a boor; Saint Simon too had every opportunity of forming a correct judgment; for he

saw Portland in a situation full of difficulties; and Saint Simon says, in one place, "Benting, discret, secret,

poli aux autres, fidele a son maitre, adroit en affaires, le servit tres utilement;" in another, "Portland parut

avec un eclat personnel, une politesse, un air de monde et de cour, une galanterie et des graces qui surprirent;

avec cela, beaucoup de dignite, meme (le hauteur, mais avec discernement et un jugement prompt sans rien

de hasarde." Boufflers too extols Portland's good breeding and tact. Boufflers to Lewis, July 9. 1697. This

letter is in the archives of the French Foreign Office. A translation will be found in the valuable collection

FN 807 Boufflers to Lewis, June 21/July 1 1697; Lewis to Boufflers, June 22/July 2; Boufflers to Lewis, June

FN 809 My account of this negotiation I have taken chiefly from the despatches in the French Foreign Office.

Translations of those despatches have been published by M. Grimblot. See also Burnet, ii. 200, 201.

It has been frequently asserted that William promised to pay Mary of Modena fifty thousand pounds a year.

Whoever takes the trouble to read the Protocol of Sept. 10/20 1697, among the Acts of the Peace of Ryswick,

will see that my account is correct. Prior evidently understood the protocol as I understand it. For he says, in a

letter to Lexington of Sept. 17. 1697, "No. 2. is the thing to which the King consents as to Queen Marie's

settlements. It is fairly giving her what the law allows her. The mediator is to dictate this paper to the French,

and enter it into his protocol; and so I think we shall come off a bon marche upon that article."

It was rumoured at the time (see Boyer's History of King William III. 1703) that Portland and Boufflers had

agreed on a secret article by which it was stipulated that, after the death of William, the Prince of Wales

should succeed to the English throne. This fable has often been repeated, but was never believed by men of

sense, and can hardly, since the publication of the letters which passed between Lewis and Boufflers, find

credit even with the weakest. Dalrymple and other writers imagined that they had found in the Life of James

(ii. 574, 575.) proof that the story of the secret article was true. The passage on which they relied was

certainly not written by James, nor under his direction; and the authority of those portions of the Life which

were not written by him, or under his direction, is but small. Moreover, when we examine this passage, we

shall find that it not only does not bear out the story of the secret article, but directly contradicts that story.

The compiler of the Life tells us that, after James had declared that he never would consent to purchase the

English throne for his posterity by surrendering his own rights, nothing more was said on the subject. Now it

is quite certain that James in his Memorial published in March 1697, a Memorial which will be found both in

the Life (ii. 566,) and in the Acts of the Peace of Ryswick, declared to all Europe that he never would stoop to

so low and degenerate an action as to permit the Prince of Orange to reign on condition that the Prince of

Wales should succeed. It follows, therefore, that nothing can have been said on this subject after March 1697.

Nothing therefore, can have been said on this subject in the conferences between Boufflers and Portland,

Was there then absolutely no foundation for the story? I believe that there was a foundation; and I have

already related the facts on which this superstructure of fiction has been reared. It is quite certain that Lewis,

in 1693, intimated to the allies through the government of Sweden, his hope that some expedient might be

devised which would reconcile the Princes who laid claim to the English crown. The expedient at which be

hinted was, no doubt, that the Prince of Wales should succeed William and Mary. It is possible that, as the

compiler of the Life of James says, William may have "show'd no great aversness" to this arrangement. He

had no reason, public or private, for preferring his sister in law to his brother in law, if his brother in law were

bred a Protestant. But William could do nothing without the concurrence of the Parliament; and it is in the

highest degree improbable that either he or the Parliament would ever have consented to make the settlement

of the English crown a matter of stipulation with France. What he would or would not have done, however,

we cannot with certainty pronounce. For James proved impracticable. Lewis consequently gave up all

thoughts of effecting a compromise and promised, as we have seen, to recognise William as King of England

"without any difficulty, restriction, condition, or reserve." It seems certain that, after this promise, which was

made in December 1696, the Prince of Wales was not again mentioned in the negotiations.

FN 810 Prior MS.; Williamson to Lexington, July 20/30. 1697; Williamson to Shrewsbury, July 23/Aug 2

FN 811 The note of the French ministers, dated July 10/20 1697, will be found in the Actes et Memoires.

FN 814 Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick; Life of James, ii. 566.

FN 816 Actes et Memoires des Negociations de la Paix de Ryswick; Williamson to Lexington, Sept 14/24

FN 818 L'Hermitage, July 20/30; July 27/Aug 6, Aug 24/Sept 3, Aug 27/Sept 6 Aug 31/Sept 10 1697

FN 819 Van Cleverskirke to the States General, Sept. 14/24 1697; L'Hermitage, Sept. 14/24; Postscript to the

Postman, of the same date; Postman and Postboy of Sept. 19/29 Postman of Sept. 18/28.

FN 821 L'Hermitage, Sept 21/Oct 1 Nov 2/12 I697; Paris Gazette, Nov. 20/30; Postboy, Nov. 2. At this time

appeared a pasquinade entitled, A Satyr upon the French King, written after the Peace was concluded at

Reswick, anno 1697, by a NonSwearing Parson, and said to be drop'd out of his Pocket at Sam's Coffee

"Lord! with what monstrous lies and senseless shams Have we been cullied all along at Sam's! Who could

have e'er believed, unless in spite Lewis le Grand would turn rank Williamite? Thou that hast look'd so fierce

and talk'd so big, In thine old age to dwindle to a Whig! Of Kings distress'd thou art a fine securer. Thou

mak'st me swear, that am a known nonjuror. Were Job alive, and banter'd by such shufflers, He'd outrail

Oates, and curse both thee and Boufflers For thee I've lost, if I can rightly scan 'em, Two livings, worth full

eightscore pounds per annum, Bonae et legalis Angliae Monetae. But now I'm clearly routed by the treaty."

FN 823 London Gazette, Nov. 18. 22 1697; Van Cleverskirke Nov. 16/26, 19/29.; L'Hermitage, Nov. 16/26;

FN 824 Evelyn's Diary, Dec, 2. 1697. The sermon is extant; and I must acknowledge that it deserves Evelyn's

FN 825 London Gazette, Dec. 6. 1697; Postman, Dec. 4.; Van Cleverskirke, Dec. 2/12; L'Hermitage, Nov.

I HAVE thought it right to publish that portion of the continuation of the "History of England" which was

fairly transcribed and revised by Lord Macaulay. It is given to the world precisely as it was left: no

connecting link has been added; no reference verified; no authority sought for or examined. It would indeed

have been possible, with the help I might have obtained from his friends, to have supplied much that is

wanting; but I preferred, and I believe the public will prefer, that the last thoughts of the great mind passed

away from among us should be preserved sacred from any touch but his own. Besides the revised manuscript,

a few pages containing the first rough sketch of the last two months of William's reign are all that is left.

From this I have with some difficulty deciphered the account of the death of William. No attempt has been

made to join it on to the preceding part, or to supply the corrections which would have been given by the

improving hand of the author. But, imperfect as it must be, I believe it will be received with pleasure and

I will only add my grateful thanks for the kind advice and assistance given me by his most dear and valued

Standing ArmiesSunderlandLord SpencerControversy touching Standing ArmiesMeeting of

ParliamentThe King's Speech well received; Debate on a Peace EstablishmentSunderland attacked

The Nation averse to a Standing ArmyMutiny Act; the Navy Acts concerning High TreasonEarl of

ClancartyWays and Means; Rights of the Sovereign in reference to Crown LandsProceedings in

Parliament on Grants of Crown LandsMontague accused of PeculationBill of Pains and Penalties

against Duncombe Dissension between the housesCommercial QuestionsIrish ManufacturesEast

India CompaniesFire at WhitehallVisit of the CzarPortland's Embassy to FranceThe Spanish

Succession The Count of Tallard's EmbassyNewmarket Meeting: the insecure State of the

RoadsFurther Negotiations relating to the Spanish SuccessionThe King goes to HollandPortland

THE rejoicings, by which London, on the second of December 1697, celebrated the return of peace and

prosperity, continued till long after midnight. On the following morning the Parliament met; and one of the

Among the questions which it was necessary that the Houses should speedily decide, one stood forth

preeminent in interest and importance. Even in the first transports of joy with which the bearer of the treaty of

Ryswick had been welcomed to England, men had eagerly and anxiously asked one another what was to be

done with that army which had been famed in Ireland and Belgium, which had learned, in many hard

campaigns, to obey and to conquer, and which now consisted of eightyseven thousand excellent soldiers.

Was any part of this great force to be retained in the service of the State? And, if any part, what part? The last

two kings had, without the consent of the legislature, maintained military establishments in time of peace.

But that they had done this in violation of the fundamental laws of England was acknowledged by all jurists,

and had been expressly affirmed in the Bill of Rights. It was therefore impossible for William, now that the

country was threatened by no foreign and no domestic enemy, to keep up even a single battalion without the

sanction of the Estates of the Realm; and it might well be doubted whether such a sanction would be given.

It is not easy for us to see this question in the light in which it appeared to our ancestors.

No man of sense has, in our days, or in the days of our fathers, seriously maintained that our island could be

safe without an army. And, even if our island were perfectly secure from attack, an army would still be

indispensably necessary to us. The growth of the empire has left us no choice. The regions which we have

colonized or conquered since the accession of the House of Hanover contain a population exceeding

twentyfold that which the House of Stuart governed. There are now more English soldiers on the other side

of the tropic of Cancer in time of peace than Cromwell had under his command in time of war. All the troops

of Charles II. would not have been sufficient to garrison the posts which we now occupy in the Mediterranean

Sea alone. The regiments which defend the remote dependencies of the Crown cannot be duly recruited and

relieved, unless a force far larger than that which James collected in the camp at Hounslow for the purpose of

overawing his capital be constantly kept up within the kingdom. The old national antipathy to permanent

military establishments, an antipathy which was once reasonable and salutary, but which lasted some time

after it had become unreasonable and noxious, has gradually yielded to the irresistible force of circumstances.

We have made the discovery, that an army may be so constituted as to be in the highest degree efficient

against an enemy, and yet obsequious to the civil magistrate. We have long ceased to apprehend danger to

law and to freedom from the license of troops, and from the ambition of victorious generals. An alarmist who

should now talk such language, as was common five generations ago, who should call for the entire

disbanding of the land force; of the realm, and who should gravely predict that the warriors of Inkerman and

Delhi would depose the Queen, dissolve the Parliament, and plunder the Bank, would be regarded as fit only

for a cell in Saint Luke's. But before the Revolution our ancestors had known a standing army only as an

instrument of lawless power. Judging by their own experience, they thought it impossible that such an army

should exist without danger to the rights both of the Crown and of the people. One class of politicians was

never weary of repeating that an Apostolic Church, a loyal gentry, an ancient nobility, a sainted King, had

been foully outraged by the Joyces and the Prides; another class recounted the atrocities committed by the

Lambs of Kirke, and by the Beelzebubs and Lucifers of Dundee; and both classes, agreeing in scarcely any

While such was the feeling of the nation, the King was, both as a statesman and as a general, most unwilling

to see that superb body of troops which he had formed with infinite difficulty broken up and dispersed. But,

as to this matter, he could not absolutely rely on the support of his ministers; nor could his ministers

absolutely rely on the support of that parliamentary majority whose attachment had enabled them to confront

enemies abroad and to crush traitors at home, to restore a debased currency, and to fix public credit on deep

The difficulties of the King's situation are to be, in part at least, attributed to an error which he had committed

in the preceding spring. The Gazette which announced that Sunderland been appointed Chamberlain of the

Royal Household, sworn of the Privy Council, and named one of the Lords Justices who were to administer

the government during the summer had caused great uneasiness among plain men who remembered all the

windings and doublings of his long career. In truth, his countrymen were unjust to him. For they thought him,

not only an unprincipled and faithless politician, which he was, but a deadly enemy of the liberties of the

nation, which he was not. What he wanted was simply to be safe, rich and great. To these objects he had been

constant through all the vicissitudes of his life. For these objects he had passed from Church to Church and

from faction to faction, had joined the most turbulent of oppositions without any zeal for freedom, and had

served the most arbitrary of monarchs without any zeal for monarchy; had voted for the Exclusion Bill

without being a Protestant, and had adored the Host without being a Papist; had sold his country at once to

both the great parties which divided the Continent; had taken money from France, and had sent intelligence to

Holland. As far, however, as he could be said to have any opinions, his opinions were Whiggish. Since his

return from exile, his influence had been generally exerted in favour of the Whig party. It was by his counsel

that the Great Seal had been entrusted to Somers, that Nottingham had been sacrificed to Russell, and that

Montague had been preferred to Fox. It was by his dexterous management that the Princess Anne had been

detached from the opposition, and that Godolphin had been removed from the head of the hoard of Treasury.

The party which Sunderland had done so much to serve now held a new pledge for his fidelity. His only son,

Charles Lord Spencer, was just entering on public life. The precocious maturity of the young man's

intellectual and moral character had excited hopes which were not destined to be realized. His knowledge of

ancient literature, and his skill in imitating the styles of the masters of Roman eloquence, were applauded by

veteran scholars. The sedateness of his deportment and the apparent regularity of his life delighted austere

moralists. He was known indeed to have one expensive taste; but it was a taste of the most respectable kind.

He loved books, and was bent or forming the most magnificent private library in England. While other heirs

of noble houses were inspecting patterns of steinkirks and sword knots, dangling after actresses, or betting on

fighting cocks, he was in pursuit of the Mentz editions of Tully's Offices, of the Parmesan Statius, and of the

inestimable Virgin of Zarottus.1 It was natural that high expectations should be formed of the virtue and

wisdom of a youth whose very luxury and prodigality had a grave and erudite air, and that even discerning

men should be unable to detect the vices which were hidden under that show of premature sobriety.

Spencer was a Whig, unhappily for the Whig party, which, before the unhonoured and unlamented close of

his life, was more than once brought to the verge of ruin by his violent temper and his crooked politics. His

Whiggism differed widely from that of his father. It was not a languid, speculative, preference of one theory

of government to another, but a fierce and dominant passion. Unfortunately, though an ardent, it was at the

same time a corrupt and degenerate, Whiggism; a Whiggism so narrow and oligarchical as to be little, if at

all, preferable to the worst forms of Toryism. The young lord's imagination had been fascinated by those

swelling sentiments of liberty which abound in the Latin poets and orators; and he, like those poets and

orators, meant by liberty something very different from the only liberty which is of importance to the

happiness of mankind. Like them, he could see no danger to liberty except from kings. A commonwealth,

oppressed and pillaged by such men as Opimius and Verres, was free, because it had no king. A member of

the Grand Council of Venice, who passed his whole life under tutelage and in fear, who could not travel

where he chose, or visit whom he chose, or invest his property as he chose, whose path was beset with spies,

who saw at the corners of the streets the mouth of bronze gaping for anonymous accusations against him, and

whom the Inquisitors of State could, at any moment, and for any or no reason, arrest, torture, fling into the

Grand Canal, was free, because he had no king. To curtail, for the benefit of a small privileged class,

prerogatives which the Sovereign possesses and ought to possess for the benefit of the whole nation, was the

object on which Spencer's heart was set. During many years he was restrained by older and wiser men; and it

was not till those whom he had early been accustomed to respect had passed away, and till he was himself at

the head of affairs, that he openly attempted to obtain for the hereditary nobility a precarious and invidious

In 1695, Spencer had taken his seat in the House of Commons as member for Tiverton, and had, during two

The party to which he had attached himself might perhaps have reasonably considered him as a hostage

sufficient to ensure the good faith of his father; for the Earl was approaching that time of life at which even

the most ambitious and rapacious men generally toil rather for their children than for themselves. But the

distrust which Sunderland inspired was such as no guarantee could quiet. Many fancied that he was,with

what object they never took the trouble to inquire,employing the same arts which had ruined James for the

purpose of ruining William. Each prince had had his weak side. One was too much a Papist, and the other too

much a soldier, for such a nation as this. The same intriguing sycophant who had encouraged the Papist in

one fatal error was now encouraging the soldier in another. It might well be apprehended that, under the

influence of this evil counsellor, the nephew might alienate as many hearts by trying to make England a

military country as the uncle had alienated by trying to make her a Roman Catholic country.

The parliamentary conflict on the great question of a standing army was preceded by a literary conflict. In the

autumn of 1697 began a controversy of no common interest and importance. The press was now free. An

exciting and momentous political question could be fairly discussed. Those who held uncourtly opinions

could express those opinions without resorting to illegal expedients and employing the agency of desperate

men. The consequence was that the dispute was carried on, though with sufficient keenness, yet, on the

whole, with a decency which would have been thought extraordinary in the days of the censorship.

On this occasion the Tories, though they felt strongly, wrote but little. The paper war was almost entirely

carried on between two sections of the Whig party. The combatants on both sides were generally anonymous.

But it was well known that one of the foremost champions of the malecontent Whigs was John Trenchard,

son of the late Secretary of State. Preeminent among the ministerial Whigs was one in whom admirable

vigour and quickness of intellect were united to a not less admirable moderation and urbanity, one who

looked on the history of past ages with the eye of a practical statesman, and on the events which were passing

before him with the eye of a philosophical historian. It was not necessary for him to name himself. He could

The pamphleteers who recommended the immediate and entire disbanding of the army had an easy task. If

they were embarrassed, it was only by the abundance of the matter from which they had to make their

selection. On their side were claptraps and historical commonplaces without number, the authority of a crowd

of illustrious names, all the prejudices, all the traditions, of both the parties in the state. These writers laid it

down as a fundamental principle of political science that a standing army and a free constitution could not

exist together. What, they asked, had destroyed the noble commonwealths of Greece? What had enslaved the

mighty Roman people? What had turned the Italian republics of the middle ages into lordships and duchies?

How was it that so many of the kingdoms of modern Europe had been transformed from limited into absolute

monarchies? The States General of France, the Cortes of Castile, the Grand Justiciary of Arragon, what had

been fatal to them all? History was ransacked for instances of adventurers who, by the help of mercenary

troops, had subjugated free nations or deposed legitimate princes; and such instances were easily found.

Much was said about Pisistratus, Timophanes, Dionysius, Agathocles, Marius and Sylla, Julius Caesar and

Augustus Caesar, Carthage besieged by her own mercenaries, Rome put up to auction by her own Praetorian

cohorts, Sultan Osman butchered by his own Janissaries, Lewis Sforza sold into captivity by his own

Switzers. But the favourite instance was taken from the recent history of our own land. Thousands still living

had seen the great usurper, who, strong in the power of the sword, had triumphed over both royalty and

freedom. The Tories were reminded that his soldiers had guarded the scaffold before the Banqueting House.

The Whigs were reminded that those same soldiers had taken the mace from the table of the House of

Commons. From such evils, it was said, no country could be secure which was cursed with a standing army.

And what were the advantages which could be set off against such evils? Invasion was the bugbear with

which the Court tried to frighten the nation. But we were not children to be scared by nursery tales. We were

at peace; and, even in time of war, an enemy who should attempt to invade us would probably be intercepted

by our fleet, and would assuredly, if he reached our shores, be repelled by our militia. Some people indeed

talked as if a militia could achieve nothing great. But that base doctrine was refuted by all ancient and all

modern history. What was the Lacedaemonian phalanx in the best days of Lacedaemon? What was, the

Roman legion in the best days of Rome? What were the armies which conquered at Cressy, at Poitiers, at

Agincourt, at Halidon, or at Flodden? What was that mighty array which Elizabeth reviewed at Tilbury? In

the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries Englishmen who did not live by the trade of war had made

war with success and glory. Were the English of the seventeenth century so degenerate that they could not be

For such reasons as these the disbanding of the forces was strongly recommended. Parliament, it was said,

might perhaps, from respect and tenderness for the person of His Majesty, permit him to have guards enough

to escort his coach and to pace the rounds before his palace. But this was the very utmost that it would be

right to concede. The defence of the realm ought to be confided to the sailors and the militia. Even the Tower

It must be evident to every intelligent and dispassionate man that these declaimers contradicted themselves. If

an army composed of regular troops really was far more efficient than an army composed of husbandmen

taken from the plough and burghers taken from the counter, how could the country be safe with no defenders

but husbandmen and burghers, when a great prince, who was our nearest neighbour, who had a few months

before been our enemy, and who might, in a few months, be our enemy again, kept up not less than a hundred

and fifty thousand regular troops? If, on the other hand, the spirit of the English people was such that they

would, with little or no training, encounter and defeat the most formidable array of veterans from the

continent, was it not absurd to apprehend that such a people could be reduced to slavery by a few regiments

of their own countrymen? But our ancestors were generally so much blinded by prejudice that this

inconsistency passed unnoticed. They were secure where they ought to have been wary, and timorous where

they might well have been secure. They were not shocked by hearing the same man maintain, in the same

breath, that, if twenty thousand professional soldiers were kept up, the liberty and property of millions of

Englishmen would be at the mercy of the Crown, and yet that those millions of Englishmen, fighting for

liberty and property, would speedily annihilate an invading army composed of fifty or sixty thousand of the

conquerors of Steinkirk and Landen. Whoever denied the former proposition was called a tool of the Court.

Somers was too wise to oppose himself directly to the strong current of popular feeling. With rare dexterity

he took the tone, not of an advocate, but of a judge. The danger which seemed so terrible to many honest

friends of liberty he did not venture to pronounce altogether visionary. But he reminded his countrymen that a

choice between dangers was sometimes all that was left to the wisest of mankind. No lawgiver had ever been

able to devise a perfect and immortal form of government. Perils lay thick on the right and on the left; and to

keep far from one evil was to draw near to another. That which, considered merely with reference to the

internal polity of England, might be, to a certain extent, objectionable, might be absolutely essential to her

rank among European Powers, and even to her independence. All that a statesman could do in such a case

was to weigh inconveniences against each other, and carefully to observe which way the scale leaned. The

evil of having regular soldiers, and the evil of not having them, Somers set forth and compared in a little

treatise, which was once widely renowned as the Balancing Letter, and which was admitted, even by the

malecontents, to be an able and plausible composition. He well knew that mere names exercise a mighty

influence on the public mind; that the most perfect tribunal which a legislator could construct would be

unpopular if it were called the Star Chamber; that the most judicious tax which a financier could devise

would excite murmurs if it were called the Shipmoney; and that the words Standing Army then had to

English ears a sound as unpleasing as either Shipmoney or Star Chamber. He declared therefore that he

abhorred the thought of a standing army. What he recommended was, not a standing, but a temporary army,

an army of which Parliament would annually fix the number, an army for which Parliament would annually

frame a military code, an army which would cease to exist as soon as either the Lords or the Commons

should think that its services were not needed. From such an army surely the danger to public liberty could

not by wise men be thought serious. On the other hand, the danger to which the kingdom would be exposed if

all the troops were disbanded was such as might well disturb the firmest mind. Suppose a war with the

greatest power in Christendom to break out suddenly, and to find us without one battalion of regular infantry,

without one squadron of regular cavalry; what disasters might we not reasonably apprehend? It was idle to

say that a descent could not take place without ample notice, and that we should have time to raise and

discipline a great force. An absolute prince, whose orders, given in profound secresy, were promptly obeyed

at once by his captains on the Rhine and on the Scheld, and by his admirals in the Bay of Biscay and in the

Mediterranean, might be ready to strike a blow long before we were prepared to parry it. We might be

appalled by learning that ships from widely remote parts, and troops from widely remote garrisons, had

assembled at a single point within sight of our coast. To trust to our fleet was to trust to the winds and the

waves. The breeze which was favourable to the invader might prevent our men of war from standing out to

sea. Only nine years ago this had actually happened. The Protestant wind, before which the Dutch armament

had run full sail down the Channel, had driven King James's navy back into the Thames. It must then be

acknowledged to be not improbable that the enemy might land. And, if he landed, what would he find? An

open country; a rich country; provisions everywhere; not a river but which could be forded; no natural

fastnesses such as protect the fertile plains of Italy; no artificial fastnesses such as, at every step, impede the

progress of a conqueror in the Netherlands. Every thing must then be staked on the steadiness of the militia;

and it was pernicious flattery to represent the militia as equal to a conflict in the field with veterans whose

whole life had been a preparation for the day of battle. The instances which it was the fashion to cite of the

great achievements of soldiers taken from the threshing floor and the shopboard were fit only for a

schoolboy's theme. Somers, who had studied ancient literature like a man,a rare thing in his time,said

that those instances refuted the doctrine which they were meant to prove. He disposed of much idle

declamation about the Lacedaemonians by saying, most concisely, correctly and happily, that the

Lacedaemonian commonwealth really was a standing army which threatened all the rest of Greece. In fact,

the Spartan had no calling except war. Of arts, sciences and letters he was ignorant. The labour of the spade

and of the loom, and the petty gains of trade, he contemptuously abandoned to men of a lower caste. His

whole existence from childhood to old age was one long military training. Meanwhile the Athenian, the

Corinthian, the Argive, the Theban, gave his chief attention to his oliveyard or his vineyard, his warehouse or

his workshop, and took up his shield and spear only for short terms and at long intervals. The difference

therefore between a Lacedaemonian phalanx and any other phalanx was long as great as the difference

between a regiment of the French household troops and a regiment of the London trainbands. Lacedaemon

consequently continued to be dominant in Greece till other states began to employ regular troops. Then her

supremacy was at an end. She was great while she was a standing army among militias. She fell when she

had to contend with other standing armies. The lesson which is really to be learned from her ascendency and

from her decline is this, that the occasional soldier is no match for the professional soldier.2

The same lesson Somers drew from the history of Rome; and every scholar who really understands that

history will admit that he was in the right. The finest militia that ever existed was probably that of Italy in the

third century before Christ. It might have been thought that seven or eight hundred thousand fighting men,

who assuredly wanted neither natural courage nor public spirit, would have been able to protect their own

hearths and altars against an invader. An invader came, bringing with him an army small and exhausted by a

march over the snows of the Alps, but familiar with battles and sieges. At the head of this army he traversed

the peninsula to and fro, gained a succession of victories against immense numerical odds, slaughtered the

hardy youth of Latium like sheep, by tens of thousands, encamped under the walls of Rome, continued during

sixteen years to maintain himself in a hostile country, and was never dislodged till he had by a cruel

It was idle to repeat the names of great battles won, in the middle ages, by men who did not make war their

chief calling; those battles proved only that one militia might beat another, and not that a militia could beat a

regular army. As idle was it to declaim about the camp at Tilbury. We had indeed reason to be proud of the

spirit which all classes of Englishmen, gentlemen and yeomen, peasants and burgesses, had so signally

displayed in the great crisis of 1588. But we had also reason to be thankful that, with all their spirit, they were

not brought face to face with the Spanish battalions. Somers related an anecdote, well worthy to be

remembered, which had been preserved by tradition in the noble house of De Vere. One of the most

illustrious men of that house, a captain who had acquired much experience and much fame in the

Netherlands, had, in the crisis of peril, been summoned back to England by Elizabeth, and rode with her

through the endless ranks of shouting pikemen. She asked him what he thought of the army. "It is," he said,

"a brave army." There was something in his tone or manner which showed that he meant more than his words

expressed. The Queen insisted on his speaking out. "Madam," he said, "Your Grace's army is brave indeed. I

have not in the world the name of a coward, and yet I am the greatest coward here. All these fine fellows are

praying that the enemy may land, and that there may be a battle; and I, who know that enemy well, cannot

think of such a battle without dismay." De Vere was doubtless in the right. The Duke of Parma, indeed,

would not have subjected our country; but it is by no means improbable that, if he had effected a landing, the

island would have been the theatre of a war greatly resembling that which Hannibal waged in Italy, and that

the invaders would not have been driven out till many cities had been sacked, till many counties had been

wasted, and till multitudes of our stouthearted rustics and artisans had perished in the carnage of days not

While the pamphlets of Trenchard and Somers were in every hand, the Parliament met.

The words with which the King opened the session brought the great question to a speedy issue. "The

circumstances," he said, "of affairs abroad are such, that I think myself obliged to tell you my opinion, that,

for the present, England cannot be safe without a land force; and I hope we shall not give those that mean us

ill the opportunity of effecting that under the notion of a peace which they could not bring to pass by war."

The speech was well received; for that Parliament was thoroughly well affected to the Government. The

members had, like the rest of the community, been put into high good humour by the return of peace and by

the revival of trade. They were indeed still under the influence of the feelings of the preceding day; and they

had still in their ears the thanksgiving sermons and thanksgiving anthems; all the bonfires had hardly burned

out; and the rows of lamps and candles had hardly been taken down. Many, therefore, who did not assent to

all that the King had said, joined in a loud hum of approbation when he concluded.3 As soon as the

Commons had retired to their own chamber, they resolved to present an address assuring His Majesty that

they would stand by him in peace as firmly as they had stood by him in war. Seymour, who had, during the

autumn, been going from shire to shire, for the purpose of inflaming the country gentlemen against the

ministry, ventured to make some uncourtly remarks; but he gave so much offence that he was hissed down,

The friends of the Government were greatly elated by the proceedings of this day. During the following week

hopes were entertained that the Parliament might be induced to vote a peace establishment of thirty thousand

men. But these hopes were delusive. The hum with which William's speech had been received, and the hiss

which had drowned the voice of Seymour, had been misunderstood. The Commons were indeed warmly

attached to the King's person and government, and quick to resent any disrespectful mention of his name. But

the members who were disposed to let him have even half as many troops as he thought necessary were a

minority. On the tenth of December his speech was considered in a Committee of the whole House; and

Harley came forward as the chief of the opposition. He did not, like some hot headed men, among both the

Whigs and the Tories, contend that there ought to be no regular soldiers. But he maintained that it was

unnecessary to keep up, after the peace of Ryswick, a larger force than had been kept up after the peace of

Nimeguen. He moved, therefore, that the military establishment should be reduced to what it had been in the

year 1680. The Ministers found that, on this occasion, neither their honest nor their dishonest supporters

could be trusted. For, in the minds of the most respectable men, the prejudice against standing armies was of

too long growth and too deep root to be at once removed; and those means by which the Court might, at

another time, have secured the help of venal politicians were, at that moment, of less avail than usual. The

Triennial Act was beginning to produce its effects. A general election was at hand. Every member who had

constituents was desirous to please them; and it was certain that no member would please his constituents by

voting for a standing army; and the resolution moved by Harvey was strongly supported by Howe, was

carried, was reported to the House on the following day, and, after a debate in which several orators made a

great display of their knowledge of ancient and modern history, was confirmed by one hundred and

In this debate the fear and hatred with which many of the best friends of the Government regarded

Sunderland were unequivocally manifested. "It is easy," such was the language of several members, "it is

easy to guess by whom that unhappy sentence was inserted in the speech from the Throne. No person well

acquainted with the disastrous and disgraceful history of the last two reigns can doubt who the minister is,

who is now whispering evil counsel in the ear of a third master." The Chamberlain, thus fiercely attacked,

was very feebly defended. There was indeed in the House of Commons a small knot of his creatures; and they

were men not destitute of a certain kind of ability; but their moral character was as bad as his. One of them

was the late Secretary of the Treasury, Guy, who had been turned out of his place for corruption. Another was

the late Speaker, Trevor, who had, from the chair, put the question whether he was or was not a rogue, and

had been forced to pronounce that the Ayes had it. A third was Charles Duncombe, long the greatest

goldsmith of Lombard Street, and now one of the greatest landowners of the North Riding of Yorkshire.

Possessed of a private fortune equal to that of any duke, he had not thought it beneath him to accept the place

of Cashier of the Excise, and had perfectly understood how to make that place lucrative; but he had recently

been ejected from office by Montague, who thought, with good reason, that he was not a man to be trusted.

Such advocates as Trevor, Guy and Duncombe could do little for Sunderland in debate. The statesmen of the

junto would do nothing for him. They had undoubtedly owed much to him. His influence, cooperating with

their own great abilities and with the force of circumstances, had induced the King to commit the direction of

the internal administration of the realm to a Whig Cabinet. But the distrust which the old traitor and apostate

inspired was not to be overcome. The ministers could not be sure that he was not, while smiling on them,

whispering in confidential tones to them, pouring out, as it might seem, all his heart to them, really

calumniating them in the closet or suggesting to the opposition some ingenious mode of attacking them. They

had very recently been thwarted by him. They were bent on making Wharton a Secretary of State, and had

therefore looked forward with impatience to the retirement of Trumball, who was indeed hardly equal to the

duties of his great place. To their surprise and mortification they learned, on the eve of the meeting of

Parliament, that Trumball had suddenly resigned, and Vernon, the Under Secretary, had been summoned to

Kensington, and had returned thence with the seals. Vernon was a zealous Whig, and not personally

unacceptable to the chiefs of his party. But the Lord Chancellor, the First Lord of the Treasury, and the First

Lord of the Admiralty, might not unnaturally think it strange that a post of the highest importance should

have been filled up in opposition to their known wishes, and with a haste and a secresy which plainly showed

that the King did not wish to be annoyed by their remonstrances. The Lord Chamberlain pretended that he

had done all in his power to serve Wharton. But the Whig chiefs were not men to be duped by the professions

of so notorious a liar. Montague bitterly described him as a fireship, dangerous at best, but on the whole most

dangerous as a consort, and least dangerous when showing hostile colours. Smith, who was the most efficient

of Montague's lieutenants, both in the Treasury and in the Parliament, cordially sympathised with his leader.

Sunderland was therefore left undefended. His enemies became bolder and more vehement every day. Sir

Thomas Dyke, member for Grinstead, and Lord Norris, son of the Earl of Abingdon, talked of moving an

address requesting the King to banish for ever from the Court and the Council that evil adviser who had

misled His Majesty's royal uncles, had betrayed the liberties of the people, and had abjured the Protestant

Sunderland had been uneasy from the first moment at which his name had been mentioned in the House of

Commons. He was now in an agony of terror. The whole enigma of his life, an enigma of which many

unsatisfactory and some absurd explanations have been propounded, is at once solved if we consider him as a

man insatiably greedy of wealth and power, and yet nervously apprehensive of danger. He rushed with

ravenous eagerness at every bait which was offered to his cupidity. But any ominous shadow, any threatening

murmur, sufficed to stop him in his full career, and to make him change his course or bury himself in a hiding

place. He ought to have thought himself fortunate indeed, when, after all the crimes which he had committed,

he found himself again enjoying his picture gallery and his woods at Althorpe, sitting in the House of Lords,

admitted to the royal closet, pensioned from the Privy Purse, consulted about the most important affairs of

state. But his ambition and avarice would not suffer him to rest till he held a high and lucrative office, till he

was a regent of the kingdom. The consequence was, as might have been expected, a violent clamour; and that

His friends assured him that the threatened address would not be carried. Perhaps a hundred and sixty

members might vote for it; but hardly more. "A hundred and sixty!" he cried: "No minister can stand against

a hundred and sixty. I am sure that I will not try." It must be remembered that a hundred and sixty votes in a

House of five hundred and thirteen members would correspond to more than two hundred votes in the present

House of Commons; a very formidable minority on the unfavourable side of a question deeply affecting the

personal character of a public man. William, unwilling to part with a servant whom he knew to be

unprincipled, but whom he did not consider as more unprincipled than many other English politicians, and in

whom he had found much of a very useful sort of knowledge, and of a very useful sort of ability, tried to

induce the ministry to come to the rescue. It was particularly important to soothe Wharton, who had been

exasperated by his recent disappointment, and had probably exasperated the other members of the junto. He

was sent for to the palace. The King himself intreated him to be reconciled to the Lord Chamberlain, and to

prevail on the Whig leaders in the Lower House to oppose any motion which Dyke or Norris might make.

Wharton answered in a manner which made it clear that from him no help was to be expected. Sunderland's

terrors now became insupportable. He had requested some of his friends to come to his house that he might

consult them; they came at the appointed hour, but found that he had gone to Kensington, and had left word

that he should soon be back. When he joined them, they observed that he had not the gold key which is the

badge of the Lord Chamberlain, and asked where it was. "At Kensington," answered Sunderland. They found

that he had tendered his resignation, and that it had been, after a long struggle, accepted. They blamed his

haste, and told him that, since he had summoned them to advise him on that day, he might at least have

waited till the morrow. "To morrow," he exclaimed, "would have ruined me. To night has saved me."

Meanwhile, both the disciples of Somers and the disciples of Trenchard were grumbling at Harley's

resolution. The disciples of Somers maintained that, if it was right to have an army at all, it must be right to

have an efficient army. The disciples of Trenchard complained that a great principle had been shamefully

given up. On the vital issue, Standing Army or no Standing Army, the Commons had pronounced an

erroneous, a fatal decision. Whether that army should consist of five regiments or of fifteen was hardly worth

debating. The great dyke which kept out arbitrary power had been broken. It was idle to say that the breach

was narrow; for it would soon be widened by the flood which would rush in. The war of pamphlets raged

more fiercely than ever. At the same time alarming symptoms began to appear among the men of the sword.

They saw themselves every day described in print as the scum of society, as mortal enemies of the liberties of

their country. Was it reasonable,such was the language of some scribblers,that an honest gentleman

should pay a heavy land tax, in order to support in idleness and luxury a set of fellows who requited him by

seducing his dairy maids and shooting his partridges? Nor was it only in Grub Street tracts that such

reflections were to be found. It was known all over the town that uncivil things had been said of the military

profession in the House of Commons, and that Jack Howe, in particular, had, on this subject, given the rein to

his wit and to his ill nature. Some rough and daring veterans, marked with the scars of Steinkirk and singed

with the smoke of Namur, threatened vengeance for these insults. The writers and speakers who had taken the

greatest liberties went in constant fear of being accosted by fiercelooking captains, and required to make an

immediate choice between fighting and being caned. One gentleman, who had made himself conspicuous by

the severity of his language, went about with pistols in his pockets. Howe, whose courage was not

proportionate to his malignity and petulance, was so much frightened, that he retired into the country. The

King, well aware that a single blow given, at that critical conjuncture, by a soldier to a member of Parliament

might produce disastrous consequences, ordered the officers of the army to their quarters, and, by the

vigorous exertion of his authority and influence, succeeded in preventing all outrage.6

All this time the feeling in favour of a regular force seemed to be growing in the House of Commons. The

resignation of Sunderland had put many honest gentlemen in good humour. The Whig leaders exerted

themselves to rally their followers, held meetings at the "Rose," and represented strongly the dangers to

which the country would be exposed, if defended only by a militia. The opposition asserted that neither bribes

nor promises were spared. The ministers at length flattered themselves that Harley's resolution might be

rescinded. On the eighth of January they again tried their strength, and were again defeated, though by a

smaller majority than before. A hundred and sixtyfour members divided with them. A hundred and

eightyeight were for adhering to the vote of the eleventh of December. It was remarked that on this occasion

It was necessary to yield. All that remained was to put on the words of the resolution of the eleventh of

December the most favourable sense that they could be made to bear. They did indeed admit of very different

interpretations. The force which was actually in England in 1680 hardly amounted to five thousand men. But

the garrison of Tangier and the regiments in the pay of the Batavian federation, which, as they were available

for the defence of England against a foreign or domestic enemy, might be said to be in some sort part of the

English army, amounted to at least five thousand more. The construction which the ministers put on the

resolution of the eleventh of December was, that the army was to consist of ten thousand men; and in this

construction the House acquiesced. It was not held to be necessary that the Parliament should, as in our time,

fix the amount of the land force. The Commons thought that they sufficiently limited the number of soldiers

by limiting the sum which was to be expended in maintaining soldiers. What that sum should be was a

question which raised much debate. Harley was unwilling to give more than three hundred thousand pounds.

Montague struggled for four hundred thousand. The general sense of the House was that Harley offered too

little, and that Montague demanded too much. At last, on the fourteenth of January, a vote was taken for three

hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Four days later the House resolved to grant halfpay to the disbanded

officers till they should be otherwise provided for. The halfpay was meant to be a retainer as well as a

reward. The effect of this important vote therefore was that, whenever a new war should break out, the nation

would be able to command the services of many gentlemen of great military experience. The ministry

afterwards succeeded in obtaining, much against the will of a portion of the opposition, a separate vote for

A Mutiny Act, which had been passed in 1697, expired in the spring of 1698. As yet no such Act had been

passed except in time of war; and the temper of the Parliament and of the nation was such that the ministers

did not venture to ask, in time of peace, for a renewal of powers unknown to the constitution. For the present,

therefore, the soldier was again, as in the times which preceded the Revolution, subject to exactly the same

It was only in matters relating to the army that the government found the Commons unmanageable. Liberal

provision was made for the navy. The number of seamen was fixed at ten thousand, a great force, according

to the notions of that age, for a time of peace. The funds assigned some years before for the support of the

civil list had fallen short of the estimate. It was resolved that a new arrangement should be made, and that a

certain income should be settled on the King. The amount was fixed, by an unanimous vote, at seven hundred

thousand pounds; and the Commons declared that, by making this ample provision for his comfort and

dignity, they meant to express their sense of the great things which he had done for the country. It is probable,

however, that so large a sum would not have been given without debates and divisions, had it not been

understood that he meant to take on himself the charge of the Duke of Gloucester's establishment, and that he

would in all probability have to pay fifty thousand pounds a year to Mary of Modena. The Tories were

unwilling to disoblige the Princess of Denmark; and the Jacobites abstained from offering any opposition to a

grant in the benefit of which they hoped that the banished family would participate.

It was not merely by pecuniary liberality that the Parliament testified attachment to the Sovereign. A bill was

rapidly passed which withheld the benefit of the Habeas Corpus Act, during twelve months more, from

Bernardi and some other conspirators who had been concerned in the Assassination Plot, but whose guilt,

though demonstrated to the conviction of every reasonable man, could not be proved by two witnesses. At the

same time new securities were provided against a new danger which threatened the government. The peace

had put an end to the apprehension that the throne of William might be subverted by foreign arms, but had, at

the same time, facilitated domestic treason. It was no longer necessary for an agent from Saint Germains to

cross the sea in a fishing boat, under the constant dread of being intercepted by a cruiser. It was no longer

necessary for him to land on a desolate beach, to lodge in a thatched hovel, to dress himself like a carter, or to

travel up to town on foot. He came openly by the Calais packet, walked into the best inn at Dover, and

ordered posthorses for London. Meanwhile young Englishmen of quality and fortune were hastening in

crowds to Paris. They would naturally wish to see him who had once been their king; and this curiosity,

though in itself innocent, might have evil consequences. Artful tempters would doubtless be on the watch for

every such traveller; and many such travellers might be well pleased to be courteously accosted, in a foreign

land, by Englishmen of honourable name, distinguished appearance, and insinuating address. It was not to be

expected that a lad fresh from the university would be able to refute all the sophisms and calumnies which

might be breathed in his ear by dexterous and experienced seducers. Nor would it be strange if he should, in

no long time, accept an invitation to a private audience at Saint Germains, should be charmed by the graces of

Mary of Modena, should find something engaging in the childish innocence of the Prince of Wales, should

kiss the hand of James, and should return home an ardent Jacobite. An Act was therefore passed forbidding

English subjects to hold any intercourse orally, or by writing, or by message, with the exiled family. A day

was fixed after which no English subject, who had, during the late war, gone into France without the royal

permission or borne arms against his country was to be permitted to reside in this kingdom, except under a

special license from the King. Whoever infringed these rules incurred the penalties of high treason.

The dismay was at first great among the malecontents. For English and Irish Jacobites, who had served under

the standards of Lewis or hung about the Court of Saint Germains, had, since the peace, come over in

multitudes to England. It was computed that thousands were within the scope of the new Act. But the severity

of that Act was mitigated by a beneficent administration. Some fierce and stubborn nonjurors who would

not debase themselves by asking for any indulgence, and some conspicuous enemies of the government who

had asked for indulgence in vain, were under the necessity of taking refuge on the Continent. But the great

majority of those offenders who promised to live peaceably under William's rule obtained his permission to

In the case of one great offender there were some circumstances which attracted general interest, and which

might furnish a good subject to a novelist or a dramatist. Near fourteen years before this time, Sunderland,

then Secretary of State to Charles the Second, had married his daughter Lady Elizabeth Spencer to Donough

Macarthy, Earl of Clancarty, the lord of an immense domain in Munster. Both the bridegroom and the bride

were mere children, the bridegroom only fifteen, the bride only eleven. After the ceremony they were

separated; and many years full of strange vicissitudes elapsed before they again met. The boy soon visited his

estates in Ireland. He had been bred a member of the Church of England; but his opinions and his practice

were loose. He found himself among kinsmen who were zealous Roman Catholics. A Roman Catholic king

was on the throne. To turn Roman Catholic was the best recommendation to favour both at Whitehall and at

Dublin Castle. Clancarty speedily changed his religion, and from a dissolute Protestant became a dissolute

Papist. After the Revolution he followed the fortunes of James; sate in the Celtic Parliament which met at the

King's Inns; commanded a regiment in the Celtic army; was forced to surrender himself to Marlborough at

Cork; was sent to England, and was imprisoned in the Tower. The Clancarty estates, which were supposed to

yield a rent of not much less than ten thousand a year, were confiscated. They were charged with an annuity

to the Earl's brother, and with another annuity to his wife; but the greater part was bestowed by the King on

Lord Woodstock, the eldest son of Portland; During some time, the prisoner's life was not safe. For the

popular voice accused him of outrages for which the utmost license of civil war would not furnish a plea. It is

said that he was threatened with an appeal of murder by the widow of a Protestant clergyman who had been

put to death during the troubles. After passing three years in confinement, Clancarty made his escape to the

Continent, was graciously received at St. Germains, and was entrusted with the command of a corps of Irish

refugees. When the treaty of Ryswick had put an end to the hope that the banished dynasty would be restored

by foreign arms, he flattered himself that he might be able to make his peace with the English Government.

But he was grievously disappointed. The interest of his wife's family was undoubtedly more than sufficient to

obtain a pardon for him. But on that interest he could not reckon. The selfish, base, covetous, fatherinlaw

was not at all desirous to have a highborn beggar and the posterity of a highborn beggar to maintain. The

ruling passion of the brotherinlaw was a stern and acrimonious party spirit. He could not bear to think that

he was so nearly connected with an enemy of the Revolution and of the Bill of Rights, and would with

pleasure have seen the odious tie severed even by the hand of the executioner. There was one, however, from

whom the ruined, expatriated, proscribed young nobleman might hope to find a kind reception. He stole

across the Channel in disguise, presented himself at Sunderland's door, and requested to see Lady Clancarty.

He was charged, he said, with a message to her from her mother, who was then lying on a sick bed at

Windsor. By this fiction he obtained admission, made himself known to his wife, whose thoughts had

probably been constantly fixed on him during many years, and prevailed on her to give him the most tender

proofs of an affection sanctioned by the laws both of God and of man. The secret was soon discovered and

betrayed by a waiting woman. Spencer learned that very night that his sister had admitted her husband to her

apartment. The fanatical young Whig, burning with animosity which he mistook for virtue, and eager to

emulate the Corinthian who assassinated his brother, and the Roman who passed sentence of death on his son,

flew to Vernon's office, gave information that the Irish rebel, who had once already escaped from custody,

was in hiding hard by, and procured a warrant and a guard of soldiers. Clancarty was found in the arms of his

wife, and dragged to the Tower. She followed him and implored permission to partake his cell. These events

produced a great stir throughout the society of London. Sunderland professed everywhere that he heartily

approved of his son's conduct; but the public had made up its mind about Sunderland's veracity, and paid very

little attention to his professions on this or on any other subject. In general, honourable men of both parties,

whatever might be their opinion of Clancarty, felt great compassion for his mother who was dying of a

broken heart, and his poor young wife who was begging piteously to be admitted within the Traitor's Gate.

Devonshire and Bedford joined with Ormond to ask for mercy. The aid of a still more powerful intercessor

was called in. Lady Russell was esteemed by the King as a valuable friend; she was venerated by the nation

generally as a saint, the widow of a martyr; and, when she deigned to solicit favours, it was scarcely possible

that she should solicit in vain. She naturally felt a strong sympathy for the unhappy couple, who were parted

by the walls of that gloomy old fortress in which she had herself exchanged the last sad endearments with one

whose image was never absent from her. She took Lady Clancarty with her to the palace, obtained access to

William, and put a petition into his hand. Clancarty was pardoned on condition that he should leave the

kingdom and never return to it. A pension was granted to him, small when compared with the magnificent

inheritance which he had forfeited, but quite sufficient to enable him to live like a gentleman on the

All this time the ways and means for the year were under consideration. The Parliament was able to grant

some relief to the country. The land tax was reduced from four shillings in the pound to three. But nine

expensive campaigns had left a heavy arrear behind them; and it was plain that the public burdens must, even

in the time of peace, be such as, before the Revolution, would have been thought more than sufficient to

support a vigorous war. A country gentleman was in no very good humour, when he compared the sums

which were now exacted from him with those which he had been in the habit of paying under the last two

kings; his discontent became stronger when he compared his own situation with that of courtiers, and above

all of Dutch courtiers, who had been enriched by grants of Crown property; and both interest and envy made

him willing to listen to politicians who assured him that, if those grants were resumed, he might be relieved

The arguments against such a resumption were not likely to be heard with favour by a popular assembly

There can be no doubt that the Sovereign was, by the old polity of the realm, competent to give or let the

domains of the Crown in such manner as seemed good to him. No statute defined the length of the term

which he might grant, or the amount of the rent which he must reserve. He might part with the fee simple of a

forest extending over a hundred square miles in consideration of a tribute of a brace of hawks to be delivered

annually to his falconer, or of a napkin of fine linen to be laid on the royal table at the coronation banquet. In

fact, there had been hardly a reign since the Conquest, in which great estates had not been bestowed by our

princes on favoured subjects. Anciently, indeed, what had been lavishly given was not seldom violently taken

away. Several laws for the resumption of Crown lands were passed by the Parliaments of the fourteenth and

fifteenth centuries. Of those laws the last was that which, in the year 1485, immediately after the battle of

Bosworth, annulled the donations of the kings of the House of York. More than two hundred years had since

elapsed without any Resumption Act. An estate derived from the royal liberality had long been universally

thought as secure as an estate which had descended from father to son since the compilation of Domesday

Book. No title was considered as more perfect than that of the Russells to Woburn, given by Henry the Eighth

to the first Earl of Bedford, or than that of the Cecils to Hatfield, purchased from the Crown for less than a

third of the real value by the first Earl of Salisbury. The Long Parliament did not, even in that celebrated

instrument of nineteen articles, which was framed expressly for the purpose of making the King a mere Doge,

propose to restrain him from dealing according to his pleasure with his parks and his castles, his fisheries and

his mines. After the Restoration, under the government of an easy prince, who had indeed little disposition to

give, but who could not bear to refuse, many noble private fortunes were carved out of the property of the

Crown. Some of the persons who were thus enriched, Albemarle, for example, Sandwich and Clarendon,

might be thought to have fairly earned their master's favour by their services. Others had merely amused his

leisure or pandered to his vices. His mistresses were munificently rewarded. Estates sufficient to support the

highest rank in the peerage were distributed among his illegitimate children. That these grants, however

prodigal, were strictly legal, was tacitly admitted by the Estates of the Realm, when, in 1689, they recounted

and condemned the unconstitutional acts of the kings of the House of Stuart. Neither in the Declaration of

Right nor in the Bill of Rights is there a word on the subject. William, therefore, thought himself at liberty to

give away his hereditary domains as freely as his predecessors had given away theirs. There was much

murmuring at the profusion with which he rewarded his Dutch favourites; and we have seen that, on one

occasion in the year 1696, the House of Commons interfered for the purpose of restraining his liberality. An

address was presented requesting him not to grant to Portland an extensive territory in North Wales. But it is

to be observed that, though in this address a strong opinion was expressed that the grant would be

mischievous, the Commons did not deny, and must therefore be considered as having admitted, that it would

be perfectly legal. The King, however, yielded; and Portland was forced to content himself with ten or twelve

It seems, therefore, clear that our princes were, by the law of the land, competent to do what they would with

their hereditary estates. It is perfectly true that the law was defective, and that the profusion with which

mansions, abbeys, chaces, warrens, beds of ore, whole streets, whole market towns, had been bestowed on

courtiers was greatly to be lamented. Nothing could have been more proper than to pass a prospective statute

tying up in strict entail the little which still remained of the Crown property. But to annul by a retrospective

statute patents, which in Westminster Hall were held to be legally valid, would have been simply robbery.

Such robbery must necessarily have made all property insecure; and a statesman must be shortsighted

indeed who imagines that what makes property insecure can really make society prosperous.

But it is vain to expect that men who are inflamed by anger, who are suffering distress, and who fancy that it

is in their power to obtain immediate relief from their distresses at the expense of those who have excited

their anger, will reason as calmly as the historian who, biassed neither by interest nor passion, reviews the

events of a past age. The public burdens were heavy. To whatever extent the grants of royal domains were

revoked, those burdens would be lightened. Some of the recent grants had undoubtedly been profuse. Some

of the living grantees were unpopular. A cry was raised which soon became formidably loud. All the Tories,

all the malecontent Whigs, and multitudes who, without being either Tories or malecontent Whigs, disliked

taxes and disliked Dutchmen, called for a resumption of all the Crown property which King William had, as

On the seventh of February 1698, this subject, destined to irritate the public mind at intervals during many

years, was brought under the consideration of the House of Commons. The opposition asked leave to bring in

a bill vacating all grants of Crown property which had been made since the Revolution. The ministers were in

a great strait; the public feeling was strong; a general election was approaching; it was dangerous and it

would probably be vain to encounter the prevailing sentiment directly. But the shock which could not be

resisted might be eluded. The ministry accordingly professed to find no fault with the proposed bill, except

that it did not go far enough, and moved for leave to bring in two more bills, one for annulling the grants of

James the Second, the other for annulling the grants of Charles the Second. The Tories were caught in their

own snare. For most of the grants of Charles and James had been made to Tories; and a resumption of those

grants would have reduced some of the chiefs of the Tory party to poverty. Yet it was impossible to draw a

distinction between the grants of William and those of his two predecessors. Nobody could pretend that the

law had been altered since his accession. If, therefore, the grants of the Stuarts were legal, so were his; if his

grants were illegal, so were the grants of his uncles. And, if both his grants and the grants of his uncles were

illegal, it was absurd to say that the mere lapse of time made a difference. For not only was it part of the

alphabet of the law that there was no prescription against the Crown, but the thirtyeight years which had

elapsed since the Restoration would not have sufficed to bar a writ of right brought by a private demandant

against a wrongful tenant. Nor could it be pretended that William had bestowed his favours less judiciously

than Charles and James. Those who were least friendly to the Dutch would hardly venture to say that

Portland, Zulestein and Ginkell was less deserving of the royal bounty than the Duchess of Cleveland and the

Duchess of Portsmouth, than the progeny of Nell Gwynn, than the apostate Arlington or the butcher Jeffreys.

The opposition, therefore, sullenly assented to what the ministry proposed. From that moment the scheme

was doomed. Everybody affected to be for it; and everybody was really against it. The three bills were

brought in together, read a second time together, ordered to be committed together, and were then, first

In the history of the financial legislation of this session, there were some episodes which deserve to be

related. Those members, a numerous body, who envied and dreaded Montague readily became the

unconscious tools of the cunning malice of Sunderland, whom Montague had refused to defend in Parliament,

and who, though detested by the opposition, contrived to exercise some influence over that party through the

instrumentality of Charles Duncombe. Duncombe indeed had his own reasons for hating Montague, who had

turned him out of the place of Cashier of the Excise. A serious charge was brought against the Board of

Treasury, and especially against its chief. He was the inventor of Exchequer Bills; and they were popularly

called Montague's notes. He had induced the Parliament to enact that those bills, even when at a discount in

the market, should be received at par by the collectors of the revenue. This enactment, if honestly carried into

effect, would have been unobjectionable. But it was strongly rumoured that there had been foul play,

peculation, even forgery. Duncombe threw the most serious imputations on the Board of Treasury, and

pretended that he had been put out of his office only because he was too shrewd to be deceived, and too

honest to join in deceiving the public. Tories and malecontent Whigs, elated by the hope that Montague

might be convicted of malversation, eagerly called for inquiry. An inquiry was instituted; but the result not

only disappointed but utterly confounded the accusers. The persecuted minister obtained both a complete

acquittal, and a signal revenge. Circumstances were discovered which seemed to indicate that Duncombe

himself was not blameless. The clue was followed; he was severely crossexamined; he lost his head; made

one unguarded admission after another, and was at length compelled to confess, on the floor of the House,

that he had been guilty of an infamous fraud, which, but for his own confession, it would have been scarcely

possible to bring home to him. He had been ordered by the Commissioners of the Excise to pay ten thousand

pounds into the Exchequer for the public service. He had in his hands, as cashier, more than double that sum

in good milled silver. With some of this money he bought Exchequer Bills which were then at a considerable

discount; he paid those bills in; and he pocketed the discount, which amounted to about four hundred pounds.

Nor was this all. In order to make it appear that the depreciated paper, which he had fraudulently substituted

for silver, had been received by him in payment of taxes, he had employed a knavish Jew to forge

endorsements of names, some real and some imaginary. This scandalous story, wrung out of his own lips,

was heard by the opposition with consternation and shame, by the ministers and their friends with vindictive

exultation. It was resolved, without any division, that he should be sent to the Tower, that he should be kept

close prisoner there, that he should be expelled from the House. Whether any further punishment could be

inflicted on him was a perplexing question. The English law touching forgery became, at a later period,

barbarously severe; but, in 1698, it was absurdly lax. The prisoner's offence was certainly not a felony; and

lawyers apprehended that there would be much difficulty in convicting him even of a misdemeanour. But a

recent precedent was fresh in the minds of all men. The weapon which had reached Fenwick might reach

Duncombe. A bill of pains and penalties was brought in, and carried through the earlier stages with less

opposition than might have been expected. Some Noes might perhaps be uttered; but no members ventured to

say that the Noes had it. The Tories were mad with shame and mortification, at finding that their rash attempt

to ruin an enemy had produced no effect except the ruin of a friend. In their rage, they eagerly caught at a

new hope of revenge, a hope destined to end, as their former hope had ended, in discomfiture and disgrace.

They learned, from the agents of Sunderland, as many people suspected, but certainly from informants who

were well acquainted with the offices about Whitehall, that some securities forfeited to the Crown in Ireland

had been bestowed by the King ostensibly on one Thomas Railton, but really on the Chancellor of the

Exchequer. The value of these securities was about ten thousand pounds. On the sixteenth of February this

transaction was brought without any notice under the consideration of the House of Commons by Colonel

Granville, a Tory member, nearly related to the Earl of Bath. Montague was taken completely by surprise, but

manfully avowed the whole truth, and defended what he had done. The orators of the opposition declaimed

against him with great animation and asperity. "This gentleman," they said, "has at once violated three

distinct duties. He is a privy councillor, and, as such, is bound to advise the Crown with a view, not to his

own selfish interests, but to the general good. He is the first minister of finance, and is, as such, bound to be a

thrifty manager of the royal treasure. He is a member of this House, and is, as such, bound to see that the

burdens borne by his constituents are not made heavier by rapacity and prodigality. To all these trusts he has

been unfaithful. The advice of the privy councillor to his master is, 'Give me money.' The first Lord of the

Treasury signs a warrant for giving himself money out of the Treasury. The member for Westminster puts

into his pocket money which his constituents must be taxed to replace." The surprise was complete; the onset

was formidable; but the Whig majority, after a moment of dismay and wavering, rallied firmly round their

leader. Several speakers declared that they highly approved of the prudent liberality with which His Majesty

had requited the services of a most able, diligent and trusty counsellor. It was miserable economy indeed to

grudge a reward of a few thousands to one who had made the State richer by millions. Would that all the

largesses of former kings had been as well bestowed! How those largesses had been bestowed none knew

better than some of the austere patriots who harangued so loudly against the avidity of Montague. If there is,

it was said, a House in England which has been gorged with undeserved riches by the prodigality of weak

sovereigns, it is the House of Bath. Does it lie in the mouth of a son of that house to blame the judicious

munificence of a wise and good King? Before the Granvilles complain that distinguished merit has been

rewarded with ten thousand pounds, let them refund some part of the hundreds of thousands which they have

The rule was, and still is, that a member against whom a charge is made must be heard in his own defence,

and must then leave the House. The Opposition insisted that Montague should retire. His friends maintained

that this case did not fall within the rule. Distinctions were drawn; precedents were cited; and at length the

question was put, that Mr. Montague do withdraw. The Ayes were only ninetyseven; the Noes two hundred

and nine. This decisive result astonished both parties. The Tories lost heart and hope. The joy of the Whigs

was boundless. It was instantly moved that the Honourable Charles Montague, Esquire, Chancellor of the

Exchequer, for his good services to this Government does deserve His Majesty's favour. The Opposition,

completely cowed, did not venture to demand another division. Montague scornfully thanked them for the

inestimable service which they had done him. But for their malice he never should have had the honour and

happiness of being solemnly pronounced by the Commons of England a benefactor of his country. As to the

grant which had been the subject of debate, he was perfectly ready to give it up, if his accusers would engage

Even after this defeat the Tories returned to the charge. They pretended that the frauds which had been

committed with respect to the Exchequer Bills had been facilitated by the mismanagement of the Board of

Treasury, and moved a resolution which implied a censure on that Board, and especially on its chief. This

resolution was rejected by a hundred and seventy votes to eighty eight. It was remarked that Spencer, as if

anxious to show that he had taken no part in the machinations of which his father was justly or unjustly

suspected, spoke in this debate with great warmth against Duncombe and for Montague.

A few days later, the bill of pains and penalties against Duncombe passed the Commons. It provided that two

thirds of his enormous property, real and personal, should be confiscated and applied to the public service.

Till the third reading there was no serious opposition. Then the Tories mustered their strength. They were

defeated by a hundred and thirtyeight votes to a hundred and three; and the bill was carried up to the Lords

by the Marquess of Hartington, a young nobleman whom the great body of Whigs respected as one of their

That Duncombe had been guilty of shameful dishonesty was acknowledged by all men of sense and honour in

the party to which he belonged. He had therefore little right to expect indulgence from the party which he had

unfairly and malignantly assailed. Yet it is not creditable to the Whigs that they should have been so much

disgusted by his frauds, or so much irritated by his attacks, as to have been bent on punishing him in a

manner inconsistent with all the principles which governments ought to hold most sacred.

Those who concurred in the proceeding against Duncombe tried to vindicate their conduct by citing as an

example the proceeding against Fenwick. So dangerous is it to violate, on any pretence, those principles

which the experience of ages has proved to be the safeguards of all that is most precious to a community.

Twelve months had hardly elapsed since the legislature had, in very peculiar circumstances, and for very

plausible reasons, taken upon itself to try and to punish a great criminal whom it was impossible to reach in

the ordinary course of justice; and already the breach then made in the fences which protect the dearest rights

of Englishmen was widening fast. What had last year been defended only as a rare exception seemed now to

be regarded as the ordinary rule. Nay, the bill of pains and penalties which now had an easy passage through

the House of Commons was infinitely more objectionable than the bill which had been so obstinately resisted

The writ of attainder against Fenwick was not, as the vulgar imagined and still imagine, objectionable

because it was retrospective. It is always to be remembered that retrospective legislation is bad in principle

only when it affects the substantive law. Statutes creating new crimes or increasing the punishment of old

crimes ought in no case to be retrospective. But statutes which merely alter the procedure, if they are in

themselves good statutes, ought to be retrospective. To take examples from the legislation of our own time,

the Act passed in 1845, for punishing the malicious destruction of works of art with whipping, was most

properly made prospective only. Whatever indignation the authors of that Act might feel against the ruffian

who had broken the Barberini Vase, they knew that they could not, without the most serious detriment to the

commonwealth, pass a law for scourging him. On the other hand the Act which allowed the affirmation of a

Quaker to be received in criminal cases allowed, and most justly and reasonably, such affirmation to be

received in the case of a past as well as of a future misdemeanour or felony. If we try the Act which attainted

Fenwick by these rules we shall find that almost all the numerous writers who have condemned it have

condemned it on wrong grounds. It made no retrospective change in the substantive law. The crime was not

new. It was high treason as defined by the Statute of Edward the Third. The punishment was not new. It was

the punishment which had been inflicted on traitors of ten generations. All that was new was the procedure;

and, if the new procedure had been intrinsically better than the old procedure, the new procedure might with

perfect propriety have been employed. But the procedure employed in Fenwick's case was the worst possible,

and would have been the worst possible if it had been established from time immemorial. However clearly

political crime may have been defined by ancient laws, a man accused of it ought not to be tried by a crowd

of five hundred and thirteen eager politicians, of whom he can challenge none even with cause, who have no

judge to guide them, who are allowed to come in and go out as they choose, who hear as much or as little as

they choose of the accusation and of the defence, who are exposed, during the investigation, to every kind of

corrupting influence, who are inflamed by all the passions which animated debates naturally excite, who

cheer one orator and cough down another, who are roused from sleep to cry Aye or No, or who are hurried

half drunk from their suppers to divide. For this reason, and for no other, the attainder of Fenwick is to be

condemned. It was unjust and of evil example, not because it was a retrospective Act, but because it was an

act essentially judicial, performed by a body destitute of all judicial qualities.

The bill for punishing Duncombe was open to all the objections which can be urged against the bill for

punishing Fenwick, and to other objections of even greater weight. In both cases the judicial functions were

usurped by a body unfit to exercise such functions. But the bill against Duncombe really was, what the bill

against Fenwick was not, objectionable as a retrospective bill. It altered the substantive criminal law. It

visited an offence with a penalty of which the offender, at the time when he offended, had no notice.

It may be thought a strange proposition that the bill against Duncombe was a worse bill than the bill against

Fenwick, because the bill against Fenwick struck at life, and the bill against Duncombe struck only at

property. Yet this apparent paradox is a sober truth. Life is indeed more precious than property. But the

power of arbitrarily taking away the lives of men is infinitely less likely to be abused than the power of

arbitrarily taking away their property. Even the lawless classes of society generally shrink from blood. They

commit thousands of offences against property to one murder; and most of the few murders which they do

commit are committed for the purpose of facilitating or concealing some offence against property. The

unwillingness of juries to find a fellow creature guilty of a capital felony even on the clearest evidence is

notorious; and it may well be suspected that they frequently violate their oaths in favour of life. In civil suits,

on the other hand, they too often forget that their duty is merely to give the plaintiff a compensation for evil

suffered; and, if the conduct of the defendant has moved their indignation and his fortune is known to be

large, they turn themselves into a criminal tribunal, and, under the name of damages, impose a large fine. As

housebreakers are more likely to take plate and jewellery than to cut throats; as juries are far more likely to

err on the side of pecuniary severity in assessing damages than to send to the gibbet any man who has not

richly deserved it; so a legislature, which should be so unwise as to take on itself the functions properly

belonging to the Courts of Law, would be far more likely to pass Acts of Confiscation than Acts of Attainder.

We naturally feel pity even for a bad man whose head is about to fall. But, when a bad man is compelled to

disgorge his illgotten gains, we naturally feel a vindictive pleasure, in which there is much danger that we

The hearts of many stout Whigs doubtless bled at the thought of what Fenwick must have suffered, the

agonizing struggle, in a mind not of the firmest temper, between the fear of shame and the fear of death, the

parting from a tender wife, and all the gloomy solemnity of the last morning. But whose heart was to bleed at

the thought that Charles Duncombe, who was born to carry parcels and to sweep down a countinghouse,

was to be punished for his knavery by having his income reduced to eight thousand a year, more than most

His judges were not likely to feel compassion for him; and they all had strong selfish reasons to vote against

him. They were all in fact bribed by the very bill by which he would be punished.

His property was supposed to amount to considerably more than four hundred thousand pounds. Two thirds

of that property were equivalent to about sevenpence in the pound on the rental of the kingdom as assessed to

the land tax. If, therefore, two thirds of that property could have been brought into the Exchequer, the land tax

for 1699, a burden most painfully felt by the class which had the chief power in England, might have been

reduced from three shillings to two and fivepence. Every squire of a thousand a year in the House of

Commons would have had thirty pounds more to spend; and that sum might well have made to him the whole

difference between being at ease and being pinched during twelve months. If the bill had passed, if the gentry

and yeomanry of the kingdom had found that it was possible for them to obtain a welcome remission of

taxation by imposing on a Shylock or an Overreach, by a retrospective law, a fine not heavier than his

misconduct might, in a moral view, seem to have deserved, it is impossible to believe that they would not

soon have recurred to so simple and agreeable a resource. In every age it is easy to find rich men who have

done bad things for which the law has provided no punishment or an inadequate punishment. The estates of

such men would soon have been considered as a fund applicable to the public service. As often as it was

necessary to vote an extraordinary supply to the Crown, the Committee of Ways and Means would have

looked about for some unpopular capitalist to plunder. Appetite would have grown with indulgence.

Accusations would have been eagerly welcomed. Rumours and suspicions would have been received as

proofs. The wealth of the great goldsmiths of the Royal Exchange would have become as insecure as that of a

Jew under the Plantagenets, as that of a Christian under a Turkish Pasha. Rich men would have tried to invest

their acquisitions in some form in which they could lie closely hidden and could be speedily removed. In no

long time it would have been found that of all financial resources the least productive is robbery, and that the

public had really paid far more dearly for Duncombe's hundreds of thousands than if it had borrowed them at

These considerations had more weight with the Lords than with the Commons. Indeed one of the principal

uses of the Upper House is to defend the vested rights of property in cases in which those rights are

unpopular, and are attacked on grounds which to shortsighted politicians seem valid. An assembly composed

of men almost all of whom have inherited opulence, and who are not under the necessity of paying court to

constituent bodies, will not easily be hurried by passion or seduced by sophistry into robbery. As soon as the

bill for punishing Duncombe had been read at the table of the Peers, it became clear that there would be a

sharp contest. Three great Tory noblemen, Rochester, Nottingham and Leeds, headed the opposition; and

they were joined by some who did not ordinarily act with them. At an early stage of the proceedings a new

and perplexing question was raised. How did it appear that the facts set forth in the preamble were true, that

Duncombe had committed the frauds for which it was proposed to punish him in so extraordinary a manner?

In the House of Commons, he had been taken by surprise; he had made admissions of which he had not

foreseen the consequences; and he had then been so much disconcerted by the severe manner in which he had

been interrogated that he had at length avowed everything. But he had now had time to prepare himself; he

had been furnished with advice by counsel; and, when he was placed at the bar of the Peers, he refused to

criminate himself and defied his persecutors to prove him guilty. He was sent back to the Tower. The Lords

acquainted the Commons with the difficulty which had arisen. A conference was held in the Painted

Chamber; and there Hartington, who appeared for the Commons, declared that he was authorized, by those

who had sent him, to assure the Lords that Duncombe had, in his place in Parliament, owned the misdeeds

which he now challenged his accusers to bring home to him. The Lords, however, rightly thought that it

would be a strange and a dangerous thing to receive a declaration of the House of Commons in its collective

character as conclusive evidence of the fact that a man had committed a crime. The House of Commons was

under none of those restraints which were thought necessary in ordinary cases to protect innocent defendants

against false witnesses. The House of Commons could not be sworn, could not be crossexamined, could not

be indicted, imprisoned, pilloried, mutilated, for perjury. Indeed the testimony of the House of Commons in

its collective character was of less value than the uncontradicted testimony of a single member. For it was

only the testimony of the majority of the House. There might be a large respectable minority whose

recollections might materially differ from the recollections of the majority. This indeed was actually the case.

For there had been a dispute among those who had heard Duncombe's confession as to the precise extent of

what he had confessed; and there had been a division; and the statement which the Upper House was

expected to receive as decisive on the point of fact had been at last carried only by ninety votes to

sixtyeight. It should seem therefore that, whatever moral conviction the Lords might feel of Duncombe's

After much animated debate, they divided; and the bill was lost by fortyeight votes to fortyseven. It was

proposed by some of the minority that proxies should be called; but this scandalous proposition was

strenuously resisted; and the House, to its great honour, resolved that on questions which were substantially

judicial, though they might be in form legislative, no peer who was absent should be allowed to have a voice.

Many of the Whig Lords protested. Among them were Orford and Wharton. It is to be lamented that Burnet,

and the excellent Hough, who was now Bishop of Oxford, should have been impelled by party spirit to record

their dissent from a decision which all sensible and candid men will now pronounce to have been just and

salutary. Somers was present; but his name is not attached to the protest which was subscribed by his brethren

of the junto. We may therefore not unreasonably infer that, on this as on many other occasions, that wise and

In rejecting the bill, the Lords had only exercised their indisputable right. But they immediately proceeded to

take a step of which the legality was not equally clear. Rochester moved that Duncombe should be set at

liberty. The motion was carried; a warrant for the discharge of the prisoner was sent to the Tower, and was

obeyed without hesitation by Lord Lucas, who was Lieutenant of that fortress. As soon as this was known,

the anger of the Commons broke forth with violence. It was by their order that the upstart Duncombe had

been put in ward. He was their prisoner; and it was monstrous insolence in the Peers to release him. The

Peers defended what they had done by arguments which must be allowed to have been ingenious, if not

satisfactory. It was quite true that Duncombe had originally been committed to the Tower by the Commons.

But, it was said, the Commons, by sending a penal bill against him to the Lords, did, by necessary

implication, send him also to the Lords. For it was plainly impossible for the Lords to pass the bill without

hearing what he had to say against it. The Commons had felt this, and had not complained when he had,

without their consent, been brought from his place of confinement, and set at the bar of the Peers. From that

moment he was the prisoner of the Peers. He had been taken back from the bar to the Tower, not by virtue of

the Speaker's warrant, of which the force was spent, but by virtue of their order which had remanded him.

Whatever a jurist might have thought of these arguments, they had no effect on the Commons. Indeed, violent

as the spirit of party was in those times, it was less violent than the spirit of caste. Whenever a dispute arose

between the two Houses, many members of both forgot that they were Whigs or Tories, and remembered

only that they were Patricians or Plebeians. On this occasion nobody was louder in asserting the privileges of

the representatives of the people in opposition to the encroachments of the nobility than Harley. Duncombe

was again arrested by the Serjeant at Arms, and remained in confinement till the end of the session. Some

eager men were for addressing the King to turn Lucas out of office. This was not done; but during several

days the ill humour of the Lower House showed itself by a studied discourtesy. One of the members was

wanted as a witness in a matter which the Lords were investigating. They sent two judges with a message

requesting the permission of the Commons to examine him. At any other time the judges would have been

called in immediately, and the permission would have been granted as of course. But on this occasion the

judges were kept waiting some hours at the door; and such difficulties were made about the permission that

the Peers desisted from urging a request which seemed likely to be ungraciously refused.

The attention of the Parliament was, during the remainder of the session, chiefly occupied by commercial

questions. Some of those questions required so much investigation, and gave occasion to so much dispute,

that the prorogation did not take place till the fifth of July. There was consequently some illness and much

discontent among both Lords and Commons. For, in that age, the London season usually ended soon after the

first notes of the cuckoo had been heard, and before the poles had been decked for the dances and mummeries

which welcomed the genial May day of the ancient calendar. Since the year of the Revolution, a year which

was an exception to all ordinary rules, the members of the two Houses had never been detained from their

The Commons had, soon after they met, appointed a Committee to enquire into the state of trade, and had

referred to this Committee several petitions from merchants and manufacturers who complained that they

A highly curious report on the importation of silks and the exportation of wool was soon presented to the

House. It was in that age believed by all but a very few speculative men that the sound commercial policy

was to keep out of the country the delicate and brilliantly tinted textures of southern looms, and to keep in the

country the raw material on which most of our own looms were employed. It was now fully proved that,

during eight years of war, the textures which it was thought desirable to keep out had been constantly coming

in, and the material which it was thought desirable to keep in had been constantly going out. This

interchange, an interchange, as it was imagined, pernicious to England, had been chiefly managed by an

association of Huguenot refugees, residing in London. Whole fleets of boats with illicit cargoes had been

passing and repassing between Kent and Picardy. The loading and unloading had taken place sometimes in

Romney Marsh, sometimes on the beach under the cliffs between Dover and Folkstone. All the inhabitants of

the south eastern coast were in the plot. It was a common saying among them that, if a gallows were set up

every quarter of a mile along the coast, the trade would still go on briskly. It had been discovered, some years

before, that the vessels and the hiding places which were necessary to the business of the smuggler had

frequently afforded accommodation to the traitor. The report contained fresh evidence upon this point. It was

proved that one of the contrabandists had provided the vessel in which the ruffian O'Brien had carried Scum

The inference which ought to have been drawn from these facts was that the prohibitory system was absurd.

That system had not destroyed the trade which was so much dreaded, but had merely called into existence a

desperate race of men who, accustomed to earn their daily bread by the breach of an unreasonable law, soon

came to regard the most reasonable laws with contempt, and, having begun by eluding the custom house

officers, ended by conspiring against the throne. And, if, in time of war, when the whole Channel was dotted

with our cruisers, it had been found impossible to prevent the regular exchange of the fleeces of Cotswold for

the alamodes of Lyons, what chance was there that any machinery which could be employed in time of peace

would be more efficacious? The politicians of the seventeenth century, however, were of opinion that sharp

laws sharply administered could not fail to save Englishmen from the intolerable grievance of selling dear

what could be best produced by themselves, and of buying cheap what could be best produced by others. The

penalty for importing French silks was made more severe. An Act was passed which gave to a joint stock

company an absolute monopoly of lustrings for a term of fourteen years. The fruit of these wise counsels was

such as might have been foreseen. French silks were still imported; and, long before the term of fourteen

years had expired, the funds of the Lustring Company had been spent, its offices had been shut up, and its

Not content with prospective legislation, the Commons unanimously determined to treat the offences which

the Committee had brought to light as high crimes against the State, and to employ against a few cunning

mercers in Nicholas Lane and the Old Jewry all the gorgeous and cumbrous machinery which ought to be

reserved for the delinquencies of great Ministers and Judges. It was resolved, without a division, that several

Frenchmen and one Englishman who had been deeply concerned in the contraband trade should be

impeached. Managers were appointed; articles were drawn up; preparations were made for fitting up

Westminster Hall with benches and scarlet hangings; and at one time it was thought that the trials would last

till the partridge shooting began. But the defendants, having little hope of acquittal, and not wishing that the

Peers should come to the business of fixing the punishment in the temper which was likely to be the effect of

an August passed in London, very wisely declined to give their lordships unnecessary trouble, and pleaded

guilty. The sentences were consequently lenient. The French offenders were merely fined; and their fines

probably did not amount to a fifth part of the sums which they had realised by unlawful traffic. The

Englishman who had been active in managing the escape of Goodman was both fined and imprisoned.

The progress of the woollen manufactures of Ireland excited even more alarm and indignation than the

contraband trade with France. The French question indeed had been simply commercial. The Irish question,

originally commercial, became political. It was not merely the prosperity of the clothiers of Wiltshire and of

the West Riding that was at stake; but the dignity of the Crown, the authority of the Parliament, and the unity

of the empire. Already might be discerned among the Englishry, who were now, by the help and under the

protection of the mother country, the lords of the conquered island, some signs of a spirit, feeble indeed, as

yet, and such as might easily be put down by a few resolute words, but destined to revive at long intervals,

The person who on this occasion came forward as the champion of the colonists, the forerunner of Swift and

of Grattan, was William Molyneux. He would have rejected the name of Irishman as indignantly as a citizen

of Marseilles or Cyrene, proud of his pure Greek blood, and fully qualified to send a chariot to the Olympic

race course, would have rejected the name of Gaul or Libyan. He was, in the phrase of that time, an English

gentleman of family and fortune born in Ireland. He had studied at the Temple, had travelled on the

Continent, had become well known to the most eminent scholars and philosophers of Oxford and Cambridge,

had been elected a member of the Royal Society of London, and had been one of the founders of the Royal

Society of Dublin. In the days of Popish ascendancy he had taken refuge among his friends here; he had

returned to his home when the ascendancy of his own caste had been reestablished; and he had been chosen

to represent the University of Dublin in the House of Commons. He had made great efforts to promote the

manufactures of the kingdom in which he resided; and he had found those efforts impeded by an Act of the

English Parliament which laid severe restrictions on the exportation of woollen goods from Ireland. In

principle this Act was altogether indefensible. Practically it was altogether unimportant. Prohibitions were

not needed to prevent the Ireland of the seventeenth century from being a great manufacturing country; nor

could the most liberal bounties have made her so. The jealousy of commerce, however, is as fanciful and

unreasonable as the jealousy of love. The clothiers of Wilts and Yorkshire were weak enough to imagine that

they should be ruined by the competition of a half barbarous island, an island where there was far less capital

than in England, where there was far less security for life and property than in England, and where there was

far less industry and energy among the labouring classes than in England. Molyneux, on the other hand, had

the sanguine temperament of a projector. He imagined that, but for the tyrannical interference of strangers, a

Ghent would spring up in Connemara, and a Bruges in the Bog of Allen. And what right had strangers to

interfere? Not content with showing that the law of which he complained was absurd and unjust, he

undertook to prove that it was null and void. Early in the year 1698 he published and dedicated to the King a

treatise in which it was asserted in plain terms that the English Parliament had no authority over Ireland.

Whoever considers without passion or prejudice the great constitutional question which was thus for the first

time raised will probably be of opinion that Molyneux was in error. The right of the Parliament of England to

legislate for Ireland rested on the broad general principle that the paramount authority of the mother country

extends over all colonies planted by her sons in all parts of the world. This principle was the subject of much

discussion at the time of the American troubles, and was then maintained, without any reservation, not only

by the English Ministers, but by Burke and all the adherents of Rockingham, and was admitted, with one

single reservation, even by the Americans themselves. Down to the moment of separation the Congress fully

acknowledged the competency of the King, Lords and Commons to make laws, of any kind but one, for

Massachusetts and Virginia. The only power which such men as Washington and Franklin denied to the

Imperial legislature was the power of taxing. Within living memory, Acts which have made great political

and social revolutions in our Colonies have been passed in this country; nor has the validity of those Acts

ever been questioned; and conspicuous among them were the law of 1807 which abolished the slave trade,

The doctrine that the parent state has supreme power over the colonies is not only borne out by authority and

by precedent, but will appear, when examined, to be in entire accordance with justice and with policy. During

the feeble infancy of colonies independence would be pernicious, or rather fatal, to them. Undoubtedly, as

they grow stronger and stronger, it will be wise in the home government to be more and more indulgent. No

sensible parent deals with a son of twenty in the same way as with a son of ten. Nor will any government not

infatuated treat such a province as Canada or Victoria in the way in which it might be proper to treat a little

band of emigrants who have just begun to build their huts on a barbarous shore, and to whom the protection

of the flag of a great nation is indispensably necessary. Nevertheless, there cannot really be more than one

supreme power in a society. If, therefore, a time comes at which the mother country finds it expedient

altogether to abdicate her paramount authority over a colony, one of two courses ought to be taken. There

ought to be complete incorporation, if such incorporation be possible. If not, there ought to be complete

separation. Very few propositions in polities can be so perfectly demonstrated as this, that parliamentary

government cannot be carried on by two really equal and independent parliaments in one empire.

And, if we admit the general rule to be that the English parliament is competent to legislate for colonies

planted by English subjects, what reason was there for considering the case of the colony in Ireland as an

exception? For it is to be observed that the whole question was between the mother country and the colony.

The aboriginal inhabitants, more than five sixths of the population, had no more interest in the matter than the

swine or the poultry; or, if they had an interest, it was for their interest that the caste which domineered over

them should not be emancipated from all external control. They were no more represented in the parliament

which sate at Dublin than in the parliament which sate at Westminster. They had less to dread from

legislation at Westminster than from legislation at Dublin. They were, indeed, likely to obtain but a very

scanty measure of justice from the English Tories, a more scanty measure still from the English Whigs; but

the most acrimonious English Whig did not feel towards them that intense antipathy, compounded of hatred,

fear and scorn, with which they were regarded by the Cromwellian who dwelt among them.8 For the Irishry

Molyneux, though boasting that he was the champion of liberty, though professing to have learned his

political principles from Locke's writings, and though confidently expecting Locke's applause, asked nothing

but a more cruel and more hopeless slavery. What he claimed was that, as respected the colony to which he

belonged, England should forego rights which she has exercised and is still exercising over every other

colony that she has ever planted. And what reason could be given for making such a distinction? No colony

had owed so much to England. No colony stood in such need of the support of England. Twice, within the

memory of men then living, the natives had attempted to throw off the alien yoke; twice the intruders had

been in imminent danger of extirpation; twice England had come to the rescue, and had put down the Celtic

population under the feet of her own progeny. Millions of English money had been expended in the struggle.

English blood had flowed at the Boyne and at Athlone, at Aghrim and at Limerick. The graves of thousands

of English soldiers had been dug in the pestilential morass of Dundalk. It was owing to the exertions and

sacrifices of the English people that, from the basaltic pillars of Ulster to the lakes of Kerry, the Saxon

settlers were trampling on the children of the soil. The colony in Ireland was therefore emphatically a

dependency; a dependency, not merely by the common law of the realm, but by the nature of things. It was

absurd to claim independence for a community which could not cease to be dependent without ceasing to

Molyneux soon found that he had ventured on a perilous undertaking. A member of the English House of

Commons complained in his place that a book which attacked the most precious privileges of the supreme

legislature was in circulation. The volume was produced; some passages were read; and a Committee was

appointed to consider the whole subject. The Committee soon reported that the obnoxious pamphlet was only

one of several symptoms which indicated a spirit such as ought to be suppressed. The Crown of Ireland had

been most improperly described in public instruments as an imperial Crown. The Irish Lords and Commons

had presumed, not only to reenact an English Act passed expressly for the purpose of binding them, but to

reenact it with alterations. The alterations were indeed small; but the alteration even of a letter was

tantamount to a declaration of independence. Several addresses were voted without a division. The King was

entreated to discourage all encroachments of subordinate powers on the supreme authority of the English

legislature, to bring to justice the pamphleteer who had dared to question that authority, to enforce the Acts

which had been passed for the protection of the woollen manufactures of England, and to direct the industry

and capital of Ireland into the channel of the linen trade, a trade which might grow and flourish in Leinster

The King promised to do what the Commons asked; but in truth there was little to be done. The Irish,

conscious of their impotence, submitted without a murmur. The Irish woollen manufacture languished and

disappeared, as it would, in all probability, have languished and disappeared if it had been left to itself. Had

Molyneux lived a few months longer he would probably have been impeached. But the close of the session

was approaching; and before the Houses met again a timely death had snatched him from their vengeance;

and the momentous question which had been first stirred by him slept a deep sleep till it was revived in a

more formidable shape, after the lapse of twentysix years, by the fourth letter of The Drapier.

Of the commercial questions which prolonged this session far into the summer the most important respected

India. Four years had elapsed since the House of Commons had decided that all Englishmen had an equal

right to traffic in the Asiatic Seas, unless prohibited by Parliament; and in that decision the King had thought

it prudent to acquiesce. Any merchant of London or Bristol might now fit out a ship for Bengal or for China,

without the least apprehension of being molested by the Admiralty or sued in the Courts of Westminster. No

wise man, however, was disposed to stake a large sum on such a venture. For the vote which protected him

from annoyance here left him exposed to serious risks on the other side of the Cape of Good Hope. The Old

Company, though its exclusive privileges were no more, and though its dividends had greatly diminished,

was still in existence, and still retained its castles and warehouses, its fleet of fine merchantmen, and its able

and zealous factors, thoroughly qualified by a long experience to transact business both in the palaces and in

the bazaars of the East, and accustomed to look for direction to the India House alone. The private trader

therefore still ran great risk of being treated as a smuggler, if not as a pirate. He might indeed, if he was

wronged, apply for redress to the tribunals of his country. But years must elapse before his cause could be

heard; his witnesses must be conveyed over fifteen thousand miles of sea; and in the meantime he was a

ruined man. The experiment of free trade with India had therefore been tried under every disadvantage, or, to

speak more correctly, had not been tried at all. The general opinion had always been that some restriction was

necessary; and that opinion had been confirmed by all that had happened since the old restrictions had been

removed. The doors of the House of Commons were again besieged by the two great contending factions of

the City. The Old Company offered, in return for a monopoly secured by law, a loan of seven hundred

thousand pounds; and the whole body of Tories was for accepting the offer. But those indefatigable agitators

who had, ever since the Revolution, been striving to obtain a share in the trade of the Eastern seas exerted

themselves at this conjuncture more strenuously than ever, and found a powerful patron in Montague.

That dexterous and eloquent statesman had two objects in view. One was to obtain for the State, as the price

of the monopoly, a sum much larger than the Old Company was able to give. The other was to promote the

interest of his own party. Nowhere was the conflict between Whigs and Tories sharper than in the City of

London; and the influence of the City of London was felt to the remotest corner of the realm. To elevate the

Whig section of that mighty commercial aristocracy which congregated under the arches of the Royal

Exchange, and to depress the Tory section, had long been one of Montague's favourite schemes. He had

already formed one citadel in the heart of that great emporium; and he now thought that it might be in his

power to erect and garrison a second stronghold in a position scarcely less commanding. It had often been

said, in times of civil war, that whoever was master of the Tower and of Tilbury Fort was master of London.

The fastnesses by means of which Montague proposed to keep the capital obedient in times of peace and of

constitutional government were of a different kind. The Bank was one of his fortresses; and he trusted that a

The task which he had undertaken was not an easy one. For, while his opponents were united, his adherents

were divided. Most of those who were for a New Company thought that the New Company ought, like the

Old Company, to trade on a joint stock. But there were some who held that our commerce with India would

be best carried on by means of what is called a regulated Company. There was a Turkey Company, the

members of which contributed to a general fund, and had in return the exclusive privilege of trafficking with

the Levant; but those members trafficked, each on his own account; they forestalled each other; they

undersold each other; one became rich; another became bankrupt. The Corporation meanwhile watched over

the common interest of all the members, furnished the Crown with the means of maintaining an embassy at

Constantinople, and placed at several important ports consuls and viceconsuls, whose business was to keep

the Pacha and the Cadi in good humour, and to arbitrate in disputes among Englishmen. Why might not the

same system be found to answer in regions lying still further to the east? Why should not every member of

the New Company be at liberty to export European commodities to the countries beyond the Cape, and to

bring back shawls, saltpetre and bohea to England, while the Company, in its collective capacity, might treat

with Asiatic potentates, or exact reparation from them, and might be entrusted with powers for the

Montague tried to please all those whose support was necessary to him; and this he could effect only by

bringing forward a plan so intricate that it cannot without some pains be understood. He wanted two millions

to extricate the State from its financial embarrassments. That sum he proposed to raise by a loan at eight per

cent. The lenders might be either individuals or corporations. But they were all, individuals and corporations,

to be united in a new corporation, which was to be called the General Society. Every member of the General

Society, whether individual or corporation, might trade separately with India to an extent not exceeding the

amount which such member had advanced to the government. But all the members or any of them might, if

they so thought fit, give up the privilege of trading separately, and unite themselves under a royal Charter for

the purpose of trading in common. Thus the General Society was, by its original constitution, a regulated

company; but it was provided that either the whole Society or any part of it might become a joint stock

The opposition to the scheme was vehement and pertinacious. The Old Company presented petition after

petition. The Tories, with Seymour at their head, appealed both to the good faith and to the compassion of

Parliament. Much was said about the sanctity of the existing Charter, and much about the tenderness due to

the numerous families which had, in reliance on that Charter, invested their substance in India stock. On the

other side there was no want of plausible topics or of skill to use them. Was it not strange that those who

talked so much about the Charter should have altogether overlooked the very clause of the Charter on which

the whole question turned? That clause expressly reserved to the government power of revocation, after three

years' notice, if the Charter should not appear to be beneficial to the public. The Charter had not been found

beneficial to the public; the three years' notice should be given; and in the year 1701 the revocation would

take effect. What could be fairer? If anybody was so weak as to imagine that the privileges of the Old

Company were perpetual, when the very instrument which created those privileges expressly declared them

to be terminable, what right had he to blame the Parliament, which was bound to do the best for the State, for

not saving him, at the expense of the State, from the natural punishment of his own folly? It was evident that

nothing was proposed inconsistent with strict justice. And what right had the Old Company to more than

strict justice? These petitioners who implored the legislature to deal indulgently with them in their adversity,

how had they used their boundless prosperity? Had not the India House recently been the very den of

corruption, the tainted spot from which the plague had spread to the Court and the Council, to the House of

Commons and the House of Lords? Were the disclosures of 1695 forgotten, the eighty thousand pounds of

secret service money disbursed in one year, the enormous bribes direct and indirect, Seymour's saltpetre

contracts, Leeds's bags of golds? By the malpractices which the inquiry in the Exchequer Chamber then

brought to light, the Charter had been forfeited; and it would have been well if the forfeiture had been

immediately enforced. "Had not time then pressed," said Montague, "had it not been necessary that the

session should close, it is probable that the petitioners, who now cry out that they cannot get justice, would

have got more justice than they desired. If they had been called to account for great and real wrong in 1695,

The fight was protracted by the obstinacy and dexterity of the Old Company and its friends from the first

week of May to the last week in June. It seems that many even of Montague's followers doubted whether the

promised two millions would be forthcoming. His enemies confidently predicted that the General Society

would be as complete a failure as the Land Bank had been in the year before the last, and that he would in the

autumn find himself in charge of an empty exchequer. His activity and eloquence, however, prevailed. On the

twentysixth of June, after many laborious sittings, the question was put that this Bill do pass, and was

carried by one hundred and fifteen votes to seventyeight. In the upper House, the conflict was short and

sharp. Some peers declared that, in their opinion, the subscription to the proposed loan, far from amounting to

the two millions which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expected, would fall far short of one million. Others,

with much reason, complained that a law of such grave importance should have been sent up to them in such

a shape that they must either take the whole or throw out the whole. The privilege of the Commons with

respect to money bills had of late been grossly abused. The Bank had been created by one money bill; this

General Society was to be created by another money bill. Such a bill the Lords could not amend; they might

indeed reject it; but to reject it was to shake the foundations of public credit and to leave the kingdom

defenceless. Thus one branch of the legislature was systematically put under duress by the other, and seemed

likely to be reduced to utter insignificance. It was better that the government should be once pinched for

money than that the House of Peers should cease to be part of the Constitution. So strong was this feeling that

the Bill was carried only by sixtyfive to fortyeight. It received the royal sanction on the fifth of July. The

King then spoke from the throne. This was the first occasion on which a King of England had spoken to a

Parliament of which the existence was about to be terminated, not by his own act, but by the act of the law.

He could not, he said, take leave of the Lords and Gentlemen before him without publicly acknowledging the

great things which they had done for his dignity and for the welfare of the nation. He recounted the chief

services which they had, during three eventful sessions, rendered to the country. "These things will," he said,

"give a lasting reputation to this Parliament, and will be a subject of emulation to Parliaments which shall

During the week which followed there was some anxiety as to the result of the subscription for the stock of

the General Society. If that subscription failed, there would be a deficit; public credit would be shaken; and

Montague would be regarded as a pretender who had owed his reputation to a mere run of good luck, and

who had tempted chance once too often. But the event was such as even his sanguine spirit had scarcely

ventured to anticipate. At one in the afternoon of the 14th of July the books were opened at the Hall of the

Company of Mercers in Cheapside. An immense crowd was already collected in the street. As soon as the

doors were flung wide, wealthy citizens, with their money in their hands, pressed in, pushing and elbowing

each other. The guineas were paid down faster than the clerks could count them. Before night six hundred

thousand pounds had been subscribed. The next day the throng was as great. More than one capitalist put

down his name for thirty thousand pounds. To the astonishment of those ill boding politicians who were

constantly repeating that the war, the debt, the taxes, the grants to Dutch courtiers, had ruined the kingdom,

the sum, which it had been doubted whether England would be able to raise in many weeks, was subscribed

by London in a few hours. The applications from the provincial towns and rural districts came too late. The

merchants of Bristol had intended to take three hundred thousand pounds of the stock, but had waited to learn

how the subscription went on before they gave their final orders; and, by the time that the mail had gone

This was the moment at which the fortunes of Montague reached the meridian. The decline was close at hand.

His ability and his constant success were everywhere talked of with admiration and envy. That man, it was

During the long and busy session which had just closed, some interesting and important events had taken

place which may properly be mentioned here. One of those events was the destruction of the most celebrated

palace in which the sovereigns of England have ever dwelt. On the evening of the 4th of January, a

woman,the patriotic journalists and pamphleteers of that time did not fail to note that she was a

Dutchwoman,who was employed as a laundress at Whitehall, lighted a charcoal fire in her room and

placed some linen round it. The linen caught fire and burned furiously. The tapestry, the bedding, the

wainscots were soon in a blaze. The unhappy woman who had done the mischief perished. Soon the flames

burst out of the windows. All Westminster, all the Strand, all the river were in commotion. Before midnight

the King's apartments, the Queen's apartments, the Wardrobe, the Treasury, the office of the Privy Council,

the office of the Secretary of State, had been destroyed. The two chapels perished together; that ancient

chapel where Wolsey had heard mass in the midst of gorgeous copes, golden candlesticks, and jewelled

crosses, and that modern edifice which had been erected for the devotions of James and had been embellished

by the pencil of Verrio and the chisel of Gibbons. Meanwhile a great extent of building had been blown up;

and it was hoped that by this expedient a stop had been put to the conflagration. But early in the morning a

new fire broke out of the heaps of combustible matter which the gunpowder had scattered to right and left.

The guard room was consumed. No trace was left of that celebrated gallery which had witnessed so many

balls and pageants, in which so many maids of honour had listened too easily to the vows and flatteries of

gallants, and in which so many bags of gold had changed masters at the hazard table. During some time men

despaired of the Banqueting House. The flames broke in on the south of that beautiful hall, and were with

great difficulty extinguished by the exertions of the guards, to whom Cutts, mindful of his honourable

nickname of the Salamander, set as good an example on this night of terror as he had set in the breach of

Namur. Many lives were lost, and many grievous wounds were inflicted by the falling masses of stone and

timber, before the fire was effectually subdued. When day broke, the heaps of smoking ruins spread from

Scotland Yard to the Bowling Green, where the mansion of the Duke of Buccleuch now stands. The

Banqueting House was safe; but the graceful columns and festoons designed by Inigo were so much defaced

and blackened that their form could hardly be discerned. There had been time to move the most valuable

effects which were moveable. Unfortunately some of Holbein's finest pictures were painted on the walls, and

are consequently known to us only by copies and engravings. The books of the Treasury and of the Privy

Council were rescued, and are still preserved. The Ministers whose offices had been burned down were

provided with new offices in the neighbourhood. Henry the Eighth had built, close to St. James's Park, two

appendages to the Palace of Whitehall, a cockpit and a tennis court. The Treasury now occupies the site of the

Notwithstanding the many associations which make the name of Whitehall still interesting to an Englishman,

the old building was little regretted. It was spacious indeed and commodious, but mean and inelegant. The

people of the capital had been annoyed by the scoffing way in which foreigners spoke of the principal

residence of our sovereigns, and often said that it was a pity that the great fire had not spared the old portico

of St. Paul's and the stately arcades of Gresham's Bourse, and taken in exchange that ugly old labyrinth of

dingy brick and plastered timber. It might now be hoped that we should have a Louvre. Before the ashes of

the old palace were cold, plans for a new palace were circulated and discussed. But William, who could not

draw his breath in the air of Westminster, was little disposed to expend a million on a house which it would

have been impossible for him to inhabit. Many blamed him for not restoring the dwelling of his predecessors;

and a few Jacobites, whom evil temper and repeated disappointments had driven almost mad, accused him of

having burned it down. It was not till long after his death that Tory writers ceased to call for the rebuilding of

Whitehall, and to complain that the King of England had no better town house than St. James's, while the

delightful spot where the Tudors and the Stuarts had held their councils and their revels was covered with the

In the same week in which Whitehall perished, the Londoners were supplied with a new topic of conversation

by a royal visit, which, of all royal visits, was the least pompous and ceremonious and yet the most

interesting and important. On the 10th of January a vessel from Holland anchored off Greenwich and was

welcomed with great respect. Peter the First, Czar of Muscovy, was on board. He took boat with a few

attendants and was rowed up the Thames to Norfolk Street, where a house overlooking the river had been

His journey is an epoch in the history, not only of his own country, but of our's, and of the world. To the

polished nations of Western Europe, the empire which he governed had till then been what Bokhara or Siam

is to us. That empire indeed, though less extensive than at present, was the most extensive that had ever

obeyed a single chief. The dominions of Alexander and of Trajan were small when compared with the

immense area of the Scythian desert. But in the estimation of statesmen that boundless expanse of larch forest

and morass, where the snow lay deep during eight months of every year, and where a wretched peasantry

could with difficulty defend their hovels against troops of famished wolves, was of less account than the two

or three square miles into which were crowded the counting houses, the warehouses, and the innumerable

masts of Amsterdam. On the Baltic Russia had not then a single port. Her maritime trade with the other

rations of Christendom was entirely carried on at Archangel, a place which had been created and was

supported by adventurers from our island. In the days of the Tudors, a ship from England, seeking a north

east passage to the land of silk and spice, had discovered the White Sea. The barbarians who dwelt on the

shores of that dreary gulf had never before seen such a portent as a vessel of a hundred and sixty tons burden.

They fled in terror; and, when they were pursued and overtaken, prostrated themselves before the chief of the

strangers and kissed his feet. He succeeded in opening a friendly communication with them; and from that

time there had been a regular commercial intercourse between our country and the subjects of the Czar. A

Russia Company was incorporated in London. An English factory was built at Archangel. That factory was

indeed, even in the latter part of the seventeenth century, a rude and mean building. The walls consisted of

trees laid one upon another; and the roof was of birch bark. This shelter, however, was sufficient in the long

summer day of the Arctic regions. Regularly at that season several English ships cast anchor in the bay. A fair

was held on the beach. Traders came from a distance of many hundreds of miles to the only mart where they

could exchange hemp and tar, hides and tallow, wax and honey, the fur of the sable and the wolverine, and

the roe of the sturgeon of the Volga, for Manchester stuffs, Sheffield knives, Birmingham buttons, sugar from

Jamaica and pepper from Malabar. The commerce in these articles was open. But there was a secret traffic

which was not less active or less lucrative, though the Russian laws had made it punishable, and though the

Russian divines pronounced it damnable. In general the mandates of princes and the lessons of priests were

received by the Muscovite with profound reverence. But the authority of his princes and of his priests united

could not keep him from tobacco. Pipes he could not obtain; but a cow's horn perforated served his turn.

From every Archangel fair rolls of the best Virginia speedily found their way to Novgorod and Tobolsk.

The commercial intercourse between England and Russia made some diplomatic intercourse necessary. The

diplomatic intercourse however was only occasional. The Czar had no permanent minister here. We had no

permanent minister at Moscow; and even at Archangel we had no consul. Three or four times in a century

extraordinary embassies were sent from Whitehall to the Kremlin and from the Kremlin to Whitehall.

The English embassies had historians whose narratives may still be read with interest. Those historians

described vividly, and sometimes bitterly, the savage ignorance and the squalid poverty of the barbarous

country in which they had sojourned. In that country, they said, there was neither literature nor science,

neither school nor college. It was not till more than a hundred years after the invention of printing that a

single printing press had been introduced into the Russian empire; and that printing press had speedily

perished in a fire which was supposed to have been kindled by the priests. Even in the seventeenth century

the library of a prelate of the first dignity consisted of a few manuscripts. Those manuscripts too were in long

rolls; for the art of bookbinding was unknown. The best educated men could barely read and write. It was

much if the secretary to whom was entrusted the direction of negotiations with foreign powers had a

sufficient smattering of Dog Latin to make himself understood. The arithmetic was the arithmetic of the dark

ages. The denary notation was unknown. Even in the Imperial Treasury the computations were made by the

help of balls strung on wires. Round the person of the Sovereign there was a blaze of gold and jewels; but

even in his most splendid palaces were to be found the filth and misery of an Irish cabin. So late as the year

1663 the gentlemen of the retinue of the Earl of Carlisle were, in the city of Moscow, thrust into a single

bedroom, and were told that, if they did not remain together, they would be in danger of being devoured by

Such was the report which the English legations made of what they had seen and suffered in Russia; and their

evidence was confirmed by the appearance which the Russian legations made in England. The strangers

spoke no civilised language. Their garb, their gestures, their salutations, had a wild and barbarous character.

The ambassador and the grandees who accompanied him were so gorgeous that all London crowded to stare

at them, and so filthy that nobody dared to touch them. They came to the court balls dropping pearls and

vermin. It was said that one envoy cudgelled the lords of his train whenever they soiled or lost any part of

their finery, and that another had with difficulty been prevented from putting his son to death for the crime of

Our ancestors therefore were not a little surprised to learn that a young barbarian, who had, at seventeen years

of age, become the autocrat of the immense region stretching from the confines of Sweden to those of China,

and whose education had been inferior to that of an English farmer or shopman, had planned gigantic

improvements, had learned enough of some languages of Western Europe to enable him to communicate with

civilised men, had begun to surround himself with able adventurers from various parts of the world, had sent

many of his young subjects to study languages, arts and sciences in foreign cities, and finally had determined

to travel as a private man, and to discover, by personal observation, the secret of the immense prosperity and

power enjoyed by some communities whose whole territory was far less than the hundredth part of his

It might have been expected that France would have been the first object of his curiosity. For the grace and

dignity of the French King, the splendour of the French Court, the discipline of the French armies, and the

genius and learning of the French writers, were then renowned all over the world. But the Czar's mind had

early taken a strange ply which it retained to the last. His empire was of all empires the least capable of being

made a great naval power. The Swedish provinces lay between his States and the Baltic. The Bosporus and

the Dardanelles lay between his States and the Mediterranean. He had access to the ocean only in a latitude in

which navigation is, during a great part of every year, perilous and difficult. On the ocean he had only a

single port, Archangel; and the whole shipping of Archangel was foreign. There did not exist a Russian vessel

larger than a fishingboat. Yet, from some cause which cannot now be traced, he had a taste for maritime

pursuits which amounted to a passion, indeed almost to a monomania. His imagination was full of sails,

yardarms, and rudders. That large mind, equal to the highest duties of the general and the statesman,

contracted itself to the most minute details of naval architecture and naval discipline. The chief ambition of

the great conqueror and legislator was to be a good boatswain and a good ship's carpenter. Holland and

England therefore had for him an attraction which was wanting to the galleries and terraces of Versailles. He

repaired to Amsterdam, took a lodging in the dockyard, assumed the garb of a pilot, put down his name on

the list of workmen, wielded with his own hand the caulking iron and the mallet, fixed the pumps, and

twisted the ropes. Ambassadors who came to pay their respects to him were forced, much against their will,

to clamber up the rigging of a man of war, and found him enthroned on the cross trees.

Such was the prince whom the populace of London now crowded to behold. His stately form, his intellectual

forehead, his piercing black eyes, his Tartar nose and mouth, his gracious smile, his frown black with all the

stormy rage and hate of a barbarian tyrant, and above all a strange nervous convulsion which sometimes

transformed his countenance during a few moments, into an object on which it was impossible to look

without terror, the immense quantities of meat which he devoured, the pints of brandy which he swallowed,

and which, it was said, he had carefully distilled with his own hands, the fool who jabbered at his feet, the

monkey which grinned at the back of his chair, were, during some weeks, popular topics of conversation. He

meanwhile shunned the public gaze with a haughty shyness which inflamed curiosity. He went to a play; but,

as soon as he perceived that pit, boxes and galleries were staring, not at the stage, but at him, he retired to a

back bench where he was screened from observation by his attendants. He was desirous to see a sitting of the

House of Lords; but, as he was determined not to be seen, he was forced to climb up to the leads, and to peep

through a small window. He heard with great interest the royal assent given to a bill for raising fifteen

hundred thousand pounds by land tax, and learned with amazement that this sum, though larger by one half

than the whole revenue which he could wring from the population of the immense empire of which he was

absolute master, was but a small part of what the Commons of England voluntarily granted every year to their

William judiciously humoured the whims of his illustrious guest, and stole to Norfolk Street so quietly that

nobody in the neighbourhood recognised His Majesty in the thin gentleman who got out of the modest

looking coach at the Czar's lodgings. The Czar returned the visit with the same precautions, and was admitted

into Kensington House by a back door. It was afterwards known that he took no notice of the fine pictures

with which the palace was adorned. But over the chimney of the royal sitting room was a plate which, by an

ingenious machinery, indicated the direction of the wind; and with this plate he was in raptures.

He soon became weary of his residence. He found that he was too far from the objects of his curiosity, and

too near to the crowds to which he was himself an object of curiosity. He accordingly removed to Deptford,

and was there lodged in the house of John Evelyn, a house which had long been a favourite resort of men of

letters, men of taste and men of science. Here Peter gave himself up to his favourite pursuits. He navigated a

yacht every day up and down the river. His apartment was crowded with models of three deckers and two

deckers, frigates, sloops and fireships. The only Englishman of rank in whose society he seemed to take much

pleasure was the eccentric Caermarthen, whose passion for the sea bore some resemblance to his own, and

who was very competent to give an opinion about every part of a ship from the stem to the stern.

Caermarthen, indeed, became so great a favourite that he prevailed on the Czar to consent to the admission of

a limited quantity of tobacco into Russia. There was reason to apprehend that the Russian clergy would cry

out against any relaxation of the ancient rule, and would strenuously maintain that the practice of smoking

was condemned by that text which declares that man is defiled, not by those things which enter in at the

mouth, but by those which proceed out of it. This apprehension was expressed by a deputation of merchants

who were admitted to an audience of the Czar; but they were reassured by the air with which he told them

He was indeed so free from any bigoted attachment to the religion in which he had been brought up that both

Papists and Protestants hoped at different times to make him a proselyte. Burnet, commissioned by his

brethren, and impelled, no doubt, by his own restless curiosity and love of meddling, repaired to Deptford and

was honoured with several audiences. The Czar could not be persuaded to exhibit himself at Saint Paul's; but

he was induced to visit Lambeth palace. There he saw the ceremony of ordination performed, and expressed

warm approbation of the Anglican ritual. Nothing in England astonished him so much as the Archiepiscopal

library. It was the first good collection of books that he had seen; and he declared that he had never imagined

The impression which he made on Burnet was not favourable. The good bishop could not understand that a

mind which seemed to be chiefly occupied with questions about the best place for a capstan and the best way

of rigging a jury mast might be capable, not merely of ruling an empire, but of creating a nation. He

complained that he had gone to see a great prince, and had found only an industrious shipwright. Nor does

Evelyn seem to have formed a much more favourable opinion of his august tenant. It was, indeed, not in the

character of tenant that the Czar was likely to gain the good word of civilised men. With all the high qualities

which were peculiar to himself, he had all the filthy habits which were then common among his countrymen.

To the end of his life, while disciplining armies, founding schools, framing codes, organising tribunals,

building cities in deserts, joining distant seas by artificial rivers, he lived in his palace like a hog in a sty; and,

when he was entertained by other sovereigns, never failed to leave on their tapestried walls and velvet state

beds unequivocal proof that a savage had been there. Evelyn's house was left in such a state that the Treasury

Towards the close of March the Czar visited Portsmouth, saw a sham seafight at Spithead, watched every

movement of the contending fleets with intense interest, and expressed in warm terms his gratitude to the

hospitable government which had provided so delightful a spectacle for his amusement and instruction. After

His visit, his singular character, and what was rumoured of his great designs, excited much curiosity here, but

nothing more than curiosity. England had as yet nothing to hope or to fear from his vast empire. All her

serious apprehensions were directed towards a different quarter. None could say how soon France, so lately

The new diplomatic relations between the two great western powers were widely different from those which

had existed before the war. During the eighteen years which had elapsed between the signing of the Treaty of

Dover and the Revolution, all the envoys who had been sent from Whitehall to Versailles had been mere

sycophants of the great King. In England the French ambassador had been the object of a degrading worship.

The chiefs of both the great parties had been his pensioners and his tools. The ministers of the Crown had

paid him open homage. The leaders of the opposition had stolen into his house by the back door. Kings had

stooped to implore his good offices, had persecuted him for money with the importunity of street beggars;

and, when they had succeeded in obtaining from him a box of doubloons or a bill of exchange, had embraced

him with tears of gratitude and joy. But those days were past. England would never again send a Preston or a

Skelton to bow down before the majesty of France. France would never again send a Barillon to dictate to the

cabinet of England. Henceforth the intercourse between the two states would be on terms of perfect equality.

William thought it necessary that the minister who was to represent him at the French Court should be a man

of the first consideration, and one on whom entire reliance could be reposed. Portland was chosen for this

important and delicate mission; and the choice was eminently judicious. He had, in the negotiations of the

preceding year, shown more ability than was to be found in the whole crowd of formalists who had been

exchanging notes and drawing up protocols at Ryswick. Things which had been kept secret from the

plenipotentiaries who had signed the treaty were well known to him. The clue of the whole foreign policy of

England and Holland was in his possession. His fidelity and diligence were beyond all praise. These were

strong recommendations. Yet it seemed strange to many that William should have been willing to part, for a

considerable time, from a companion with whom he had during a quarter of a century lived on terms of entire

confidence and affection. The truth was that the confidence was still what it had long been, but that the

affection, though it was not yet extinct, though it had not even cooled, had become a cause of uneasiness to

both parties. Till very recently, the little knot of personal friends who had followed William from his native

land to his place of splendid banishment had been firmly united. The aversion which the English nation felt

for them had given him much pain; but he had not been annoyed by any quarrel among themselves. Zulestein

and Auverquerque had, without a murmur, yielded to Portland the first place in the royal favour; nor had

Portland grudged to Zulestein and Auverquerque very solid and very signal proofs of their master's kindness.

But a younger rival had lately obtained an influence which created much jealousy. Among the Dutch

gentlemen who had sailed with the Prince of Orange from Helvoetsluys to Torbay was one named Arnold

Van Keppel. Keppel had a sweet and obliging temper, winning manners, and a quick, though not a profound,

understanding. Courage, loyalty and secresy were common between him and Portland. In other points they

differed widely. Portland was naturally the very opposite of a flatterer, and, having been the intimate friend of

the Prince of Orange at a time when the interval between the House of Orange and the House of Bentinck

was not so wide as it afterwards became, had acquired a habit of plain speaking which he could not unlearn

when the comrade of his youth had become the sovereign of three kingdoms. He was a most trusty, but not a

very respectful, subject. There was nothing which he was not ready to do or suffer for William. But in his

intercourse with William he was blunt and sometimes surly. Keppel, on the other hand, had a great desire to

please, and looked up with unfeigned admiration to a master whom he had been accustomed, ever since he

could remember, to consider as the first of living men. Arts, therefore, which were neglected by the elder

courtier were assiduously practised by the younger. So early as the spring of 1691 shrewd observers were

struck by the manner in which Keppel watched every turn of the King's eye, and anticipated the King's

unuttered wishes. Gradually the new servant rose into favour. He was at length made Earl of Albemarle and

Master of the Robes. But his elevation, though it furnished the Jacobites with a fresh topic for calumny and

ribaldry, was not so offensive to the nation as the elevation of Portland had been. Portland's manners were

thought dry and haughty; but envy was disarmed by the blandness of Albemarle's temper and by the affability

Portland, though strictly honest, was covetous; Albemarle was generous. Portland had been naturalised here

only in name and form; but Albemarle affected to have forgotten his own country, and to have become an

Englishman in feelings and manners. The palace was soon disturbed by quarrels in which Portland seems to

have been always the aggressor, and in which he found little support either among the English or among his

own countrymen. William, indeed, was not the man to discard an old friend for a new one. He steadily gave,

on all occasions, the preference to the companion of his youthful days. Portland had the first place in the

bedchamber. He held high command in the army. On all great occasions he was trusted and consulted. He

was far more powerful in Scotland than the Lord High Commissioner, and far deeper in the secret of foreign

affairs than the Secretary of State. He wore the Garter, which sovereign princes coveted. Lands and money

had been bestowed on him so liberally that he was one of the richest subjects in Europe. Albemarle had as yet

not even a regiment; he had not been sworn of the Council; and the wealth which he owed to the royal bounty

was a pittance when compared with the domains and the hoards of Portland. Yet Portland thought himself

aggrieved. He could not bear to see any other person near him, though below him, in the royal favour. In his

fits of resentful sullenness, he hinted an intention of retiring from the Court. William omitted nothing that a

brother could have done to soothe and conciliate a brother. Letters are still extant in which he, with the

utmost solemnity, calls God to witness that his affection for Bentinck still is what it was in their early days.

At length a compromise was made. Portland, disgusted with Kensington, was not sorry to go to France as

ambassador; and William with deep emotion consented to a separation longer than had ever taken place

during an intimacy of twentyfive years. A day or two after the new plenipotentiary had set out on his

mission, he received a touching letter from his master. "The loss of your society," the King wrote, "has

affected me more than you can imagine. I should be very glad if I could believe that you felt as much pain at

quitting me as I felt at seeing you depart; for then I might hope that you had ceased to doubt the truth of what

I so solemnly declared to you on my oath. Assure yourself that I never was more sincere. My feeling towards

you is one which nothing but death can alter." It should seem that the answer returned to these affectionate

assurances was not perfectly gracious; for, when the King next wrote, he gently complained of an expression

But, though Portland was an unreasonable and querulous friend, he was a most faithful and zealous minister.

His despatches show how indefatigably he toiled for the interests, and how punctiliously he guarded the

dignity, of the prince by whom he imagined that he had been unjustly and unkindly treated.

The embassy was the most magnificent that England had ever sent to any foreign court. Twelve men of

honourable birth and ample fortune, some of whom afterwards filled high offices in the State, attended the

mission at their own charge. Each of them had his own carriage, his own horses, and his own train of

servants. Two less wealthy persons, who, in different ways, attained great note in literature, were of the

company. Rapin, whose history of England might have been found, a century ago, in every library, was the

preceptor of the ambassador's eldest son, Lord Woodstock. Prior was Secretary of Legation. His quick parts,

his industry, his politeness, and his perfect knowledge of the French language, marked him out as eminently

fitted for diplomatic employment. He had, however, found much difficulty in overcoming an odd prejudice

which his chief had conceived against him. Portland, with good natural abilities and great expertness in

business, was no scholar. He had probably never read an English book; but he had a general notion,

unhappily but too well founded, that the wits and poets who congregated at Will's were a most profane and

licentious set; and, being himself a man of orthodox opinions and regular life, he was not disposed to give his

confidence to one whom he supposed to be a ribald scoffer. Prior, with much address, and perhaps with the

help of a little hypocrisy, completely removed this unfavourable impression. He talked on serious subjects

seriously, quoted the New Testament appositely, vindicated Hammond from the charge of popery, and, by

way of a decisive blow, gave the definition of a true Church from the nineteenth Article. Portland stared at

him. "I am glad, Mr. Prior, to find you so good a Christian. I was afraid that you were an atheist." "An atheist,

my good lord!" cried Prior. "What could lead your Lordship to entertain such a suspicion?" "Why," said

Portland, "I knew that you were a poet; and I took it for granted that you did not believe in God." "My lord,"

said the wit, "you do us poets the greatest injustice. Of all people we are the farthest from atheism. For the

atheists do not even worship the true God, whom the rest of mankind acknowledge; and we are always

invoking and hymning false gods whom everybody else has renounced." This jest will be perfectly

intelligible to all who remember the eternally recurring allusions to Venus and Minerva, Mars, Cupid and

Apollo, which were meant to be the ornaments, and are the blemishers, of Prior's compositions. But Portland

was much puzzled. However, he declared himself satisfied; and the young diplomatist withdrew, laughing to

think with how little learning a man might shine in courts, lead armies, negotiate treaties, obtain a coronet

The citizens of Paris and the courtiers of Versailles, though more accustomed than the Londoners to

magnificent pageantry, allowed that no minister from any foreign state had ever made so superb an

appearance as Portland. His horses, his liveries, his plate, were unrivalled. His state carriage, drawn by eight

fine Neapolitan greys decorated with orange ribands, was specially admired. On the day of his public entry

the streets, the balconies, and the windows were crowded with spectators along a line of three miles. As he

passed over the bridge on which the statue of Henry IV. stands, he was much amused by hearing one of the

crowd exclaim: "Was it not this gentleman's master that we burned on this very bridge eight years ago?" The

Ambassador's hotel was constantly thronged from morning to night by visitors in plumes and embroidery.

Several tables were sumptuously spread every day under his roof; and every English traveller of decent

station and character was welcome to dine there. The board at which the master of the house presided in

person, and at which he entertained his most distinguished guests, was said to be more luxurious than that of

any prince of the House of Bourbon. For there the most exquisite cookery of France was set off by a certain

neatness and comfort which then, as now, peculiarly belonged to England. During the banquet the room was

filled with people of fashion, who went to see the grandees eat and drink. The expense of all this splendour

and hospitality was enormous, and was exaggerated by report. The cost to the English government really was

fifty thousand pounds in five months. It is probable that the opulent gentlemen who accompanied the mission

The malecontents at the coffeehouses of London murmured at this profusion, and accused William of

ostentation. But, as this fault was never, on any other occasion, imputed to him even by his detractors, we

may not unreasonably attribute to policy what to superficial or malicious observers seemed to be vanity. He

probably thought it important, at the commencement of a new era in the relations between the two great

kingdoms of the West, to hold high the dignity of the Crown which he wore. He well knew, indeed, that the

greatness of a prince does not depend on piles of silver bowls and chargers, trains of gilded coaches, and

multitudes of running footmen in brocade, and led horses in velvet housings. But he knew also that the

subjects of Lewis had, during the long reign of their magnificent sovereign, been accustomed to see power

constantly associated with pomp, and would hardly believe that the substance existed unless they were

If the object of William was to strike the imagination of the French people, he completely succeeded. The

stately and gorgeous appearance which the English embassy made on public occasions was, during some

time, the general topic of conversation at Paris. Portland enjoyed a popularity which contrasts strangely with

the extreme unpopularity which he had incurred in England. The contrast will perhaps seem less strange

when we consider what immense sums he had accumulated at the expense of the English, and what immense

sums he was laying out for the benefit of the French. It must also be remembered that he could not confer or

correspond with Englishmen in their own language, and that the French tongue was at least as familiar to

him, as that of his native Holland. He, therefore, who here was called greedy, niggardly, dull, brutal, whom

one English nobleman had described as a block of wood, and another as just capable of carrying a message

right, was in the brilliant circles of France considered as a model of grace, of dignity and of munificence, as a

dexterous negotiator and a finished gentleman. He was the better liked because he was a Dutchman. For,

though fortune had favoured William, though considerations of policy had induced the Court of Versailles to

acknowledge him, he was still, in the estimation of that Court, an usurper; and his English councillors and

captains were perjured traitors who richly deserved axes and halters, and might, perhaps, get what they

deserved. But Bentinck was not to be confounded with Leeds and Marlborough, Orford and Godolphin. He

had broken no oath, had violated no law. He owed no allegiance to the House of Stuart; and the fidelity and

zeal with which he had discharged his duties to his own country and his own master entitled him to respect.

The Ambassador was splendidly entertained by the Duke of Orleans at St. Cloud, and by the Dauphin at

Meudon. A Marshal of France was charged to do the honours of Marli; and Lewis graciously expressed his

concern that the frosts of an ungenial spring prevented the fountains and flower beds from appearing to

advantage. On one occasion Portland was distinguished, not only by being selected to hold the waxlight in

the royal bedroom, but by being invited to go within the balustrade which surrounded the couch, a magic

circle which the most illustrious foreigners had hitherto found impassable. The Secretary shared largely in the

attentions which were paid to his chief. The Prince of Cond� took pleasure in talking with him on literary

subjects. The courtesy of the aged Bossuet, the glory of the Church of Rome, was long gratefully

remembered by the young heretic. Boileau had the good sense and good feeling to exchange a friendly

greeting with the aspiring novice who had administered to him a discipline as severe as he had administered

to Quinault. The great King himself warmly praised Prior's manners and conversation, a circumstance which

will be thought remarkable when it is remembered that His Majesty was an excellent model and an excellent

judge of gentlemanlike deportment, and that Prior had passed his boyhood in drawing corks at a tavern, and

his early manhood in the seclusion of a college. The Secretary did not however carry his politeness so far as

to refrain from asserting, on proper occasions, the dignity of his country and of his master. He looked coldly

on the twentyone celebrated pictures in which Le Brun had represented on the coifing of the gallery of

Versailles the exploits of Lewis. When he was sneeringly asked whether Kensington Palace could boast of

such decorations, he answered, with spirit and propriety: "No, Sir. The memorials of the great things which

Great as was the success of the embassy, there was one drawback. James was still at Saint Germains; and

round the mock King were gathered a mock Court and Council, a Great Seal and a Privy Seal, a crowd of

garters and collars, white staves and gold keys. Against the pleasure which the marked attentions of the

French princes and grandees gave to Portland, was to be set off the vexation which he felt when Middleton

crossed his path with the busy look of a real Secretary of State. But it was with emotions far deeper that the

Ambassador saw on the terraces and in the antechambers of Versailles men who had been deeply implicated

in plots against the life of his master. He expressed his indignation loudly and vehemently. "I hope," he said,

"that there is no design in this; that these wretches are not purposely thrust in my way. When they come near

me all my blood runs back in my veins." His words were reported to Lewis. Lewis employed Boufflers to

smooth matters; and Boufflers took occasion to say something on the subject as if from himself. Portland

easily divined that in talking with Boufflers he was really talking with Lewis, and eagerly seized the

opportunity of representing the expediency, the absolute necessity, of removing James to a greater distance

from England. "It was not contemplated, Marshal," he said, "when we arranged the terms of peace in Brabant,

that a palace in the suburbs of Paris was to continue to be an asylum for outlaws and murderers." "Nay, my

Lord," said Boufflers, uneasy doubtless on his own account, "you will not; I am sure, assert that I gave you

any pledge that King James would be required to leave France. You are too honourable a man, you are too

much my friend, to say any such thing." "It is true," answered Portland, "that I did not insist on a positive

promise from you; but remember what passed. I proposed that King James should retire to Rome or Modena.

Then you suggested Avignon; and I assented. Certainly my regard for you makes me very unwilling to do

anything that would give you pain. But my master's interests are dearer to me than all the friends that I have

in the world put together. I must tell His Most Christian Majesty all that passed between us; and I hope that,

when I tell him, you will be present, and that you will be able to bear witness that I have not put a single word

When Boufflers had argued and expostulated in vain, Villeroy was sent on the same errand, but had no better

success. A few days later Portland had a long private audience of Lewis. Lewis declared that he was

determined to keep his word, to preserve the peace of Europe, to abstain from everything which could give

just cause of offence to England, but that, as a man of honour, as a man of humanity, he could not refuse

shelter to an unfortunate King, his own first cousin. Portland replied that nobody questioned His Majesty's

good faith; but that while Saint Germains was occupied by its present inmates it would be beyond even His

Majesty's power to prevent eternal plotting between them and the malecontents on the other side of the Straits

of Dover, and that, while such plotting went on, the peace must necessarily be insecure. The question was

really not one of humanity. It was not asked, it was not wished, that James should be left destitute. Nay, the

English government was willing to allow him an income larger than that which he derived from the

munificence of France. Fifty thousand pounds a year, to which in strictness of law he had no right, awaited

his acceptance, if he would only move to a greater distance from the country which, while he was near it,

could never be at rest. If, in such circumstances, he refused to move, this was the strongest reason for

believing that he could not safely be suffered to stay. The fact that he thought the difference between residing

at Saint Germains and residing at Avignon worth more than fifty thousand a year sufficiently proved that he

had not relinquished the hope of being restored to his throne by means of a rebellion or of something worse.

Lewis answered that on that point his resolution was unalterable. He never would compel his guest and

kinsman to depart. "There is another matter," said Portland, "about which I have felt it my duty to make

representations. I mean the countenance given to the assassins." "I know nothing about assassins," said

Lewis. "Of course," answered the Ambassador, "your Majesty knows nothing about such men. At least your

Majesty does not know them for what they are. But I can point them out, and can furnish ample proofs of

their guilt." He then named Berwick. For the English Government, which had been willing to make large

allowances for Berwick's peculiar position as long as he confined himself to acts of open and manly hostility,

conceived that he had forfeited all claim to indulgence by becoming privy to the Assassination Plot. This

man, Portland said, constantly haunted Versailles. Barclay, whose guilt was of a still deeper dye,Barclay,

the chief contriver of the murderous ambuscade of Turnham Green,had found in France, not only an

asylum, but an honourable military position. The monk who was sometimes called Harrison and sometimes

went by the alias of Johnson, but who, whether Harrison or Johnson, had been one of the earliest and one of

the most bloodthirsty of Barclays accomplices, was now comfortably settled as prior of a religious house in

France. Lewis denied or evaded all these charges. "I never," he said, "heard of your Harrison. As to Barclay,

he certainly once had a company; but it has been disbanded; and what has become of him I do not know. It is

true that Berwick was in London towards the close of 1695; but he was there only for the purpose of

ascertaining whether a descent on England was practicable; and I am confident that he was no party to any

cruel and dishonourable design." In truth Lewis had a strong personal motive for defending Berwick. The

guilt of Berwick as respected the Assassination Plot does not appear to have extended beyond connivance;

Thus the audience terminated. All that was left to Portland was to announce that the exiles must make their

choice between Saint Germains and fifty thousand a year; that the protocol of Ryswick bound the English

government to pay to Mary of Modena only what the law gave her; that the law gave her nothing; that

consequently the English government was bound to nothing; and that, while she, her husband and her child

remained where they were, she should have nothing. It was hoped that this announcement would produce a

considerable effect even in James's household; and indeed some of his hungry courtiers and priests seem to

have thought the chance of a restoration so small that it would be absurd to refuse a splendid income, though

coupled with a condition which might make that small chance somewhat smaller. But it is certain that, if

there was murmuring among the Jacobites, it was disregarded by James. He was fully resolved not to move,

and was only confirmed in his resolution by learning that he was regarded by the usurper as a dangerous

neighbour. Lewis paid so much regard to Portland's complaints as to intimate to Middleton a request,

equivalent to a command, that the Lords and gentlemen who formed the retinue of the banished King of

England would not come to Versailles on days on which the representative of the actual King was expected

there. But at other places there was constant risk of an encounter which might have produced several duels, if

not an European war. James indeed, far from shunning such encounters, seems to have taken a perverse

pleasure in thwarting his benefactor's wish to keep the peace, and in placing the Ambassador in embarrassing

situations. One day his Excellency, while drawing on his boots for a run with the Dauphin's celebrated wolf

pack, was informed that King James meant to be of the party, and was forced to stay at home. Another day,

when his Excellency had set his heart on having some sport with the royal staghounds, he was informed by

the Grand Huntsman that King James might probably come to the rendezvous without any notice. Melfort

was particularly active in laying traps for the young noblemen and gentlemen of the Legation. The Prince of

Wales was more than once placed in such a situation that they could scarcely avoid passing close to him.

Were they to salute him? Were they to stand erect and covered while every body else saluted him? No

Englishman zealous for the Bill of Rights and the Protestant religion would willingly do any thing which

could be construed into an act of homage to a Popish pretender. Yet no goodnatured and generous man,

however firm in his Whig principles, would willingly offer any thing which could look like an affront to an

Meanwhile other matters of grave importance claimed Portland's attention. There was one matter in particular

about which the French ministers anxiously expected him to say something, but about which he observed

strict silence. How to interpret that silence they scarcely knew. They were certain only that it could not be the

effect of unconcern. They were well assured that the subject which he so carefully avoided was never, during

two waking hours together, out of his thoughts or out of the thoughts of his master. Nay, there was not in all

Christendom a single politician, from the greatest ministers of state down to the silliest newsmongers of

coffeehouses, who really felt that indifference which the prudent Ambassador of England affected. A

momentous event, which had during many years been constantly becoming more and more probable, was

now certain and near. Charles the Second of Spain, the last descendant in the male line of the Emperor

Charles the Fifth, would soon die without posterity. Who would then be the heir to his many kingdoms,

dukedoms, counties, lordships, acquired in different ways, held by different titles and subject to different

laws? That was a question about which jurists differed, and which it was not likely that jurists would, even if

they were unanimous, be suffered to decide. Among the claimants were the mightiest sovereigns of the

continent; there was little chance that they would submit to any arbitration but that of the sword; and it could

not be hoped that, if they appealed to the sword, other potentates who had no pretension to any part of the

disputed inheritance would long remain neutral. For there was in Western Europe no government which did

not feel that its own prosperity, dignity and security might depend on the event of the contest.

It is true that the empire, which had, in the preceding century, threatened both France and England with

subjugation, had of late been of hardly so much account as the Duchy of Savoy or the Electorate of

Brandenburg. But it by no means followed that the fate of that empire was matter of indifference to the rest of

the world. The paralytic helplessness and drowsiness of the body once so formidable could not be imputed to

any deficiency of the natural elements of power. The dominions of the Catholic King were in extent and in

population superior to those of Lewis and of William united. Spain alone, without a single dependency, ought

to have been a kingdom of the first rank; and Spain was but the nucleus of the Spanish monarchy. The

outlying provinces of that monarchy in Europe would have sufficed to make three highly respectable states of

the second order. One such state might have been formed in the Netherlands. It would have been a wide

expanse of cornfield, orchard and meadow, intersected by navigable rivers and canals. At short intervals, in

that thickly peopled and carefully tilled region, rose stately old towns, encircled by strong fortifications,

embellished by fine cathedrals and senate houses, and renowned either as seats of learning or as seats of

mechanical industry. A second flourishing principality might have been created between the Alps and the Po,

out of that well watered garden of olives and mulberry trees which spreads many miles on every side of the

great white temple of Milan. Yet neither the Netherlands nor the Milanese could, in physical advantages, vie

with the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a land which nature had taken pleasure in enriching and adorning, a

land which would have been paradise, if tyranny and superstition had not, during many ages, lavished all

their noxious influences on the bay of Campania, the plain of Enna, and the sunny banks of Galesus.

In America the Spanish territories spread from the Equator northward and southward through all the signs of

the Zodiac far into the temperate zone. Thence came gold and silver to be coined in all the mints, and

curiously wrought in all the jewellers' shops, of Europe and Asia. Thence came the finest tobacco, the finest

chocolate, the finest indigo, the finest cochineal, the hides of innumerable wild oxen, quinquina, coffee,

sugar. Either the viceroyalty of Mexico or the viceroyalty of Peru would, as an independent state with ports

open to all the world, have been an important member of the great community of nations.

And yet the aggregate, made up of so many parts, each of which separately might have been powerful and

highly considered, was impotent to a degree which moved at once pity and laughter. Already one most

remarkable experiment had been tried on this strange empire. A small fragment, hardly a three hundredth part

of the whole in extent, hardly a thirtieth part of the whole in population, had been detached from the rest, had

from that moment begun to display a new energy and to enjoy a new prosperity, and was now, after the lapse

of a hundred and twenty years, far more feared and reverenced than the huge mass of which it had once been

an obscure corner. What a contrast between the Holland which Alva had oppressed and plundered, and the

Holland from which William had sailed to deliver England! And who, with such an example before him,

would venture to foretell what changes might be at hand, if the most languid and torpid of monarchies should

be dissolved, and if every one of the members which had composed it should enter on an independent

To such a dissolution that monarchy was peculiarly liable. The King, and the King alone, held it together.

The populations which acknowledged him as their chief either knew nothing of each other, or regarded each

other with positive aversion. The Biscayan was in no sense the countryman of the Valencian, nor the

Lombard of the Biscayan, nor the Fleeting of the Lombard, nor the Sicilian of the Fleeting. The Arragonese

had never ceased to pine for their lost independence. Within the memory of many persons still living the

Catalans had risen in rebellion, had entreated Lewis the Thirteenth of France to become their ruler with the

old title of Count of Barcelona, and had actually sworn fealty to him. Before the Catalans had been quieted,

the Neapolitans had taken arms, had abjured their foreign master, had proclaimed their city a republic, and

had elected a Loge. In the New World the small caste of born Spaniards which had the exclusive enjoyment

of power and dignity was hated by Creoles and Indians, Mestizos and Quadroons. The Mexicans especially

had turned their eyes on a chief who bore the name and had inherited the blood of the unhappy Montezuma.

Thus it seemed that the empire against which Elizabeth and Henry the Fourth had been scarcely able to

contend would not improbably fall to pieces of itself, and that the first violent shock from without would

But, though such a dissolution had no terrors for the Catalonian or the Fleming, for the Lombard or the

Calabrian, for the Mexican or the Peruvian, the thought of it was torture and madness to the Castilian. Castile

enjoyed the supremacy in that great assemblage of races and languages. Castile sent out governors to

Brussels, Milan, Naples, Mexico, Lima. To Castile came the annual galleons laden with the treasures of

America. In Castile was ostentatiously displayed and lavishly spent great fortunes made in remote provinces

by oppression and corruption. In Castile were the King and his Court. There stood the stately Escurial, once

the centre of the politics of the world, the place to which distant potentates looked, some with hope and

gratitude, some with dread and hatred, but none without anxiety and awe. The glory of the house had indeed

departed. It was long since couriers bearing orders big with the fate of kings and commonwealths had ridden

forth from those gloomy portals. Military renown, maritime ascendency, the policy once reputed so profound,

the wealth once deemed inexhaustible, had passed away. An undisciplined army, a rotting fleet, an incapable

council, an empty treasury, were all that remained of that which had been so great. Yet the proudest of

nations could not bear to part even with the name and the shadow of a supremacy which was no more. All,

from the grandee of the first class to the peasant, looked forward with dread to the day when God should be

pleased to take their king to himself. Some of them might have a predilection for Germany; but such

predilections were subordinate to a stronger feeling. The paramount object was the integrity of the empire of

which Castile was the head; and the prince who should appear to be most likely to preserve that integrity

No man of sense, however, out of Castile, when he considered the nature of the inheritance and the situation

of the claimants, could doubt that a partition was inevitable. Among those claimants three stood preeminent,

If the question had been simply one of pedigree, the right of the Dauphin would have been incontestable.

Lewis the Fourteeenth had married the Infanta Maria Theresa, eldest daughter of Philip the Fourth and sister

of Charles the Second. Her eldest son, the Dauphin, would therefore, in the regular course of things, have

been her brother's successor. But she had, at the time of her marriage, renounced, for herself and her

To that renunciation her husband had assented. It had been made an article of the Treaty of the Pyrenees. The

Pope had been requested to give his apostolical sanction to an arrangement so important to the peace of

Europe; and Lewis had sworn, by every thing that could bind a gentleman, a king, and a Christian, by his

honour, by his royal word, by the canon of the Mass, by the Holy Gospels, by the Cross of Christ, that he

The claim of the Emperor was derived from his mother Mary Anne, daughter of Philip the Third, and aunt of

Charles the Second, and could not therefore, if nearness of blood alone were to be regarded, come into

competition with the claim of the Dauphin. But the claim of the Emperor was barred by no renunciation. The

rival pretensions of the great Houses of Bourbon and Habsburg furnished all Europe with an inexhaustible

subject of discussion. Plausible topics were not wanting to the supporters of either cause. The partisans of the

House of Austria dwelt on the sacredness of treaties; the partisans of France on the sacredness of birthright.

How, it was asked on one side, can a Christian king have the effrontery, the impiety, to insist on a claim

which he has with such solemnity renounced in the face of heaven and earth? How, it was asked on the other

side, can the fundamental laws of a monarchy be annulled by any authority but that of the supreme

legislature? The only body which was competent to take away from the children of Maria Theresa their

hereditary rights was the Comes. The Comes had not ratified her renunciation. That renunciation was

therefore a nullity; and no swearing, no signing, no sealing, could turn that nullity into a reality.

Which of these two mighty competitors had the better case may perhaps be doubted. What could not be

doubted was that neither would obtain the prize without a struggle which would shake the world. Nor can we

justly blame either for refusing to give way to the other. For, on this occasion, the chief motive which

actuated them was, not greediness, but the fear of degradation and ruin. Lewis, in resolving to put every thing

to hazard rather than suffer the power of the House of Austria to be doubled; Leopold, in determining to put

every thing to hazard rather than suffer the power of the House of Bourbon to be doubled; merely obeyed the

law of self preservation. There was therefore one way, and one alone, by which the great woe which seemed

to be coming on Europe could be averted. Was it possible that the dispute might be compromised? Might not

the two great rivals be induced to make to a third party concessions such as neither could reasonably be

The third party, to whom all who were anxious for the peace of Christendom looked as their best hope, was a

child of tender age, Joseph, son of the Elector of Bavaria. His mother, the Electress Mary Antoinette, was the

only child of the Emperor Leopold by his first wife Margaret, a younger sister of the Queen of Lewis the

Fourteenth. Prince Joseph was, therefore, nearer in blood to the Spanish throne than his grandfather the

Emperor, or than the sons whom the Emperor had by his second wife. The Infanta Margaret had indeed, at

the time of her marriage, renounced her rights to the kingdom of her forefathers. But the renunciation wanted

many formalities which had been observed in her sister's case, and might be considered as cancelled by the

will of Philip the Fourth, which had declared that, failing his issue male, Margaret and her posterity would be

entitled to inherit his Crown. The partisans of France held that the Bavarian claim was better than the

Austrian claim; the partisans of Austria held that the Bavarian claim was better than the French claim. But

that which really constituted the strength of the Bavarian claim was the weakness of the Bavarian

government. The Electoral Prince was the only candidate whose success would alarm nobody; would not

make it necessary for any power to raise another regiment, to man another frigate, to have in store another

barrel of gunpowder. He was therefore the favourite candidate of prudent and peaceable men in every

Thus all Europe was divided into the French, the Austrian, and the Bavarian factions. The contests of these

factions were daily renewed in every place where men congregated, from Stockholm to Malta, and from

Lisbon to Smyrna. But the fiercest and most obstinate conflict was that which raged in the palace of the

Catholic King. Much depended on him. For, though it was not pretended that he was competent to alter by his

sole authority the law which regulated the descent of the Crown, yet, in a case in which the law was doubtful,

it was probable that his subjects might be disposed to accept the construction which he might put upon it, and

to support the claimant whom be might, either by a solemn adoption or by will, designate as the rightful heir.

It was also in the power of the reigning sovereign to entrust all the most important offices in his kingdom, the

government of all the provinces subject to him in the Old and in the New World, and the keys of all his

fortresses and arsenals, to persons zealous for the family which he was inclined to favour. It was difficult to

say to what extent the fate of whole nations might be affected by the conduct of the officers who, at the time

of his decease, might command the garrisons of Barcelona, of Mons, and of Namur.

The prince on whom so much depended was the most miserable of human beings. In old times he would have

been exposed as soon as he came into the world; and to expose him would have been a kindness. From his

birth a blight was on his body and on his mind. With difficulty his almost imperceptible spark of life had

been screened and fanned into a dim and flickering flame. His childhood, except when he could be rocked

and sung into sickly sleep, was one long piteous wail. Until he was ten years old his days were passed on the

laps of women; and he has never once suffered to stand on his ricketty legs. None of those tawny little

urchins, clad in rags stolen from scarecrows, whom Murillo loved to paint begging or rolling in the sand,

owed less to education than this despotic ruler of thirty millions of subjects, The most important events in the

history of his own kingdom, the very names of provinces and cities which were among his most valuable

possessions, were unknown to him. It may well be doubted whether he was ware that Sicily was an island,

that Christopher Columbus had discovered America, or that the English were not Mahometans. In his youth,

however, though too imbecile for study or for business, he was not incapable of being amused. He shot,

hawked and hunted. He enjoyed with the delight of a true Spaniard two delightful spectacles, a horse with its

bowels gored out, and a Jew writhing in the fire. The time came when the mightiest of instincts ordinarily

wakens from its repose. It was hoped that the young King would not prove invincible to female attractions,

and that he would leave a Prince of Asturias to succeed him. A consort was found for him in the royal family

of France; and her beauty and grace gave him a languid pleasure. He liked to adorn her with jewels, to see her

dance, and to tell her what sport he had had with his dogs and his falcons. But it was soon whispered that she

was a wife only in name. She died; and her place was supplied by a German princess nearly allied to the

Imperial House. But the second marriage, like the first, proved barren; and, long before the King had passed

the prime of life, all the politicians of Europe had begun to take it for granted in all their calculations that he

would be the last descendant, in the male line, of Charles the Fifth. Meanwhile a sullen and abject

melancholy took possession of his soul. The diversions which had been the serious employment of his youth

became distasteful to him. He ceased to find pleasure in his nets and boar spears, in the fandango and the

bullfight. Sometimes he shut himself up in an inner chamber from the eyes of his courtiers. Sometimes he

loitered alone, from sunrise to sunset, in the dreary and rugged wilderness which surrounds the Escurial. The

hours which he did not waste in listless indolence were divided between childish sports and childish

devotions. He delighted in rare animals, and still more in dwarfs. When neither strange beasts nor little men

could dispel the black thoughts which gathered in his mind, he repeated Aves and Credos; he walked in

processions; sometimes he starved himself; sometimes he whipped himself. At length a complication of

maladies completed the ruin of all his faculties. His stomach failed; nor was this strange; for in him the

malformation of the jaw, characteristic of his family, was so serious that he could not masticate his food; and

he was in the habit of swallowing ollas and sweetmeats in the state in which they were set before him. While

suffering from indigestion he was attacked by ague. Every third day his convulsive tremblings, his dejection,

his fits of wandering, seemed to indicate the approach of dissolution. His misery was increased by the

knowledge that every body was calculating how long he had to live, and wondering what would become of

his kingdoms when he should be dead. The stately dignitaries of his household, the physicians who

ministered to his diseased body, the divines whose business was to soothe his not less diseased mind, the very

wife who should have been intent on those gentle offices by which female tenderness can alleviate even the

misery of hopeless decay, were all thinking of the new world which was to commence with his death, and

would have been perfectly willing to see him in the hands of the embalmer if they could have been certain

that his successor would be the prince whose interest they espoused. As yet the party of the Emperor seemed

to predominate. Charles had a faint sort of preference for the House of Austria, which was his own house, and

a faint sort of antipathy to the House of Bourbon, with which he had been quarrelling, he did not well know

why, ever since he could remember. His Queen, whom he did not love, but of whom he stood greatly in awe,

was devoted to the interests of her kinsman the Emperor; and with her was closely leagued the Count of

Such was the state of the question of the Spanish succession at the time when Portland had his first public

audience at Versailles. The French ministers were certain that he must be constantly thinking about that

question, and were therefore perplexed by his evident determination to say nothing about it. They watched his

lips in the hope that he would at least let fall some unguarded word indicating the hopes or fears entertained

by the English and Dutch Governments. But Portland was not a man out of whom much was to be got in that

way. Nature and habit cooperating had made him the best keeper of secrets in Europe. Lewis therefore

directed Pomponne and Torcy, two ministers of eminent ability, who had, under himself, the chief direction

of foreign affairs, to introduce the subject which the discreet confidant of William seemed studiously to

avoid. Pomponne and Torcy accordingly repaired to the English embassy; and there opened one of the most

The two French statesmen professed in their master's name the most earnest desire, not only that the peace

might remain unbroken, but that there might be a close union between the Courts of Versailles and

Kensington. One event only seemed likely to raise new troubles. If the Catholic King should die before it had

been settled who should succeed to his immense dominions, there was but too much reason to fear that the

nations, which were just beginning to breathe after an exhausting and devastating struggle of nine years,

would be again in arms. His Most Christian Majesty was therefore desirous to employ the short interval

which might remain, in concerting with the King of England the means of preserving the tranquillity of the

Portland made a courteous but guarded answer. He could not, he said, presume to say exactly what William's

sentiments were; but this he knew, that it was not solely or chiefly by the sentiments of the King of England

that the policy of England on a great occasion would be regulated. The islanders must and would have their

government administered according to certain maxims which they held sacred; and of those maxims they held

none more sacred than this, that every increase of the power of France ought to be viewed with extreme

Pomponne and Torcy answered that their master was most desirous to avoid every thing which could excite

the jealousy of which Portland had spoken. But was it of France alone that a nation so enlightened as the

English must be jealous? Was it forgotten that the House of Austria had once aspired to universal dominion?

And would it be wise in the princes and commonwealths of Europe to lend their aid for the purpose of

reconstructing the gigantic monarchy which, in the sixteenth century, had seemed likely to overwhelm them

Portland answered that, on this subject, he must be understood to express only the opinions of a private man.

He had however now lived, during some years, among the English, and believed himself to be pretty well

acquainted with their temper. They would not, he thought, be much alarmed by any augmentation of power

which the Emperor might obtain. The sea was their element. Traffic by sea was the great source of their

wealth; ascendency on the sea the great object of their ambition. Of the Emperor they had no fear. Extensive

as was the area which he governed, he had not a frigate on the water; and they cared nothing for his Pandours

and Croatians. But France had a great navy. The balance of maritime power was what would be anxiously

watched in London; and the balance of maritime power would not be affected by an union between Spain and

Austria, but would be most seriously deranged by an union between Spain and France.

Pomponne and Torcy declared that every thing should be done to quiet the apprehensions which Portland had

described. It was not contemplated, it was not wished, that France and Spain should be united. The Dauphin

and his eldest son the Duke of Burgundy would waive their rights. The younger brothers of the Duke of

Burgundy, Philip Duke of Anjou and Charles Duke of Berry, were not named; but Portland perfectly

understood what was meant. There would, he said, be scarcely less alarm in England if the Spanish

dominions devolved on a grandson of His Most Christian Majesty than if they were annexed to the French

crown. The laudable affection of the young princes for their country and their family, and their profound

respect for the great monarch from whom they were descended, would inevitably determine their policy. The

two kingdoms would be one; the two navies would be one; and all other states would be reduced to vassalage.

England would rather see the Spanish monarchy added to the Emperor's dominions than governed by one of

the younger French princes, who would, though nominally independent, be really a viceroy of France. But in

truth there was no risk that the Spanish monarchy would be added to the Emperor's dominions. He and his

eldest son the Archduke Joseph would, no doubt, be as ready to waive their rights as the Dauphin and the

Duke of Burgundy could be; and thus the Austrian claim to the disputed heritage would pass to the younger

Archduke Charles. A long discussion followed. At length Portland plainly avowed, always merely as his own

private opinion, what was the opinion of every intelligent man who wished to preserve the peace of the

world. "France is afraid," he said, "of every thing which can increase the power of the Emperor. All Europe is

afraid of every thing which can increase the power of France. Why not put an end to all these uneasy feelings

at once, by agreeing to place the Electoral Prince of Bavaria on the throne of Spain?" To this suggestion no

decisive answer was returned. The conference ended; and a courier started for England with a despatch

William, who was, as he had always been, his own Secretary for Foreign Affairs, did not think it necessary to

discuss the contents of this despatch with any of his English ministers. The only person whom he consulted

was Heinsius. Portland received a kind letter warmly approving all that he had said in the conference, and

directing him to declare that the English government sincerely wished to avert the calamities which were but

too likely to follow the death of the King of Spain, and would therefore be prepared to take into serious

consideration any definite plan which His Most Christian Majesty might think fit to suggest. "I will own to

you," William wrote to his friend, "that I am so unwilling to be again at war during the short time which I still

have to live, that I will omit nothing that I can honestly and with a safe conscience do for the purpose of

William's message was delivered by Portland to Lewis at a private audience. In a few days Pomponne and

Torcy were authorised to propose a plan. They fully admitted that all neighbouring states were entitled to

demand the strongest security against the union of the French and Spanish crowns. Such security should be

given. The Spanish government might be requested to choose between the Duke of Anjou and the Duke of

Berry. The youth who was selected would, at the utmost, be only fifteen years old, and could not be supposed

to have any very deeply rooted national prejudices. He should be sent to Madrid without French attendants,

should be educated by Spaniards, should become a Spaniard. It was absurd to imagine that such a prince

would be a mere viceroy of France. Apprehensions had been sometimes hinted that a Bourbon, seated on the

throne of Spain, might cede his dominions in the Netherlands to the head of his family. It was undoubtedly

important to England, and all important to Holland, that those provinces should not become a part of the

French monarchy. All danger might be averted by making them over to the Elector of Bavaria, who was now

governing them as representative of the Catholic King. The Dauphin would be perfectly willing to renounce

them for himself and for all his descendants. As to what concerned trade, England and Holland had only to

say what they desired, and every thing in reason should be done to give them satisfaction.

As this plan was, in the main, the same which had been suggested by the French ministers in the former

conference, Portland did little more than repeat what he had then said. As to the new scheme respecting the

Netherlands, he shrewdly propounded a dilemma which silenced Pomponne and Torcy.

If renunciations were of any value, the Dauphin and his posterity were excluded from the Spanish succession;

and, if renunciations were of no value, it was idle to offer England and Holland a renunciation as a guarantee

The French Ministers withdrew to make their report to their master, and soon returned to say that their

proposals had been merely first thoughts, that it was now the turn of King William to suggest something, and

that whatever he might suggest should receive the fullest and fairest consideration.

And now the scene of the negotiation was shifted from Versailles to Kensington. The Count of Tallard had

just set out for England as Ambassador. He was a fine gentleman; he was a brave soldier; and he was as yet

reputed a skilful general. In all the arts and graces which were priced as qualifications for diplomatic

missions of the highest class, he had, among the brilliant aristocracy to which he belonged, no superior and

only one equal, the Marquess of Harcourt, who was entrusted with the care of the interests of the House of

Tallard carried with him instructions carefully framed in the French Foreign Office. He was reminded that his

situation would be widely different from that of his predecessors who had resided in England before the

Revolution. Even his predecessors, however, had considered it as their duty to study the temper, not only of

the Court, but of the nation. It would now be more than ever necessary to watch the movements of the public

mind. A man of note was not to be slighted merely because he was out of place. Such a man, with a great

name in the country and a strong following in Parliament, might exercise as much influence on the politics of

England, and consequently of Europe, as any minister. The Ambassador must therefore try to be on good

terms with those who were out as well as with those who were in. To this rule, however, there was one

exception which he must constantly bear in mind. With nonjurors and persons suspected of plotting against

the existing government he must not appear to have any connection. They must not be admitted into his

house. The English people evidently wished to be at rest, and had given the best proof of their pacific

disposition by insisting on the reduction of the army. The sure way to stir up jealousies and animosities which

were just sinking to sleep would be to make the French embassy the head quarters of the Jacobite party. It

would be wise in Tallard to say and to charge his agents to say, on all fit occasions, and particularly in

societies where members of Parliament might be present, that the Most Christian King had never been an

enemy of the liberties of England. His Majesty had indeed hoped that it might be in his power to restore his

cousin, but not without the assent of the nation. In the original draft of the instructions was a curious

paragraph which, on second thoughts, it was determined to omit. The Ambassador was directed to take proper

opportunities of cautioning the English against a standing army, as the only thing which could really be fatal

to their laws and liberties. This passage was suppressed, no doubt, because it occurred to Pomponne and

Torcy that, with whatever approbation the English might listen to such language when uttered by a

demagogue of their own race, they might be very differently affected by hearing it from a French diplomatist,

and might think that there could not be a better reason for arming, than that Lewis and his emissaries

Tallard was instructed to gain, if possible, some members of the House of Commons. Every thing, he was

told, was now subjected to the scrutiny of that assembly; accounts of the public income, of the public

expenditure, of the army, of the navy, were regularly laid on the table; and it would not be difficult to find

persons who would supply the French legation with copious information on all these subjects.

The question of the Spanish succession was to be mentioned to William at a private audience. Tallard was

fully informed of all that had passed in the conferences which the French ministers had held with Portland;

and was furnished with all the arguments that the ingenuity of publicists could devise in favour of the claim

The French embassy made as magnificent an appearance m England as the English embassy had made in

France. The mansion of the Duke of Ormond, one of the finest houses in Saint James's Square, was taken for

Tallard. On the day of the public entry, all the streets from Tower Hill to Pall Mall were crowded with gazers

who admired the painting and gilding of his Excellency's carriages, the surpassing beauty of his horses, and

the multitude of his running footmen, dressed in gorgeous liveries of scarlet and gold lace. The Ambassador

was graciously received at Kensington, and was invited to accompany William to Newmarket, where the

largest and most splendid Spring Meeting ever known was about to assemble. The attraction must be

supposed to have been great; for the risks of the journey were not trifling. The peace had, all over Europe,

and nowhere more than in England, turned crowds of old soldiers into marauders.12 Several aristocratical

equipages had been attacked even in Hyde Park. Every newspaper contained stories of travellers stripped,

bound and flung into ditches. One day the Bristol mail was robbed; another day the Dover coach; then the

Norwich waggon. On Hounslow Heath a company of horsemen, with masks on their faces, waited for the

great people who had been to pay their court to the King at Windsor. Lord Ossulston escaped with the loss of

two horses. The Duke of Saint Albans, with the help of his servants, beat off the assailants. His brother the

Duke of Northumberland, less strongly guarded, fell into their hands. They succeeded in stopping thirty or

forty coaches, and rode off with a great booty in guineas, watches and jewellery. Nowhere, however, does the

peal seem to have been so great as on the Newmarket road. There indeed robbery was organised on a scale

unparalleled in the kingdom since the days of Robin Hood and Little John. A fraternity of plunderers, thirty

in number according to the lowest estimate, squatted, near Waltham Cross, under the shades of Epping

Forest, and built themselves huts, from which they sallied forth with sword and pistol to bid passengers stand.

The King and Tallard were doubtless too well attended to be in jeopardy. But, soon after they had passed the

dangerous spot, there was a fight on the highway attended with loss of life. A warrant of the Lord Chief

justice broke up the Maroon village for a short time, but the dispersed thieves soon mustered again, and had

the impudence to bid defiance to the government in a cartel signed, it was said, with their real names. The

civil power was unable to deal with this frightful evil. It was necessary that, during some time, cavalry should

patrol every evening on the roads near the boundary between Middlesex and Essex.

The state of those roads, however, though contemporaries described it as dangerous beyond all example, did

not deter men of rank and fashion from making the joyous pilgrimages to Newmarket. Half the Dukes in the

kingdom were there. Most of the chief ministers of state swelled the crowd; nor was the opposition

unrepresented. Montague stole two or three days from the Treasury, and Orford from the Admiralty.

Godolphin was there, looking after his horses and his bets, and probably went away a richer man than he

came. But racing was only one of the many amusements of that festive season. On fine mornings there was

hunting. For those who preferred hawking choice falcons had been brought from Holland. On rainy days the

cockpit was encircled by stars and blue ribands. On Sundays William went to church in state, and the most

eminent divines of the neighbouring University of Cambridge preached before him. He omitted no

opportunity of showing marked civility to Tallard. The Ambassador informed his Court that his place at table

was next to the royal arm chair, and that his health had been most graciously drunk by the King.

All this time, both at Kensington and Newmarket, the Spanish question was the subject of constant and

earnest discussion. To trace all the windings of the negotiation would be tedious. The general course which it

took may easily be described. The object of William was to place the Electoral Prince of Bavaria on the

Spanish throne. To obtain the consent of Lewis to such an arrangement seemed all but impossible; but

William manoeuvred with rare skill. Though he frankly acknowledged that he preferred the Electoral Prince

to any other candidate, he professed. himself desirous to meet, as far as he honourably or safely could, the

wishes of the French King. There were conditions on which England and Holland might perhaps consent,

though not without reluctance, that a son of the Dauphin should reign at Madrid, and should be master of the

treasures of the New World. Those conditions were that the Milanese and the Two Sicilies should belong to

the Archduke Charles, that the Elector of Bavaria should have the Spanish Netherlands, that Lewis should

give up some fortified towns in Artois for the purpose of strengthening the barrier which protected the United

Provinces, and that some important places both in the Mediterranean sea and in the Gulf of Mexico should be

made over to the English and Dutch for the security of trade. Minorca and Havanna were mentioned as what

Against these terms Lewis exclaimed loudly. Nobody, he said, who knew with how sensitive a jealousy the

Spaniards watched every encroachment on their colonial empire would believe that they would ever consent

to give up any part of that empire either to England or to Holland. The demand which was made upon himself

was altogether inadmissible. A barrier was not less necessary to France than to Holland; and he never would

break the iron chain of frontier fastnesses which was the defence of his own kingdom, even in order to

purchase another kingdom for his grandson. On that subject he begged that he might hear no more. The

proposition was one which he would not discuss, one to which he would not listen.

As William, however, resolutely maintained that the terms which he had offered, hard as they might seem,

were the only terms on which England and Holland could suffer a Bourbon to reign at Madrid, Lewis began

seriously to consider, whether it might not be on the whole for his interest and that of his family rather to sell

the Spanish crown dear than to buy it dear. He therefore now offered to withdraw his opposition to the

Bavarian claim, provided a portion of the disputed inheritance were assigned to him in consideration of his

disinterestedness and moderation. William was perfectly willing and even eager to treat on this basis. The

first demands of Lewis were, as might have been expected, exorbitantly high. He asked for the kingdom of

Navarre, which would have made him little less than master of the whole Iberian peninsula, and for the duchy

of Luxemburg, which would have made him more dangerous than ever to the United Provinces. On both

points he encountered a steady resistance. The impression which, throughout these transactions, the firmness

and good faith of William made on Tallard is remarkable. At first the dexterous and keen witted Frenchman

was all suspicion. He imagined that there was an evasion in every phrase, a hidden snare in every offer. But

after a time he began to discover that he had to do with a man far too wise to be false. "The King of

England," he wrote, and it is impossible to doubt that he wrote what he thought, "acts with good faith in every

thing. His way of dealing is upright and sincere."13 "The King of England," he wrote a few days later, "has

hitherto acted with great sincerity; and I venture to say that, if he once enters into a treaty, he will steadily

adhere to it." But in the same letter the Ambassador thought it necessary to hint to his master that the

diplomatic chicanery which might be useful in other negotiations would be all thrown away here. "I must

venture to observe to Your Majesty that the King of England is very sharpsighted, that his judgment is sound,

and that, if we try to spin the negotiation out, he will very soon perceive that we are trifling with him."14

During some time projects and counterprojects continued to pass and repass between Kensington and

Versailles. Something was conceded on both sides; and when the session of Parliament ended there seemed to

be fair hopes of a settlement. And now the scene of the negotiation was again changed. Having been shifted

from France to England, it was shifted from England to Holland. As soon as William had prorogued the

Houses, he was impatient to be again in his native land. He felt all the glee of a schoolboy who is leaving

harsh masters and quarrelsome comrades to pass the Christmas holidays at a happy home. That stern and

composed face which had been the same in the pursuit at the Boyne and in the rout at Landen, and of which

the keenest politicians had in vain tried to read the secrets, now wore an expression but too intelligible. The

English were not a little provoked by seeing their King so happy. Hitherto his annual visits to the Continent

had been not only pardoned but approved. It was necessary that he should be at the head of his army. If he

had left his people, it had been in order to put his life in jeopardy for their independence, their liberty, and

their religion. But they had hoped that, when peace had been restored, when no call of duty required him to

cross the sea, he would generally, during the summer and autumn, reside in his fair palaces and parks on the

banks of the Thames, or travel from country seat to country seat, and from cathedral town to cathedral town,

making himself acquainted with every shire of his realm, and giving his hand to be kissed by multitudes of

squires, clergymen and aldermen who were not likely ever to see him unless he came among them. It now

appeared that he was sick of the noble residences which had descended to him from ancient princes; that he

was sick even of those mansions which the liberality of Parliament had enabled him to build and embellish

according to his own taste; that he was sick of Windsor, of Richmond, and of Hampton; that he promised

himself no enjoyment from a progress through those flourishing and populous counties which he had never

seen, Yorkshire and Norfolk, Cheshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire. While he was forced to be with us, he

was weary of us, pining for his home, counting the hours to the prorogation. As soon as the passing of the last

bill of supply had set him at liberty, he turned his back on his English subjects; he hastened to his seat in

Guelders, where, during some months, he might be free from the annoyance of seeing English faces and

hearing English words; and he would with difficulty tear himself away from his favourite spot when it

Thus his subjects murmured; but, in spite of their murmurs, he set off in high spirits. It had been arranged that

Tallard should speedily follow him, and that the discussion in which they had been engaged at Kensington

Heinsius, whose cooperation was indispensable, would be there. Portland too would lend his assistance. He

had just returned. He had always considered his mission as an extraordinary mission, of which the object was

to put the relations between the two great Western powers on a proper footing after a long series of years

during which England had been sometimes the enemy, but never the equal friend, of France. His task had

been well performed; and he now came back, leaving behind him the reputation of an excellent minister, firm

yet cautious as to substance, dignified yet conciliating in manner. His last audience at Versailles was

unusually long; and no third person was present. Nothing could be more gracious than the language and

demeanour of Lewis. He condescended to trace a route for the embassy, and insisted that Portland should

make a circuit for the purpose of inspecting some of the superb fortresses of the French Netherlands. At every

one of those fortresses the governors and engineers had orders to pay every attention to the distinguished

stranger. Salutes were everywhere fired to welcome him. A guard of honour was everywhere in attendance on

him. He stopped during three days at Chantilly, and was entertained there by the Prince of Cond� with all that

taste and magnificence for which Chantilly had long been renowned. There were boar hunts in the morning

and concerts in the evening. Every gentleman of the legation had a gamekeeper specially assigned to him.

The guests, who, in their own island were accustomed to give extravagant vails at every country house which

they visited, learned, with admiration, that His Highness's servants were strictly forbidden to receive presents.

At his luxurious table, by a refinement of politeness, choice cider from the orchards round the Malvern Hills

Portland was welcomed by his master with all the kindness of old times. But that kindness availed nothing.

For Albemarle was still in the royal household, and appeared to have been, during the last few months,

making progress in the royal favour. Portland was angry, and the more angry because he could not but

perceive that his enemies enjoyed his anger, and that even his friends generally thought it unreasonable; nor

did he take any pains to conceal his vexation. But he was the very opposite of the vulgar crowd of courtiers

who fawn on a master while they betray him. He neither disguised his ill humour, nor suffered it to interfere

with the discharge of his duties. He gave his prince sullen looks, short answers, and faithful and strenuous

services. His first wish, he said, was to retire altogether from public life. But he was sensible that, having

borne a chief part in the negotiation on which the fate of Europe depended, he might be of use at Loo; and,

with devoted loyalty, though with a sore heart and a gloomy brow, he prepared to attend William thither.

Before the King departed he delegated his power to nine Lords Justices. The public was well pleased to find

that Sunderland was not among them. Two new names appeared in the list. That of Montague could excite no

surprise. But that of Marlborough awakened many recollections and gave occasion to many speculations. He

had once enjoyed a large measure of royal favour. He had then been dismissed, disgraced, imprisoned. The

Princess Anne, for refusing to discard his wife, had been turned out of the palace, and deprived of the

honours which had often been enjoyed by persons less near to the throne. Ministers who were supposed to

have great influence in the closet had vainly tried to overcome the dislike with which their master regarded

the Churchills. It was not till he had been some time reconciled to his sister in law that he ceased to regard her

two favourite servants as his enemies. So late as the year 1696 he had been heard to say, "If I had been a

private gentleman, my Lord Marlborough and I must have measured swords." All these things were now, it

seemed, forgotten. The Duke of Gloucester's household had just been arranged. As he was not yet nine years

old, and the civil list was burdened with a heavy debt, fifteen thousand pounds was thought for the present a

sufficient provision. The child's literary education was directed by Burnet, with the title of Preceptor.

Marlborough was appointed Governor; and the London Gazette announced his appointment, not with official

dryness, but in the fervid language of panegyric. He was at the same time again sworn a member of the Privy

Council from which he had been expelled with ignominy; and he was honoured a few days later with a still

Some persons imagined that they saw in this strange reconciliation a sign that the influence of Portland was

on the wane and that the influence of Albemarle was growing. For Marlborough had been many years at feud

with Portland, and had evena rare event indeedbeen so much irritated as to speak of Portland in coarse

and ungentlemanlike terms. With Albemarle, on the other hand, Marlborough had studiously ingratiated

himself by all the arts which a mind singularly observant and sagacious could learn from a long experience in

courts; and it is possible that Albemarle may have removed some difficulties. It is hardly necessary, however,

to resort to that supposition for the purpose of explaining why so wise a man as William forced himself, after

some delay caused by very just and natural resentment, to act wisely. His opinion of Marlborough's character

was probably unaltered. But he could not help perceiving that Marlborough's situation was widely different

from what it had been a few years before. That very ambition, that very avarice, which had, in former times,

impelled him to betray two masters, were now sufficient securities for his fidelity to the order of things which

had been established by the Bill of Rights. If that order of things could be maintained inviolate, he could

scarcely fail to be, in a few years, the greatest and wealthiest subject in Europe. His military and political

talents might therefore now be used without any apprehension that they would be turned against the

government which used them. It is to be remembered too that he derived his importance less from his military

and political talents, great as they were, than from the dominion which, through the instrumentality of his

wife, he exercised over the mind of the Princess. While he was on good terms with the Court it was certain

that she would lend no countenance to any cabal which might attack either the title or the prerogatives of her

brother in law. Confident that from this quarter, a quarter once the darkest and most stormy in the whole

political horizon, nothing but sunshine and calm was now to be expected, William set out cheerfully on his

Altered Position of the MinistryThe ElectionsFirst Partition TreatyDomestic DiscontentLittleton

chosen SpeakerKing's Speech; Proceedings relating to the Amount of the Land Force Unpopularity of

MontagueBill for Disbanding the ArmyThe King's SpeechDeath of the Electoral Prince of

Bavaria.Renewed Discussion of the Army QuestionNaval AdministrationCommission on Irish

Forfeitures.Prorogation of ParliamentChanges in the Ministry and HouseholdSpanish

THE Gazette which informed the public that the King had set out for Holland announced also the names of

the first members returned, in obedience to his writ, by the constituent bodies of the Realm. The history of

those times has been so little studied that few persons are aware how remarkable an epoch the general

We have seen that the extreme inconvenience which had resulted from the capricious and headstrong conduct

of the House of Commons during the years immediately following the Revolution had forced William to

resort to a political machinery which had been unknown to his predecessors, and of which the nature and

operation were but very imperfectly understood by himself or by his ablest advisers. For the first time the

administration was confided to a small body of statesmen, who, on all grave and pressing questions, agreed

with each other and with the majority of the representatives of the people. The direction of war and of

diplomacy the King reserved to himself; and his servants, conscious that they were less versed than he in

military affairs and in foreign affairs, were content to leave to him the command of the army, and to know

only what he thought fit to communicate about the instructions which he gave to his own ambassadors and

about the conferences which he held with the ambassadors of other princes. But, with these important

exceptions, the government was entrusted to what then began to be called the Ministry.

The first English ministry was gradually formed; nor is it possible to say quite precisely when it began to

exist. But, on the whole, the date from which the era of ministries may most properly be reckoned is the day

of the meeting of the Parliament after the general election of 1695. That election had taken place at a time

when peril and distress had called forth all the best qualities of the nation. The hearts of men were in the

struggle against France for independence, for liberty, and for the Protestant religion. Everybody knew that

such a struggle could not be carried on without large establishments and heavy taxes. The government

therefore could hardly ask for more than the country was ready to give. A House of Commons was chosen in

which the Whig party had a decided preponderance. The leaders of that party had presently been raised, one

by one, to the highest executive offices. The majority, therefore, readily arranged itself in admirable order

under the ministers, and during three sessions gave them on almost every occasion a cordial support. The

consequence was that the country was rescued from its dangerous position, and, when that Parliament had

lived out its three years, enjoyed prosperity after a terrible commercial crisis, peace after a long and

sanguinary war, and liberty united with order after civil troubles which had lasted during two generations,

and in which sometimes order and sometimes liberty had been in danger of perishing.

Such were the fruits of the general election of 1695. The ministers had flattered themselves that the general

election of 1698 would be equally favourable to them, and that in the new Parliament the old Parliament

would revive. Nor is it strange that they should have indulged such a hope. Since they had been called to the

direction of affairs every thing had been changed, changed for the better, and changed chiefly by their wise

and resolute policy, and by the firmness with which their party had stood by them. There was peace abroad

and at home. The sentinels had ceased to watch by the beacons of Dorsetshire and Sussex. The merchant

ships went forth without fear from the Thames and the Avon. Soldiers had been disbanded by tens of

thousands. Taxes had been remitted. The value of all public and private securities had risen. Trade had never

been so brisk. Credit had never been so solid. All over the kingdom the shopkeepers and the farmers, the

artisans and the ploughmen, relieved, beyond all hope, from the daily and hourly misery of the clipped silver,

were blessing the broad faces of the new shillings and half crowns. The statesmen whose administration had

been so beneficent might be pardoned if they expected the gratitude and confidence which they had fairly

earned. But it soon became clear that they had served their country only too well for their own interest. In

1695 adversity and danger had made men amenable to that control to which it is the glory of free nations to

submit themselves, the control of superior minds. In 1698 prosperity and security had made men querulous,

fastidious and unmanageable. The government was assailed with equal violence from widely different

quarters. The opposition, made up of Tories many of whom carried Toryism to the length of Jacobitism, and

of discontented Whigs some of whom carried Whiggism to the length of republicanism, called itself the

Country party, a name which had been popular before the words Whig and Tory were known in England. The

majority of the late House of Commons, a majority which had saved the State, was nicknamed the Court

party. The Tory gentry, who were powerful in all the counties, had special grievances. The whole patronage

of the government, they said, was in Whig hands. The old landed interest, the old Cavalier interest, had now

no share in the favours of the Crown. Every public office, every bench of justice, every commission of

Lieutenancy, was filled with Roundheads. The Tory rectors and vicars were not less exasperated. They

accused the men in power of systematically protecting and preferring Presbyterians, Latitudinarians, Arians,

Socinians, Deists, Atheists. An orthodox divine, a divine who held high the dignity of the priesthood and the

mystical virtue of the sacraments, who thought schism as great a sin as theft and venerated the Icon as much

as the Gospel, had no more chance of a bishopric or a deanery than a Papist recusant. Such complaints as

these were not likely to call forth the sympathy of the Whig malecontents. But there were three war cries in

which all the enemies of the government, from Trenchard to Seymour, could join: No standing army; No

grants of Crown property; and No Dutchmen. Multitudes of honest freeholders and freemen were weak

enough to believe that, unless the land force, which had already been reduced below what the public safety

required, were altogether disbanded, the nation would be enslaved, and that, if the estates which the King had

given away were resumed, all direct taxes might be abolished. The animosity to the Dutch mingled itself both

with the animosity to standing armies and with the animosity to Crown grants. For a brigade of Dutch troops

was part of the military establishment which was still kept up; and it was to Dutch favourites that William

The elections, however, began auspiciously for the government. The first great contest was in Westminster. It

must be remembered that Westminster was then by far the greatest city in the island, except only the

neighbouring city of London, and contained more than three times as large a population as Bristol or

Norwich, which came next in size. The right of voting at Westminster was in the householders paying scot

and lot; and the householders paying scot and lot were many thousands. It is also to be observed that their

political education was much further advanced than that of the great majority of the electors of the kingdom.

A burgess in a country town, or a forty shilling freeholder in an agricultural district, then knew little about

public affairs except what he could learn from reading the Postman at the alehouse, and from hearing, on the

30th of January, the 29th of May or the 5th of November, a sermon in which questions of state were

discussed with more zeal than sense. But the citizen of Westminster passed his days in the vicinity of the

palace, of the public offices, of the houses of parliament, of the courts of law. He was familiar with the faces

and voices of ministers, senators and judges. In anxious times he walked in the great Hall to pick up news.

When there was an important trial, he looked into the Court of King's Bench, and heard Cowper and Harcourt

contending, and Holt moderating between them. When there was an interesting debate, in the House of

Commons, he could at least squeeze himself into the lobby or the Court of Requests, and hear who had

spoken, and how and what were the numbers on the division. He lived in a region of coffeehouses, of

booksellers' shops, of clubs, of pamphlets, of newspapers, of theatres where poignant allusions to the most

exciting questions of the day perpetually called forth applause and hisses, of pulpits where the doctrines of

the High Churchman, of the Low Churchman, of the Nonjuror, of the Nonconformist, were explained and

defended every Sunday by the most eloquent and learned divines of every persuasion. At that time, therefore,

the metropolitan electors were, as a class, decidedly superior in intelligence and knowledge to the provincial

Montague and Secretary Vernon were the ministerial candidates for Westminster. They were opposed by Sir

Henry Colt, a dull, surly, stubborn professor of patriotism, who tired everybody to death with his endless

railing at standing armies and placemen. The electors were summoned to meet on an open space just out of

the streets. The first Lord of the Treasury and the Secretary of State appeared at the head of three thousand

horsemen. Colt's followers were almost all on foot. He was a favourite with the keepers of pothouses, and

had enlisted a strong body of porters and chairmen. The two parties, after exchanging a good deal of abuse,

came to blows. The adherents of the ministers were victorious, put the adverse mob to the rout, and cudgelled

Colt himself into a muddy ditch. The poll was taken in Westminster Hall. From the first there was no doubt

of the result. But Colt tried to prolong the contest by bringing up a voter an hour. When it became clear that

this artifice was employed for the purpose of causing delay, the returning officer took on himself the

responsibility of closing the books, and of declaring Montague and Vernon duly elected.

At Guildhall the junto was less fortunate. Three ministerial Aldermen were returned. But the fourth member,

Sir John Fleet, was not only a Tory, but was Governor of the old East India Company, and had distinguished

himself by the pertinacity with which he had opposed the financial and commercial policy of the first Lord of

the Treasury. While Montague suffered the mortification of finding that his empire over the city was less

absolute than he had imagined, Wharton, notwithstanding his acknowledged preeminence in the art of

electioneering, underwent a succession of defeats in boroughs and counties for which he had expected to

name the members. He failed at Brackley, at Malmesbury and at Cockermouth. He was unable to maintain

possession even of his own strongholds, Wycombe and Aylesbury. He was beaten in Oxfordshire. The

freeholders of Buckinghamshire, who had been true to him during many years, and who in 1685, when the

Whig party was in the lowest state of depression, had, in spite of fraud and tyranny, not only placed him at

the head of the poll but put their second votes at his disposal, now rejected one of his candidates, and could

hardly be induced to return the other, his own brother, by a very small majority.

The elections for Exeter appear to have been in that age observed by the nation with peculiar interest. For

Exeter was not only one of the largest and most thriving cities in the Kingdom, but was also the capital of the

West of England, and was much frequented by the gentry of several counties. The franchise was popular.

Party spirit ran high; and the contests were among the fiercest and the longest of which there is any record in

our history. Seymour had represented Exeter in the Parliament of James, and in the two first Parliaments of

William. In 1695, after a struggle of several weeks which had attracted much attention not only here but on

the Continent, he had been defeated by two Whig candidates, and forced to take refuge in a small borough.

But times had changed. He was now returned in his absence by a large majority; and with him was joined

another Tory less able and, if possible, more unprincipled than himself, Sir Bartholomew Shower. Shower

had been notorious as one of the hangmen of James. When that cruel King was bent on punishing with death

soldiers who deserted from the army which he kept up in defiance of the constitution, he found that he could

expect no assistance from Holt, who was the Recorder of London. Holt was accordingly removed. Shower

was made Recorder, and showed his gratitude for his promotion by sending to Tyburn men who, as every

barrister in the Inns of Court knew, were guilty of no offence at all. He richly deserved to have been excepted

from the Act of Grace, and left to the vengeance of the laws which he had so foully perverted. The return

which he made for the clemency which spared him was most characteristic. He missed no opportunity of

thwarting and damaging the Government which had saved him from the gallows. Having shed innocent blood

for the purpose of enabling James to keep up thirty thousand troops without the consent of Parliament, he

now pretended to think it monstrous that William should keep up ten thousand with the consent of

Parliament. That a great constituent body should be so forgetful of the past and so much out of humour with

the present as to take this base and hardhearted pettifogger for a patriot was an omen which might well justify

When the returns were complete, it appeared that the new House of Commons contained an unusual number

of men about whom little was known, and on whose support neither the government nor the opposition could

with any confidence reckon. The ranks of the staunch ministerial Whigs were certainly much thinned; but it

did not appear that the Tory ranks were much fuller than before. That section of the representative body

which was Whiggish without being ministerial had gamed a great accession of strength, and seemed likely to

have, during some time, the fate of the country in its hands. It was plain that the next session would be a

trying one. Yet it was not impossible that the servants of the Crown might, by prudent management, succeed

in obtaining a working majority. Towards the close of August the statesmen of the junto, disappointed and

anxious but not hopeless, dispersed in order to lay in a stock of health and vigour for the next parliamentary

campaign. There were races at that season in the neighbourhood of Winchenden, Wharton's seat in

Buckinghamshire; and a large party assembled there. Orford, Montague and Shrewsbury repaired to the

muster. But Somers, whose chronic maladies, aggravated by sedulous application to judicial and political

business, made it necessary for him to avoid crowds and luxurious banquets, retired to Tunbridge Wells, and

tried to repair his exhausted frame with the water of the springs and the air of the heath. Just at this moment

The long negotiation touching the Spanish succession had at length been brought to a conclusion. Tallard had

joined William at Loo, and had there met Heinsius and Portland. After much discussion, the price in

consideration of which the House of Bourbon would consent to waive all claim to Spain and the Indies, and

to support the pretensions of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, was definitively settled. The Dauphin was to

have the Province of Guipuscoa, Naples, Sicily and some small Italian islands which were part of the Spanish

monarchy. The Milanese was allotted to the Archduke Charles. As the Electoral Prince was still a child, it

was agreed that his father, who was then governing the Spanish Netherlands as Viceroy, should be Regent of

Spain during the minority. Such was the first Partition Treaty, a treaty which has been during five generations

confidently and noisily condemned, and for which scarcely any writer has ventured to offer even a timid

apology, but which it may perhaps not be impossible to defend by grave and temperate argument.

It was said, when first the terms of the Partition Treaty were made public, and has since been many times

repeated, that the English and Dutch Governments, in making this covenant with France, were guilty of a

violation of plighted faith. They had, it was affirmed, by a secret article of a Treaty of Alliance concluded in

1689, bound themselves to support the pretensions of the Emperor to the Spanish throne; and they now, in

direct defiance of that article, agreed to an arrangement by which he was excluded from the Spanish throne.

The truth is that the secret article will not, whether construed according to the letter or according to the spirit,

bear the sense which has generally been put upon it. The stipulations of that article were introduced by a

preamble, in which it was set forth that the Dauphin was preparing to assert by arms his claim to the great

heritage which his mother had renounced, and that there was reason to believe that he also aspired to the

dignity of King of the Romans. For these reasons, England and the States General, considering the evil

consequences which must follow if he should succeed in attaining either of his objects, promised to support

with all their power his Caesarean Majesty against the French and their adherents. Surely we cannot

reasonably interpret this engagement to mean that, when the dangers mentioned in the preamble had ceased to

exist, when the eldest Archduke was King of the Romans, and when the Dauphin had, for the sake of peace,

withdrawn his claim to the Spanish Crown, England and the United Provinces would be bound to go to war

for the purpose of supporting the cause of the Emperor, not against the French but against his own grandson,

against the only prince who could reign at Madrid without exciting fear and jealousy throughout all

While some persons accused William of breaking faith with the House of Austria, others accused him of

interfering unjustly in the internal affairs of Spain. In the most ingenious and humorous political satire extant

in our language, Arbuthnot's History of John Bull, England and Holland are typified by a clothier and a

linendraper, who take upon themselves to settle the estate of a bedridden old gentleman in their

neighbourhood. They meet at the corner of his park with paper and pencils, a pole, a chain and a semicircle,

measure his fields, calculate the value of his mines, and then proceed to his house in order to take an

inventory of his plate and furniture. But this pleasantry, excellent as pleasantry, hardly deserves serious

refutation. No person who has a right to give any opinion at all about politics can think that the question,

whether two of the greatest empires in the world should be virtually united so as to form one irresistible mass,

was a question with which other states had nothing to do, a question about which other states could not take

counsel together without being guilty of impertinence as gross as that of a busybody in private life who

should insist on being allowed to dictate the wills of other people. If the whole Spanish monarchy should pass

to the House of Bourbon, it was highly probable that in a few years England would cease to be great and free,

and that Holland would be a mere province of France. Such a danger England and Holland might lawfully

have averted by war; and it would be absurd to say that a danger which may be lawfully averted by war

cannot lawfully be averted by peaceable means. If nations are so deeply interested in a question that they

would be justified in resorting to arms for the purpose of settling it, they must surely be sufficiently interested

in it to be justified in resorting to amicable arrangements for the purpose of settling it. Yet, strange to say, a

multitude of writers who have warmly praised the English and Dutch governments for waging a long and

bloody war in order to prevent the question of the Spanish succession from being settled in a manner

prejudicial to them, have severely blamed those governments for trying to attain the same end without the

shedding of a drop of blood, without the addition of a crown to the taxation of any country in Christendom,

and without a moment's interruption of the trade of the world by land or by sea.

It has been said to have been unjust that three states should have combined to divide a fourth state without its

own consent; and, in recent times, the partition of the Spanish monarchy which was meditated in 1698 has

been compared to the greatest political crime which stains the history of modern Europe, the partition of

Poland. But those who hold such language cannot have well considered the nature of the Spanish monarchy

in the seventeenth century. That monarchy was not a body pervaded by one principle of vitality and

sensation. It was an assemblage of distinct bodies, none of which had any strong sympathy with the rest, and

some of which had a positive antipathy for each other. The partition planned at Loo was therefore the very

opposite of the partition of Poland. The partition of Poland was the partition of a nation. It was such a

partition as is effected by hacking a living man limb from limb. The partition planned at Loo was the partition

of an ill governed empire which was not a nation. It was such a partition as is effected by setting loose a

drove of slaves who have been fastened together with collars and handcuffs, and whose union has produced

only pain, inconvenience and mutual disgust. There is not the slightest reason to believe that the Neapolitans

would have preferred the Catholic King to the Dauphin, or that the Lombards would have preferred the

Catholic King to the Archduke. How little the Guipuscoans would have disliked separation from Spain and

annexation to France we may judge from the fact that, a few years later, the States of Guipuscoa actually

offered to transfer their allegiance to France on condition that their peculiar franchises should be held sacred.

One wound the partition would undoubtedly have inflicted, a wound on the Castilian pride. But surely the

pride which a nation takes in exercising over other nations a blighting and withering dominion, a dominion

without prudence or energy, without justice or mercy, is not a feeling entitled to much respect. And even a

Castilian who was not greatly deficient in sagacity must have seen that an inheritance claimed by two of the

greatest potentates in Europe could hardly pass entire to one claimant; that a partition was therefore all but

inevitable; and that the question was in truth merely between a partition effected by friendly compromise and

There seems, therefore, to be no ground at all for pronouncing the terms of the Treaty of Loo unjust to the

Emperor, to the Spanish monarchy considered as a whole, or to any part of that monarchy. Whether those

terms were or were not too favourable to France is quite another question. It has often been maintained that

she would have gained more by permanently annexing to herself Guipuscoa, Naples and Sicily than by

sending the Duke of Anjou or the Duke of Berry to reign at the Escurial. On this point, however, if on any

point, respect is due to the opinion of William. That he thoroughly understood the politics of Europe is as

certain as that jealousy of the greatness of France was with him a passion, a ruling passion, almost an

infirmity. Before we blame him, therefore, for making large concessions to the power which it was the chief

business of his life to keep within bounds, we shall do well to consider whether those concessions may not,

on close examination, be found to be rather apparent than real. The truth is that they were so, and were well

Naples and Sicily formed indeed a noble kingdom, fertile, populous, blessed with a delicious climate, and

excellently situated for trade. Such a kingdom, had it been contiguous to Provence, would indeed have been a

most formidable addition to the French monarchy. But a glance at the map ought to have been sufficient to

undeceive those who imagined that the great antagonist of the House of Bourbon could be so weak as to lay

the liberties of Europe at the feet of that house. A King of France would, by acquiring territories in the South

of Italy, have really bound himself over to keep the peace; for, as soon as he was at war with his neighbours,

those territories were certain to be worse than useless to him. They were hostages at the mercy of his

enemies. It would be easy to attack them. It would be hardly possible to defend them. A French army sent to

them by land would have to force its way through the passes of the Alps, through Piedmont, through

Tuscany, and through the Pontifical States, in opposition probably to great German armies. A French fleet

would run great risk of being intercepted and destroyed by the squadrons of England and Holland. Of all this

Lewis was perfectly aware. He repeatedly declared that he should consider the kingdom of the Two Sicilies

as a source, not of strength, but of weakness. He accepted it at last with murmurs; he seems to have intended

to make it over to one of his younger grandsons; and he would beyond all doubt have gladly given it in

exchange for a thirtieth part of the same area in the Netherlands.15 But in the Netherlands England and

Holland were determined to allow him nothing. What he really obtained in Italy was little more than a

splendid provision for a cadet of his house. Guipuscoa was then in truth the price in consideration of which

France consented that the Electoral Prince of Bavaria should be King of Spain and the Indies. Guipuscoa,

though a small, was doubtless a valuable province, and was in a military point of view highly important. But

Guipuscoa was not in the Netherlands. Guipuscoa would not make Lewis a more formidable neighbour to

England or to the United Provinces. And, if the Treaty should be broken off, if the vast Spanish empire

should be struggled for and torn in pieces by the rival races of Bourbon and Habsburg, was it not possible,

was it not probable, that France might lay her iron grasp, not on Guipuscoa alone, but on Luxemburg and

Namur, on Hainault, Brabant and Antwerp, on Flanders East and West? Was it certain that the united force of

all her neighbours would be sufficient to compel her to relinquish her prey? Was it not certain that the contest

would be long and terrible? And would not the English and Dutch think themselves most fortunate if, after

many bloody and costly campaigns, the French King could be compelled to sign a treaty, the same, word for

William, firmly relying on his own judgment, had not yet, in the whole course of this momentous negotiation,

asked the advice or employed the agency of any English minister. But the treaty could not be formally

concluded without the instrumentality of one of the Secretaries of State and of the Great Seal. Portland was

directed to write to Vernon. The King himself wrote to the Chancellor. Somers was authorised to consult any

of his colleagues whom he might think fit to be entrusted with so high a secret; and he was requested to give

his own opinion of the proposed arrangement. If that opinion should be favourable, not a day must be lost.

The King of Spain might die at any moment, and could hardly live till the winter. Full powers must be sent to

Loo, sealed, but with blanks left for the names of the plenipotentiaries. Strict secresy must be observed; and

care must be taken that the clerks whose duty it was to draw up the necessary documents should not entertain

The despatch from Loo found Somers at a distance from all his political friends, and almost incapacitated by

infirmities and by remedies from attending to serious business, his delicate frame worn out by the labours and

vigils of many months, his head aching and giddy with the first draughts from the chalybeate spring. He

roused himself, however, and promptly communicated by writing with Shrewsbury and Orford. Montague

and Vernon came down to Tunbridge Wells, and conferred fully with him. The opinion of the leading Whig

statesmen was communicated to the King in a letter which was not many months later placed on the records

of Parliament. These statesmen entirely agreed with William in wishing to see the question of the Spanish

succession speedily and peaceably settled. They apprehended that, if Charles should die leaving that question

unsettled, the immense power of the French King and the geographical situation of his dominions would

enable him to take immediate possession of the most important parts of the great inheritance. Whether he was

likely to venture on so bold a course, and whether, if he did venture on it, any continental government would

have the means and the spirit to withstand him, were questions as to which the English ministers, with

unfeigned deference, submitted their opinion to that of their master, whose knowledge of the interests and

tempers of all the courts of Europe was unrivalled. But there was one important point which must not be left

out of consideration, and about which his servants might perhaps be better informed than himself, the temper

of their own country. It was, the Chancellor wrote, their duty to tell His Majesty that the recent elections had

indicated the public feeling in a manner which had not been expected, but which could not be mistaken. The

spirit which had borne the nation up through nine years of exertions and sacrifices seemed to be dead. The

people were sick of taxes; they hated the thought of war. As it would, in such circumstances, be no easy

matter to form a coalition capable of resisting the pretensions of France, it was most desirable that she should

be induced to withdraw those pretensions; and it was not to be expected that she would withdraw them

without securing for herself a large compensation. The principle of the Treaty of Loo, therefore, the English

Ministers cordially approved. But whether the articles of that treaty were or were not too favourable to the

House of Bourbon, and whether the House of Bourbon was likely faithfully to observe them, were questions

about which Somers delicately hinted that he and his colleagues felt some misgivings. They had their fears

that Lewis might be playing false. They had their fears also that, possessed of Sicily, he would be master of

the trade of the Levant; and that, possessed of Guipuscoa, he would be able at any moment to push an army

into the heart of Castile. But they had been reassured by the thought that their Sovereign thoroughly

understood this department of politics, that he had fully considered all these things, that he had neglected no

precaution, and that the concessions which he had made to France were the smallest which could have

averted the calamities impending over Christendom. It was added that the service which His Majesty had

rendered to the House of Bavaria gave him a right to ask for some return. Would it be too much to expect,

from the gratitude of the prince who was soon to be a great king, some relaxation of the rigorous system

which excluded the English trade from the Spanish colonies? Such a relaxation would greatly endear His

With these suggestions the Chancellor sent off the powers which the King wanted. They were drawn up by

Vernon with his own hand, and sealed in such a manner that no subordinate officer was let into the secret.

Blanks were left, as the King had directed, for the names of two Commissioners. But Somers gently hinted

that it would be proper to fill those blanks with the names of persons who were English by naturalisation, if

The King now had what he wanted from England. The peculiarity of the Batavian polity threw some

difficulties in his way; but every difficulty gelded to his authority and to the dexterous management of

Heinsius. And in truth the treaty could not but be favourably regarded by the States General; for it had been

carefully framed with the especial object of preventing France from obtaining any accession of territory, or

influence on the side of the Netherlands; and Dutchmen, who remembered the terrible year when the camp of

Lewis had been pitched between Utrecht and Amsterdam, were delighted to find that he was not to add to his

dominions a single fortress in their neighbourhood, and were quite willing to buy him off with whole

provinces under the Pyrenees and the Apennines. The sanction both of the federal and of the provincial

governments was given with ease and expedition; and in the evening of the fourth of September 1698, the

treaty was signed. As to the blanks in the English powers, William had attended to his Chancellor's

suggestion, and had inserted the names of Sir Joseph Williamson, minister at the Hague, a born Englishman,

and of Portland, a naturalised Englishman. The Grand Pensionary and seven other Commissioners signed on

behalf of the United Provinces. Tallard alone signed for France. He seems to have been extravagantly elated

by what seemed to be the happy issue of the negotiation in which he had borne so great a part, and in his next

despatch to Lewis boasted of the new treaty as destined to be the most famous that had been made during

William too was well pleased; and he had reason to be so. Had the King of Spain died, as all men expected,

before the end of that year, it is highly probable that France would have kept faith with England and the

United Provinces; and it is almost certain that, if France had kept faith, the treaty would have been carried

into effect without any serious opposition in any quarter. The Emperor might have complained and

threatened; but he must have submitted; for what could he do? He had no fleet; and it was therefore

impossible for him even to attempt to possess himself of Castile, of Arragon, of Sicily, of the Indies, in

opposition to the united navies of the three greatest maritime powers in the world. In fact, the only part of the

Spanish empire which he could hope to seize and hold by force against the will of the confederates of Loo

was the Milanese; and the Milanese the confederates of Loo had agreed to assign to his family. He would

scarcely have been so mad as to disturb the peace of the world when the only thing which he had any chance

of gaining by war was offered him without war. The Castilians would doubtless have resented the

dismemberment of the unwieldy body of which they formed the head. But they would have perceived that by

resisting they were much more likely to lose the Indies than to preserve Guipuscoa. As to Italy, they could no

more make war there than in the moon. Thus the crisis which had seemed likely to produce an European war

of ten years would have produced nothing worse than a few angry notes and plaintive manifestoes.

Both the confederate Kings wished their compact to remain a secret while their brother Charles lived; and it

probably would have remained secret, had it been confided only to the English and French Ministers. But the

institutions of the United Provinces were not well fitted for the purpose of concealment. It had been necessary

to trust so many deputies and magistrates that rumours of what had been passing at Loo got abroad. Quiros,

the Spanish Ambassador at the Hague, followed the trail with such skill and perseverance that he discovered,

if not the whole truth, yet enough to furnish materials for a despatch which produced much irritation and

alarm at Madrid. A council was summoned, and sate long in deliberation. The grandees of the proudest of

Courts could hardly fail to perceive that their next sovereign, be he who he might, would find it impossible to

avoid sacrificing part of his defenceless and widely scattered empire in order to preserve the rest; they could

not bear to think that a single fort, a single islet, in any of the four quarters of the world was about to escape

from the sullen domination of Castile. To this sentiment all the passions and prejudices of the haughty race

were subordinate. "We are ready," such was the phrase then in their mouths, "to go to any body, to go to the

Dauphin, to go to the Devil, so that we all go together." In the hope of averting the threatened

dismemberment, the Spanish ministers advised their master to adopt as his heir the candidate whose

pretensions it was understood that France, England and Holland were inclined to support. The advice was

taken; and it was soon every where known that His Catholic Majesty had solemnly designated as his

successor his nephew Francis Joseph, Electoral Prince of Bavaria. France protested against this arrangement,

not, as far as can now be judged, because she meant to violate the Treaty of Loo, but because it would have

been difficult for her, if she did not protest, to insist on the full execution of that treaty. Had she silently

acquiesced in the nomination of the Electoral Prince, she would have appeared to admit that the Dauphin's

pretensions were unfounded; and, if she admitted the Dauphin's pretensions to be unfounded, she could not,

without flagrant injustice, demand several provinces as the price in consideration of which she would consent

to waive those pretensions. Meanwhile the confederates had secured the cooperation of a most important

person, the Elector of Bavaria, who was actually Governor of the Netherlands, and was likely to be in a few

months, at farthest, Regent of the whole Spanish monarchy. He was perfectly sensible that the consent of

France, England and Holland to his son's elevation was worth purchasing at almost any cost, and, with much

alacrity, promised that, when the time came, he would do all in his power to facilitate the execution of the

Treaty of Partition. He was indeed bound by the strongest ties to the confederates of Loo. They had, by a

secret article, added to the treaty, agreed that, if the Electoral Prince should become King of Spain, and then

die without issue, his father should be his heir. The news that young Francis Joseph had been declared heir to

the throne of Spain was welcome to all the potentates of Europe with the single exception of his grandfather

the Emperor. The vexation and indignation of Leopold were extreme. But there could be no doubt that,

graciously or ungraciously, he would submit. It would have been madness in him to contend against all

Western Europe on land; and it was physically impossible for him to wage war on the sea. William was

therefore able to indulge, during some weeks, the pleasing belief that he had by skill and firmness averted

from the civilised world a general war which had lately seemed to be imminent, and that he had secured the

great community of nations against the undue predominance of one too powerful member.

But the pleasure and the pride with which he contemplated the success of his foreign policy gave place to

very different feelings as soon as he again had to deal with our domestic factions. And, indeed, those who

most revere his memory must acknowledge that, in dealing with these factions, he did not, at this time, show

his wonted statesmanship. For a wise man, he seems never to have been sufficiently aware how much offence

is given by discourtesy in small things. His ministers had apprised him that the result of the elections had

been unsatisfactory, and that the temper of the new representatives of the people would require much

management. Unfortunately he did not lay this intimation to heart. He had by proclamation fixed the opening

of the Parliament for the 29th of November. This was then considered as a very late day. For the London

season began together with Michaelmas Term; and, even during the war, the King had scarcely ever failed to

receive the compliments of his faithful Lords and Commons on the fifth of November, the anniversary both

of his birth and of his memorable landing. The numerous members of the House of Commons who were in

town, having their tune on their hands, formed cabals, and heated themselves and each other by murmuring at

his partiality for the country of his birth. He had been off to Holland, they said, at the earliest possible

moment. He was now lingering in Holland till the latest possible moment. This was not the worst. The

twentyninth of November came; but the King was not come. It was necessary that the Lords Justices should

prorogue the Parliament to the sixth of December. The delay was imputed, and justly, to adverse winds. But

the malecontents asked, with some reason, whether His Majesty had not known that there were often gales

from the West in the German Ocean, and whether, when he had made a solemn appointment with the Estates

of his Realm for a particular day, he ought not to have arranged things in such a way that nothing short of a

Thus the ill humour which a large proportion of the new legislators had brought up from their country seats

became more and more aced every day, till they entered on their functions. One question was much agitated

during this unpleasant interval. Who was to be Speaker? The junto wished to place Sir Thomas Littleton in

the chair. He was one of their ablest, most zealous and most steadfast friends; and had been, both in the

House of Commons and at the Board of Treasury, an invaluable second to Montague. There was reason

indeed to expect a strong opposition. That Littleton was a Whig was a grave objection to him in the opinion

of the Tories. That he was a placeman, and that he was for a standing army, were grave objections to him in

the opinion of many who were not Tories. But nobody else came forward. The health of the late Speaker

Foley had failed. Musgrave was talked of in coffeehouses; but the rumour that he would be proposed soon

died away. Seymour's name was in a few mouths; but Seymour's day had gone by. He still possessed, indeed,

those advantages which had once made him the first of the country gentlemen of England, illustrious descent,

ample fortune, ready and weighty eloquence, perfect familiarity with parliamentary business. But all these

things could not do so much to raise him as his moral character did to drag him down. Haughtiness such as

his, though it could never have been liked, might, if it had been united with elevated sentiments of virtue and

honour, have been pardoned. But of all the forms of pride, even the pride of upstart wealth not excepted, the

most offensive is the pride of ancestry when found in company with sordid and ignoble vices, greediness,

mendacity, knavery and impudence; and such was the pride of Seymour. Many, even of those who were well

pleased to see the ministers galled by his keen and skilful rhetoric, remembered that he had sold himself more

than once, and suspected that he was impatient to sell himself again. On the very eve of the opening of

Parliament, a little tract entitled "Considerations on the Choice of a Speaker" was widely circulated, and

seems to have produced a great sensation. The writer cautioned the representatives of the people, at some

length, against Littleton; and then, in even stronger language, though more concisely, against Seymour; but

did not suggest any third person. The sixth of December came, and found the Country party, as it called itself,

still unprovided with a candidate. The King, who had not been many hours in London, took his seat in the

House of Lords. The Commons were summoned to the bar, and were directed to choose a Speaker. They

returned to their Chamber. Hartington proposed Littleton; and the proposition was seconded by Spencer. No

other person was put in nomination; but there was a warm debate of two hours. Seymour, exasperated by

finding that no party was inclined to support his pretensions, spoke with extravagant violence. He who could

well remember the military despotism of Cromwell, who had been an active politician in the days of the

Cabal, and who had seen his own beautiful county turned into a Golgotha by the Bloody Circuit, declared that

the liberties of the nation had never been in greater danger than at that moment, and that their doom would be

fixed if a courtier should be called to the chair. The opposition insisted on dividing. Hartington's motion was

carried by two hundred and fortytwo votes to a hundred and thirtyfive, Littleton himself, according to the

childish old usage which has descended to our times, voting in the minority. Three days later, he was

The King then spoke from the throne. He declared his firm conviction that the Houses were disposed to do

whatever was necessary for the safety, honour and happiness of the kingdom; and he asked them for nothing

more. When they came to consider the military and naval establishments, they would remember that, unless

England were secure from attack, she could not continue to hold the high place which she had won for herself

among European powers; her trade would languish; her credit would fail; and even her internal tranquillity

would be in danger. He also expressed a hope that some progress would be made in the discharge of the debts

contracted during the War. "I think," he said, "an English Parliament can never make such a mistake as not to

The speech appeared to be well received; and during a short time William flattered himself that the great

fault, as he considered it, of the preceding session would be repaired, that the army would be augmented, and

that he should be able, at the important conjuncture which was approaching, to speak to foreign powers in

tones of authority, and especially to keep France steady to her engagements. The Whigs of the junto, better

acquainted with the temper of the country and of the new House of Commons, pronounced it impossible to

carry a vote for a land force of more than ten thousand men. Ten thousand men would probably be obtained if

His Majesty would authorise his servants to ask in his name for that number, and to declare that with a

smaller number he could not answer for the public safety. William, firmly convinced that twenty thousand

would be too few, refused to make or empower others to make a proposition which seemed to him absurd and

disgraceful. Thus, at a moment at which it was peculiarly desirable that all who bore a part in the executive

administration should act cordially together, there was serious dissension between him and his ablest

councillors. For that dissension neither he nor they can be severely blamed. They were differently situated,

and necessarily saw the same objects from different points of view. He, as was natural, considered the

question chiefly as an European question. They, as was natural, considered it chiefly as an English question.

They had found the antipathy to a standing army insurmountably strong even in the late Parliament, a

Parliament disposed to place large confidence in them and in their master. In the new Parliament that

antipathy amounted almost to a mania. That liberty, law, property, could never be secured while the

Sovereign had a large body of regular troops at his command in time of peace, and that of all regular troops

foreign troops were the most to be dreaded, had, during the recent elections, been repeated in every town hall

and market place, and scrawled upon every dead wall. The reductions of the preceding year, it was said, even

if they had been honestly carved into effect, would not have been sufficient; and they had not been honestly

carried into effect. On this subject the ministers pronounced the temper of the Commons to be such that, if

any person high in office were to ask for what His Majesty thought necessary, there would assuredly be a

violent explosion; the majority would probably be provoked into disbanding all that remained of the army;

and the kingdom would be left without a single soldier. William, however, could not be brought to believe

that the case was so hopeless. He listened too easily to some secret adviser, Sunderland was probably the

man, who accused Montague and Somers of cowardice and insincerity. They had, it was whispered in the

royal ear, a majority, whenever they really wanted one. They were bent upon placing their friend Littleton in

the Speaker's chair; and they had carried their point triumphantly. They would carry as triumphantly a vote

for a respectable military establishment if the honour of their master and the safety of their country were as

dear to them as the petty interests of their own faction. It was to no purpose that the King was told, what was

nevertheless perfectly true, that not one half of the members who had voted for Littleton, could, by any art or

eloquence, be induced to vote for an augmentation of the land force. While he was urging his ministers to

stand up manfully against the popular prejudice, and while they were respectfully representing to him that by

so standing up they should only make that prejudice stronger and more noxious, the day came which the

Commons had fixed for taking the royal speech into consideration. The House resolved itself into a

Committee. The great question was instantly raised; What provision should be made for the defence of the

realm? It was naturally expected that the confidential advisers of the Crown would propose something. As

they remained silent, Harley took the lead which properly belonged to them, and moved that the army should

not exceed seven thousand men. Sir Charles Sedley suggested ten thousand. Vernon, who was present, was of

opinion that this number would have been carved if it had been proposed by one who was known to speak on

behalf of the King. But few members cared to support an amendment which was certain to be less pleasing to

their constituents, and did not appear to be more pleasing to the Court, than the original motion. Harley's

resolution passed the Committee. On the morrow it was reported and approved. The House also resolved that

all the seven thousand men who were to be retained should be natural born English subjects. Other votes were

carried without a single division either in the Committee or when the mace was on the table.

The King's indignation and vexation were extreme. He was angry with the opposition, with the ministers,

with all England. The nation seemed to him to be under a judicial infatuation, blind to dangers which his

sagacity perceived to be real, near and formidable, and morbidly apprehensive of dangers which his

conscience told him were no dangers at all. The perverse islanders were willing to trust every thing that was

most precious to them, their independence, their property, their laws, their religion, to the moderation and

good faith of France, to the winds and the waves, to the steadiness and expertness of battalions of ploughmen

commanded by squires; and yet they were afraid to trust him with the means of protecting them lest he should

use those means for the destruction of the liberties which he had saved from extreme peril, which he had

fenced with new securities, which he had defended with the hazard of his life, and which from the day of his

accession he had never once violated. He was attached, and not without reason, to the Blue Dutch Foot

Guards. That brigade had served under him for many years, and had been eminently distinguished by

courage, discipline and fidelity. In December 1688 that brigade had been the first in his army to enter the

English capital, and had been entrusted with the important duty of occupying Whitehall and guarding the

person of James. Eighteen months later, that brigade had been the first to plunge into the waters of the Boyne.

Nor had the conduct of these veteran soldiers been less exemplary in their quarters than in the field. The vote

which required the King to discard them merely because they were what he himself was seemed to him a

personal affront. All these vexations and scandals he imagined that his ministers might have averted, if they

had been more solicitous for his honour and for the success of his great schemes of policy, and less solicitous

about their own popularity. They, on the other hand, continued to assure him, and, as far as can now be

judged, to assure him with perfect truth, that it was altogether out of their power to effect what he wished.

Something they might perhaps be able to do. Many members of the House of Commons had said in private

that seven thousand men was too small a number. If His Majesty would let it be understood that he should

consider those who should vote for ten thousand as having done him good service, there might be hopes. But

there could be no hope if gentlemen found that by voting for ten thousand they should please nobody, that

they should be held up to the counties and towns which they represented as turncoats and slaves for going so

far to meet his wishes, and that they should be at the same time frowned upon at Kensington for not going

farther. The King was not to be moved. He had been too great to sink into littleness without a struggle. He

had been the soul of two great coalitions, the dread of France, the hope of all oppressed nations. And was he

to be degraded into a mere puppet of the Harleys and the Hooves, a petty prince who could neither help nor

hurt, a less formidable enemy and less valuable ally than the Elector of Brandenburg or the Duke of Savoy?

His spirit, quite as arbitrary and as impatient of control as that of any of his predecessors, Stuart, Tudor or

Plantagenet, swelled high against this ignominious bondage. It was well known at Versailles that he was

cruelly mortified and incensed; and, during a short time, a strange hope was cherished there that, in the heat

of his resentment, he might be induced to imitate his uncles, Charles and James, to conclude another treaty of

Dover, and to sell himself into vassalage for a subsidy which might make him independent of his niggardly

and mutinous Parliament. Such a subsidy, it was thought, might be disguised under the name of a

compensation for the little principality of Orange, which Lewis had long been desirous to purchase even at a

fancy price. A despatch was drawn up containing a paragraph by which Tallard was to be apprised of his

master's views, and instructed not to hazard any distinct proposition, but to try the effect of cautious and

delicate insinuations, and, if possible, to draw William on to speak first. This paragraph was, on second

thoughts, cancelled; but that it should ever have been written must be considered a most significant

It may with confidence be affirmed that William would never have stooped to be the pensioner of France; but

it was with difficulty that he was, at this conjuncture, dissuaded from throwing up the government of

England. When first he threw out hints about retiring to the Continent, his ministers imagined that he was

only trying to frighten them into making a desperate effort to obtain for him an efficient army. But they soon

saw reason to believe that he was in earnest. That he was in earnest, indeed, can hardly be doubted. For, in a

confidential letter to Heinsius, whom he could have no motive for deceiving, he intimated his intention very

clearly. "I foresee," he writes, "that I shall be driven to take an extreme course, and that I shall see you again

in Holland sooner than I had imagined."16 In fact he had resolved to go down to the Lords, to send for the

Commons, and to make his last speech from the throne. That speech he actually prepared and had it

translated. He meant to tell his hearers that he had come to England to rescue their religion and their liberties;

that, for that end, he had been under the necessity of waging a long and cruel war; that the war had, by the

blessing of God, ended in an honourable and advantageous peace; and that the nation might now be tranquil

and happy, if only those precautions were adopted which he had on the first day of the session recommended

as essential to the public security. Since, however, the Estates of the Realm thought fit to slight his advice,

and to expose themselves to the imminent risk of ruin, he would not be the witness of calamities which he

had not caused and which he could not avert. He must therefore request the Houses to present to him a bill

providing for the government of the realm; he would pass that bill, and withdraw from a post in which he

could no longer be useful, but he should always take a deep interest in the welfare of England; and, if what he

foreboded should come to pass, if in some day of danger she should again need his services, his life should be

When the King showed his speech to the Chancellor, that wise minister forgot for a moment his habitual

selfcommand. "This is extravagance, Sir," he said: "this is madness. I implore your Majesty, for the sake of

your own honour, not to say to anybody else what you have said to me." He argued the matter during two

hours, and no doubt lucidly and forcibly. William listened patiently; but his purpose remained unchanged.

The alarm of the ministers seems to have been increased by finding that the King's intention had been

confided to Marlborough, the very last man to whom such a secret would have been imparted unless William

had really made up his mind to abdicate in favour of the Princess of Denmark. Somers had another audience,

and again began to expostulate. But William cut him short. "We shall not agree, my Lord; my mind is made

up." "Then, Sir," said Somers, "I have to request that I may be excused from assisting as Chancellor at the

fatal act which Your Majesty meditates. It was from my King that I received this seal; and I beg that he will

In these circumstances the ministers, though with scarcely the faintest hope of success, determined to try

what they could do to meet the King's wishes. A select Committee had been appointed by the House of

Commons to frame a bill for the disbanding of all the troops above seven thousand. A motion was made by

one of the Court party that this Committee should be instructed to reconsider the number of men. Vernon

acquitted himself well in the debate. Montague spoke with even more than his wonted ability and energy, but

in vain. So far was he from being able to rally round him such a majority as that which had supported him in

the preceding Parliament, that he could not count on the support even of the placemen who sate at the same

executive board with him. Thomas Pelham, who had, only a few months before, been made a Lord of the

Treasury, tried to answer him. "I own," said Pelham, "that last year I thought a large land force necessary; this

year I think such a force unnecessary; but I deny that I have been guilty of any inconsistency. Last year the

great question of the Spanish succession was unsettled, and there was serious danger of a general war. That

question has now been settled in the best possible way; and we may look forward to many years of peace." A

Whig of still greater note and authority, the Marquess of Hartington, separated himself on this occasion from

the junto. The current was irresistible. At last the voices of those who tried to speak for the Instruction were

drowned by clamour. When the question was put, there was a great shout of No, and the minority submitted.

By this time it became clear that the relations between the executive government and the Parliament were

again what they had been before the year 1695. The history of our polity at this time is closely connected with

the history of one man. Hitherto Montague's career had been more splendidly and uninterruptedly successful

than that of any member of the House of Commons, since the House of Commons had begun to exist. And

now fortune had turned. By the Tories he had long been hated as a Whig; and the rapidity of his rise, the

brilliancy of his fame, and the unvarying good luck which seemed to attend him, had made many Whigs his

enemies. He was absurdly compared to the upstart favourites of a former age, Carr and Villiers, men whom

he resembled in nothing but in the speed with which he had mounted from a humble to a lofty position. They

had, without rendering any service to the State, without showing any capacity for the conduct of great affairs,

been elevated to the highest dignities, in spite of the murmurs of the whole nation, by the mere partiality of

the Sovereign. Montague owed every thing to his own merit and to the public opinion of his merit. With his

master he appears to have had very little intercourse, and none that was not official. He was in truth a living

monument of what the Revolution had done for the Country. The Revolution had found him a young student

in a cell by the Cam, poring on the diagrams which illustrated the newly discovered laws of centripetal and

centrifugal force, writing little copies of verses, and indulging visions of parsonages with rich glebes, and of

closes in old cathedral towns had developed in him new talents; had held out to him the hope of prizes of a

very different sort from a rectory or a prebend. His eloquence had gained for him the ear of the legislature.

His skill in fiscal and commercial affairs had won for him the confidence of the City. During four years he

had been the undisputed leader of the majority of the House of Commons; and every one of those years he

had made memorable by great parliamentary victories, and by great public services. It should seem that his

success ought to have been gratifying to the nation, and especially to that assembly of which he was the chief

ornament, of which indeed he might be called the creature. The representatives of the people ought to have

been well pleased to find that their approbation could, in the new order of things, do for the man whom they

delighted to honour all that the mightiest of the Tudors could do for Leicester, or the most arbitrary of the

Stuarts for Strafford. But, strange to say, the Commons soon began to regard with an evil eve that greatness

which was their own work. The fault indeed was partly Montague's. With all his ability, he had not the

wisdom to avert, by suavity and moderation, that curse, the inseparable concomitant of prosperity and glory,

which the ancients personified under the name of Nemesis. His head, strong for all the purposes of debate and

arithmetical calculation, was weak against the intoxicating influence of success and fame. He became proud

even to insolence. Old companions, who, a very few years before, had punned and rhymed with him in

garrets, had dined with him at cheap ordinaries, had sate with him in the pit, and had lent him some silver to

pay his seamstress's bill, hardly knew their friend Charles in the great man who could not forget for one

moment that he was First Lord of the Treasury, that he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, that he had been a

Regent of the kingdom, that he had founded the Bank of England and the new East India Company, that he

had restored the currency, that he had invented the Exchequer Bills, that he had planned the General

Mortgage, and that he had been pronounced, by a solemn vote of the Commons, to have deserved all the

favours which he had received from the Crown. It was said that admiration of himself and contempt of others

were indicated by all his gestures and written in all the lines of his face. The very way in which the little

jackanapes, as the hostile pamphleteers loved to call him, strutted through the lobby, making the most of his

small figure, rising on his toe, and perking up his chin, made him enemies. Rash and arrogant sayings were

imputed to him, and perhaps invented for him. He was accused of boasting that there was nothing that he

could not carry through the House of Commons, that he could turn the majority round his finger. A crowd of

libellers assailed him with much more than political hatred. Boundless rapacity and corruption were laid to

his charge. He was represented as selling all the places in the revenue department for three years' purchase.

The opprobrious nickname of Filcher was fastened on him. His luxury, it was said, was not less inordinate

than his avarice. There was indeed an attempt made at this time to raise against the leading Whig politicians

and their allies, the great moneyed men of the City, a cry much resembling the cry which, seventy or eighty

years later, was raised against the English Nabobs. Great wealth, suddenly acquired, is not often enjoyed with

moderation, dignity and good taste. It is therefore not impossible that there may have been some small

foundation for the extravagant stories with which malecontent pamphleteers amused the leisure of

malecontent squires. In such stories Montague played a conspicuous part. He contrived, it was said, to be at

once as rich as Croesus and as riotous as Mark Antony. His stud and his cellar were beyond all price. His

very lacqueys turned up their noses at claret. He and his confederates were described as spending the

immense sums of which they had plundered the public in banquets of four courses, such as Lucullus might

have eaten in the Hall of Apollo. A supper for twelve Whigs, enriched by jobs, grants, bribes, lucky

purchases and lucky sales of stock, was cheap at eighty pounds. At the end of every course all the fine linen

on the table was changed. Those who saw the pyramids of choice wild fowl imagined that the entertainment

had been prepared for fifty epicures at the least. Only six birds' nests from the Nicobar islands were to be had

in London; and all the six, bought at an enormous price, were smoking in soup on the board. These fables

were destitute alike of probability and of evidence. But Grub Street could devise no fable injurious to

Montague which was not certain to find credence in more than half the manor houses and vicarages of

It may seem strange that a man who loved literature passionately, and rewarded literary merit munificently,

should have been more savagely reviled both in prose and verse than almost any other politician in our

history. But there is really no cause for wonder. A powerful, liberal and discerning protector of genius is very

likely to be mentioned with honour long after his death, but is very likely also to be most brutally libelled

during his life. In every age there will be twenty bad writers for one good one; and every bad writer will think

himself a good one. A ruler who neglects all men of letters alike does not wound the self love of any man of

letters. But a ruler who shows favour to the few men of letters who deserve it inflicts on the many the

miseries of disappointed hope, of affronted pride, of jealousy cruel as the grave. All the rage of a multitude of

authors, irritated at once by the sting of want and by the sting of vanity, is directed against the unfortunate

patron. It is true that the thanks and eulogies of those whom he has befriended will be remembered when the

invectives of those whom he has neglected are forgotten. But in his own time the obloquy will probably make

as much noise and find as much credit as the panegyric. The name of Maecenas has been made immortal by

Horace and Virgil, and is popularly used to designate an accomplished statesman, who lives in close intimacy

with the greatest poets and wits of his time, and heaps benefits on them with the most delicate generosity. But

it may well be suspected that, if the verses of Alpinus and Fannius, of Bavius and Maevius, had come down

to us, we might see Maecenas represented as the most niggardly and tasteless of human beings, nay as a man

who, on system, neglected and persecuted all intellectual superiority. It is certain that Montague was thus

represented by contemporary scribblers. They told the world in essays, in letters, in dialogues, in ballads, that

he would do nothing for anybody without being paid either in money or in some vile services; that he not

only never rewarded merit, but hated it whenever he saw it; that he practised the meanest arts for the purpose

of depressing it; that those whom he protected and enriched were not men of ability and virtue, but wretches

distinguished only by their sycophancy and their low debaucheries. And this was said of the man who made

Nothing had done more to diminish the influence of Montague in the House of Commons than a step which

he had taken a few weeks before the meeting of the Parliament. It would seem that the result of the general

election had made him uneasy, and that he had looked anxiously round him for some harbour in which he

might take refuge from the storms which seemed to be gathering. While his thoughts were thus employed, he

learned that the Auditorship of the Exchequer had suddenly become vacant. The Auditorship was held for

life. The duties were formal and easy. The gains were uncertain; for they rose and fell with the public

expenditure; but they could hardly, in time of peace, and under the most economical administration, be less

than four thousand pounds a year, and were likely, in time of war, to be more than double of that sum.

Montague marked this great office for his own. He could not indeed take it, while he continued to be in

charge of the public purse. For it would have been indecent, and perhaps illegal, that he should audit his own

accounts. He therefore selected his brother Christopher, whom he had lately made a Commissioner of the

Excise, to keep the place for him. There was, as may easily be supposed, no want of powerful and noble

competitors for such a prize. Leeds had, more than twenty years before, obtained from Charles the Second a

patent granting the reversion to Caermarthen. Godolphin, it was said, pleaded a promise made by William.

But Montague maintained, and was, it seems, right in maintaining, that both the patent of Charles and the

promise of William had been given under a mistake, and that the right of appointing the Auditor belonged,

not to the Crown, but to the Board of Treasury. He carried his point with characteristic audacity and celerity.

The news of the vacancy reached London on a Sunday. On the Tuesday the new Auditor was sworn in. The

ministers were amazed. Even the Chancellor, with whom Montague was on terms of intimate friendship, had

not been consulted. Godolphin devoured his ill temper. Caermarthen ordered out his wonderful yacht, and

hastened to complain to the King, who was then at Loo. But what had been done could not be undone.

This bold stroke placed Montague's fortune, in the lower sense of the word, out of hazard, but increased the

animosity of his enemies and cooled the zeal of his adherents. In a letter written by one of his colleagues,

Secretary Vernon, on the day after the appointment, the Auditorship is described as at once a safe and

lucrative place. "But I thought," Vernon proceeds, "Mr. Montague was too aspiring to stoop to any thing

below the height he was in, and that he least considered profit." This feeling was no doubt shared by many of

the friends of the ministry. It was plain that Montague was preparing a retreat for himself. This flinching of

the captain, just on the eve of a perilous campaign, naturally disheartened the whole army. It deserves to be

remarked that, more than eighty years later, another great parliamentary leader was placed in a very similar

situation. The younger William Pitt held in 1784 the same offices which Montague had held in 1698. Pitt was

pressed in 1784 by political difficulties not less than those with which Montague had contended in 1698. Pitt

was also in 1784 a much poorer man than Montague in 1698. Pitt, in 1784, like Montage in 1698, had at his

own absolute disposal a lucrative sinecure place in the Exchequer. Pitt gave away the office which would

have made him an opulent man, and gave it away in such a manner as at once to reward unfortunate merit,

and to relieve the country from a burden. For this disinterestedness he was repaid by the enthusiastic applause

of his followers, by the enforced respect of his opponents, and by the confidence which, through all the

vicissitudes of a chequered and at length disastrous career, the great body of Englishmen reposed in his

public spirit and in his personal integrity. In the intellectual qualities of a statesman Montague was probably

not inferior to Pitt. But the magnanimity, the dauntless courage, the contempt for riches and for baubles, to

which, more than to any intellectual quality, Pitt owed his long ascendency, were wanting to Montague.

The faults of Montague were great; but his punishment was cruel. It was indeed a punishment which must

have been more bitter than the bitterness of death to a man whose vanity was exquisitely sensitive, and who

had been spoiled by early and rapid success and by constant prosperity. Before the new Parliament had been a

month sitting it was plain that his empire was at an end. He spoke with the old eloquence; but his speeches no

longer called forth the old response. Whatever he proposed was maliciously scrutinised. The success of his

budget of the preceding year had surpassed all expectation. The two millions which he had undertaken to find

had been raised with a rapidity which seemed magical. Yet for bringing the riches of the City, in an

unprecedented flood, to overflow the Exchequer he was reviled as if his scheme had failed more ludicrously

than the Tory Land Bank. Emboldened by his unpopularity, the Old East India Company presented a petition

praying that the General Society Act, which his influence and eloquence had induced the late Parliament to

pass, might be extensively modified. Howe took the matter up. It was moved that leave should be given to

bring in a bill according to the prayer of the petition; the motion was carried by a hundred and seventyfive

votes to a hundred and fortyeight; and the whole question of the trade with the Eastern seas was reopened.

The bill was brought in, but was, with great difficulty and by a very small majority, thrown out on the second

reading.17 On other financial questions Montague, so lately the oracle of the Committee of Supply, was now

heard with malevolent distrust. If his enemies were unable to detect any flaw in his reasonings and

calculations, they could at least whisper that Mr. Montague was very cunning, that it was not easy to track

him, but that it might be taken for granted that for whatever he did he had some sinister motive, and that the

safest course was to negative whatever he proposed. Though that House of Commons was economical even

to a vice, the majority preferred paying high interest to paying low interest, solely because the plan for raising

money at low interest had been framed by him. In a despatch from the Dutch embassy the States General

were informed that many of the votes of that session which had caused astonishment out of doors were to be

ascribed to nothing but to the bitter envy which the ability and fame of Montague had excited. It was not

without a hard struggle and a sharp pang that the first Englishman who has held that high position which has

now been long called the Leadership of the House of Commons submitted to be deposed. But he was set upon

with cowardly malignity by whole rows of small men none of whom singly would have dared to look him in

the face. A contemporary pamphleteer compared him to an owl in the sunshine pursued and pecked to death

by flights of tiny birds. On one occasion he was irritated into uttering an oath. Then there was a cry of Order;

and he was threatened with the Serjeant and the Tower. On another occasion he was moved even to shedding

tears of rage and vexation, tears which only moved the mockery of his low minded and bad hearted foes.

If a minister were now to fend himself thus situated in a House of Commons which had just been elected, and

from which it would therefore be idle to appeal to the electors, he would instantly resign his office, and his

adversaries would take his place. The change would be most advantageous to the public, even if we suppose

his successor to be both less virtuous and less able than himself. For it is much better for the country to have

a bad ministry than to have no ministry at all, and there would be no ministry at all if the executive

departments were filled by men whom the representatives of the people took every opportunity of thwarting

and insulting. That an unprincipled man should be followed by a majority of the House of Commons is no

doubt an evil. But, when this is the case, he will nowhere be so harmless as at the head of affairs. As he

already possesses the power to do boundless mischief, it is desirable to give him a strong motive to abstain

from doing mischief; and such a motive he has from the moment that he is entrusted with the administration.

Office of itself does much to equalise politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level; but it does

bring high characters down and low characters up towards a common standard. In power the most patriotic

and most enlightened statesman finds that he must disappoint the expectations of his admirers; that, if he

effects any good, he must effect it by compromise; that he must relinquish many favourite schemes; that he

must bear with many abuses. On the other hand, power turns the very vices of the most worthless adventurer,

his selfish ambition, his sordid cupidity, his vanity, his cowardice, into a sort of public spirit. The most

greedy and cruel wrecker that ever put up false lights to lure mariners to their destruction will do his best to

preserve a ship from going to pieces on the rocks, if he is taken on board of her and made pilot; and so the

most profligate Chancellor of the Exchequer most wish that trade may flourish, that the revenue may come in

well, and that he may be able to take taxes off instead of putting them on. The most profligate First Lord of

the Admiralty must wish to receive news of a victory like that of the Nile rather than of a mutiny like that at

the Nore. There is, therefore, a limit to the evil which is to be apprehended from the worst ministry that is

likely ever to exist in England. But to the evil of having no ministry, to the evil of having a House of

Commons permanently at war with the executive government, there is absolutely no limit. This was signally

proved in 1699 and 1700. Had the statesmen of the junto, as soon as they had ascertained the temper of the

new Parliament, acted as statesmen similarly situated would now act, great calamities would have been

averted. The chiefs of the opposition must then have been called upon to form a government. With the power

of the late ministry the responsibility of the late ministry would have been transferred to them; and that

responsibility would at once have sobered them. The orator whose eloquence had been the delight of the

Country party would have had to exert his ingenuity on a new set of topics. There would have been an end of

his invectives against courtiers and placemen, of piteous meanings about the intolerable weight of the land

tax, of his boasts that the militia of Kent and Sussex, without the help of a single regular soldier, would turn

the conquerors of Landen to the right about. He would himself have been a courtier; he would himself have

been a placeman; he would have known that he should be held accountable for all the misery which a national

bankruptcy or a French invasion might produce; and, instead of labouring to get up a clamour for the

reduction of imposts, and the disbanding of regiments, he would have employed all his talents and influence

for the purpose of obtaining from Parliament the means of supporting public credit, and of putting the country

in a good posture of defence. Meanwhile the statesmen who were out might have watched the new men,

might have checked them when they were wrong, might have come to their help when, by doing right, they

had raised a mutiny in their own absurd and perverse faction. In this way Montague and Somers might, in

opposition, have been really far more powerful than they could be while they filled the highest posts in the

executive government and were outvoted every day in the House of Commons. Their retirement would have

mitigated envy; their abilities would have been missed and regretted; their unpopularity would have passed to

their successors, who would have grievously disappointed vulgar expectation, and would have been under the

necessity of eating their own words in every debate. The league between the Tories and the discontented

Whigs would have been dissolved; and it is probable that, in a session or two, the public voice would have

loudly demanded the recall of the best Keeper of the Great Seal, and of the best First Lord of the Treasury,

But these lessons, the fruits of the experience of five generations, had never been taught to the politicians of

the seventeenth century. Notions imbibed before the Revolution still kept possession of the public mind. Not

even Somers, the foremost man of his age in civil wisdom, thought it strange that one party should be in

possession of the executive administration while the other predominated in the legislature. Thus, at the

beginning of 1699, there ceased to be a ministry; and years elapsed before the servants of the Crown and the

representatives of the people were again joined in an union as harmonious as that which had existed from the

general election of 1695 to the general election of 1698. The anarchy lasted, with some short intervals of

composedness, till the general election of 1765. No portion of our parliamentary history is less pleasing or

more instructive. It will be seen that the House of Commons became altogether ungovernable, abused its

gigantic power with unjust and insolent caprice, browbeat King and Lords, the Courts of Common Law and

the Constituent bodies, violated rights guaranteed by the Great Charter, and at length made itself so odious

that the people were glad to take shelter, under the protection of the throne and of the hereditary aristocracy,

The evil which had brought on so much discredit on representative institutions was of gradual though of rapid

growth, and did not, in the first session of the Parliament of 1698, take the most alarming form. The lead of

the House of Commons had, however, entirely passed away from Montague, who was still the first minister

of finance, to the chiefs of the turbulent and discordant opposition. Among those chiefs the most powerful

was Harley, who, while almost constantly acting with the Tories and High Churchmen, continued to use, on

occasions cunningly selected, the political and religious phraseology which he had learned in his youth

among the Roundheads. He thus, while high in the esteem of the country gentlemen and even of his

hereditary enemies, the country parsons, retained a portion of the favour with which he and his ancestors had

long been regarded by Whigs and Nonconformists. He was therefore peculiarly well qualified to act as

The bill for the disbanding of the army passed with little opposition through the House till it reached the last

stage. Then, at length, a stand was made, but in vain. Vernon wrote the next day to Shrewsbury that the

ministers had had a division which they need not be ashamed of; for that they had mustered a hundred and

fiftyfour against two hundred and twentyone. Such a division would not be considered as matter of boast

The bill went up to the House of Lords, where it was regarded with no great favour. But this was not one of

those occasions on which the House of Lords can act effectually as a check on the popular branch of the

legislature. No good would have been done by rejecting the bill for disbanding the troops, unless the King

could have been furnished with the means of maintaining them; and with such means he could be furnished

only by the House of Commons. Somers, in a speech of which both the eloquence and the wisdom were

greatly admired, placed the question in the true light. He set forth strongly the dangers to which the jealousy

and parsimony of the representatives of the people exposed the country. But any thing, he said, was better

than that the King and the Peers should engage, without hope of success, in an acrimonious conflict with the

Commons. Tankerville spoke with his usual ability on the same side. Nottingham and the other Tories

By this time the King's strong understanding had mastered, as it seldom failed, after a struggle, to master, his

rebellious temper. He had made up his mind to fulfil his great mission to the end. It was with no common

pain that he admitted it to be necessary for him to give his assent to the disbanding bill. But in this case it

would have been worse than useless to resort to his veto. For, if the bill had been rejected, the army would

have been dissolved, and he would have been left without even the seven thousand men whom the Commons

were willing to allow him. He determined, therefore, to comply with the wish of his people, and at the same

time to give them a weighty and serious but friendly admonition. Never had he succeeded better in

suppressing the outward signs of his emotions than on the day on which he carried this determination into

effect. The public mind was much excited. The crowds in the parks and streets were immense. The Jacobites

came in troops, hoping to enjoy the pleasure of reading shame and rage on the face of him whom they most

hated and dreaded. The hope was disappointed. The Prussian Minister, a discerning observer, free from the

passions which distracted English society, accompanied the royal procession from St. James's Palace to

Westminster Hall. He well knew how bitterly William had been mortified, and was astonished to see him

The speech delivered from the throne was much admired; and the correspondent of the States General

acknowledged that he despaired of exhibiting in a French translation the graces of style which distinguished

the original. Indeed that weighty, simple and dignified eloquence which becomes the lips of a sovereign was

seldom wanting in any composition of which the plan was furnished by William and the language by Somers.

The King informed the Lords and Commons that he had come down to pass their bill as soon as it was ready

for him. He could not indeed but think that they had carried the reduction of the army to a dangerous extent.

He could not but feel that they had treated him unkindly in requiring him to part with those guards who had

come over with him to deliver England, and who had since been near him on every field of battle. But it was

his fixed opinion that nothing could be so pernicious to the State as that he should be regarded by his people

with distrust, distrust of which he had not expected to be the object after what he had endeavoured, ventured,

and acted, to restore and to secure their liberties. He had now, he said, told the Houses plainly the reason, the

only reason, which had induced him to pass their bill; and it was his duty to tell them plainly, in discharge of

his high trust, and in order that none might hold him accountable for the evils which he had vainly

endeavoured to avert, that, in his judgment, the nation was left too much exposed.

When the Commons had returned to their chamber, and the King's speech had been read from the chair,

Howe attempted to raise a storm. A gross insult had been offered to the House. The King ought to be asked

who had put such words into his mouth. But the spiteful agitator found no support. The majority were so

much pleased with the King for promptly passing the bill that they were not disposed to quarrel with him for

frankly declaring that he disliked it. It was resolved without a division that an address should be presented,

thanking him for his gracious speech and for his ready compliance with the wishes of his people, and assuring

him that his grateful Commons would never forget the great things which he had done for the country, would

never give him cause to think them unkind or undutiful, and would, on all occasions, stand by him against all

Just at this juncture tidings arrived which might well raise misgivings in the minds of those who had voted

for reducing the national means of defence. The Electoral Prince of Bavaria was no more. The Gazette which

announced that the Disbanding Bill had received the royal assent informed the public that he was dangerously

ill at Brussels. The next Gazette contained the news of his death. Only a few weeks had elapsed since all who

were anxious for the peace of the world had learned with joy that he had been named heir to the Spanish

throne. That the boy just entering upon life with such hopes should die, while the wretched Charles, long ago

half dead, continued to creep about between his bedroom and his chapel, was an event for which,

notwithstanding the proverbial uncertainty of life, the minds of men were altogether unprepared. A peaceful

solution of the great question now seemed impossible. France and Austria were left confronting each other.

Within a month the whole Continent might be in arms. Pious men saw in this stroke, so sudden and so

terrible, the plain signs of the divine displeasure. God had a controversy with the nations. Nine years of fire,

of slaughter and of famine had not been sufficient to reclaim a guilty world; and a second and more severe

chastisement was at hand. Others muttered that the event which all good men lamented was to be ascribed to

unprincipled ambition. It would indeed have been strange if, in that age, so important a death, happening at so

critical a moment, had not been imputed to poison. The father of the deceased Prince loudly accused the

Court of Vienna; and the imputation, though not supported by the slightest evidence, was, during some time,

The politicians at the Dutch embassy imagined that now at length the parliament would listen to reason. It

seemed that even the country gentlemen must begin to contemplate the probability of an alarming crisis. The

merchants of the Royal Exchange, much better acquainted than the country gentlemen with foreign lands, and

much more accustomed than the country gentlemen to take large views, were in great agitation. Nobody

could mistake the beat of that wonderful pulse which had recently begun, and has during five generations

continued, to indicate the variations of the body politic. When Littleton was chosen speaker, the stocks rose.

When it was resolved that the army should be reduced to seven thousand men, the stocks fell. When the death

of the Electoral Prince was known, they fell still lower. The subscriptions to a new loan, which the Commons

had, from mere spite to Montague, determined to raise on conditions of which he disapproved, came in very

slowly. The signs of a reaction of feeling were discernible both in and out of Parliament. Many men are

alarmists by constitution. Trenchard and Howe had frightened most men by writing and talking about the

danger to which liberty and property would be exposed if the government were allowed to keep a large body

of Janissaries in pay. The danger had ceased to exist; and those people who must always be afraid of

something, as they could no longer be afraid of a standing army, began to be afraid of the French King. There

was a turn in the tide of public opinion; and no part of statesmanship is more important than the art of taking

the tide of public opinion at the turn. On more than one occasion William showed himself a master of that art.

But, on the present occasion, a sentiment, in itself amiable and respectable, led him to commit the greatest

mistake of his whole life. Had he at this conjuncture again earnestly pressed on the Houses the importance of

providing for the defence of the kingdom, and asked of them an additional number of English troops, it is not

improbable that he might have carried his point; it is certain that, if he had failed, there would have been

nothing ignominious in his failure. Unhappily, instead of raising a great public question, on which he was in

the right, on which he had a good chance of succeeding, and on which he might have been defeated without

any loss of dignity, he chose to raise a personal question, on which he was in the wrong, on which, right or

wrong, he was sure to be beaten, and on which he could not be beaten without being degraded. Instead of

pressing for more English regiments, he exerted all his influence to obtain for the Dutch guards permission to

The first trial of strength was in the Upper House. A resolution was moved there to the effect that the Lords

would gladly concur in any plan that could be suggested for retaining the services of the Dutch brigade. The

motion was carried by fiftyfour votes to thirtyeight. But a protest was entered, and was signed by all the

minority. It is remarkable that Devonshire was, and that Marlborough was not, one of the Dissentients.

Marlborough had formerly made himself conspicuous by the keenness and pertinacity with which he had

attacked the Dutch. But he had now made his peace with the Court, and was in the receipt of a large salary

from the civil list. He was in the House on that day; and therefore, if he voted, must have voted with the

majority. The Cavendishes had generally been strenuous supporters of the King and the junto. But on the

subject of the foreign troops Hartington in one House and his father in the other were intractable.

This vote of the Lords caused much murmuring among the Commons. It was said to be most unparliamentary

to pass a bill one week, and the next week to pass a resolution condemning that bill. It was true that the bill

had been passed before the death of the Electoral Prince was known in London. But that unhappy event,

though it might be a good reason for increasing the English army, could be no reason for departing from the

principle that the English army should consist of Englishmen. A gentleman who despised the vulgar clamour

against professional soldiers, who held the doctrine of Somers's Balancing Letter, and who was prepared to

vote for twenty or even thirty thousand men, might yet well ask why any of those men should be foreigners.

Were our countrymen naturally inferior to men of other races in any of the qualities which, under proper

training, make excellent soldiers? That assuredly was not the opinion of the Prince who had, at the head of

Ormond's Life Guards, driven the French household troops, till, then invincible, back over the ruins of

Neerwinden, and whose eagle eye and applauding voice had followed Cutts's grenadiers up the glacis of

Namur. Bitter spirited malecontents muttered that, since there was no honourable service which could not be

as well performed by the natives of the realm as by alien mercenaries, it might well be suspected that the

King wanted his alien mercenaries for some service not honourable. If it were necessary to repel a French

invasion or to put down an Irish insurrection, the Blues and the Buffs would stand by him to the death. But, if

his object were to govern in defiance of the votes of his Parliament and of the cry of his people, he might well

apprehend that English swords and muskets would, at the crisis, fail him, as they had failed his father in law,

and might well wish to surround himself with men who were not of our blood, who had no reverence for our

laws, and no sympathy with our feelings. Such imputations could find credit with no body superior in

intelligence to those clownish squires who with difficulty managed to spell out Dyer's Letter over their ale.

Men of sense and temper admitted that William had never shown any disposition to violate the solemn

compact which he had made with the nation, and that, even if he were depraved enough to think of destroying

the constitution by military violence, he was not imbecile enough to imagine that the Dutch brigade, or five

such brigades, would suffice for his purpose. But such men, while they fully acquitted him of the design

attributed to him by factious malignity, could not acquit him of a partiality which it was natural that he should

feel, but which it would have been wise in him to hide, and with which it was impossible that his subjects

should sympathise. He ought to have known that nothing is more offensive to free and proud nations than the

sight of foreign uniforms and standards. Though not much conversant with books, he must have been

acquainted with the chief events in the history of his own illustrious House; and he could hardly have been

ignorant that his great grandfather had commenced a long and glorious struggle against despotism by exciting

the States General of Ghent to demand that all Spanish troops should be withdrawn from the Netherlands.

The final parting between the tyrant and the future deliverer was not an event to be forgotten by any of the

race of Nassau. "It was the States, Sir," said the Prince of Orange. Philip seized his wrist with a convulsive

William, however, determined to try whether a request made by himself in earnest and almost supplicating

terms would induce his subjects to indulge his national partiality at the expense of their own. None of his

ministers could flatter him with any hope of success. But on this subject he was too much excited to hear

reason. He sent down to the Commons a message, not merely signed by himself according to the usual form,

but written throughout with his own hand. He informed them that the necessary preparations had been made

for sending away the guards who came with him to England, and that they would immediately embark, unless

the House should, out of consideration for him, be disposed to retain them, which he should take very kindly.

When the message had been read, a member proposed that a day might be fixed for the consideration of the

subject. But the chiefs of the majority would not consent to any thing which might seem to indicate

hesitation, and moved the previous question. The ministers were in a false position. It was out of their power

to answer Harley when he sarcastically declared that he did not suspect them of having advised His Majesty

on this occasion. If, he said, those gentlemen had thought it desirable that the Dutch brigade should remain in

the kingdom, they would have done so before. There had been many opportunities of raising the question in a

perfectly regular manner during the progress of the Disbanding Bill. Of those opportunities nobody had

thought fit to avail himself; and it was now too late to reopen the question. Most of the other members who

spoke against taking the message into consideration took the same line, declined discussing points which

might have been discussed when the Disbanding Bill was before the House, and declared merely that they

could not consent to any thing so unparliamentary as the repealing of an Act which had just been passed. But

this way of dealing with the message was far too mild and moderate to satisfy the implacable malice of

Howe. In his courtly days he had vehemently called on the King to use the Dutch for the purpose of quelling

the insubordination of the English regiments. "None but the Dutch troops," he said, "are to be trusted." He

was now not ashamed to draw a parallel between those very Dutch troops and the Popish Kernes whom

James had brought over from Munster and Connaught to enslave our island. The general feeling was such

that the previous question was carried without a division. A Committee was immediately appointed to draw

up an address explaining the reasons which made it impossible for the House to comply with His Majesty's

wish. At the next sitting the Committee reported; and on the report there was an animated debate. The friends

of the government thought the proposed address offensive. The most respectable members of the majority felt

that it would be ungraceful to aggravate by harsh language the pain which must be caused by their

conscientious opposition to the King's wishes. Some strong expressions were therefore softened down; some

courtly phrases were inserted; but the House refused to omit one sentence which almost reproachfully

reminded the King that in his memorable Declaration of 1688 he had promised to send back all the foreign

forces as soon as he had effected the deliverance of this country. The division was, however, very close.

There were one hundred and fiftyseven votes for omitting this passage, and one hundred and sixtythree for

The address was presented by the whole House. William's answer was as good as it was possible for him, in

the unfortunate position in which he had placed himself, to return. It showed that he was deeply hurt; but it

was temperate and dignified. Those who saw him in private knew that his feelings had been cruelly lacerated.

His body sympathised with his mind. His sleep was broken. His headaches tormented him more than ever.

From those whom he had been in the habit of considering as his friends, and who had failed him in the recent

struggle, he did not attempt to conceal his displeasure. The lucrative see of Worcester was vacant; and some

powerful Whigs of the cider country wished to obtain it for John Hall, Bishop of Bristol. One of the Foleys, a

family zealous for the Revolution, but hostile to standing armies, spoke to the King on the subject. "I will pay

as much respect to your rashes," said William, "as you and yours have paid to mine." Lloyd of St. Asaph was

The Dutch Guards immediately began to march to the coast. After all the clamour which had been raised

against them, the populace witnessed their departure rather with sorrow than with triumph. They had been

long domiciled here; they had been honest and inoffensive; and many of them were accompanied by English

wives and by young children who talked no language but English. As they traversed the capital, not a single

shout of exultation was raised; and they were almost everywhere greeted with kindness. One rude spectator,

indeed, was heard to remark that Hans made a much better figure, now that he had been living ten years on

the fat of the land, than when he first came. "A pretty figure you would have made," said a Dutch soldier, "if

we had not come." And the retort was generally applauded. It would not, however, be reasonable to infer

from the signs of public sympathy and good will with which the foreigners were dismissed that the nation

wished them to remain. It was probably because they were going that they were regarded with favour by

many who would never have seen them relieve guard at St. James's without black looks and muttered curses.

Side by side with the discussion about the land force had been proceeding a discussion, scarcely less

animated, about the naval administration. The chief minister of marine was a man whom it had once been

useless and even perilous to attack in the Commons. It was to no purpose that, in 1693, grave charges, resting

on grave evidence, had been brought against the Russell who had conquered at La Hogue. The name of

Russell acted as a spell on all who loved English freedom. The name of La Hogue acted as a spell on all who

were proud of the glory of the English arms. The accusations, unexamined and unrefuted, were

contemptuously flung aside; and the thanks of the House were voted to the accused commander without one

dissentient voice. But times had changed. The Admiral still had zealous partisans; but the fame of his exploits

had lost their gloss; people in general were quick to discern his faults; and his faults were but too discernible.

That he had carried on a traitorous correspondence with Saint Germains had not been proved, and had been

pronounced by the representatives of the people to be a foul calumny. Yet the imputation had left a stain on

his name. His arrogant, insolent and quarrelsome temper made him an object of hatred. His vast and growing

wealth made him an object of envy. What his official merits and demerits really were it is not easy to

discover through the mist made up of factious abuse and factious panegyric. One set of waters described him

as the most ravenous of all the plunderers of the poor overtaxed nation. Another set asserted that under him

the ships were better built and rigged, the crews were better disciplined and better tempered, the biscuit was

better, the beer was better, the slops were better, than under any of his predecessors; and yet that the charge to

the public was less than it had been when the vessels were unseaworthy, when the sailors were riotous, when

the food was alive with vermin, when the drink tasted like tanpickle, and when the clothes and hammocks

were rotten. It may, however, be observed that these two representations are not inconsistent with each other;

and there is strong reason to believe that both are, to a great extent, true. Orford was covetous and

unprincipled; but he had great professional skill and knowledge, great industry, and a strong will. He was

therefore an useful servant of the state when the interests of the state were not opposed to his own; and this

was more than could be said of some who had preceded him. He was, for example, an incomparably better

administrator than Torrington. For Torrington's weakness and negligence caused ten times as much mischief

as his rapacity. But, when Orford had nothing to gain by doing what was wrong, he did what was right, and

did it ably and diligently. Whatever Torrington did not embezzle he wasted. Orford may have embezzled as

Early in the session, the House of Commons resolved itself into a Committee on the state of the Navy. This

Committee sate at intervals during more than three months. Orford's administration underwent a close

scrutiny, and very narrowly escaped a severe censure. A resolution condemning the manner in which his

accounts had been kept was lost by only one vote. There were a hundred and forty against him, and a hundred

and fortyone for him. When the report was presented to the House, another attempt was made to put a

stigma upon him. It was moved that the King should be requested to place the direction of maritime affairs in

other hands. There were a hundred and sixty Ayes to a hundred and sixtyfour Noes. With this victory, a

victory hardly to be distinguished from a defeat, his friends were forced to be content. An address setting

forth some of the abuses in the naval department, and beseeching King William to correct them, was voted

without a division. In one of those abuses Orford was deeply interested. He was First Lord of the Admiralty;

and he had held, ever since the Revolution, the lucrative place of Treasurer of the Navy. It was evidently

improper that two offices, one of which was meant to be a check on the other, should be united in the same

Questions relating to the military and naval Establishments occupied the attention of the Commons so much

during the session that, until the prorogation was at hand, little was said about the resumption of the Crown

grants. But, just before the Land Tax Bill was sent up to the Lords, a clause was added to it by which seven

Commissioners were empowered to take account of the property forfeited in Ireland during the late troubles.

The selection of those Commissioners the House reserved to itself. Every member was directed to bring a list

containing the names of seven persons who were not members; and the seven names which appeared in the

greatest number of lists were inserted in the bill. The result of the ballot was unfavourable to the government.

Four of the seven on whom the choice fell were connected with the opposition; and one of them, Trenchard,

was the most conspicuous of the pamphleteers who had been during many months employed in raising a cry

The Land Tax Bill, with this clause tacked to it, was carried to the Upper House. The Peers complained, and

not without reason, of this mode of proceeding. It may, they said, be very proper that Commissioners should

be appointed by Act of Parliament to take account of the forfeited property in Ireland. But they should be

appointed by a separate Act. Then we should be able to make amendments, to ask for conferences, to give

and receive explanations. The Land Tax Bill we cannot amend. We may indeed reject it; but we cannot reject

it without shaking public credit, without leaving the kingdom defenceless, without raising a mutiny in the

navy. The Lords yielded, but not without a protest which was signed by some strong Whigs and some strong

Tories. The King was even more displeased than the Peers. "This Commission," he said, in one of his private

letters, "will give plenty of trouble next winter." It did indeed give more trouble than he at all anticipated, and

brought the nation nearer than it has ever since been to the verge of another revolution.

And now the supplies had been voted. The spring was brightening and blooming into summer. The lords and

squires were sick of London; and the King was sick of England. On the fourth day of May he prorogued the

Houses with a speech very different from the speeches with which he had been in the habit of dismissing the

preceding Parliament. He uttered not one word of thanks or praise. He expressed a hope that, when they

should meet again, they would make effectual provision for the public safety. "I wish," these were his

concluding words, "no mischief may happen in the mean time." The gentlemen who thronged the bar

withdrew in wrath, and, as they could not take immediate vengeance, laid up his reproaches in their hearts

The Houses had broken up; but there was still much to be done before the King could set out for Loo. He did

not yet perceive that the true way to escape from his difficulties was to form an entirely new ministry

possessing the confidence of the majority which had, in the late session, been found so unmanageable. But

some partial changes he could not help making. The recent votes of the Commons forced him seriously to

consider the state of the Board of Admiralty. It was impossible that Orford could continue to preside at that

Board and be at the same time Treasurer of the Navy. He was offered his option. His own wish was to keep

the Treasurership, which was both the more lucrative and the more secure of his two places. But it was so

strongly represented to him that he would disgrace himself by giving up great power for the sake of gains

which, rich and childless as he was, ought to have been beneath his consideration, that he determined to

remain at the Admiralty. He seems to have thought that the sacrifice which he had made entitled him to

govern despotically the department at which he had been persuaded to remain. But be soon found that the

King was determined to keep in his own hands the power of appointing and removing the junior Lords. One

of these Lords, especially, the First Commissioner hated, and was bent on ejecting, Sir George Rooke, who

was Member of Parliament for Portsmouth. Rooke was a brave and skilful officer, and had, therefore, though

a Tory in politics, been suffered to keep his place during the ascendency of the Whig junto. Orford now

complained to the King that Rooke had been in correspondence with the factious opposition which had given

so much trouble, and had lent the weight of his professional and official authority to the accusations which

had been brought against the naval administration. The King spoke to Rooke, who declared that Orford had

been misinformed. "I have a great respect for my Lord; and on proper occasions I have not failed to express it

in public. There have certainly been abuses at the Admiralty which I am unable to defend. When those abuses

have been the subject of debate in the House of Commons, I have sate silent. But, whenever any personal

attack has been made on my Lord, I have done him the best service that I could." William was satisfied, and

thought that Orford should have been satisfied too. But that haughty and perverse nature could be content

with nothing but absolute dominion. He tendered his resignation, and could not be induced to retract it. He

said that he could be of no use. It would be easy to supply his place; and his successors should have his best

wishes. He then retired to the country, where, as was reported and may easily be believed, he vented his ill

humour in furious invectives against the King. The Treasurership of the Navy was given to the Speaker

Littleton. The Earl of Bridgewater, a nobleman of very fair character and of some experience in business,

Other changes were made at the same time. There had during some time been really no Lord President of the

Council. Leeds, indeed, was still called Lord President, and, as such, took precedence of dukes of older

creation; but he had not performed any of the duties of his office since the prosecution instituted against him

by the Commons in 1695 had been suddenly stopped by an event which made the evidence of his guilt at

once legally defective and morally complete. It seems strange that a statesman of eminent ability, who had

been twice Prime Minister, should have wished to hold, by so ignominious a tenure, a place which can have

had no attraction for him but the salary. To that salary, however, Leeds had clung, year after year; and he now

relinquished it with a very bad grace. He was succeeded by Pembroke; and the Privy Seal which Pembroke

laid down was put into the hands of a peer of recent creation, Viscount Lonsdale. Lonsdale had been

distinguished in the House of Commons as Sir John Lowther, and had held high office, but had quitted public

life in weariness and disgust, and had passed several years in retirement at his hereditary seat in Cumberland.

He had planted forests round his house, and had employed Verrio to decorate the interior with gorgeous

frescoes which represented the gods at their banquet of ambrosia. Very reluctantly, and only in compliance

with the earnest and almost angry importunity of the King, Lonsdale consented to leave his magnificent

Trumball resigned the Secretaryship of State; and the Seals which he had held were given to Jersey, who was

It is to be remarked that the new Privy Seal and the new Secretary of State were moderate Tories. The King

had probably hoped that, by calling them to his councils, he should conciliate the opposition. But the device

proved unsuccessful; and soon it appeared that the old practice of filling the chief offices of state with men

taken from various parties, and hostile to one another, or, at least, unconnected with one another, was

altogether unsuited to the new state of affairs; and that, since the Commons had become possessed of

supreme power, the only way to prevent them from abusing that power with boundless folly and violence was

While William was making these changes in the great offices of state, a change in which he took a still deeper

interest was taking place in his own household. He had laboured in vain during many months to keep the

peace between Portland and Albemarle. Albemarle, indeed, was all courtesy, good humour, and submission;

but Portland would not be conciliated. Even to foreign ministers he railed at his rival and complained of his

master. The whole Court was divided between the competitors, but divided very unequally. The majority took

the side of Albemarle, whose manners were popular and whose power was evidently growing. Portland's few

adherents were persons who, like him, had already made their fortunes, and who did not therefore think it

worth their while to transfer their homage to a new patron. One of these persons tried to enlist Prior in

Portland's faction, but with very little success. "Excuse me," said the poet, "if I follow your example and my

Lord's. My Lord is a model to us all; and you have imitated him to good purpose. He retires with half a

million. You have large grants, a lucrative employment in Holland, a fine house. I have nothing of the kind.

A court is like those fashionable churches into which we have looked at Paris. Those who have received the

benediction are instantly away to the Opera House or the wood of Boulogne. Those who have not received

the benediction are pressing and elbowing each other to get near the altar. You and my Lord have got your

blessing, and are quite right to take yourselves off with at. I have not been blest, and must fight my way up as

well as I can." Prior's wit was his own. But his worldly wisdom was common to him with multitudes; and the

crowd of those who wanted to be lords of the bedchamber, rangers of parks, and lieutenants of counties,

By one person, however, Portland was still assiduously courted; and that person was the King. Nothing was

omitted which could soothe an irritated mind. Sometimes William argued, expostulated and implored during

two hours together. But he found the comrade of his youth an altered man, unreasonable, obstinate and

disrespectful even before the public eye. The Prussian minister, an observant and impartial witness, declared

that his hair had more than once stood on end to see the rude discourtesy with which the servant repelled the

gracious advances of the master. Over and over William invited his old friend to take the long accustomed

seat in his royal coach, that seat which Prince George himself had never been permitted to invade; and the

invitation was over and over declined in a way which would have been thought uncivil even between equals.

A sovereign could not, without a culpable sacrifice of his personal dignity, persist longer in such a contest.

Portland was permitted to withdraw from the palace. To Heinsius, as to a common friend, William announced

this separation in a letter which shows how deeply his feelings had been wounded. "I cannot tell you what I

have suffered. I have done on my side every thing that I could do to satisfy him; but it was decreed that a

blind jealousy should make him regardless of every thing that ought to have been dear to him." To Portland

himself the King wrote in language still more touching. "I hope that you will oblige me in one thing. Keep

your key of office. I shall not consider you as bound to any attendance. But I beg you to let me see you as

often as possible. That will be a great mitigation of the distress which you have caused me. For, after all that

Thus Portland retired to enjoy at his ease immense estates scattered over half the shires of England, and a

hoard of ready money, such, it was said, as no other private man in Europe possessed. His fortune still

continued to grow. For, though, after the fashion of his countrymen, he laid out large sums on the interior

decoration of his houses, on his gardens, and on his aviaries, his other expenses were regulated with strict

frugality. His repose was, however, during some years not uninterrupted. He had been trusted with such grave

secrets, and employed in such high missions, that his assistance was still frequently necessary to the

government; and that assistance was given, not, as formerly, with the ardour of a devoted friend, but with the

exactness of a conscientious servant. He still continued to receive letters from William; letters no longer

indeed overflowing with kindness, but always indicative of perfect confidence and esteem.

The chief subject of those letters was the question which had been for a time settled in the previous autumn at

Loo, and which had been reopened in the spring by the death of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria.

As soon as that event was known at Paris, Lewis directed Tallard to sound William as to a new treaty. The

first thought which occurred to William was that it might be possible to put the Elector of Bavaria in his son's

place. But this suggestion was coldly received at Versailles, and not without reason. If, indeed, the young

Francis Joseph had lived to succeed Charles, and had then died a minor without issue, the case would have

been very different. Then the Elector would have been actually administering the government of the Spanish

monarchy, and, supported by France, England and the United Provinces, might without much difficulty have

continued to rule as King the empire which he had begun to rule as Regent. He would have had also, not

indeed a right, but something which to the vulgar would have looked like a right, to be his son's heir. Now he

was altogether unconnected with Spain. No more reason could be given for selecting him to be the Catholic

King than for selecting the Margrave of Baden or the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Something was said about

Victor Amadeus of Savoy, and something about the King of Portugal; but to both there were insurmountable

objections. It seemed, therefore, that the only choice was between a French Prince and an Austrian Prince;

and William learned, with agreeable surprise, that Lewis might possibly be induced to suffer the younger

Archduke to be King of Spain and the Indies. It was intimated at the same time that the House of Bourbon

would expect, in return for so great a concession to the rival House of Habsburg, greater advantages than had

been thought sufficient when the Dauphin consented to waive his claims in favour of a candidate whose

elevation could cause no jealousies. What Lewis demanded, in addition to the portion formerly assigned to

France, was the Milanese. With the Milanese he proposed to buy Lorraine from its Duke. To the Duke of

Lorraine this arrangement would have been beneficial, and to the people of Lorraine more beneficial still.

They were, and had long been, in a singularly unhappy situation. Lewis domineered over them as if they had

been his subjects, and troubled himself as little about their happiness as if they had been his enemies. Since

he exercised as absolute a power over them as over the Normans and Burgundians, it was desirable that he

should have as great an interest in their welfare as in the welfare of the Normans and Burgundians.

On the basis proposed by France William was willing to negotiate; and, when, in June 1699, he left

Kensington to pass the summer at Loo, the terms of the treaty known as the Second Treaty of Partition were

very nearly adjusted. The great object now was to obtain the consent of the Emperor. That consent, it should

seem, ought to have been readily and even eagerly given. Had it been given, it might perhaps have saved

Christendom from a war of eleven years. But the policy of Austria was, at that time, strangely dilatory and

irresolute. It was in vain that William and Heinsius represented the importance of every hour. "The Emperor's

ministers go on dawdling," so the King wrote to Heinsius, "not because there is any difficulty about the

matter, not because they mean to reject the terms, but solely because they are people who can make up their

minds to nothing." While the negotiation at Vienna was thus drawn out into endless length, evil tidings came

Spain and her King had long been sunk so low that it seemed impossible for him to sink lower. Yet the

political maladies of the monarchy and the physical maladies of the monarch went on growing, and exhibited

every day some new and frightful symptom. Since the death of the Bavarian Prince, the Court had been

divided between the Austrian faction, of which the Queen and the leading ministers Oropesa and Melgar were

the chiefs, and the French faction, of which the most important member was Cardinal Portocarrero,

Archbishop of Toledo. At length an event which, as far as can now be judged, was not the effect of a deeply

meditated plan, and was altogether unconnected with the disputes about the succession, gave the advantage to

the adherents of France. The government, having committed the great error of undertaking to supply Madrid

with food, committed the still greater error of neglecting to perform what it had undertaken. The price of

bread doubled. Complaints were made to the magistrates, and were heard with the indolent apathy

characteristic of the Spanish administration from the highest to the lowest grade. Then the populace rose,

attacked the house of Oropesa, poured by thousands into the great court of the palace, and insisted on seeing

the King. The Queen appeared in a balcony, and told the rioters that His Majesty was asleep. Then the

multitude set up a roar of fury. "It is false; we do not believe you. We will see him." "He has slept too long,"

said one threatening voice; "and it is high time that he should wake." The Queen retired weeping; and the

wretched being on whose dominions the sun never set tottered to the window, bowed as he had never bowed

before, muttered some gracious promises, waved a handkerchief in the air, bowed again, and withdrew.

Oropesa, afraid of being torn to pieces, retired to his country seat. Melgar made some show of resistance,

garrisoned his house, and menaced the rabble with a shower of grenades, but was soon forced to go after

Portocarrero was one of a race of men of whom we, happily for us, have seen very little, but whose influence

has been the curse of Roman Catholic countries. He was, like Sixtus the Fourth and Alexander the Sixth, a

politician made out of an impious priest. Such politicians are generally worse than the worst of the laity, more

merciless than any ruffian that can be found in camps, more dishonest than any pettifogger who haunts the

tribunals. The sanctity of their profession has an unsanctifying influence on them. The lessons of the nursery,

the habits of boyhood and of early youth, leave in the minds of the great majority of avowed infidels some

traces of religion, which, in seasons of mourning and of sickness, become plainly discernible. But it is

scarcely possible that any such trace should remain in the mind of the hypocrite who, during many years, is

constantly going through what he considers as the mummery of preaching, saying mass, baptizing, shriving.

When an ecclesiastic of this sort mixes in the contests of men of the world, he is indeed much to be dreaded

as an enemy, but still more to be dreaded as an ally. From the pulpit where he daily employs his eloquence to

embellish what he regards as fables, from the altar whence he daily looks down with secret scorn on the

prostrate dupes who believe that he can turn a drop of wine into blood, from the confessional where he daily

studies with cold and scientific attention the morbid anatomy of guilty consciences, he brings to courts some

talents which may move the envy of the more cunning and unscrupulous of lay courtiers; a rare skill in

reading characters and in managing tempers, a rare art of dissimulation, a rare dexterity in insinuating what it

is not safe to affirm or to propose in explicit terms. There are two feelings which often prevent an

unprincipled layman from becoming utterly depraved and despicable, domestic feeling, and chivalrous

feeling. His heart may be softened by the endearments of a family. His pride may revolt from the thought of

doing what does not become a gentleman. But neither with the domestic feeling nor with the chivalrous

feeling has the wicked priest any sympathy. His gown excludes him from the closest and most tender of

human relations, and at the same time dispenses him from the observation of the fashionable code of honour.

Such a priest was Portocarrero; and he seems to have been a consummate master of his craft. To the name of

statesman he had no pretensions. The lofty part of his predecessor Ximenes was out of the range, not more of

his intellectual, than his moral capacity. To reanimate a paralysed and torpid monarchy, to introduce order

and economy into a bankrupt treasury, to restore the discipline of an army which had become a mob, to refit a

navy which was perishing from mere rottenness, these were achievements beyond the power, beyond even

the ambition, of that ignoble nature. But there was one task for which the new minister was admirably

qualified, that of establishing, by means of superstitious terror, an absolute dominion over a feeble mind; and

the feeblest of all minds was that of his unhappy sovereign. Even before the riot which had made the cardinal

supreme in the state, he had succeeded in introducing into the palace a new confessor selected by himself. In

a very short time the King's malady took a new form. That he was too weak to lift his food to his misshapen

mouth, that, at thirtyseven, he had the bald head and wrinkled face of a man of seventy, that his complexion

was turning from yellow to green, that he frequently fell down in fits and remained long insensible, these

were no longer the worst symptoms of his malady. He had always been afraid of ghosts and demons; and it

had long been necessary that three friars should watch every night by his restless bed as a guard against

hobgoblins. But now he was firmly convinced that he was bewitched, that he was possessed, that there was a

devil within him, that there were devils all around him. He was exorcised according to the forms of his

Church; but this ceremony, instead of quieting him, scared him out of almost all the little reason that nature

had given him. In his misery and despair he was induced to resort to irregular modes of relief. His confessor

brought to court impostors who pretended that they could interrogate the powers of darkness. The Devil was

called up, sworn and examined. This strange deponent made oath, as in the presence of God, that His

Catholic Majesty was under a spell, which had been laid on him many years before, for the purpose of

preventing the continuation of the royal line. A drug had been compounded out of the brains and kidneys of a

human corpse, and had been administered in a cup of chocolate. This potion had dried up all the sources of

life; and the best remedy to which the patient could now resort would be to swallow a bowl of consecrated oil

every morning before breakfast. Unhappily, the authors of this story fell into contradictions which they could

excuse only by throwing the blame on Satan, who, they said, was an unwilling witness, and a liar from the

beginning. In the midst of their conjuring, the Inquisition came down upon them. It must be admitted that, if

the Holy Office had reserved all its terrors for such cases, it would not now have been remembered as the

most hateful judicature that was ever known among civilised men. The subaltern impostors were thrown into

dungeons. But the chief criminal continued to be master of the King and of the kingdom. Meanwhile, in the

distempered mind of Charles one mania succeeded another. A longing to pry into those mysteries of the grave

from which human beings avert their thoughts had long been hereditary in his house. Juana, from whom the

mental constitution of her posterity seems to have derived a morbid taint, had sate, year after year, by the bed

on which lay the ghastly remains of her husband, apparelled in the rich embroidery and jewels which he had

been wont to wear while living. Her son Charles found an eccentric pleasure in celebrating his own

obsequies, in putting on his shroud, placing himself in the coffin, covering himself with the pall; and lying as

one dead till the requiem had been sung, and the mourners had departed leaving him alone in the tomb. Philip

the Second found a similar pleasure in gazing on the huge chest of bronze in which his remains were to be

laid, and especially on the skull which, encircled with the crown of Spain, grinned at him from the cover.

Philip the Fourth, too, hankered after burials and burial places, gratified his curiosity by gazing on the

remains of his great grandfather, the Emperor, and sometimes stretched himself out at full length like a corpse

in the niche which he had selected for himself in the royal cemetery. To that cemetery his son was now

attracted by a strange fascination. Europe could show no more magnificent place of sepulture. A staircase

encrusted with jasper led down from the stately church of the Escurial into an octagon situated just beneath

the high altar. The vault, impervious to the sun, was rich with gold and precious marbles, which reflected the

blaze from a huge chandelier of silver. On the right and on the left reposed, each in a massy sarcophagus, the

departed kings and queens of Spain. Into this mausoleum the King descended with a long train of courtiers,

and ordered the coffins to be unclosed. His mother had been embalmed with such consummate skill that she

appeared as she had appeared on her death bed. The body of his grandfather too seemed entire, but crumbled

into dust at the first touch. From Charles neither the remains of his mother nor those of his grandfather could

draw any sign of sensibility. But, when the gentle and graceful Louisa of Orleans, the miserable man's first

wife, she who had lighted up his dark existence with one short and pale gleam of happiness, presented

herself, after the lapse of ten years, to his eyes, his sullen apathy gave way. "She is in heaven," he cried; "and

I shall soon be there with her;" and, with all the speed of which his limbs were capable, he tottered back to

Such was the state of the Court of Spain when, in the autumn of 1699, it became known that, since the death

of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria, the governments of France, of England and of the United Provinces, were

busily engaged in framing a second Treaty of Partition. That Castilians would be indignant at learning that

any foreign potentate meditated the dismemberment of that empire of which Castile was the head might have

been foreseen. But it was less easy to foresee that William would be the chief and indeed almost the only

object of their indignation. If the meditated partition really was unjustifiable, there could be no doubt that

Lewis was far more to blame than William. For it was by Lewis, and not by William, that the partition had

been originally suggested; and it was Lewis, and not William, who was to gain an accession of territory by

the partition. Nobody could doubt that William would most gladly have acceded to any arrangement by

which the Spanish monarchy, could be preserved entire without danger to the liberties of Europe, and that he

had agreed to the division of that monarchy solely for the purpose of contenting Lewis. Nevertheless the

Spanish ministers carefully avoided whatever could give offence to Lewis, and indemnified themselves by

offering a gross indignity to William. The truth is that their pride had, as extravagant pride often has, a close

affinity with meanness. They knew that it was unsafe to insult Lewis; and they believed that they might with

perfect safety insult William. Lewis was absolute master of his large kingdom. He had at no great distance

armies and fleets which one word from him would put in motion. If he were provoked, the white flag might

in a few days be again flying on the walls of Barcelona. His immense power was contemplated by the

Castilians with hope as well as with fear. He and he alone, they imagined, could avert that dismemberment of

which they could not bear to think. Perhaps he might yet be induced to violate the engagements into which he

had entered with England and Holland, if one of his grandsons were named successor to the Spanish throne.

He, therefore, must be respected and courted. But William could at that moment do little to hurt or to help.

He could hardly be said to have an army. He could take no step which would require an outlay of money

without the sanction of the House of Commons; and it seemed to be the chief study of the House of

Commons to cross him and to humble him. The history of the late session was known to the Spaniards

principally by inaccurate reports brought by Irish friars. And, had those reports been accurate, the real nature

of a Parliamentary struggle between the Court party and the Country party could have been but very

imperfectly understood by the magnates of a realm in which there had not, during several generations, been

any constitutional opposition to the royal pleasure. At one time it was generally believed at Madrid, not by

the mere rabble, but by Grandees who had the envied privilege of going in coaches and four through the

streets of the capital, that William had been deposed, that he had retired to Holland, that the Parliament had

resolved that there should be no more kings, that a commonwealth had been proclaimed, and that a Doge was

about to be appointed and, though this rumour turned out to be false, it was but too true that the English

government was, just at that conjuncture, in no condition to resent slights. Accordingly, the Marquess of

Canales, who represented the Catholic King at Westminster, received instructions to remonstrate in strong

language, and was not afraid to go beyond those instructions. He delivered to the Secretary of State a note

abusive and impertinent beyond all example and all endurance. His master, he wrote, had learnt with

amazement that King William, Holland and other powers,for the ambassador, prudent even in his

blustering, did not choose to name the King of France,were engaged in framing a treaty, not only for

settling the succession to the Spanish crown, but for the detestable purpose of dividing the Spanish monarchy.

The whole scheme was vehemently condemned as contrary to the law of nature and to the law of God. The

ambassador appealed from the King of England to the Parliament, to the nobility, and to the whole nation,

and concluded by giving notice that he should lay the whole case before the two Houses when next they met.

The style of this paper shows how strong an impression had been made on foreign nations by the unfortunate

events of the late session. The King, it was plain, was no longer considered as the head of the government. He

was charged with having committed a wrong; but he was not asked to make reparation. He was treated as a

subordinate officer who had been guilty of an offence against public law, and was threatened with the

displeasure of the Commons, who, as the real rulers of the state, were bound to keep their servants in order.

The Lords justices read this outrageous note with indignation, and sent it with all speed to Loo. Thence they

received, with equal speed, directions to send Canales out of the country. Our ambassador was at the same

time recalled from Madrid; and all diplomatic intercourse between England and Spain was suspended.

It is probable that Canales would have expressed himself in a less unbecoming manner, had there not already

existed a most unfortunate quarrel between Spain and William, a quarrel in which William was perfectly

blameless, but in which the unanimous feeling of the English Parliament and of the English nation was on the

It is necessary to go back some years for the purpose of tracing the origin and progress of this quarrel. Few

portions of our history are more interesting or instructive; but few have been more obscured and distorted by

passion and prejudice. The story is an exciting one; and it has generally been told by writers whose judgment

had been perverted by strong national partiality. Their invectives and lamentations have still to be

temperately examined; and it may well be doubted whether, even now, after the lapse of more than a century

and a half, feelings hardly compatible with temperate examination will not be stirred up in many minds by

the name of Darien. In truth that name is associated with calamities so cruel that the recollection of them may

The man who brought these calamities on his country was not a mere visionary or a mere swindler. He was

that William Paterson whose name is honourably associated with the auspicious commencement of a new era

in English commerce and in English finance. His plan of a national bank, having been examined and

approved by the most eminent statesmen who sate in the Parliament house at Westminster and by the most

eminent merchants who walked the Exchange of London, had been carried into execution with signal success.

He thought, and perhaps thought with reason, that his services had been ill requited. He was, indeed, one of

the original Directors of the great corporation which owed its existence to him; but he was not reelected. It

may easily be believed that his colleagues, citizens of ample fortune and of long experience in the practical

part of trade, aldermen, wardens of companies, heads of firms well known in every Burse throughout the

civilised world, were not well pleased to see among them in Grocers' Hall a foreign adventurer whose whole

capital consisted in an inventive brain and a persuasive tongue. Some of them were probably weak enough to

dislike him for being a Scot; some were probably mean enough to be jealous of his parts and knowledge; and

even persons who were not unfavourably disposed to him might have discovered, before they had known him

long, that, with all his cleverness, he was deficient in common sense; that his mind was full of schemes

which, at the first glance, had a specious aspect, but which, on closer examination, appeared to be

impracticable or pernicious; and that the benefit which the public had derived from one happy project formed

by him would be very dearly purchased if it were taken for granted that all his other projects must be equally

happy. Disgusted by what he considered as the ingratitude of the English, he repaired to the Continent, in the

hope that he might be able to interest the traders of the Hanse Towns and the princes of the German Empire

in his plans. From the Continent he returned unsuccessful to London; and then at length the thought that he

might be more justly appreciated by his countrymen than by strangers seems to have risen in his mind. Just at

this time he fell in with Fletcher of Saltoun, who happened to be in England. These eccentric men soon

became intimate. Each of them had his monomania; and the two monomaniac suited each other perfectly.

Fletcher's whole soul was possessed by a sore, jealous, punctilious patriotism. His heart was ulcerated by the

thought of the poverty, the feebleness, the political insignificance of Scotland, and of the indignities which

she had suffered at the hand of her powerful and opulent neighbour. When he talked of her wrongs his dark

meagre face took its sternest expression; his habitual frown grew blacker, and his eyes flashed more than

their wonted fire. Paterson, on the other hand, firmly believed himself to have discovered the means of

making any state which would follow his counsel great and prosperous in a time which, when compared with

the life of an individual, could hardly be called long, and which, in the life of a nation, was but as a moment.

There is not the least reason to believe that he was dishonest. Indeed he would have found more difficulty in

deceiving others had he not begun by deceiving himself. His faith to his own schemes was strong even to

martyrdom; and the eloquence with which he illustrated and defended them had all the charm of sincerity and

of enthusiasm. Very seldom has any blunder committed by fools, or any villany devised by impostors,

brought on any society miseries so great as the dreams of these two friends, both of them men of integrity and

In 1695 the pair went down together to their native country. The Parliament of that country was then about to

meet under the presidency of Tweeddale, an old acquaintance and country neighbour of Fletcher. On

Tweeddale the first attack was made. He was a shrewd, cautious, old politician. Yet it should seem that he

was not able to hold out against the skill and energy of the assailants. Perhaps, however, he was not

altogether a dupe. The public mind was at that moment violently agitated. Men of all parties were clamouring

for an inquiry into the slaughter of Glencoe. There was reason to fear that the session which was about to

commence would be stormy. In such circumstances the Lord High Commissioner might think that it would

be prudent to appease the anger of the Estates by offering an almost irresistible bait to their cupidity. If such

was the policy of Tweeddale, it was, for the moment, eminently successful. The Parliament, which met

burning with indignation, was soothed into good humour. The blood of the murdered Macdonalds continued

to cry for vengeance in vain. The schemes of Paterson, brought forward under the patronage of the ministers

The great projector was the idol of the whole nation. Men spoke to him with more profound respect than to

the Lord High Commissioner. His antechamber was crowded with solicitors desirous to catch some drops of

that golden shower of which he was supposed to be the dispenser. To be seen walking with him in the High

Street, to be honoured by him with a private interview of a quarter of an hour, were enviable distinctions. He,

after the fashion of all the false prophets who have deluded themselves and others, drew new faith in his own

lie from the credulity of his disciples. His countenance, his voice, his gestures, indicated boundless

selfimportance. When he appeared in public he looked,such is the language of one who probably had

often seen him,like Atlas conscious that a world was on his shoulders. But the airs which he gave himself

only heightened the respect and admiration which he inspired. His demeanour was regarded as a model.

His plan, though as yet disclosed to the public only by glimpses, was applauded by all classes, factions and

sects, lords, merchants, advocates, divines, Whigs and Jacobites, Cameronians and Episcopalians. In truth, of

all the ten thousand bubbles of which history has preserved the memory, none was ever more skilfully puffed

into existence; none ever soared higher, or glittered more brilliantly; and none ever burst with a more

lamentable explosion. There was, however, a certain mixture of truth in the magnificent day dream which

Scotland was, indeed, not blessed with a mild climate or a fertile soil. But the richest spots that had ever

existed on the face of the earth had been spots quite as little favoured by nature. It was on a bare rock,

surrounded by deep sea, that the streets of Tyre were piled up to a dizzy height. On that sterile crag were

woven the robes of Persian satraps and Sicilian tyrants; there were fashioned silver bowls and chargers for the

banquets of kings; and there Pomeranian amber was set in Lydian gold to adorn the necks of queens. In the

warehouses were collected the fine linen of Egypt and the odorous gums of Arabia; the ivory of India, and the

tin of Britain. In the port lay fleets of great ships which had weathered the storms of the Euxine and the

Atlantic. Powerful and wealthy colonies in distant parts of the world looked up with filial reverence to the

little island; and despots, who trampled on the laws and outraged the feelings of all the nations between the

Hydaspes and the Aegean, condescended to court the population of that busy hive. At a later period, on a

dreary bank formed by the soil which the Alpine streams swept down to the Adriatic, rose the palaces of

Venice. Within a space which would not have been thought large enough for one of the parks of a rude

northern baron were collected riches far exceeding those of a northern kingdom. In almost every one of the

prorate dwellings which fringed the Great Canal were to be seen plate, mirrors, jewellery, tapestry, paintings,

carving, such as might move the envy of the master of Holyrood. In the arsenal were munitions of war

sufficient to maintain a contest against the whole power of the Ottoman Empire. And, before the grandeur of

Venice had declined, another commonwealth, still less favoured, if possible, by nature, had rapidly risen to a

power and opulence which the whole civilised world contemplated with envy and admiration. On a desolate

marsh overhung by fogs and exhaling diseases, a marsh where there was neither wood nor stone, neither firm

earth nor drinkable water, a marsh from which the ocean on one side and the Rhine on the other were with

difficulty kept out by art, was to be found the most prosperous community in Europe. The wealth which was

collected within five miles of the Stadthouse of Amsterdam would purchase the fee simple of Scotland. And

why should this be? Was there any reason to believe that nature had bestowed on the Phoenician, on the

Venetian, or on the Hollander, a larger measure of activity, of ingenuity, of forethought, of self command,

than on the citizen of Edinburgh or Glasgow? The truth was that, in all those qualities which conduce to

success in life, and especially in commercial life, the Scot had never been surpassed; perhaps he had never

been equalled. All that was necessary was that his energy should take a proper direction, and a proper

His esoteric project was the original project of Christopher Columbus, extended and modified. Columbus had

hoped to establish a communication between our quarter of the world and India across the great western

ocean. But he was stopped by an unexpected obstacle. The American continent, stretching far north and far

south into cold and inhospitable regions, presented what seemed an insurmountable barrier to his progress;

and, in the same year in which he first set foot on that continent, Gama reached Malabar by doubling the

Cape of Good Hope. The consequence was that during two hundred years the trade of Europe with the

remoter parts of Asia had been carried on by rounding the immense peninsula of Africa. Paterson now

revived the project of Columbus, and persuaded himself and others that it was possible to carry that project

into effect in such a manner as to make his country the greatest emporium that had ever existed on our globe.

For this purpose it was necessary to occupy in America some spot which might be a resting place between

Scotland and India. It was true that almost every habitable part of America had already been seized by some

European power. Paterson, however, imagined that one province, the most important of all, had been

overlooked by the shortsighted cupidity of vulgar politicians and vulgar traders. The isthmus which joined

the two great continents of the New World remained, according to him, unappropriated. Great Spanish

viceroyalties, he said, lay on the east and on the west; but the mountains and forests of Darien were

abandoned to rude tribes which followed their own usages and obeyed their own princes. He had been in that

part of the world, in what character was not quite clear. Some said that he had gone thither to convert the

Indians, and some that he had gone thither to rob the Spaniards. But, missionary or pirate, he had visited

Darien, and had brought away none but delightful recollections. The havens, he averred, were capacious and

secure; the sea swarmed with turtle; the country was so mountainous that, within nine degrees of the equator,

the climate was temperate; and yet the inequalities of the ground offered no impediment to the conveyance of

goods. Nothing would be easier than to construct roads along which a string of mules or a wheeled carriage

might in the course of a single day pass from sea to sea. The soil was, to the depth of several feet, a rich black

mould, on which a profusion of valuable herbs and fruits grew spontaneously, and on which all the choicest

productions of tropical regions might easily be raised by human industry and art; and yet the exuberant

fertility of the earth had not tainted the purity of the air. Considered merely as a place of residence, the

isthmus was a paradise. A colony placed there could not fail to prosper, even if it had no wealth except what

was derived from agriculture. But agriculture was a secondary object in the colonization of Darien. Let but

that precious neck of land be occupied by an intelligent, an enterprising, a thrifty race; and, in a few years, the

whole trade between India and Europe must be drawn to that point. The tedious and perilous passage round

Africa would soon be abandoned. The merchant would no longer expose his cargoes to the mountainous

billows and capricious gales of the Antarctic seas. The greater part of the voyage from Europe to Darien, and

the whole voyage from Darien to the richest kingdoms of Asia, would be a rapid yet easy gliding before the

trade winds over blue and sparkling waters. The voyage back across the Pacific would, in the latitude of

Japan, be almost equally speedy and pleasant. Time, labour, money, would be saved. The returns would come

in more quickly. Fewer hands would be required to navigate the ships. The loss of a vessel would be a rare

event. The trade would increase fast. In a short time it would double; and it would all pass through Darien.

Whoever possessed that door of the sea, that key of the universe,such were the bold figures which Paterson

loved to employ,would give law to both hemispheres; and would, by peaceful arts, without shedding one

drop of blood, establish an empire as splendid as that of Cyrus or Alexander. Of the kingdoms of Europe,

Scotland was, as yet, the poorest and the least considered. If she would but occupy Darien, if she would but

become one great free port, one great warehouse for the wealth which the soil of Darien might produce, and

for the still greater wealth which would be poured into Darien from Canton and Siam, from Ceylon and the

Moluccas, from the mouths of the Ganges and the Gulf of Cambay, she would at once take her place in the

first rank among nations. No rival would be able to contend with her either in the West Indian or in the East

Indian trade. The beggarly country, as it had been insolently called by the inhabitants of warmer and more

fruitful regions, would be the great mart for the choicest luxuries, sugar, rum, coffee, chocolate, tobacco, the

tea and porcelain of China, the muslin of Dacca, the shawls of Cashmere, the diamonds of Golconda, the

pearls of Karrack, the delicious birds' nests of Nicobar, cinnamon and pepper, ivory and sandal wood. From

Scotland would come all the finest jewels and brocade worn by duchesses at the balls of St. James's and

Versailles. From Scotland would come all the saltpetre which would furnish the means of war to the fleets

and armies of contending potentates. And on all the vast riches which would be constantly passing through

the little kingdom a toll would be paid which would remain behind. There would be a prosperity such as

might seem fabulous, a prosperity of which every Scotchman, from the peer to the cadie, would partake.

Soon, all along the now desolate shores of the Forth and Clyde, villas and pleasure grounds would be as thick

as along the edges of the Dutch canals. Edinburgh would vie with London and Paris; and the baillie of

Glasgow or Dundee would have as stately and well furnished a mansion, and as fine a gallery of pictures, as

This magnificent plan was at first but partially disclosed to the public. A colony was to be planted; a vast

trade was to be opened between both the Indies and Scotland; but the name of Darien was as yet pronounced

only in whispers by Paterson and by his most confidential friends. He had however shown enough to excite

boundless hopes and desires. How well he succeeded in inspiring others with his own feelings is sufficiently

proved by the memorable Act to which the Lord High Commissioner gave the Royal sanction on the 26th of

June 1695. By this Act some persons who were named, and such other persons as should join with them,

were formed into a corporation, which was to be named the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the

Indies. The amount of the capital to be employed was not fixed by law; but it was provided that one half of

the stock at least must be held by Scotchmen resident in Scotland, and that no stock which had been

originally held by a Scotchman resident in Scotland should ever be transferred to any but a Scotchman

resident in Scotland. An entire monopoly of the trade with Asia, Africa and America, for a term of thirtyone

years, was granted to the Company. All goods imported by the Company were during twentyone years to be

duty free, with the exception of foreign sugar and tobacco. Sugar and tobacco grown on the Company's own

plantations were exempted from all taxation. Every member and every servant of the Company was to be

privileged against impressment and arrest. If any of these privileged persons was impressed or arrested, the

Company was authorised to release him, and to demand the assistance both of the civil and of the military

power. The Company was authorised to take possession of unoccupied territories in any part of Asia, Africa

or America, and there to plant colonies, to build towns and forts, to impose taxes, and to provide magazines,

arms and ammunition, to raise troops, to wage war, to conclude treaties; and the King was made to promise

that, if any foreign state should injure the Company, he would interpose, and would, at the public charge,

obtain reparation. Lastly it was provided that, in order to give greater security and solemnity to this most

exorbitant grant, the whole substance of the Act should be set forth in Letters Patent to which the Chancellor

The letters were drawn; the Great Seal was affixed; the subscription books were opened; the shares were

fixed at a hundred pounds sterling each; and from the Pentland Firth to the Solway Firth every man who had

a hundred pounds was impatient to put down his name. About two hundred and twenty thousand pounds were

actually paid up. This may not, at first sight, appear a large sum to those who remember the bubbles of 1825

and of 1845, and would assuredly not have sufficed to defray the charge of three months of war with Spain.

Yet the effort was marvellous when it may be affirmed with confidence that the Scotch people voluntarily

contributed for the colonisation of Darien a larger proportion of their substance than any other people ever, in

the same space of time, voluntarily contributed to any commercial undertaking. A great part of Scotland was

then as poor and rude as Iceland now is. There were five or six shires which did not altogether contain so

many guineas and crowns as were tossed about every day by the shovels of a single goldsmith in Lombard

Street. Even the nobles had very little ready money. They generally took a large part of their rents in kind,

and were thus able, on their own domains, to live plentifully and hospitably. But there were many esquires in

Kent and Somersetshire who received from their tenants a greater quantity of gold and silver than a Duke of

Cordon or a Marquess of Atholl drew from extensive provinces. The pecuniary remuneration of the clergy

was such as would have moved the pity of the most needy curate who thought it a privilege to drink his ale

and smoke his pipe in the kitchen of an English manor house. Even in the fertile Merse there were parishes of

which the minister received only from four to eight pounds sterling in cash. The official income of the Lord

President of the Court of Session was only five hundred a year; that of the Lord Justice Clerk only four

hundred a year. The land tax of the whole kingdom was fixed some years later by the Treaty of Union at little

more than half the land tax of the single county of Norfolk. Four hundred thousand pounds probably bore as

The list of the members of the Darien Company deserves to be examined. The number of shareholders was

about fourteen hundred. The largest quantity of stock registered in one name was three thousand pounds. The

heads of three noble houses took three thousand pounds each, the Duke of Hamilton, the Duke of Queensbury

and Lord Belhaven, a man of ability, spirit and patriotism, who had entered into the design with enthusiasm

not inferior to that of Fletcher. Argyle held fifteen hundred pounds. John Dalrymple, but too well known as

the Master of Stair, had just succeeded to his father's title and estate, and was now Viscount Stair. He put

down his name for a thousand pounds. The number of Scotch peers who subscribed was between thirty and

forty. The City of Edinburgh, in its corporate capacity, took three thousand pounds, the City of Glasgow three

thousand, the City of Perth two thousand. But the great majority of the subscribers contributed only one

hundred or two hundred pounds each. A very few divines who were settled in the capital or in other large

towns were able to purchase shares. It is melancholy to see in the roll the name of more than one professional

man whose paternal anxiety led him to lay out probably all his hardly earned savings in purchasing a hundred

pound share for each of his children. If, indeed, Paterson's predictions had been verified, such a share would,

according to the notions of that age and country, have been a handsome portion for the daughter of a writer or

That the Scotch are a people eminently intelligent, wary, resolute and self possessed, is obvious to the most

superficial observation. That they are a people peculiarly liable to dangerous fits of passion and delusions of

the imagination is less generally acknowledged, but is not less true. The whole kingdom seemed to have gone

mad. Paterson had acquired an influence resembling rather that of the founder of a new religion, that of a

Mahomet, that of a Joseph Smith, than that of a commercial projector. Blind faith in a religion, fanatical zeal

for a religion, are too common to astonish us. But such faith and zeal seem strangely out of place in the

transactions of the money market. It is true that we are judging after the event. But before the event materials

sufficient for the forming of a sound judgment were within the reach of all who cared to use them. It seems

incredible that men of sense, who had only a vague and general notion of Paterson's scheme, should have

staked every thing on the success of that scheme. It seems more incredible still that men to whom the details

of that scheme had been confided should not have looked into any of the common books of history or

geography in which an account of Darien might have been found, and should not have asked themselves the

simple question, whether Spain was likely to endure a Scotch colony in the midst of her Transatlantic

dominions. It was notorious that she claimed the sovereignty of the isthmus on specious, nay, on solid,

grounds. A Spaniard had been the first discoverer of the coast of Darien. A Spaniard had built a town and

established a government on that coast. A Spaniard had, with great labour and peril, crossed the mountainous

neck of land, had seen rolling beneath him the vast Pacific, never before revealed to European eyes, had

descended, sword in hand, into the waves up to his girdle, and had there solemnly taken possession of sea and

shore in the name of the Crown of Castile. It was true that the region which Paterson described as a paradise

had been found by the first Castilian settlers to be a land of misery and death. The poisonous air, exhaled

from rank jungle and stagnant water, had compelled them to remove to the neighbouring haven of Panama;

and the Red Indians had been contemptuously permitted to live after their own fashion on the pestilential soil.

But that soil was still considered, and might well be considered, by Spain as her own. In many countries there

were tracts of morass, of mountain, of forest, in which governments did not think it worth while to be at the

expense of maintaining order, and in which rude tribes enjoyed by connivance a kind of independence. It was

not necessary for the members of the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies to look very far

for an example. In some highland districts, not more than a hundred miles from Edinburgh, dwelt clans which

had always regarded the authority of King, Parliament, Privy Council and Court of Session, quite as little as

the aboriginal population of Darien regarded the authority of the Spanish Viceroys and Audiences. Yet it

would surely have been thought an outrageous violation of public law in the King of Spain to take possession

of Appin and Lochaber. And would it be a less outrageous violation of public law in the Scots to seize on a

province in the very centre of his possessions, on the plea that this province was in the same state in which

So grossly unjust was Paterson's scheme; and yet it was less unjust than impolitic. Torpid as Spain had

become, there was still one point on which she was exquisitely sensitive. The slightest encroachment of any

other European power even on the outskirts of her American dominions sufficed to disturb her repose and to

brace her paralysed nerves. To imagine that she would tamely suffer adventurers from one of the most

insignificant kingdoms of the Old World to form a settlement in the midst of her empire, within a day's sail of

Portobello on one side and of Carthagena on the other, was ludicrously absurd. She would have been just as

likely to let them take possession of the Escurial. It was, therefore, evident that, before the new Company

could even begin its commercial operations, there must be a war with Spain and a complete triumph over

Spain. What means had the Company of waging such a war, and what chance of achieving such a triumph?

The ordinary revenue of Scotland in time of peace was between sixty and seventy thousand a year. The

extraordinary supplies granted to the Crown during the war with France had amounted perhaps to as much

more. Spain, it is true, was no longer the Spain of Pavia and Lepanto. But, even in her decay, she possessed in

Europe resources which exceeded thirty fold those of Scotland; and in America, where the struggle must take

place, the disproportion was still greater. The Spanish fleets and arsenals were doubtless in wretched

condition. But there were Spanish fleets; there were Spanish arsenals. The galleons, which sailed every year

from Seville to the neighbourhood of Darien and from the neighbourhood of Darien back to Seville, were in

tolerable condition, and formed, by themselves, a considerable armament. Scotland had not a single ship of

the line, nor a single dockyard where such a ship could be built. A marine sufficient to overpower that of

Spain must be, not merely equipped and manned, but created. An armed force sufficient to defend the

isthmus against the whole power of the viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru must be sent over five thousand

miles of ocean. What was the charge of such an expedition likely to be? Oliver had, in the preceding

generation, wrested a West Indian island from Spain; but, in order to do this, Oliver, a man who thoroughly

understood the administration of war, who wasted nothing, and who was excellently served, had been forced

to spend, in a single year, on his navy alone, twenty times the ordinary revenue of Scotland; and, since his

It was plain that Scotland could not alone support the charge of a contest with the enemy whom Paterson was

bent on provoking. And what assistance was she likely to have from abroad? Undoubtedly the vast colonial

empire and the narrow colonial policy of Spain were regarded with an evil eye by more than one great

maritime power. But there was no great maritime power which would not far rather have seen the isthmus

between the Atlantic and the Pacific in the hands of Spain than in the hands of the Darien Company. Lewis

could not but dread whatever tended to aggrandise a state governed by William. To Holland the East India

trade was as the apple of her eye. She had been the chief gainer by the discoveries of Gama; and it might be

expected that she would do all that could be done by craft, and, if need were, by violence, rather than suffer

any rival to be to her what she had been to Venice. England remained; and Paterson was sanguine enough to

flatter himself that England might be induced to lend her powerful aid to the Company. He and Lord

Belhaven repaired to London, opened an office in Clement's Lane, formed a Board of Directors auxiliary to

the Central Board at Edinburgh, and invited the capitalists of the Royal Exchange to subscribe for the stock

which had not been reserved for Scotchmen resident in Scotland. A few moneyed men were allured by the

bait; but the clamour of the City was loud and menacing; and from the City a feeling of indignation spread

fast through the country. In this feeling there was undoubtedly a large mixture of evil. National antipathy

operated on some minds, religious antipathy on others. But it is impossible to deny that the anger which

Paterson's schemes excited throughout the south of the island was, in the main, just and reasonable. Though it

was not yet generally known in what precise spot his colony was to be planted, there could be little doubt that

he intended to occupy some part of America; and there could be as little doubt that such occupation would be

resisted. There would be a maritime war; and such a war Scotland had no means of carrying on. The state of

her finances was such that she must be quite unable to fit out even a single squadron of moderate size. Before

the conflict had lasted three months, she would have neither money nor credit left. These things were obvious

to every coffeehouse politician; and it was impossible to believe that they had escaped the notice of men so

able and well informed as some who sate in the Privy Council and Parliament at Edinburgh. In one way only

could the conduct of these schemers be explained. They meant to make a dupe and a tool of the Southron.

The two British kingdoms were so closely connected, physically and politically, that it was scarcely possible

for one of them to be at peace with a power with which the other was at war. If the Scotch drew King

William into a quarrel, England must, from regard to her own dignity which was bound up with his, support

him in it. She was to be tricked into a bloody and expensive contest in the event of which she had no interest;

nay, into a contest in which victory would be a greater calamity to her than defeat. She was to lavish her

wealth and the lives of her seamen, in order that a set of cunning foreigners might enjoy a monopoly by

which she would be the chief sufferer. She was to conquer and defend provinces for this Scotch Corporation;

and her reward was to be that her merchants were to be undersold, her customers decoyed away, her

exchequer beggared. There would be an end to the disputes between the old East India Company and the new

East India Company; for both Companies would be ruined alike. The two great springs of revenue would be

dried up together. What would be the receipt of the Customs, what of the Excise, when vast magazines of

sugar, rum, tobacco, coffee, chocolate, tea, spices, silks, muslins, all duty free, should be formed along the

estuaries of the Forth and of the Clyde, and along the border from the mouth of the Esk to the mouth of the

Tweed? What army, what fleet, would be sufficient to protect the interests of the government and of the fair

trader when the whole kingdom of Scotland should be turned into one great smuggling establishment?

Paterson's plan was simply this, that England should first spend millions in defence of the trade of his

Company, and should then be plundered of twice as many millions by means of that very trade.

The cry of the city and of the nation was soon echoed by the legislature. When the Parliament met for the first

time after the general election of 1695, Rochester called the attention of the Lords to the constitution and

designs of the Company. Several witnesses were summoned to the bar, and gave evidence which produced a

powerful effect on the House. "If these Scots are to have their way," said one peer, "I shall go and settle in

Scotland, and not stay here to be made a beggar." The Lords resolved to represent strongly to the King the

injustice of requiring England to exert her power in support of an enterprise which, if successful, must be

fatal to her commerce and to her finances. A representation was drawn up and communicated to the

Commons. The Commons eagerly concurred, and complimented the Peers on the promptitude with which

their Lordships had, on this occasion, stood forth to protect the public interests. The two Houses went up

together to Kensington with the address. William had been under the walls of Namur when the Act for

incorporating the Company had been touched with his sceptre at Edinburgh, and had known nothing about

that Act till his attention had been called to it by the clamour of his English subjects. He now said, in plain

terms, that he had been ill served in Scotland, but that he would try to find a remedy for the evil which bad

been brought to his notice. The Lord High Commissioner Tweeddale and Secretary Johnstone were

immediately dismissed. But the Act which had been passed by their management still continued to be law in

The Commons were not content with addressing the throne. They instituted an inquiry into the proceedings of

the Scotch Company in London. Belhaven made his escape to his own country, and was there beyond the

reach of the SerjeantatArms. But Paterson and some of his confederates were severely examined. It soon

appeared that the Board which was sitting in Clement's Lane had done things which were certainly imprudent

and perhaps illegal. The Act of Incorporation empowered the detectors to take and to administer to their

servants an oath of fidelity. But that Act was on the south of the Tweed a nullity. Nevertheless the directors

had, in the heart of the City of London, taken and administered this oath, and had thus, by implication,

asserted that the powers conferred on them by the legislature of Scotland accompanied them to England. It

was resolved that they had been guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour, and that they should be

impeached. A committee was appointed to frame articles of impeachment; but the task proved a difficult one;

and the prosecution was suffered to drop, not however till the few English capitalists who had at first been

friendly to Paterson's project had been terrified into renouncing all connection with him.

Now, surely, if not before, Paterson ought to have seen that his project could end in nothing but shame to

himself and ruin to his worshippers. From the first it had been clear that England alone could protect his

Company against the enmity of Spain; and it was now clear that Spain would be a less formidable enemy

than England. It was impossible that his plan could excite greater indignation in the Council of the Indies at

Madrid, or in the House of Trade at Seville, than it had excited in London. Unhappily he was given over to a

strong delusion, and the blind multitude eagerly followed their blind leader. Indeed his dupes were maddened

by that which should have sobered them. The proceedings of the Parliament which sate at Westminster,

proceedings just and reasonable in substance, but in manner doubtless harsh and insolent, had roused the

angry passions of a nation, feeble indeed in numbers and in material resources, but eminently high spirited.

The proverbial pride of the Scotch was too much for their proverbial shrewdness. The votes of the English

Lords and Commons were treated with marked contempt. The populace of Edinburgh burned Rochester in

effigy. Money was poured faster than ever into the treasury of the Company. A stately house, in Milne

Square, then the most modern and fashionable part of Edinburgh, was purchased and fitted up at once as an

office and a warehouse. Ships adapted both for war and for trade were required; but the means of building

such ships did not exist in Scotland; and no firm in the south of the island was disposed to enter into a

contract which might not improbably be considered by the House of Commons as an impeachable offence. It

was necessary to have recourse to the dockyards of Amsterdam and Hamburg. At an expense of fifty

thousand pounds a few vessels were procured, the largest of which would hardly have ranked as sixtieth in

the English navy; and with this force, a force not sufficient to keep the pirates of Sallee in check, the

It was not till the summer of 1698 that all was ready for the expedition which was to change the face of the

globe. The number of seamen and colonists who embarked at Leith was twelve hundred. Of the colonists

many were younger sons of honourable families, or officers who had been disbanded since the peace. It was

impossible to find room for all who were desirous of emigrating. It is said that some persons who had vainly

applied for a passage hid themselves in dark corners about the ships, and, when discovered, refused to depart,

clung to the rigging, and were at last taken on shore by main force. This infatuation is the more extraordinary

because few of the adventurers knew to what place they were going. All that was quite certain was that a

colony was to be planted somewhere, and to be named Caledonia. The general opinion was that the fleet

would steer for some part of the coast of America. But this opinion was not universal. At the Dutch Embassy

in Saint James's Square there was an uneasy suspicion that the new Caledonia would be founded among those

Eastern spice islands with which Amsterdam had long carried on a lucrative commerce.

The supreme direction of the expedition was entrusted to a Council of Seven. Two Presbyterian chaplains and

a preceptor were on board. A cargo had been laid in which was afterwards the subject of much mirth to the

enemies of the Company, slippers innumerable, four thousand periwigs of all kinds from plain bobs to those

magnificent structures which, in that age, towered high above the foreheads and descended to the elbows of

men of fashion, bales of Scotch woollen stuffs which nobody within the tropics could wear, and many

hundreds of English bibles which neither Spaniard nor Indian could read. Paterson, flushed with pride and

hope, not only accompanied the expedition, but took with him his wife, a comely dame, whose heart he had

won in London, where she had presided over one of the great coffeehouses in the neighbourhood of the Royal

Exchange. At length on the twentyfifth of July the ships, followed by many tearful eyes, and commended to

The voyage was much longer than a voyage to the Antipodes now is; and the adventurers suffered much. The

rations were scanty; there were bitter complaints both of the bread and of the meat; and, when the little fleet,

after passing round the Orkneys and Ireland, touched at Madeira, those gentlemen who had fine clothes

among their baggage were glad to exchange embroidered coats and laced waistcoats for provisions and wine.

From Madeira the adventurers ran across the Atlantic, landed on an uninhabited islet lying between Porto

Rico and St. Thomas, took possession of this desolate spot in the name of the Company, set up a tent, and

hoisted the white cross of St. Andrew. Soon, however, they were warned off by an officer who was sent from

St. Thomas to inform them that they were trespassing on the territory of the King of Denmark. They

proceeded on their voyage, having obtained the services of an old buccaneer who knew the coast of Central

America well. Under his pilotage they anchored on the first of November close to the Isthmus of Darien. One

of the greatest princes of the country soon came on board. The courtiers who attended him, ten or twelve in

number, were stark naked; but he was distinguished by a red coat, a pair of cotton drawers, and an old hat. He

had a Spanish name, spoke Spanish, and affected the grave deportment of a Spanish don. The Scotch

propitiated Andreas, as he was called, by a present of a new hat blazing with gold lace, and assured him that,

if he would trade with them, they would treat him better than the Castilians had done.

A few hours later the chiefs of the expedition went on shore, took formal possession of the country, and

named it Caledonia. They were pleased with the aspect of a small peninsula about three miles in length and a

quarter of a mile in breadth, and determined to fix here the city of New Edinburgh, destined, as they hoped, to

be the great emporium of both Indies. The peninsula terminated in a low promontory of about thirty acres,

which might easily be turned into an island by digging a trench. The trench was dug; and on the ground thus

separated from the main land a fort was constructed; fifty guns were placed on the ramparts; and within the

Negotiations were opened with the chieftains, as they were called, who governed the neighbouring tribes.

Among these savage rulers were found as insatiable a cupidity, as watchful a jealousy, and as punctilious a

pride, as among the potentates whose disputes had seemed likely to make the Congress of Ryswick eternal.

One prince hated the Spaniards because a fine rifle had been taken away from him by the Governor of

Portobello on the plea that such a weapon was too good for a red man. Another loved the Spaniards because

they had given him a stick tipped with silver. On the whole, the new comers succeeded in making friends of

the aboriginal race. One mighty monarch, the Lewis the Great of the isthmus, who wore with pride a cap of

white reeds lined with red silk and adorned with an ostrich feather, seemed well inclined to the strangers,

received them hospitably in a palace built of canes and covered with palmetto royal, and regaled them with

calabashes of a sort of ale brewed from Indian corn and potatoes. Another chief set his mark to a treaty of

peace and alliance with the colony. A third consented to become a vassal of the Company, received with

great delight a commission embellished with gold thread and flowered riband, and swallowed to the health of

Meanwhile the internal government of the colony was organised according to a plan devised by the directors

at Edinburgh. The settlers were divided into bands of fifty or sixty; each band chose a representative; and thus

was formed an assembly which took the magnificent name of Parliament. This Parliament speedily framed a

curious code. The first article provided that the precepts, instructions, examples, commands and prohibitions

expressed and contained in the Holy Scriptures should have the full force and effect of laws in New

Caledonia, an enactment which proves that those who drew it up either did not know what the Holy

Scriptures contained or did not know what a law meant. There is another provision which shows not less

clearly how far these legislators were from understanding the first principles of legislation. "Benefits received

and good services done shall always be generously and thankfully compensated, whether a prior bargain hath

been made or not; and, if it shall happen to be otherwise, and the Benefactor obliged justly to complain of the

ingratitude, the Ungrateful shall in such case be obliged to give threefold satisfaction at the least." An article

much more creditable to the little Parliament, and much needed in a community which was likely to be

constantly at war, prohibits, on pain of death, the violation of female captives.

By this time all the Antilles and all the shores of the Gulf of Mexico were in a ferment. The new colony was

the object of universal hatred. The Spaniards began to fit out armaments. The chiefs of the French

dependencies in the West Indies eagerly offered assistance to the Spaniards. The governors of the English

settlements put forth proclamations interdicting all communication with this nest of buccaneers. Just at this

time, the Dolphin, a vessel of fourteen guns, which was the property of the Scotch Company, was driven on

shore by stress of weather under the walls of Carthagena. The ship and cargo were confiscated, the crew

imprisoned and put in irons. Some of the sailors were treated as slaves, and compelled to sweep the streets

and to work on the fortifications. Others, and among them the captain, were sent to Seville to be tried for

piracy. Soon an envoy with a flag of truce arrived at Carthagena, and, in the name of the Council of

Caledonia, demanded the release of the prisoners. He delivered to the authorities a letter threatening them

with the vengeance of the King of Great Britain, and a copy of the Act of Parliament by which the Company

had been created. The Castilian governor, who probably knew that William, as Sovereign of England, would

not, and, as Sovereign of Scotland, could not, protect the squatters who had occupied Darien, flung away both

letter and Act of Parliament with a gesture of contempt, called for a guard, and was with difficulty dissuaded

from throwing the messenger into a dungeon. The Council of Caledonia, in great indignation, issued letters of

mark and reprisal against Spanish vessels. What every man of common sense must have foreseen had taken

place. The Scottish flag had been but a few months planted on the walls of New Edinburgh; and already a

war, which Scotland, without the help of England, was utterly unable to sustain, had begun.

By this time it was known in Europe that the mysterious voyage of the adventurers from the Forth had ended

at Darien. The ambassador of the Catholic King repaired to Kensington, and complained bitterly to William

of this outrageous violation of the law of nations. Preparations were made in the Spanish ports for an

expedition against the intruders; and in no Spanish port were there more fervent wishes for the success of that

expedition than in the cities of London and Bristol. In Scotland, on the other hand, the exultation was

boundless. In the parish churches all over the kingdom the ministers gave public thanks to God for having

vouchsafed thus far to protect and bless the infant colony. At some places a day was set apart for religious

exercises on this account. In every borough bells were rung; bonfires were lighted; and candles were placed

in the windows at night. During some months all the reports which arrived from the other side of the Atlantic

were such as to excite hope and joy in the north of the island, and alarm and envy in the south. The colonists,

it was asserted, had found rich gold mines, mines in which the precious metal was far more abundant and in a

far purer state than on the coast of Guinea. Provisions were plentiful. The rainy season had not proved

unhealthy. The settlement was well fortified. Sixty guns were mounted on the ramparts. An immense crop of

Indian corn was expected. The aboriginal tribes were friendly. Emigrants from various quarters were coming

in. The population of Caledonia had already increased from twelve hundred to ten thousand. The riches of the

country,these are the words of a newspaper of that time,were great beyond imagination. The mania in

Scotland rose to the highest point. Munitions of war and implements of agriculture were provided in large

In August 1699 four ships, with thirteen hundred men on board, were despatched by the Company to

Caledonia. The spiritual care of these emigrants was entrusted to divines of the Church of Scotland. One of

these was that Alexander Shields whose Hind Let Loose proves that in his zeal for the Covenant he had

forgotten the Gospel. To another, John Borland, we owe the best account of the voyage which is now extant.

The General Assembly had charged the chaplains to divide the colonists into congregations, to appoint ruling

elders, to constitute a presbytery, and to labour for the propagation of divine truth among the Pagan

inhabitants of Darien. The second expedition sailed as the first had sailed, amidst the acclamations and

blessings of all Scotland. During the earlier part of September the whole nation was dreaming a delightful

dream of prosperity and glory; and triumphing, somewhat maliciously, in the vexation of the English. But,

before the close of that month, it began to be rumoured about Lombard Street and Cheapside that letters had

arrived from Jamaica with strange news. The colony from which so much had been hoped and dreaded was

no more. It had disappeared from the face of the earth. The report spread to Edinburgh, but was received

there with scornful incredulity. It was an impudent lie devised by some Englishmen who could not bear to see

that, in spite of the votes of the English Parliament, in spite of the proclamations of the governors of the

English colonies, Caledonia was waxing great and opulent. Nay, the inventor of the fable was named. It was

declared to be quite certain that Secretary Vernon was the man. On the fourth of October was put forth a

On the fifth the whole truth was known. Letters were received from New York announcing that a few

miserable men, the remains of the colony which was to have been the garden, the warehouse, the mart, of the

whole world, their bones peeping through their skin, and hunger and fever written in their faces, had arrived

The grief, the dismay and the rage of those who had a few hours before fancied themselves masters of all the

wealth of both Indies may easily be imagined. The Directors, in their fury, lost all self command, and, in their

official letters, railed at the betrayers of Scotland, the whitelivered deserters. The truth is that those who

used these hard words were far more deserving of blame than the wretches whom they had sent to

destruction, and whom they now reviled for not staying to be utterly destroyed. Nothing had happened but

what might easily have been foreseen. The Company had, in childish reliance on the word of an enthusiastic

projector, and in defiance of facts known to every educated man in Europe, taken it for granted that emigrants

born and bred within ten degrees of the Arctic Circle would enjoy excellent health within ten degrees of the

Equator. Nay, statesmen and scholars had been deluded into the belief that a country which, as they might

have read in books so common as those of Hakluyt and Purchas, was noted even among tropical countries for

its insalubrity, and had been abandoned by the Spaniards solely on account of its insalubrity, was a

Montpelier. Nor had any of Paterson's dupes considered how colonists from Fife or Lothian, who had never

in their lives known what it was to feel the heat of a distressing midsummer day, could endure the labour of

breaking clods and carrying burdens under the fierce blaze of a vertical sun. It ought to have been

remembered that such colonists would have to do for themselves what English, French, Dutch, and Spanish

colonists employed Negroes or Indians to do for them. It was seldom indeed that a white freeman in

Barbadoes or Martinique, in Guiana or at Panama, was employed in severe bodily labour. But the Scotch who

settled at Darien must at first be without slaves, and must therefore dig the trench round their town, build

their houses, cultivate their fields, hew wood, and draw water, with their own hands. Such toil in such an

atmosphere was too much for them. The provisions which they had brought out had been of no good quality,

and had not been improved by lapse of time or by change of climate. The yams and plantains did not suit

stomachs accustomed to good oatmeal. The flesh of wild animals and the green fat of the turtle, a luxury then

unknown in Europe, went but a small way; and supplies were not to be expected from any foreign settlement.

During the cool months, however, which immediately followed the occupation of the isthmus there were few

deaths. But, before the equinox, disease began to make fearful havoc in the little community. The mortality

gradually rose to ten or twelve a day. Both the clergymen who had accompanied the expedition died. Paterson

buried his wife in that soil which, as he had assured his too credulous countrymen, exhaled health and vigour.

He was himself stretched on his pallet by an intermittent fever. Still he would not admit that the climate of his

promised land was bad. There could not be a purer air. This was merely the seasoning which people who

passed from one country to another must expect. In November all would be well again. But the rate at which

the emigrants died was such that none of them seemed likely to live till November. Those who were not laid

on their beds were yellow, lean, feeble, hardly able to move the sick and to bury the dead, and quite unable to

repel the expected attack of the Spaniards. The cry of the whole community was that death was all around

them, and that they must, while they still had strength to weigh an anchor or spread a sail, fly to some less

fatal region. The men and provisions were equally distributed among three ships, the Caledonia, the Unicorn,

and the Saint Andrew. Paterson, though still too ill to sit in the Council, begged hard that he might be left

behind with twenty or thirty companions to keep up a show of possession, and to await the next arrivals from

Scotland. So small a number of people, he said, might easily subsist by catching fish and turtles. But his offer

was disregarded; he was carried, utterly helpless, on board of the Saint Andrew; and the vessel stood out to

The voyage was horrible. Scarcely any Guinea slave ship has ever had such a middle passage. Of two

hundred and fifty persons who were on board of the Saint Andrew, one hundred and fifty fed the sharks of the

Atlantic before Sandy Hook was in sight. The Unicorn lost almost all its officers, and about a hundred and

forty men. The Caledonia, the healthiest ship of the three, threw overboard a hundred corpses. The squalid

survivors, as if they were not sufficiently miserable, raged fiercely against one another. Charges of

incapacity, cruelty, brutal insolence, were hurled backward and forward. The rigid Presbyterians attributed

the calamities of the colony to the wickedness of Jacobites, Prelatists, Sabbathbreakers, Atheists, who hated

in others that image of God which was wanting in themselves. The accused malignants, on the other hand,

complained bitterly of the impertinence of meddling fanatics and hypocrites. Paterson was cruelly reviled,

and was unable to defend himself. He had been completely prostrated by bodily and mental suffering. He

looked like a skeleton. His heart was broken. His inventive faculties and his plausible eloquence were no

Meanwhile the second expedition had been on the seas. It reached Darien about four months after the first

settlers had fled. The new comers had fully expected to find a flourishing young town, secure fortifications,

cultivated fields, and a cordial welcome. They found a wilderness. The castle of New Edinburgh was in ruins.

The huts had been burned. The site marked out for the proud capital which was to have been the Tyre, the

Venice, the Amsterdam of the eighteenth century was overgrown with jungle, and inhabited only by the sloth

and the baboon. The hearts of the adventurers sank within them. For their fleet had been fitted out, not to

plant a colony, but to recruit a colony already planted and supposed to be prospering. They were therefore

worse provided with every necessary of life than their predecessors had been. Some feeble attempts,

however, were made to restore what had perished. A new fort was constructed on the old ground; and within

the ramparts was built a hamlet, consisting of eighty or ninety cabins, generally of twelve feet by ten. But the

work went on languidly. The alacrity which is the effect of hope, the strength which is the effect of union,

were alike wanting to the little community. From the councillors down to the humblest settlers all was

despondency and discontent. The stock of provisions was scanty. The stewards embezzled great part of it.

The rations were small; and soon there was a cry that they were unfairly distributed. Factions were formed.

Plots were laid. One ringleader of the malecontents was hanged. The Scotch were generally, as they still are,

a religious people; and it might therefore have been expected that the influence of the divines to whom the

spiritual charge of the colony had been confided would have been employed with advantage for the

preserving of order and the calming of evil passions. Unfortunately those divines seem to have been at war

with almost all the rest of the society. They described their companions as the most profligate of mankind,

and declared that it was impossible to constitute a presbytery according to the directions of the General

Assembly; for that persons fit to be ruling elders of a Christian Church were not to be found among the

twelve or thirteen hundred emigrants. Where the blame lay it is now impossible to decide. All that can with

confidence be said is that either the clergymen must have been most unreasonably and most uncharitably

austere, or the laymen must have been most unfavourable specimens of the nation and class to which they

It may be added that the provision by the General Assembly for the spiritual wants of the colony was as

defective as the provision made for temporal wants by the directors of the Company. Nearly one third of the

emigrants who sailed with the second expedition were Highlanders, who did not understand a word of

English; and not one of the four chaplains could speak a word of Gaelic. It was only through interpreters that

a pastor could communicate with a large portion of the Christian flock of which he had charge. Even by the

help of interpreters he could not impart religious instruction to those heathen tribes which the Church of

Scotland had solemnly recommended to his care. In fact, the colonists left behind them no mark that baptized

men had set foot on Darien, except a few AngloSaxon curses, which, having been uttered more frequently

and with greater energy than any other words in our language, had caught the ear and been retained in the

The months which immediately followed the arrival of the new comers were the coolest and most salubrious

of the year. But, even in those months, the pestilential influence of a tropical sun, shining on swamps rank

with impenetrable thickets of black mangroves, began to be felt. The mortality was great; and it was but too

clear that, before the summer was far advanced, the second colony would, like the first, have to choose

between death and flight. But the agony of the inevitable dissolution was shortened by violence. A fleet of

eleven vessels under the flag of Castile anchored off New Edinburgh. At the same time an irregular army of

Spaniards, Creoles, negroes, mulattoes and Indians marched across the isthmus from Panama; and the fort

A drummer soon came with a message from the besiegers, but a message which was utterly unintelligible to

the besieged. Even after all that we have seen of the perverse imbecility of the directors of the Company, it

must be thought strange that they should have sent a colony to a remote part of the world, where it was

certain that there must be constant intercourse, peaceable or hostile, with Spaniards, and yet should not have

taken care that there should be in the whole colony a single person who knew a little Spanish.

With some difficulty a negotiation was carried on in such French and such Latin as the two parties could

furnish. Before the end of March a treaty was signed by which the Scotch bound themselves to evacuate

Darien in fourteen days; and on the eleventh of April they departed, a much less numerous body than when

they arrived. In little more than four months, although the healthiest months of the year, three hundred men

out of thirteen hundred had been swept away by disease. Of the survivors very few lived to see their native

country again. Two of the ships perished at sea. Many of the adventurers, who had left their homes flushed

with hopes of speedy opulence, were glad to hire themselves out to the planters of Jamaica, and laid their

bones in that land of exile. Shields died there, worn out and heart broken. Borland was the only minister who

came back. In his curious and interesting narrative, he expresses his feelings, after the fashion of the school in

which he had been bred, by grotesque allusions to the Old Testament, and by a profusion of Hebrew words.

On his first arrival, he tells us, he found New Edinburgh a Ziklag. He had subsequently been compelled to

dwell in the tents of Kedar. Once, indeed, during his sojourn, he had fallen in with a Beerlahai roi, and had

set up his Ebenezer; but in general Darien was to him a Magor Missabib, a Kibrothhattaavah. The sad story

is introduced with the words in which a great man of old, delivered over to the malice of the Evil Power, was

informed of the death of his children and of the ruin of his fortunes: "I alone am escaped to tell thee."

ParliamentAttacks on BurnetRenewed Attack on SomersQuestion of the Irish Forfeitures: Dispute

between the HousesSomers again attackedProrogation of ParliamentDeath of James the

SecondThe Pretender recognised as KingReturn of the KingGeneral ElectionDeath of William

THE passions which had agitated the Parliament during the late session continued to ferment in the minds of

men during the recess, and, having no longer a vent in the senate, broke forth in every part of the empire,

destroyed the peace of towns, brought into peril the honour and the lives of innocent men, and impelled

magistrates to leave the bench of justice and attack one another sword in hand. Private calamities, private

brawls, which had nothing to do with the disputes between court and country, were turned by the political

One mournful tale, which called forth the strongest feelings of the contending factions, is still remembered as

a curious part of the history of our jurisprudence, and especially of the history of our medical jurisprudence.

No Whig member of the lower House, with the single exception of Montague, filled a larger space in the

public eye than William Cowper. In the art of conciliating an audience, Cowper was preeminent. His graceful

and engaging eloquence cast a spell on juries; and the Commons, even in those stormy moments when no

other defender of the administration could obtain a hearing, would always listen to him. He represented

Hertford, a borough in which his family had considerable influence; but there was a strong Tory minority

among the electors, and he had not won his seat without a hard fight, which had left behind it many bitter

recollections. His younger brother Spencer, a man of parts and learning, was fast rising into practice as a

At Hertford resided an opulent Quaker family named Stout. A pretty young woman of this family had lately

sunk into a melancholy of a kind not very unusual in girls of strong sensibility and lively imagination who are

subject to the restraints of austere religious societies. Her dress, her looks, her gestures, indicated the

disturbance of her mind. She sometimes hinted her dislike of the sect to which she belonged. She complained

that a canting waterman who was one of the brotherhood had held forth against her at a meeting. She

threatened to go beyond sea, to throw herself out of window, to drown herself. To two or three of her

associates she owned that she was in love; and on one occasion she plainly said that the man whom she loved

was one whom she never could marry. In fact, the object of her fondness was Spencer Cowper, who was

already married. She at length wrote to him in language which she never would have used if her intellect had

not been disordered. He, like an honest man, took no advantage of her unhappy state of mind, and did his best

to avoid her. His prudence mortified her to such a degree that on one occasion she went into fits. It was

necessary, however, that he should see her, when he came to Hertford at the spring assizes of 1699. For he

had been entrusted with some money which was due to her on mortgage. He called on her for this purpose

late one evening, and delivered a bag of gold to her. She pressed him to be the guest of her family; but he

excused himself and retired. The next morning she was found dead among the stakes of a mill dam on the

stream called the Priory River. That she had destroyed herself there could be no reasonable doubt. The

coroner's inquest found that she had drowned herself while in a state of mental derangement. But her family

was unwilling to admit that she had shortened her own life, and looked about for somebody who might be

accused of murdering her. The last person who could be proved to have been in her company was Spencer

Cowper. It chanced that two attorneys and a scrivener, who had come down from town to the Hertford

assizes, had been overheard, on that unhappy night, talking over their wine about the charms and flirtations of

the handsome Quaker girl, in the light way in which such subjects are sometimes discussed even at the circuit

tables and mess tables of our more refined generation. Some wild words, susceptible of a double meaning,

were used about the way in which she had jilted one lover, and the way in which another lover would punish

her for her coquetry. On no better grounds than these her relations imagined that Spencer Cowper had, with

the assistance of these three retainers of the law, strangled her, and thrown her corpse into the water. There

was absolutely no evidence of the crime. There was no evidence that any one of the accused had any motive

to commit such a crime; there was no evidence that Spencer Cowper had any connection with the persons

who were said to be his accomplices. One of those persons, indeed, he had never seen. But no story is too

absurd to be imposed on minds blinded by religious and political fanaticism. The Quakers and the Tories

joined to raise a formidable clamour. The Quakers had, in those days, no scruples about capital punishments.

They would, indeed, as Spencer Cowper said bitterly, but too truly, rather send four innocent men to the

gallows than let it be believed that one who had their light within her had committed suicide. The Tories

exulted in the prospect of winning two seats from the Whigs. The whole kingdom was divided between

Stouts and Cowpers. At the summer assizes Hertford was crowded with anxious faces from London and from

parts of England more distant than London. The prosecution was conducted with a malignity and unfairness

which to us seem almost incredible; and, unfortunately, the dullest and most ignorant judge of the twelve was

on the bench. Cowper defended himself and those who were said to be his accomplices with admirable ability

and self possession. His brother, much more distressed than himself, sate near him through the long agony of

that day. The case against the prisoners rested chiefly on the vulgar error that a human body, found, as this

poor girl's body had been found, floating in water, must have been thrown into the water while still alive. To

prove this doctrine the counsel for the Crown called medical practitioners, of whom nothing is now known

except that some of them had been active against the Whigs at Hertford elections. To confirm the evidence of

these gentlemen two or three sailors were put into the witness box. On the other side appeared an array of

men of science whose names are still remembered. Among them was William Cowper, not a kinsman of the

defendant, but the most celebrated anatomist that England had then produced. He was, indeed, the founder of

a dynasty illustrious in the history of science; for he was the teacher of William Cheselden, and William

Cheselden was the teacher of John Hunter. On the same side appeared Samuel Garth, who, among the

physicians of the capital, had no rival except Radcliffe, and Hans Sloane, the founder of the magnificent

museum which is one of the glories of our country. The attempt of the prosecutors to make the superstitions

of the forecastle evidence for the purpose of taking away the lives of men was treated by these philosophers

with just disdain. The stupid judge asked Garth what he could say in answer to the testimony of the seamen.

"My Lord," replied Garth, "I say that they are mistaken. I will find seamen in abundance to swear that they

The jury found the prisoners Not guilty; and the report carried back to London by persons who had been

present at the trial was that everybody applauded the verdict, and that even the Stouts seemed to be convinced

of their error. It is certain, however, that the malevolence of the defeated party soon revived in all its energy.

The lives of the four men who had just been absolved were again attacked by means of the most absurd and

odious proceeding known to our old law, the appeal of murder. This attack too failed. Every artifice of

chicane was at length exhausted; and nothing was left to the disappointed sect and the disappointed faction

except to calumniate those whom it had been found impossible to murder. In a succession of libels Spencer

Cowper was held up to the execration of the public. But the public did him justice. He rose to high eminence

in his profession; he at length took his seat, with general applause, on the judicial bench, and there

distinguished himself by the humanity which he never failed to show to unhappy men who stood, as he had

once stood, at the bar. Many who seldom trouble themselves about pedigrees may be interested by learning

that he was the grandfather of that excellent man and excellent poet William Cowper, whose writings have

long been peculiarly loved and prized by the members of the religious community which, under a strong

Though Spencer Cowper had escaped with life and honour, the Tories had carried their point. They had

secured against the next election the support of the Quakers of Hertford; and the consequence was that the

borough was lost to the family and to the party which had lately predominated there.

In the very week in which the great trial took place at Hertford, a feud arising out of the late election for

Buckinghamshire very nearly produced fatal effects. Wharton, the chief of the Buckinghamshire Whigs, had

with difficulty succeeded in bringing in his brother as one of the knights of the shire. Graham Viscount

Cheyney, of the kingdom of Scotland, had been returned at the head of the poll by the Tories. The two

noblemen met at the quarter sessions. In England Cheyney was before the Union merely an Esquire. Wharton

was undoubtedly entitled to take place of him, and had repeatedly taken place of him without any dispute.

But angry passions now ran so high that a decent pretext for indulging them was hardly thought necessary.

Cheyney fastened a quarrel on Wharton. They drew. Wharton, whose cool good humoured courage and skill

in fence were the envy of all the swordsmen of that age, closed with his quarrelsome neighbour, disarmed

A more tragical duel had just taken place at Westminster. Conway Seymour, the eldest son of Sir Edward

Seymour, had lately come of age. He was in possession of an independent fortune of seven thousand pounds

a year, which he lavished in costly fopperies. The town had nicknamed him Beau Seymour. He was

displaying his curls and his embroidery in Saint James's Park on a midsummer evening, after indulging too

freely in wine, when a young officer of the Blues named Kirke, who was as tipsy as himself, passed near him.

"There goes Beau Seymour," said Kirke. Seymour flew into a rage. Angry words were exchanged between

the foolish boys. They immediately went beyond the precincts of the Court, drew, and exchanged some

pushes. Seymour was wounded in the neck. The wound was not very serious; but, when his cure was only

half completed, he revelled in fruit, ice and Burgundy till he threw himself into a violent fever. Though a

coxcomb and a voluptuary, he seems to have had some fine qualities. On the last day of his life he saw Kirke.

Kirke implored forgiveness; and the dying man declared that he forgave as he hoped to be forgiven. There

can be no doubt that a person who kills another in a duel is, according to law, guilty of murder. But the law

had never been strictly enforced against gentlemen in such cases; and in this case there was no peculiar

atrocity, no deep seated malice, no suspicion of foul play. Sir Edward, however, vehemently declared that he

would have life for life. Much indulgence is due to the resentment of an affectionate father maddened by the

loss of a son. But there is but too much reason to believe that the implacability of Seymour was the

implacability, not of an affectionate father, but of a factious and malignant agitator. He tried to make what is,

in the jargon of our time, called political capital out of the desolation of his house and the blood of his first

born. A brawl between two dissolute youths, a brawl distinguished by nothing but its unhappy result from the

hundred brawls which took place every month in theatres and taverns, he magnified into an attack on the

liberties of the nation, an attempt to introduce a military tyranny. The question was whether a soldier was to

be permitted to insult English gentlemen, and, if they murmured, to cut their throats? It was moved in the

Court of King's Bench that Kirke should either be brought to immediate trial or admitted to bail. Shower, as

counsel for Seymour, opposed the motion. But Seymour was not content to leave the case in Shower's hands.

In defiance of all decency, he went to Westminster Hall, demanded a hearing, and pronounced a harangue

against standing armies. "Here," he said, "is a man who lives on money taken out of our pockets. The plea set

up for taxing us in order to support him is that his sword protects us, and enables us to live in peace and

security. And is he to be suffered to use that sword to destroy us?" Kirke was tried and found guilty of

manslaughter. In his case, as in the case of Spencer Cowper, an attempt was made to obtain a writ of appeal.

The attempt failed; and Seymour was disappointed of his revenge; but he was not left without consolation. If

he had lost a son, he had found, what he seems to have prized quite as much, a fertile theme for invective.

The King, on his return from the Continent, found his subjects in no bland humour. All Scotland, exasperated

by the fate of the first expedition to Darien, and anxiously waiting for news of the second, called loudly for a

Parliament. Several of the Scottish peers carried to Kensington an address which was subscribed by thirtysix

of their body, and which earnestly pressed William to convoke the Estates at Edinburgh, and to redress the

wrongs which had been done to the colony of New Caledonia. A petition to the same effect was widely

circulated among the commonalty of his Northern kingdom, and received, if report could be trusted, not less

than thirty thousand signatures. Discontent was far from being as violent in England as in Scotland. Yet in

England there was discontent enough to make even a resolute prince uneasy. The time drew near at which the

Houses must reassemble; and how were the Commons to be managed? Montague, enraged, mortified, and

intimidated by the baiting of the last session, was fully determined not again to appear in the character of

chief minister of finance. The secure and luxurious retreat which he had, some months ago, prepared for

himself was awaiting him. He took the Auditorship, and resigned his other places. Smith became Chancellor

of the Exchequer. A new commission of Treasury issued; and the first name was that of Tankerville. He had

entered on his career, more than twenty years before, with the fairest hopes, young, noble, nobly allied, of

distinguished abilities, of graceful manners. There was no more brilliant man of fashion in the theatre and in

the ring. There was no more popular tribune in Guildhall. Such was the commencement of a life so miserable

that all the indignation excited by great faults is overpowered by pity. A guilty passion, amounting to a

madness, left on the moral character of the unhappy man a stain at which even libertines looked grave. He

tried to make the errors of his private life forgotten by splendid and perilous services to a public cause; and,

having endured in that cause penury and exile, the gloom of a dungeon, the prospect of a scaffold, the ruin of

a noble estate, he was so unfortunate as to be regarded by the party for which he had sacrificed every thing as

a coward, if not a traitor. Yet, even against such accumulated disasters and disgraces, his vigorous and

aspiring mind bore up. His parts and eloquence gained for him the ear of the House of Lords; and at length,

though not till his constitution was so broken that he was fitter for flannel and cushions than for a laborious

office at Whitehall, he was put at the head of one of the most important departments of the administration. It

might have been expected that this appointment would call forth clamours from widely different quarters; that

the Tories would be offended by the elevation of a rebel; that the Whigs would set up a cry against the

captain to whose treachery or faintheartedness they had been in the habit of imputing the rout of Sedgemoor;

and that the whole of that great body of Englishmen which cannot be said to be steadily Whig or Tory, but

which is zealous for decency and the domestic virtues, would see with indignation a signal mark of royal

favour bestowed on one who had been convicted of debauching a noble damsel, the sister of his own wife.

But so capricious is public feeling that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to find, in any of the letters,

essays, dialogues, and poems which bear the date of 1699 or of 1700, a single allusion to the vices or

misfortunes of the new First Lord of the Treasury. It is probable that his infirm health and his isolated

position were his protection. The chiefs of the opposition did not fear him enough to hate him. The Whig

junto was still their terror and their abhorrence. They continued to assail Montague and Orford, though with

somewhat less ferocity than while Montague had the direction of the finances, and Orford of the marine. But

the utmost spite of all the leading malecontents were concentrated on one object, the great magistrate who

still held the highest civil post in the realm, and who was evidently determined to hold it in defiance of them.

It was not so easy to get rid of him as it had been to drive his colleagues from office. His abilities the most

intolerant Tories were forced grudgingly to acknowledge. His integrity might be questioned in nameless

libels and in coffeehouse tattle, but was certain to come forth bright and pure from the most severe

Parliamentary investigation. Nor was he guilty of those faults of temper and of manner to which, more than to

any grave delinquency, the unpopularity of his associates is to be ascribed. He had as little of the insolence

and perverseness of Orford as of the petulance and vaingloriousness of Montague. One of the most severe

trials to which the head and heart of man can be put is great and rapid elevation. To that trial both Montague

and Somers were put. It was too much for Montague. But Somers was found equal to it. He was the son of a

country attorney. At thirtyseven he had been sitting in a stuff gown on a back bench in the Court of King's

Bench. At fortytwo he was the first lay dignitary of the realm, and took precedence of the Archbishop of

York, and of the Duke of Norfolk. He had risen from a lover point than Montague, had risen as fast as

Montague, had risen as high as Montague, and yet had not excited envy such as dogged Montague through a

long career. Garreteers, who were never weary of calling the cousin of the Earls of Manchester and Sandwich

an upstart, could not, without an unwonted sense of shame, apply those words to the Chancellor, who,

without one drop of patrician blood in his veins, had taken his place at the head of the patrician order with the

quiet dignity of a man ennobled by nature. His serenity, his modesty, his selfcommand, proof even against

the most sudden surprises of passion, his selfrespect, which forced the proudest grandees of the kingdom to

respect him, his urbanity, which won the hearts of the youngest lawyers of the Chancery Bar, gained for him

many private friends and admirers among the most respectable members of the opposition. But such men as

Howe and Seymour hated him implacably; they hated his commanding genius much; they hated the mild

majesty of his virtue still more. They sought occasion against him everywhere; and they at length flattered

Some years before, while the war was still raging, there had been loud complaints in the city that even

privateers of St. Malo's and Dunkirk caused less molestation to trade than another class of marauders. The

English navy was fully employed in the Channel, in the Atlantic, and in the Mediterranean. The Indian

Ocean, meanwhile, swarmed with pirates of whose rapacity and cruelty frightful stories were told. Many of

these men, it was said, came from our North American colonies, and carried back to those colonies the spoils

gained by crime. Adventurers who durst not show themselves in the Thames found a ready market for their

illgotten spices and stuffs at New York. Even the Puritans of New England, who in sanctimonious austerity

surpassed even their brethren of Scotland, were accused of conniving at the wickedness which enabled them

to enjoy abundantly and cheaply the produce of Indian looms and Chinese tea plantations.

In 1695 Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamont, an Irish peer who sate in the English House of Commons, was

appointed Governor of New York and Massachusets. He was a man of eminently fair character, upright,

courageous and independent. Though a decided Whig, he had distinguished himself by bringing before the

Parliament at Westminster some tyrannical acts done by Whigs at Dublin, and particularly the execution, if it

is not rather to be called the murder, of Gafney. Before Bellamont sailed for America, William spoke strongly

to him about the freebooting which was the disgrace of the colonies. "I send you, my Lord, to New York," he

said, "because an honest and intrepid man is wanted to put these abuses down, and because I believe you to

be such a man." Bellamont exerted himself to justify the high opinion which the King had formed of him. It

was soon known at New York that the Governor who had just arrived from England was bent on the

suppression of piracy; and some colonists in whom he placed great confidence suggested to him what they

may perhaps have thought the best mode of attaining that object. There was then in the settlement a veteran

mariner named William Kidd. He had passed most of his life on the waves, had distinguished himself by his

seamanship, had had opportunities of showing his valour in action with the French, and had retired on a

competence. No man knew the Eastern seas better. He was perfectly acquainted with all the haunts of the

pirates who prowled between the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Malacca; and he would undertake, if

he were entrusted with a single ship of thirty or forty guns, to clear the Indian Ocean of the whole race. The

brigantines of the rovers were numerous, no doubt; but none of them was large; one man of war, which in the

royal navy would hardly rank as a fourth rate, would easily deal with them all in succession; and the lawful

spoils of the enemies of mankind would much more than defray the charges of the expedition. Bellamont was

charmed with this plan, and recommended it to the King. The King referred it to the Admiralty. The

Admiralty raised difficulties, such as are perpetually raised by public boards when any deviation, whether for

the better or for the worse, from the established course of proceeding is proposed. It then occurred to

Bellamont that his favourite scheme might be carried into effect without any cost to the state. A few public

spirited men might easily fit out a privateer which would soon make the Arabian Gulph and the Bay of

Bengal secure highways for trade. He wrote to his friends in England imploring, remonstrating, complaining

of their lamentable want of public spirit. Six thousand pounds would be enough. That sum would be repaid,

and repaid with large interest, from the sale of prizes; and an inestimable benefit would be conferred on the

kingdom and on the world. His urgency succeeded. Shrewsbury and Romney contributed. Orford, though, as

first Lord of the Admiralty, he had been unwilling to send Kidd to the Indian ocean with a king's ship,

consented to subscribe a thousand pounds. Somers subscribed another thousand. A ship called the Adventure

Galley was equipped in the port of London; and Kidd took the command. He carried with him, besides the

ordinary letters of marque, a commission under the Great Seal empowering him to seize pirates, and to take

them to some place where they might be dealt with according to law. Whatever right the King might have to

the goods found in the possession of these malefactors he granted, by letters patent, to the persons who had

been at the expense of fitting out the expedition, reserving to himself only one tenth part of the gains of the

adventure, which was to be paid into the treasury. With the claim of merchants to have back the property of

which they had been robbed His Majesty of course did not interfere. He granted away, and could grant away,

The press for sailors to man the royal navy was at that time so hot that Kidd could not obtain his full

complement of hands in the Thames. He crossed the Atlantic, visited New York, and there found volunteers

in abundance. At length, in February 1697, he sailed from the Hudson with a crew of more than a hundred

It is possible that Kidd may at first have meant to act in accordance with his instructions. But, on the subject

of piracy, he held the notions which were then common in the North American colonies; and most of his crew

were of the same mind. He found himself in a sea which was constantly traversed by rich and defenceless

merchant ships; and he had to determine whether he would plunder those ships or protect them. The gain

which might be made by plundering them was immense, and might be snatched without the dangers of a

battle or the delays of a trial. The rewards of protecting the lawful trade were likely to be comparatively

small. Such as they were, they would be got only by first fighting with desperate ruffians who would rather

be killed than taken, and by then instituting a proceeding and obtaining a judgment in a Court of Admiralty.

The risk of being called to a severe reckoning might not unnaturally seem small to one who had seen many

old buccaneers living in comfort and credit at New York and Boston. Kidd soon threw off the character of a

privateer, and became a pirate. He established friendly communications, and exchanged arms and

ammunition, with the most notorious of those rovers whom his commission authorised him to destroy, and

made war on those peaceful traders whom he was sent to defend. He began by robbing Mussulmans, and

speedily proceeded from Mussulmans to Armenians, and from Armenians to Portuguese. The Adventure

Galley took such quantities of cotton and silk, sugar and coffee, cinnamon and pepper, that the very foremast

men received from a hundred to two hundred pounds each, and that the captain's share of the spoil would

have enabled him to live at home as an opulent gentleman. With the rapacity Kidd had the cruelty of his

odious calling. He burned houses; he massacred peasantry. His prisoners were tied up and beaten with naked

cutlasses in order to extort information about their concealed hoards. One of his crew, whom he had called a

dog, was provoked into exclaiming, in an agony of remorse, "Yes, I am a dog; but it is you that have made

News then travelled very slowly from the eastern seas to England. But, in August 1698, it was known in

London that the Adventure Galley from which so much had been hoped was the terror of the merchants of

Surat, and of the villagers of the coast of Malabar. It was thought probable that Kidd would carry his booty to

some colony. Orders were therefore sent from Whitehall to the governors of the transmarine possessions of

the Crown, directing them to be on the watch for him. He meanwhile, having burned his ship and dismissed

most of his men, who easily found berths in the sloops of other pirates, returned to New York with the means,

as he flattered himself, of making his peace and of living in splendour. He had fabricated a long romance to

which Bellamont, naturally unwilling to believe that he had been duped and had been the means of duping

others, was at first disposed to listen with favour. But the truth soon came out. The governor did his duty

firmly; and Kidd was placed in close confinement till orders arrived from the Admiralty that he should be

To an intelligent and candid judge of human actions it will not appear that any of the persons at whose

expense the Adventure Galley was fitted out deserved serious blame. The worst that could be imputed even to

Bellamont, who had drawn in all the rest, was that he had been led into a fault by his ardent zeal for the

public service, and by the generosity of a nature as little prone to suspect as to devise villanies. His friends in

England might surely be pardoned for giving credit to his recommendation. It is highly probable that the

motive which induced some of them to aid his design was genuine public spirit. But, if we suppose them to

have had a view to gain, it was to legitimate gain. Their conduct was the very opposite of corrupt. Not only

had they taken no money. They had disbursed money largely, and had disbursed it with the certainty that they

should never be reimbursed unless the outlay proved beneficial to the public. That they meant well they

proved by staking thousands on the success of their plan; and, if they erred in judgment, the loss of those

thousands was surely a sufficient punishment for such an error. On this subject there would probably have

been no difference of opinion had not Somers been one of the contributors. About the other patrons of Kidd

the chiefs of the opposition cared little. Bellamont was far removed from the political scene. Romney could

not, and Shrewsbury would not, play a first part. Orford had resigned his employments. But Somers still held

the Great Seal, still presided in the House of Lords, still had constant access to the closet. The retreat of his

friends had left him the sole and undisputed head of that party which had, in the late Parliament, been a

majority, and which was, in the present Parliament, outnumbered indeed, disorganised and disheartened, but

still numerous and respectable. His placid courage rose higher and higher to meet the dangers which

threatened him. He provided for himself no refuge. He made no move towards flight; and, without uttering

one boastful word, gave his enemies to understand, by the mild firmness of his demeanour, that he dared

In their eagerness to displace and destroy him they overreached themselves. Had they been content to accuse

him of lending his countenance, with a rashness unbecoming his high place, to an illconcerted scheme, that

large part of mankind which judges of a plan simply by the event would probably have thought the accusation

well founded. But the malice which they bore to him was not to be so satisfied. They affected to believe that

he had from the first been aware of Kidd's character and designs. The Great Seal had been employed to

sanction a piratical expedition. The head of the law had laid down a thousand pounds in the hope of receiving

tens of thousands when his accomplices should return, laden with the spoils of ruined merchants. It was

fortunate for the Chancellor that the calumnies of which he was the object were too atrocious to be

And now the time had come at which the hoarded illhumour of six months was at liberty to explode. On the

sixteenth of November the Houses met. The King, in his speech, assured them in gracious and affectionate

language that he was determined to do his best to merit their love by constant care to preserve their liberty

and their religion, by a pure administration of justice, by countenancing virtue, by discouraging vice, by

shrinking from no difficulty or danger when the welfare of the nation was at stake. "These," he said, "are my

resolutions; and I am persuaded that you are come together with purposes on your part suitable to these on

mine. Since then our aims are only for the general good, let us act with confidence in one another, which will

not fail, by God's blessing, to make me a happy king, and you a great and flourishing people."

It might have been thought that no words less likely to give offence had ever been uttered from the English

throne. But even in those words the malevolence of faction sought and found matter for a quarrel. The gentle

exhortation, "Let us act with confidence in one another," must mean that such confidence did not now exist,

that the King distrusted the Parliament, or that the Parliament had shown an unwarrantable distrust of the

King. Such an exhortation was nothing less than a reproach; and such a reproach was a bad return for the gold

and the blood which England had lavished in order to make and to keep him a great sovereign. There was a

sharp debate, in which Seymour took part. With characteristic indelicacy and want of feeling he harangued

the Commons as he had harangued the Court of King's Bench, about his son's death, and about the necessity

of curbing the insolence of military men. There were loud complaints that the events of the preceding session

had been misrepresented to the public, that emissaries of the Court, in every part of the kingdom, declaimed

against the absurd jealousies or still more absurd parsimony which had refused to His Majesty the means of

keeping up such an army as might secure the country against invasion. Even justices of the peace, it was said,

even deputylieutenants, had used King James and King Lewis as bugbears, for the purpose of stirring up the

people against honest and thrifty representatives. Angry resolutions were passed, declaring it to be the

opinion of the House that the best way to establish entire confidence between the King and the Estates of the

Realm would be to put a brand on those evil advisers who had dared to breathe in the royal ear calumnies

against a faithful Parliament. An address founded on these resolutions was voted; many thought that a violent

rupture was inevitable. But William returned an answer so prudent and gentle that malice itself could not

prolong the dispute. By this time, indeed, a new dispute had begun. The address had scarcely been moved

when the House called for copies of the papers relating to Kidd's expedition. Somers, conscious of innocence,

knew that it was wise as well as right to be perfectly ingenuous, and resolved that there should be no

concealment. His friends stood manfully by him, and his enemies struck at him with such blind fury that their

blows injured only themselves. Howe raved like a maniac. "What is to become of the country, plundered by

land, plundered by sea? Our rulers have laid hold on our lands, our woods, our mines, our money. And all this

is not enough. We cannot send a cargo to the farthest ends of the earth, but they must send a gang of thieves

after it." Harley and Seymour tried to carry a vote of censure without giving the House time to read the

papers. But the general feeling was strongly for a short delay. At length, on the sixth of December, the subject

was considered in a committee of the whole House. Shower undertook to prove that the letters patent to

which Somers had put the Great Seal were illegal. Cowper replied to him with immense applause, and seems

to have completely refuted him. Some of the Tory orators had employed what was then a favourite claptrap.

Very great men, no doubt, were concerned in this business. But were the Commons of England to stand in

awe of great men? Would not they have the spirit to censure corruption and oppression in the highest places?

Cowper answered finely that assuredly the House ought not to be deterred from the discharge of any duty by

the fear of great men, but that fear was not the only base and evil passion of which great men were the

objects, and that the flatterer who courted their favour was not a worse citizen than the envious calumniator

who took pleasure in bringing whatever was eminent down to his own level. At length, after a debate which

lasted from midday till nine at night, and in which all the leading members took part, the committee divided

on the question that the letters patent were dishonourable to the King, inconsistent with the law of nations,

contrary to the statutes of the realm, and destructive of property and trade. The Chancellor's enemies had felt

confident of victory, and had made the resolution so strong in order that it might be impossible for him to

retain the Great Seal. They soon found that it would have been wise to propose a gentler censure. Great

numbers of their adherents, convinced by Cowper's arguments, or unwilling to put a cruel stigma on a man of

whose genius and accomplishments the nation was proud, stole away before the door was closed. To the

general astonishment there were only one hundred and thirtythree Ayes to one hundred and eightynine

Noes. That the City of London did not consider Somers as the destroyer, and his enemies as the protectors, of

trade, was proved on the following morning by the most unequivocal of signs. As soon as the news of his

Some weeks elapsed before the Tories ventured again to attack him. In the meantime they amused themselves

by trying to worry another person whom they hated even more bitterly. When, in a financial debate, the

arrangements of the household of the Duke of Gloucester were incidentally mentioned, one or two members

took the opportunity of throwing reflections on Burnet. Burnet's very name sufficed to raise among the High

Churchmen a storm of mingled merriment and anger. The Speaker in vain reminded the orators that they

were wandering from the question. The majority was determined to have some fun with the Right Reverend

Whig, and encouraged them to proceed. Nothing appears to have been said on the other side. The chiefs of

the opposition inferred from the laughing and cheering of the Bishop's enemies, and from the silence of his

friends, that there would be no difficulty in driving from Court, with contumely, the prelate whom of all

prelates they most detested, as the personification of the latitudinarian spirit, a Jack Presbyter in lawn sleeves.

They, therefore, after the lapse of a few hours, moved quite unexpectedly an address requesting the King to

remove the Bishop of Salisbury from the place of preceptor to the young heir apparent. But it soon appeared

that many who could not help smiling at Burnet's weaknesses did justice to his abilities and virtues. The

debate was hot. The unlucky Pastoral Letter was of course not forgotten. It was asked whether a man who had

proclaimed that England was a conquered country, a man whose servile pages the English Commons had

ordered to be burned by the hangman, could be a fit instructor for an English Prince. Some reviled the Bishop

for being a Socinian, which he was not, and some for being a Scotchman, which he was. His defenders fought

his battle gallantly. "Grant," they said, "that it is possible to find, amidst an immense mass of eloquent and

learned matter published in defence of the Protestant religion and of the English Constitution, a paragraph

which, though well intended, was not well considered, is that error of an unguarded minute to outweigh the

services of more than twenty years? If one House of Commons, by a very small majority, censured a little

tract of which his Lordship was the author, let it be remembered that another House of Commons

unanimously voted thanks to him for a work of very different magnitude and importance, the History of the

Reformation. And, as to what is said about his birthplace, is there not already ill humour enough in Scotland?

Has not the failure of that unhappy expedition to Darien raised a sufficiently bitter feeling against us

throughout that kingdom? Every wise and honest man is desirous to soothe the angry passions of our

neighbours. And shall we, just at this moment, exasperate those passions by proclaiming that to be born on

the north of the Tweed is a disqualification for all honourable trust?" The ministerial members would gladly

have permitted the motion to be withdrawn. But the opposition, elated with hope, insisted on dividing, and

were confounded by finding that, with all the advantage of a surprise, they were only one hundred and

thirtythree to one hundred and seventythree. Their defeat would probably have been less complete, had not

all those members who were especially attached to the Princess of Denmark voted in the majority or absented

themselves. Marlborough used all his influence against the motion; and he had strong reasons for doing so.

He was by no means well pleased to see the Commons engaged in discussing the characters and past lives of

the persons who were placed about the Duke of Gloucester. If the High Churchmen, by reviving old stories,

succeeded in carrying a vote against the Preceptor, it was by no means unlikely that some malicious Whig

might retaliate on the Governor. The Governor must have been conscious that he was not invulnerable; nor

could he absolutely rely on the support of the whole body of Tories; for it was believed that their favourite

leader, Rochester, thought himself the fittest person to superintend the education of his grand nephew.

From Burnet the opposition went back to Somers. Some Crown property near Reigate had been granted to

Somers by the King. In this transaction there was nothing that deserved blame. The Great Seal ought always

to be held by a lawyer of the highest distinction; nor can such a lawyer discharge his duties in a perfectly

efficient manner unless, with the Great Seal, he accepts a peerage. But he may not have accumulated a

fortune such as will alone suffice to support a peerage; his peerage is permanent; and his tenure of the Great

Seal is precarious. In a few weeks he may be dismissed from office, and may find that he has lost a lucrative

profession, that he has got nothing but a costly dignity, that he has been transformed from a prosperous

barrister into a mendicant lord. Such a risk no wise man will run. If, therefore, the state is to be well served in

the highest civil post, it is absolutely necessary that a provision should be made for retired Chancellors. The

Sovereign is now empowered by Act of Parliament to make such a provision out of the public revenue. In old

times such a provision was ordinarily made out of the hereditary domain of the Crown. What had been

bestowed on Somers appears to have amounted, after all deductions, to a net income of about sixteen hundred

a year, a sum which will hardly shock us who have seen at one time five retired Chancellors enjoying

pensions of five thousand a year each. For the crime, however, of accepting this grant the leaders of the

opposition hoped that they should be able to punish Somers with disgrace and ruin. One difficulty stood in

the way. All that he had received was but a pittance when compared with the wealth with which some of his

persecutors had been loaded by the last two kings of the House of Stuart. It was not easy to pass any censure

on him which should not imply a still more severe censure on two generations of Granvilles, on two

generations of Hydes, and on two generations of Finches. At last some ingenious Tory thought of a device by

which it might be possible to strike the enemy without wounding friends. The grants of Charles and James

had been made in time of peace; and William's grant to Somers had been made in time of war. Malice eagerly

caught at this childish distinction. It was moved that any minister who had been concerned in passing a grant

for his own benefit while the nation was under the heavy taxes of the late war had violated his trust; as if the

expenditure which is necessary to secure to the country a good administration of justice ought to be

suspended by war; or as if it were not criminal in a government to squander the resources of the state in time

of peace. The motion was made by James Brydges, eldest son of the Lord Chandos, the James Brydges who

afterwards became Duke of Chandos, who raised a gigantic fortune out of war taxes, to squander it in

comfortless and tasteless ostentation, and who is still remembered as the Timon of Pope's keen and brilliant

satire. It was remarked as extraordinary that Brydges brought forward and defended his motion merely as the

assertion of an abstract truth, and avoided all mention of the Chancellor. It seemed still more extraordinary

that Howe, whose whole eloquence consisted in cutting personalities, named nobody on this occasion, and

contented himself with declaiming in general terms against corruption and profusion. It was plain that the

enemies of Somers were at once urged forward by hatred and kept back by fear. They knew that they could

not carry a resolution directly condemning him. They, therefore, cunningly brought forward a mere

speculative proposition which many members might be willing to affirm without scrutinising it severely. But,

as soon as the major premise had been admitted, the minor would be without difficulty established; and it

would be impossible to avoid coming to the conclusion that Somers had violated his trust. Such tactics,

however, have very seldom succeeded in English parliaments; for a little good sense and a little

straightforwardness are quite sufficient to confound them. A sturdy Whig member, Sir Rowland Gwyn,

disconcerted the whole scheme of operations. "Why this reserve?" he said, "Everybody knows your meaning.

Everybody sees that you have not the courage to name the great man whom you are trying to destroy." "That

is false," cried Brydges; and a stormy altercation followed. It soon appeared that innocence would again

triumph. The two parties seemed to have exchanged characters for one day. The friends of the government,

who in the Parliament were generally humble and timorous, took a high tone, and spoke as it becomes men to

speak who are defending persecuted genius and virtue. The malecontents, generally so insolent and turbulent,

seemed to be completely cowed. They abased themselves so low as to protest, what no human being could

believe, that they had no intention of attacking the Chancellor, and had framed their resolution without any

view to him. Howe, from whose lips scarcely any thing ever dropped but gall and poison, went so far as to

say: "My Lord Somers is a man of eminent merit, of merit so eminent that, if he had made a slip, we might

well overlook it." At a late hour the question was put; and the motion was rejected by a majority of fifty in a

house of four hundred and nineteen members. It was long since there had been so large an attendance at a

The ignominious failure of the attacks on Somers and Burnet seemed to prove that the assembly was coming

round to a better temper. But the temper of a House of Commons left without the guidance of a ministry is

never to be trusted. "Nobody can tell today," said an experienced politician of that time, "what the majority

may take it into their heads to do tomorrow." Already a storm was gathering in which the Constitution itself

was in danger of perishing, and from which none of the three branches of the legislature escaped without

The question of the Irish forfeitures had been raised; and about that question the minds of men, both within

and without the walls of Parliament, were in a strangely excitable state. Candid and intelligent men, whatever

veneration they may feel for the memory of William, must find it impossible to deny that, in his eagerness to

enrich and aggrandise his personal friends, he too often forgot what was due to his own reputation and to the

public interest. It is true that in giving away the old domains of the Crown he did only what he had a right to

do, and what all his predecessors had done; nor could the most factious opposition insist on resuming his

grants of those domains without resuming at the same time the grants of his uncles. But between those

domains and the estates recently forfeited in Ireland there was a distinction, which would not indeed have

been recognised by the judges, but which to a popular assembly might well seem to be of grave importance.

In the year 1690 a Bill had been brought in for applying the Irish forfeitures to the public service. That Bill

passed the Commons, and would probably, with large amendments, have passed the Lords, had not the King,

who was under the necessity of attending the Congress at the Hague, put an end to the session. In bidding the

Houses farewell on that occasion, he assured them that he should not dispose of the property about which

they had been deliberating, till they should have had another opportunity of settling that matter. He had, as he

thought, strictly kept his word; for he had not disposed of this property till the Houses had repeatedly met and

separated without presenting to him any bill on the subject. They had had the opportunity which he had

assured them that they should have. They had had more than one such opportunity. The pledge which he had

given had therefore been amply redeemed; and he did not conceive that he was bound to abstain longer from

exercising his undoubted prerogative. But, though it could hardly be denied that he had literally fulfilled his

promise, the general opinion was that such a promise ought to have been more than literally fulfilled. If his

Parliament, overwhelmed with business which could not be postponed without danger to his throne and to his

person, had been forced to defer, year after year, the consideration of so large and complex a question as that

of the Irish forfeitures, it ill became him to take advantage of such a laches with the eagerness of a shrewd

attorney. Many persons, therefore, who were sincerely attached to his government, and who on principle

disapproved of resumptions, thought the case of these forfeitures an exception to the general rule.

The Commons had at the close of the last session tacked to the Land Tax Bill a clause impowering seven

Commissioners, who were designated by name, to take account of the Irish forfeitures; and the Lords and the

King, afraid of losing the Land Tax Bill, had reluctantly consented to this clause. During the recess, the

commissioners had visited Ireland. They had since returned to England. Their report was soon laid before

both Houses. By the Tories, and by their allies the republicans, it was eagerly hailed. It had, indeed, been

framed for the express purpose of flattering and of inflaming them. Three of the commissioners had strongly

objected to some passages as indecorous, and even calumnious; but the other four had overruled every

objection. Of the four the chief was Trenchard. He was by calling a pamphleteer, and seems not to have been

aware that the sharpness of style and of temper which may be tolerated in a pamphlet is inexcusable in a state

paper. He was certain that he should be protected and rewarded by the party to which he owed his

appointment, and was delighted to have it in his power to publish, with perfect security and with a semblance

of official authority, bitter reflections on King and ministry, Dutch favourites, French refugees, and Irish

Papists. The consequence was that only four names were subscribed to the report. The three dissentients

presented a separate memorial. As to the main facts, however, there was little or no dispute. It appeared that

more than a million of Irish acres, or about seventeen hundred thousand English acres, an area equal to that of

Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire together, had been forfeited

during the late troubles. But of the value of this large territory very different estimates were formed. The

commissioners acknowledged that they could obtain no certain information. In the absence of such

information they conjectured the annual rent to be about two hundred thousand pounds, and the fee simple to

be worth thirteen years' purchase, that is to say, about two millions six hundred thousand pounds. They seem

not to have been aware that much of the land had been let very low on perpetual leases, and that much was

burdened with mortgages. A contemporary writer, who was evidently well acquainted with Ireland, asserted

that the authors of the report had valued the forfeited property in Carlow at six times the real market price,

and that the two million six hundred thousand pounds, of which they talked, would be found to shrink to

about half a million, which, as the exchanges then stood between Dublin and London, would have dwindled

to four hundred thousand pounds by the time that it reached the English Exchequer. It was subsequently

proved, beyond all dispute, that this estimate was very much nearer the truth than that which had been formed

Of the seventeen hundred thousand acres which had been forfeited, above a fourth part had been restored to

the ancient proprietors in conformity with the civil articles of the treaty of Limerick. About one seventh of the

remaining three fourths had been given back to unhappy families, which, though they could not plead the

letter of the treaty, had been thought fit objects of clemency. The rest had been bestowed, partly on persons

whose seances merited all and more than all that they obtained, but chiefly on the King's personal friends.

Romney had obtained a considerable share of the royal bounty. But of all the grants the largest was to

Woodstock, the eldest son of Portland; the next was to Albemarle. An admirer of William cannot relate

without pain that he divided between these two foreigners an extent of country larger than Hertfordshire.

This fact, simply reported, would have sufficed to excite a strong feeling of indignation in a House of

Commons less irritable and querulous than that which then sate at Westminster. But Trenchard and his

confederates were not content with simply reporting the fact. They employed all their skill to inflame the

passions of the majority. They at once applied goads to its anger and held out baits to its cupidity.

They censured that part of William's conduct which deserved high praise even more severely than that part of

his conduct for which it is impossible to set up any defence. They fold the Parliament that the old proprietors

of the soil had been treated with pernicious indulgence; that the capitulation of Limerick had been construed

in a manner far too favourable to the conquered race; and that the King had suffered his compassion to lead

him into the error of showing indulgence to many who could not pretend that they were within the terms of

the capitulation. Even now, after the lapse of eight years, it might be possible, by instituting a severe

inquisition, and by giving proper encouragement to informers, to prove that many Papists, who were still

permitted to enjoy their estates, had taken the side of James during the civil war. There would thus be a new

and plentiful harvest of confiscations. The four bitterly complained that their task had been made more

difficult by the hostility of persons who held office in Ireland, and by the secret influence of great men who

were interested in concealing the truth. These grave charges were made in general terms. No name was

Had the report stopped here, those who drew it up might justly have been blamed for the unfair and ill

natured manner in which they had discharged their functions; but they could not have been accused of

usurping functions which did not belong to them for the purpose of insulting the Sovereign and exasperating

the nation. But these men well knew in what way and for what purpose they might safely venture to exceed

their commission. The Act of Parliament from which they derived their powers authorised them to report on

estates forfeited during the late troubles. It contained not a word which could be construed into an authority to

report on the old hereditary domain of the Crown. With that domain they had as little to do as with the

seignorage levied on tin in the Duchy of Cornwall, or with the church patronage of the Duchy of Lancaster.

But they had discovered that a part of that domain had been alienated by a grant which they could not deny

themselves the pleasure of publishing to the world. It was indeed an unfortunate grant, a grant which could

not be brought to light without much mischief and much scandal. It was long since William had ceased to be

the lover of Elisabeth Villiers, long since he had asked her counsel or listened to her fascinating conversation

except in the presence of other persons. She had been some years married to George Hamilton, a soldier who

had distinguished himself by his courage in Ireland and Flanders, and who probably held the courtier like

doctrine that a lady is not dishonoured by having been the paramour of a king. William was well pleased with

the marriage, bestowed on the wife a portion of the old Crown property in Ireland, and created the husband a

peer of Scotland by the title of Earl of Orkney. Assuredly William would not have raised his character by

abandoning to poverty a woman whom he had loved, though with a criminal love. He was undoubtedly

bound, as a man of humanity and honour, to provide liberally for her; but he should have provided for her

rather by saving from his civil list than by alienating his hereditary revenue. The four malecontent

commissioners rejoiced with spiteful joy over this discovery. It was in vain that the other three represented

that the grant to Lady Orkney was one with which they had nothing to do, and that, if they went out of their

way to hold it up to obloquy, they might be justly said to fly in the King's face. "To fly in the King's face!"

said one of the majority; "our business is to fly in the King's face. We were sent here to fly in the King's

face." With this patriotic object a paragraph about Lady Orkney's grant was added to the report, a paragraph

too in which the value of that grant was so monstrously exaggerated that William appeared to have surpassed

the profligate extravagance of his uncle Charles. The estate bestowed on the countess was valued at

twentyfour thousand pounds a year. The truth seems to be that the income which she derived from the royal

bounty, after making allowance for incumbrances and for the rate of exchange, was about four thousand

The success of the report was complete. The nation and its representatives hated taxes, hated foreign

favourites, and hated Irish Papists; and here was a document which held out the hope that England might, at

the expense of foreign courtiers and of popish Celts, be relieved from a great load of taxes. Many, both within

and without the walls of Parliament, gave entire faith to the estimate which the commissioners had formed by

a wild guess, in the absence of trustworthy information. They gave entire faith also to the prediction that a

strict inquiry would detect many traitors who had hitherto been permitted to escape with impunity, and that a

large addition would thus be made to the extensive territory which had already been confiscated. It was

popularly said that, if vigorous measures were taken, the gain to the kingdom would be not less than three

hundred thousand pounds a year; and almost the whole of this sum, a sum more than sufficient to defray the

whole charge of such an army as the Commons were disposed to keep up in time of peace, would be raised

by simply taking away what had been unjustifiably given to Dutchmen, who would still retain immense

wealth taken out of English pockets, or unjustifiably left to Irishmen, who thought it at once the most pleasant

and the most pious of all employments to cut English throats. The Lower House went to work with the double

eagerness of rapacity and of animosity. As soon as the report of the four and the protest of the three had been

laid on the table and read by the clerk, it was resolved that a Resumption Bill should be brought in. It was

then resolved, in opposition to the plainest principles of justice, that no petition from any person who might

think himself aggrieved by this bill should ever be received. It was necessary to consider how the

commissioners should be remunerated for their services; and this question was decided with impudent

injustice. It was determined that the commissioners who had signed the report should receive a thousand

pounds each. But a large party thought that the dissentient three deserved no recompense; and two of them

were merely allowed what was thought sufficient to cover the expense of their journey to Ireland. This was

nothing less than to give notice to every man who should ever be employed in any similar inquiry that, if he

wished to be paid, he must report what would please the assembly which held the purse of the state. In truth

the House was despotic, and was fast contracting the vices of a despot. It was proud of its antipathy to

courtiers; and it was calling into existence a new set of courtiers who would study all its humours, who would

flatter all its weaknesses, who would prophesy to it smooth things, and who would assuredly be, in no

respect, less greedy, less faithless, or less abject than the sycophants who bow in the antechambers of kings.

Indeed the dissentient commissioners had worse evils to apprehend than that of being left unremunerated.

One of them, Sir Richard Levinz, had mentioned in private to his friends some disrespectful expressions

which had been used by one of his colleagues about the King. What he had mentioned in private was, not

perhaps very discreetly, repeated by Montague in the House. The predominant party eagerly seized the

opportunity of worrying both Montague and Levinz. A resolution implying a severe censure on Montague

was carried. Levinz was brought to the bar and examined. The four were also in attendance. They protested

that he had misrepresented them. Trenchard declared that he had always spoken of His Majesty as a subject

ought to speak of an excellent sovereign, who had been deceived by evil counsellors, and who would be

grateful to those who should bring the truth to his knowledge. He vehemently denied that he had called the

grant to Lady Orkney villainous. It was a word that he never used, a word that never came out of the mouth

of a gentleman. These assertions will be estimated at the proper value by those who are acquainted with

Trenchard's pamphlets, pamphlets in which the shocking word villainous will without difficulty be found, and

which are full of malignant reflections on William.20 But the House was determined not to believe Levinz.

He was voted a calumniator, and sent to the Tower, as an example to all who should be tempted to speak truth

Meanwhile the bill had been brought in, and was proceeding easily. It provided that all the property which

had belonged to the Crown at the time of the accession of James the Second, or which had been forfeited to

the Crown since that time, should be vested in trustees. These trustees were named in the bill; and among

them were the four commissioners who had signed the report. All the Irish grants of William were annulled.

The legal rights of persons other than the grantees were saved. But of those rights the trustees were to be

judges, and judges without appeal. A claimant who gave them the trouble of attending to him, and could not

make out his case, was to be heavily fined. Rewards were offered to informers who should discover any

property which was liable to confiscation, and which had not yet been confiscated. Though eight years had

elapsed since an arm had been lifted up in the conquered island against the domination of the Englishry, the

unhappy children of the soil, who had been suffered to live, submissive and obscure, on their hereditary

Objectionable as many parts of the bill undoubtedly were, nobody who knew the House of Commons

believed it to be possible to carry any amendment. The King flattered himself that a motion for leaving at his

disposal a third part of the forfeitures would be favourably received. There can be little doubt that a

compromise would have been willingly accepted twelve months earlier. But the report had made all

compromise impossible. William, however, was bent on trying the experiment; and Vernon consented to go

on what he considered as a forlorn hope. He made his speech and his motion; but the reception which he met

with was such that he did not venture to demand a division. This feeble attempt at obstruction only made the

impetuous current chafe the more. Howe immediately moved two resolutions; one attributing the load of

debts and taxes which lay on the nation to the Irish grants; the other censuring all who had been concerned in

advising or passing those grants. Nobody was named; not because the majority was inclined to show any

tenderness to the Whig ministers, but because some of the most objectionable grants had been sanctioned by

the Board of Treasury when Godolphin and Seymour, who had great influence with the country party, sate at

Howe's two resolutions were laid before the King by the Speaker, in whose train all the leaders of the

opposition appeared at Kensington. Even Seymour, with characteristic effrontery, showed himself there as

one of the chief authors of a vote which pronounced him guilty of a breach of duty. William's answer was

that he had thought himself bound to reward out of the forfeited property those who had served him well, and

especially those who had borne a principal part in the reduction of Ireland. The war, he said, had undoubtedly

left behind it a heavy debt; and he should be glad to see that debt reduced by just and effectual means. This

answer was but a bad one; and, in truth, it was hardly possible for him to return a good one. He had done

what was indefensible; and, by attempting to defend himself, he made his case worse. It was not true that the

Irish forfeitures, or one fifth part of them, had been granted to men who had distinguished themselves in the

Irish war; and it was not judicious to hint that those forfeitures could not justly be applied to the discharge of

the public debts. The Commons murmured, and not altogether without reason. "His Majesty tells us," they

said, "that the debts fall to us and the forfeitures to him. We are to make good out of the purses of

Englishmen what was spent upon the war; and he is to put into the purses of Dutchmen what was got by the

war." When the House met again, Howe moved that whoever had advised the King to return such an answer

was an enemy to His Majesty and the kingdom; and this resolution was carried with some slight modification.

To whatever criticism William's answer might be open, he had said one thing which well deserved the

attention of the House. A small part of the forfeited property had been bestowed on men whose services to

the state well deserved a much larger recompense; and that part could not be resumed without gross injustice

and ingratitude. An estate of very moderate value had been given, with the title of Earl of Athlone, to Ginkell,

whose skill and valour had brought the war in Ireland to a triumphant close. Another estate had been given,

with the title of Earl of Galway, to Rouvigny, who, in the crisis of the decisive battle, at the very moment

when Saint Ruth was waving his hat, and exclaiming that the English should be beaten back to Dublin, had,

at the head of a gallant body of horse, struggled through the morass, turned the left wing of the Celtic army,

and retrieved the day. But the predominant faction, drunk with insolence and animosity, made no distinction

between courtiers who had been enriched by injudicious partiality and warriors who had been sparingly

rewarded for great exploits achieved in defence of the liberties and the religion of our country. Athlone was a

Dutchman; Galway was a Frenchman; and it did not become a good Englishman to say a word in favour of

Yet this was not the most flagrant injustice of which the Commons were guilty. According to the plainest

principles of common law and of common sense, no man can forfeit any rights except those which he has. All

the donations which William had made he had made subject to this limitation. But by this limitation the

Commons were too angry and too rapacious to be bound. They determined to vest in the trustees of the

forfeited lands an estate greater than had ever belonged to the forfeiting landholders. Thus innocent persons

were violently deprived of property which was theirs by descent or by purchase, of property which had been

strictly respected by the King and by his grantees. No immunity was granted even to men who had fought on

the English side, even to men who had lined the walls of Londonderry and rushed on the Irish guns at Newton

In some cases the Commons showed indulgence; but their indulgence was not less unjustifiable, nor of less

pernicious example, than their severity. The ancient rule, a rule which is still strictly maintained, and which

cannot be relaxed without danger of boundless profusion and shameless jobbery, is that whatever the

Parliament grants shall be granted to the Sovereign, and that no public bounty shall be bestowed on any

The Lower House now, contemptuously disregarding both principles and precedents, took on itself to carve

estates out of the forfeitures for persons whom it was inclined to favour. To the Duke of Ormond especially,

who ranked among the Tories and was distinguished by his dislike of the foreigners, marked partiality was

shown. Some of his friends, indeed, hoped that they should be able to insert in the bill a clause bestowing on

him all the confiscated estates in the county of Tipperary. But they found that it would be prudent in them to

content themselves with conferring on him a boon smaller in amount, but equally objectionable in principle.

He had owed very large debts to persons who had forfeited to the Crown all that belonged to them. Those

debts were therefore now due from him to the Crown. The House determined to make him a present of the

whole, that very House which would not consent to leave a single acre to the general who had stormed

Athlone, who had gained the battle of Aghrim, who had entered Galway in triumph, and who had received

That a bill so violent, so unjust, and so unconstitutional would pass the Lords without considerable alteration

was hardly to be expected. The ruling demagogues, therefore, resolved to join it with the bill which granted to

the Crown a land tax of two shillings in the pound for the service of the next year, and thus to place the Upper

House under the necessity of either passing both bills together without the change of a word, or rejecting both

There was great indignation among the Peers. They were not indeed more disposed than the Commons to

approve of the manner in which the Irish forfeitures had been granted away; for the antipathy to the

foreigners, strong as it was in the nation generally, was strongest in the highest ranks. Old barons were angry

at seeing themselves preceded by new earls from Holland and Guelders. Garters, gold keys, white staves,

rangerships, which had been considered as peculiarly belonging to the hereditary grandees of the realm, were

now intercepted by aliens. Every English nobleman felt that his chance of obtaining a share of the favours of

the Crown was seriously diminished by the competition of Bentincks and Keppels, Auverquerques and

Zulesteins. But, though the riches and dignities heaped on the little knot of Dutch courtiers might disgust him,

the recent proceedings of the Commons could not but disgust him still more. The authority, the respectability,

the existence of his order were threatened with destruction. Not only,such were the just complaints of the

Peers,not only are we to be deprived of that coordinate legislative power to which we are, by the

constitution of the realm, entitled. We are not to be allowed even a suspensive veto. We are not to dare to

remonstrate, to suggest an amendment, to offer a reason, to ask for an explanation. Whenever the other House

has passed a bill to which it is known that we have strong objections, that bill is to be tacked to a bill of

supply. If we alter it, we are told that we are attacking the most sacred privilege of the representatives of the

people, and that we must either take the whole or reject the whole. If we reject the whole, public credit is

shaken; the Royal Exchange is in confusion; the Bank stops payment; the army is disbanded; the fleet is in

mutiny; the island is left, without one regiment, without one frigate, at the mercy of every enemy. The danger

of throwing out a bill of supply is doubtless great. Yet it may on the whole be better that we should face that

danger, once for all, than that we should consent to be, what we are fast becoming, a body of no more

Animated by such feelings as these, a party in the Upper House was eager to take the earliest opportunity of

making a stand. On the fourth of April, the second reading was moved. Near a hundred lords were present.

Somers, whose serene wisdom and persuasive eloquence had seldom been more needed, was confined to his

room by illness; and his place on the woolsack was supplied by the Earl of Bridgewater. Several orators, both

Whig and Tory, objected to proceeding farther. But the chiefs of both parties thought it better to try the

almost hopeless experiment of committing the bill and sending it back amended to the Commons. The second

reading was carried by seventy votes to twentythree. It was remarked that both Portland and Albemarle

In the Committee and on the third reading several amendments were proposed and carried. Wharton, the

boldest and most active of the Whig peers, and the Lord Privy Seal Lonsdale, one of the most moderate and

reasonable of the Tories, took the lead, and were strenuously supported by the Lord President Pembroke, and

by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems on this occasion to have a little forgotten his habitual sobriety

and caution. Two natural sons of Charles the Second, Richmond and Southampton, who had strong personal

reasons for disliking resumption bills, were zealous on the same side. No peer, however, as far as can now be

discovered, ventured to defend the way in which William had disposed of his Irish domains. The provisions

which annulled the grants of those domains were left untouched. But the words of which the effect was to

vest in the parliamentary trustees property which had never been forfeited to the King, and had never been

given away by him, were altered; and the clauses by which estates and sums of money were, in defiance of

constitutional principle and of immemorial practice, bestowed on persons who were favourites of the

Commons, were so far modified as to be, in form, somewhat less exceptionable. The bill, improved by these

The Lower House was all in a flame. There was now no difference of opinion there. Even those members

who thought that the Resumption Bill and the Land Tax Bill ought not to have been tacked together, yet felt

that, since those bills had been tacked together, it was impossible to agree to the amendments made by the

Lords without surrendering one of the most precious privileges of the Commons. The amendments were

rejected without one dissentient voice. It was resolved that a conference should be demanded; and the

gentlemen who were to manage the conference were instructed to say merely that the Upper House had no

right to alter a money bill; that the point had long been settled and was too clear for argument; that they

should leave the bill with the Lords, and that they should leave with the Lords also the responsibility of

stopping the supplies which were necessary for the public service. Several votes of menacing sound were

passed at the same sitting. It was Monday the eighth of April. Tuesday the ninth was allowed to the other

House for reflection and repentance. It was resolved that on the Wednesday morning the question of the Irish

forfeitures should again be taken into consideration, and that every member who was in town should be then

in his place on peril of the highest displeasure of the House. It was moved and carried that every Privy

Councillor who had been concerned in procuring or passing any exorbitant grant for his own benefit had been

guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour. Lest the courtiers should flatter themselves that this was meant to

be a mere abstract proposition, it was ordered that a list of the members of the Privy Council should be laid

on the table. As it was thought not improbable that the crisis might end in an appeal to the constituent bodies,

nothing was omitted which could excite out of doors a feeling in favour of the bill. The Speaker was directed

to print and publish the report signed by the four Commissioners, not accompanied, as in common justice it

ought to have been, by the protest of the three dissentients, but accompanied by several extracts from the

journals which were thought likely to produce an impression favourable to the House and unfavourable to the

Court. All these resolutions passed without any division, and without, as far as appears, any debate. There

was, indeed, much speaking, but all on one side. Seymour, Harley, Howe, Harcourt, Shower, Musgrave,

declaimed, one after another, about the obstinacy of the other House, the alarming state of the country, the

dangers which threatened the public peace and the public credit. If, it was said, none but Englishmen sate in

the Parliament and in the Council, we might hope that they would relent at the thought of the calamities

which impend over England. But we have to deal with men who are not Englishmen, with men who consider

this country as their own only for evil, as their property, not as their home; who, when they have gorged

themselves with our wealth, will, without one uneasy feeling, leave us sunk in bankruptcy, distracted by

faction, exposed without defence to invasion. "A new war," said one of these orators, "a new war, as long, as

bloody, and as costly as the last, would do less mischief than has been done by the introduction of that batch

of Dutchmen among the barons of the realm." Another was so absurd as to call on the House to declare that

whoever should advise a dissolution would be guilty of high treason. A third gave utterance to a sentiment

which it is difficult to understand how any assembly of civilised and Christian men, even in a moment of

strong excitement, should have heard without horror. "They object to tacking; do they? Let them take care

that they do not provoke us to tack in earnest. How would they like to have bills of supply with bills of

attainder tacked to them?" This atrocious threat, worthy of the tribune of the French Convention in the worst

days of the Jacobin tyranny, seems to have passed unreprehended. It was meantsuch at least was the

impression at the Dutch embassyto intimidate Somers. He was confined by illness. He had been unable to

take any public part in the proceedings of the Lords; and he had privately blamed them for engaging in a

conflict in which he justly thought that they could not be victorious. Nevertheless, the Tory leaders hoped

that they might be able to direct against him the whole force of the storm which they had raised. Seymour, in

particular, encouraged by the wild and almost savage temper of his hearers, harangued with rancorous

violence against the wisdom and the virtue which presented the strongest contrast to his own turbulence,

insolence, faithlessness, and rapacity. No doubt, he said, the Lord Chancellor was a man of parts. Anybody

might be glad to have for counsel so acute and eloquent an advocate. But a very good advocate might be a

very bad minister; and, of all the ministers who had brought the kingdom into difficulties, this plausible,

fairspoken person was the most dangerous. Nor was the old reprobate ashamed to add that he was afraid that

After a long sitting the members separated; but they reassembled early on the morning of the following day,

Tuesday the ninth of April. A conference was held; and Seymour, as chief manager for the Commons,

returned the bill and the amendments to the Peers in the manner which had been prescribed to him. From the

Painted Chamber he went back to the Lower House, and reported what had passed. "If," he said, "I may

venture to judge by the looks and manner of their Lordships, all will go right." But within half an hour evil

tidings came through the Court of Requests and the lobbies. The Lords had divided on the question whether

they would adhere to their amendments. Fortyseven had voted for adhering, and thirtyfour for giving way.

The House of Commons broke up with gloomy looks, and in great agitation. All London looked forward to

the next day with painful forebodings. The general feeling was in favour of the bill. It was rumoured that the

majority which had determined to stand by the amendments had been swollen by several prelates, by several

of the illegitimate sons of Charles the Second, and by several needy and greedy courtiers. The cry in all the

public places of resort was that the nation would be ruined by the three B's, Bishops, Bastards, and Beggars.

On Wednesday the tenth, at length, the contest came to a decisive issue. Both Houses were early crowded.

The Lords demanded a conference. It was held; and Pembroke delivered back to Seymour the bill and the

amendments, together with a paper containing a concise, but luminous and forcible, exposition of the grounds

on which the Lords conceived themselves to be acting in a constitutional and strictly defensive manner. This

paper was read at the bar; but, whatever effect it may now produce on a dispassionate student of history, it

produced none on the thick ranks of country gentlemen. It was instantly resolved that the bill should again be

sent back to the Lords with a peremptory announcement that the Commons' determination was unalterable.

The Lords again took the amendments into consideration. During the last fortyeight hours, great exertions

had been made in various quarters to avert a complete rupture between the Houses. The statesmen of the

junto were far too wise not to see that it would be madness to continue the struggle longer. It was indeed

necessary, unless the King and the Lords were to be of as little weight in the State as in 1648, unless the

House of Commons was not merely to exercise a general control over the government, but to be, as in the

days of the Rump, itself the whole government, the sole legislative chamber, the fountain from which were to

flow all those favours which had hitherto been in the gift of the Crown, that a determined stand should be

made. But, in order that such a stand might be successful, the ground must be carefully selected; for a defeat

might be fatal. The Lords must wait for some occasion on which their privileges would be bound up with the

privileges of all Englishmen, for some occasion on which the constituent bodies would, if an appeal were

made to them, disavow the acts of the representative body; and this was not such an occasion. The

enlightened and large minded few considered tacking as a practice so pernicious that it would be justified

only by an emergency which would justify a resort to physical force. But, in the many, tacking, when

employed for a popular end, excited little or no disapprobation. The public, which seldom troubles itself with

nice distinctions, could not be made to understand that the question at issue was any other than this, whether

a sum which was vulgarly estimated at millions, and which undoubtedly amounted to some hundreds of

thousands, should be employed in paying the debts of the state and alleviating the load of taxation, or in

making Dutchmen, who were already too rich, still richer. It was evident that on that question the Lords could

not hope to have the country with them, and that, if a general election took place while that question was

unsettled, the new House of Commons would be even more mutinous and impracticable than the present

House. Somers, in his sick chamber, had given this opinion. Orford had voted for the bill in every stage.

Montague, though no longer a minister, had obtained admission to the royal closet, and had strongly

represented to the King the dangers which threatened the state. The King had at length consented to let it be

understood that he considered the passing of the bill as on the whole the less of two great evils. It was soon

clear that the temper of the Peers had undergone a considerable alteration since the preceding day. Scarcely

any, indeed, changed sides. But not a few abstained from voting. Wharton, who had at first spoken

powerfully for the amendments, left town for Newmarket. On the other hand, some Lords who had not yet

taken their part came down to give a healing vote. Among them were the two persons to whom the education

of the young heir apparent had been entrusted, Marlborough and Burnet. Marlborough showed his usual

prudence. He had remained neutral while by taking a part he must have offended either the House of

Commons or the King. He took a part as soon as he saw that it was possible to please both. Burnet, alarmed

for the public peace, was in a state of great excitement, and, as was usual with him when in such a state,

forgot dignity and decorum, called out "stuff" in a very audible voice while a noble Lord was haranguing in

favour of the amendments, and was in great danger of being reprimanded at the bar or delivered over to Black

Rod. The motion on which the division took place was that the House do adhere to the amendments. There

were forty contents and thirtyseven not contents. Proxies were called; and the numbers were found to be

exactly even. In the House of Lords there is no casting vote. When the numbers are even, the non contents

have it. The motion to adhere had therefore been negatived. But this was not enough. It was necessary that an

affirmative resolution should be moved to the effect that the House agreed to the bill without amendments;

and, if the numbers should again be equal, this motion would also be lost. It was an anxious moment.

Fortunately the Primate's heart failed him. He had obstinately fought the battle down to the last stage. But he

probably felt that it was no light thing to take on himself, and to bring on his order, the responsibility of

throwing the whole kingdom into confusion. He started up and hurried out of the House, beckoning to some

of his brethren. His brethren followed him with a prompt obedience, which, serious as the crisis was, caused

no small merriment. In consequence of this defection, the motion to agree was carried by a majority of five.

Meanwhile the members of the other House had been impatiently waiting for news, and had been alternately

elated and depressed by the reports which followed one another in rapid succession. At first it was

confidently expected that the Peers would yield; and there was general good humour. Then came intelligence

that the majority of the Lords present had voted for adhering to the amendments. "I believe," so Vernon wrote

the next day, "I believe there was not one man in the House that did not think the nation ruined." The lobbies

were cleared; the back doors were locked; the keys were laid on the table; the Serjeant at Arms was directed

to take his post at the front door, and to suffer no member to withdraw. An awful interval followed, during

which the angry passions of the assembly seemed to be subdued by terror. Some of the leaders of the

opposition, men of grave character and of large property, stood aghast at finding that they were

engaged,they scarcely knew how,in a conflict such as they had not at all expected, in a conflict in which

they could be victorious only at the expense of the peace and order of society. Even Seymour was sobered by

the greatness and nearness of the danger. Even Howe thought it advisable to hold conciliatory language. It

was no time, he said, for wrangling. Court party and country party were Englishmen alike. Their duty was to

forget all past grievances, and to cooperate heartily for the purpose of saving the country.

In a moment all was changed. A message from the Lords was announced. It was a message which lightened

The leading malecontents, who, a few minutes before, scared by finding that their violence had brought on a

crisis for which they were not prepared, had talked about the duty of mutual forgiveness and close union,

instantly became again as rancorous as ever. One danger, they said, was over. So far well. But it was the duty

of the representatives of the people to take such steps as might make it impossible that there should ever

again be such danger. Every adviser of the Crown, who had been concerned in the procuring or passing of

any exorbitant grant, ought to be excluded from all access to the royal ear. A list of the privy councillors,

furnished in conformity with the order made two days before, was on the table. That list the clerk was ordered

to read. Prince George of Denmark and the Archbishop of Canterbury passed without remark. But, as soon as

the Chancellor's name had been pronounced, the rage of his enemies broke forth. Twice already, in the course

of that stormy session, they had attempted to ruin his fame and his fortunes; and twice his innocence and his

calm fortitude had confounded all their politics. Perhaps, in the state of excitement to which the House had

been wrought up, a third attack on him might be successful. Orator after orator declaimed against him. He

was the great offender. He was responsible for all the grievances of which the nation complained. He had

obtained exorbitant grants for himself. He had defended the exorbitant grants obtained by others. He had not,

indeed, been able, in the late debates, to raise his own voice against the just demands of the nation. But it

might well be suspected that he had in secret prompted the ungracious answer of the King and encouraged the

pertinacious resistance of the Lords. Sir John Levison Gower, a noisy and acrimonious Tory, called for

impeachment. But Musgrave, an abler and more experienced politician, saw that, if the imputations which the

opposition had been in the habit of throwing on the Chancellor were exhibited with the precision of a legal

charge, their futility would excite universal derision, and thought it more expedient to move that the House

should, without assigning any reason, request the King to remove Lord Somers from His Majesty's counsels

and presence for ever. Cowper defended his persecuted friend with great eloquence and effect; and he was

warmly supported by many members who had been zealous for the resumption of the Irish grants. Only a

hundred and six members went into the lobby with Musgrave; a hundred and sixtyseven voted against him.

Such a division, in such a House of Commons, and on such a day, is sufficient evidence of the respect which

The clerk then went on with the list. The Lord President and the Lord Privy Seal, who were well known to

have stood up strongly for the privileges of the Lords, were reviled by some angry members; but no motion

was made against either. And soon the Tories became uneasy in their turn; for the name of the Duke of Leeds

was read. He was one of themselves. They were very unwilling to put a stigma on him. Yet how could they,

just after declaiming against the Chancellor for accepting a very moderate and well earned provision,

undertake the defence of a statesman who had, out of grants, pardons and bribes, accumulated a princely

fortune? There was actually on the table evidence that His Grace was receiving from the bounty of the Crown

more than thrice as much as had been bestowed on Somers; and nobody could doubt that His Grace's secret

gains had very far exceeded those of which there was evidence on the table. It was accordingly moved that

the House, which had indeed been sitting massy hours, should adjourn. The motion was lost; but neither party

was disposed to move that the consideration of the list should be resumed. It was however resolved, without a

division, that an address should be presented to the King, requesting that no person not a native of his

dominions, Prince George excepted, might be admitted to the Privy Council either of England or of Ireland.

The evening was now far spent. The candles had been some time lighted; and the House rose. So ended one

of the most anxious, turbulent, and variously eventful days in the long Parliamentary History of England.

What the morrow would have produced if time had been allowed for a renewal of hostilities can only be

guessed. The supplies had been voted. The King was determined not to receive the address which requested

him to disgrace his dearest and most trusty friends. Indeed he would have prevented the passing of that

address by proroguing Parliament on the preceding day, had not the Lords risen the moment after they had

agreed to the Resumption Bill. He had actually come from Kensington to the Treasury for that purpose; and

his robes and crown were in readiness. He now took care to be at Westminster in good time. The Commons

had scarcely met when the knock of Black Rod was heard. They repaired to the other House. The bills were

passed; and Bridgewater, by the royal command, prorogued the Parliament. For the first time since the

Revolution the session closed without a speech from the throne. William was too angry to thank the

The health of James had been during some years declining and he had at length, on Good Friday, 1701,

suffered a shock from which he had never recovered. While he was listening in his chapel to the solemn

service of the day, he fell down in a fit, and remained long insensible. Some people imagined that the words

of the anthem which his choristers were chanting had produced in him emotions too violent to be borne by an

enfeebled body and mind. For that anthem was taken from the plaintive elegy in which a servant of the true

God, chastened by many sorrows and humiliations, banished, homesick, and living on the bounty of

strangers, bewailed the fallen throne and the desolate Temple of Sion: "Remember, O Lord, what is come

upon us; consider and behold our reproach. Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens; the

The King's malady proved to be paralytic. Fagon, the first physician of the French Court, and, on medical

questions, the oracle of all Europe, prescribed the waters of Bourbon. Lewis, with all his usual generosity,

sent to Saint Germains ten thousand crowns in gold for the charges of the journey, and gave orders that every

town along the road should receive his good brother with all the honours due to royalty.21

James, after passing some time at Bourbon, returned to the neighbourhood of Paris with health so far

reestablished that he was able to take exercise on horseback, but with judgment and memory evidently

impaired. On the thirteenth of September, he had a second fit in his chapel; and it soon became clear that this

was a final stroke. He rallied the last energies of his failing body and mind to testify his firm belief in the

religion for which he had sacrificed so much. He received the last sacraments with every mark of devotion,

exhorted his son to hold fast to the true faith in spite of all temptations, and entreated Middleton, who, almost

alone among the courtiers assembled in the bedchamber, professed himself a Protestant, to take refuge from

doubt and error in the bosom of the one infallible Church. After the extreme unction had been administered,

James declared that he pardoned all his enemies, and named particularly the Prince of Orange, the Princess of

Denmark, and the Emperor. The Emperor's name he repeated with peculiar emphasis: "Take notice, father,"

he said to the confessor, "that I forgive the Emperor with all my heart." It may perhaps seem strange that he

should have found this the hardest of all exercises of Christian charity. But it must be remembered that the

Emperor was the only Roman Catholic Prince still living who had been accessory to the Revolution, and that

James might not unnaturally consider Roman Catholics who had been accessory to the Revolution as more

inexcusably guilty than heretics who might have deluded themselves into the belief that, in violating their

While James was still able to understand what was said to him, and make intelligible answers, Lewis visited

him twice. The English exiles observed that the Most Christian King was to the last considerate and kind in

the very slightest matters which concerned his unfortunate guest. He would not allow his coach to enter the

court of Saint Germains, lest the noise of the wheels should be heard in the sick room. In both interviews he

was gracious, friendly, and even tender. But he carefully abstained from saying anything about the future

position of the family which was about to lose its head. Indeed he could say nothing, for he had not yet made

up his own mind. Soon, however, it became necessary for him to form some resolution. On the sixteenth

James sank into a stupor which indicated the near approach of death. While he lay in this helpless state,

Madame de Maintenon visited his consort. To this visit many persons who were likely to be well informed

attributed a long series of great events. We cannot wonder that a woman should have been moved to pity by

the misery of a woman; that a devout Roman Catholic should have taken a deep interest in the fate of a family

persecuted, as she conceived, solely for being Roman Catholics; or that the pride of the widow of Scarron

should have been intensely gratified by the supplications of a daughter of Este and a Queen of England. From

mixed motives, probably, the wife of Lewis promised her powerful protection to the wife of James.

Madame de Maintenon was just leaving Saint Germains when, on the brow of the hill which overlooks the

valley of the Seine, she met her husband, who had come to ask after his guest. It was probable at this moment

that he was persuaded to form a resolution, of which neither he nor she by whom he was governed foresaw

the consequences. Before he announced that resolution, however, he observed all the decent forms of

deliberation. A council was held that evening at Marli, and was attended by the princes of the blood and by

the ministers of state. The question was propounded, whether, when God should take James the Second of

England to himself, France should recognise the Pretender as King James the Third?

The ministers were, one and all, against the recognition. Indeed, it seems difficult to understand how any

person who had any pretensions to the name of statesman should have been of a different opinion. Torcy took

his stand on the ground that to recognise the Prince of Wales would be to violate the Treaty of Ryswick. This

was indeed an impregnable position. By that treaty His Most Christian Majesty had bound himself to do

nothing which could, directly or indirectly, disturb the existing order of things in England. And in what way,

except by an actual invasion, could he do more to disturb the existing order of things in England than by

solemnly declaring, in the face of the whole world, that he did not consider that order of things as legitimate,

that he regarded the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement as nullities, and the King in possession as an

usurper? The recognition would then be a breach of faith; and, even if all considerations of morality were set

aside, it was plain that it would, at that moment, be wise in the French government to avoid every thing

which could with plausibility be represented as a breach of faith. The crisis was a very peculiar one. The great

diplomatic victory won by France in the preceding year had excited the fear and hatred of her neighbours.

Nevertheless there was, as yet, no great coalition against her. The House of Austria, indeed, had appealed to

arms. But with the House of Austria alone the House of Bourbon could easily deal. Other powers were still

looking in doubt to England for the signal; and England, though her aspect was sullen and menacing, still

preserved neutrality. That neutrality would not have lasted so long, if William could have relied on the

support of his Parliament and of his people. In his Parliament there were agents of France, who, though few,

had obtained so much influence by clamouring against standing armies, profuse grants, and Dutch favourites,

that they were often blindly followed by the majority; and his people, distracted by domestic factions,

unaccustomed to busy themselves about continental politics, and remembering with bitterness the disasters

and burdens of the last war, the carnage of Landen, the loss of the Smyrna fleet, the land tax at four shillings

in the pound, hesitated about engaging in another contest, and would probably continue to hesitate while he

continued to live. He could not live long. It had, indeed, often been prophesied that his death was at hand; and

the prophets had hitherto been mistaken. But there was now no possibility of mistake. His cough was more

violent than ever; his legs were swollen; his eyes, once bright and clear as those of a falcon, had grown dim;

he who, on the day of the Boyne, had been sixteen hours on the backs of different horses, could now with

great difficulty creep into his state coach.22 The vigorous intellect, and the intrepid spirit, remained; but on

the body fifty years had done the work of ninety. In a few months the vaults of Westminster would receive

the emaciated and shattered frame which was animated by the most farsighted, the most daring, the most

commanding of souls. In a few months the British throne would be filled by a woman whose understanding

was well known to be feeble, and who was believed to lean towards the party which was averse from war. To

get over those few months without an open and violent rupture should have been the first object of the French

government. Every engagement should have been punctually fulfilled; every occasion of quarrel should have

been studiously avoided. Nothing should have been spared which could quiet the alarms and soothe the

The House of Bourbon was so situated that one year of moderation might not improbably be rewarded by

thirty years of undisputed ascendency. Was it possible the politic and experienced Lewis would at such a

conjuncture offer a new and most galling provocation, not only to William, whose animosity was already as

great as it could be, but to the people whom William had hitherto been vainly endeavouring to inspire with

animosity resembling his own? How often, since the Revolution of 1688, had it seemed that the English were

thoroughly weary of the new government. And how often had the detection of a Jacobite plot, or the approach

of a French armament, changed the whole face of things. All at once the grumbling had ceased, the grumblers

had crowded to sign loyal addresses to the usurper, had formed associations in support of his authority, had

appeared in arms at the head of the militia, crying God save King William. So it would be now. Most of those

who had taken a pleasure in crossing him on the question of his Dutch guards, on the question of his Irish

grants, would be moved to vehement resentment when they learned that Lewis had, in direct violation of a

treaty, determined to force on England a king of his own religion, a king bred in his own dominions, a king

who would be at Westminster what Philip was at Madrid, a great feudatory of France.

These arguments were concisely but clearly and strongly urged by Torcy in a paper which is still extant, and

which it is difficult to believe that his master can have read without great misgivings.23 On one side were the

faith of treaties, the peace of Europe, the welfare of France, nay the selfish interest of the House of Bourbon.

On the other side were the influence of an artful woman, and the promptings of vanity which, we must in

candour acknowledge, was ennobled by a mixture of compassion and chivalrous generosity. The King

determined to act in direct opposition to the advice of all his ablest servants; and the princes of the blood

applauded his decision, as they would have applauded any decision which he had announced. Nowhere was

he regarded with a more timorous, a more slavish, respect than in his own family.

On the following day he went again to Saint Germains, and, attended by a splendid retinue, entered James's

bedchamber. The dying man scarcely opened his heavy eyes, and then closed them again. "I have

something," said Lewis, "of great moment to communicate to Your Majesty." The courtiers who filled the

room took this as a signal to retire, and were crowding towards the door, when they were stopped by that

commanding voice: "Let nobody withdraw. I come to tell Your Majesty that, whenever it shall please God to

take you from us, I will be to your son what I have been to you, and will acknowledge him as King of

England, Scotland and Ireland." The English exiles who were standing round the couch fell on their knees.

Some burst into tears. Some poured forth praises and blessings with clamour such as, was scarcely becoming

in such a place and at such a time. Some indistinct murmurs which James uttered, and which were drowned

by the noisy gratitude of his attendants, were interpreted to mean thanks. But from the most trustworthy

accounts it appears that he was insensible to all that was passing around him.24

As soon as Lewis was again at Marli, he repeated to the Court assembled there the announcement which he

had made at Saint Germains. The whole circle broke forth into exclamations of delight and admiration. What

piety! What humanity! What magnanimity! Nor was this enthusiasm altogether feigned. For, in the estimation

of the greater part of that brilliant crowd, nations were nothing and princes every thing. What could be more

generous, more amiable, than to protect an innocent boy, who was kept out of his rightful inheritance by an

ambitious kinsman? The fine gentlemen and fine ladies who talked thus forgot that, besides the innocent boy

and that ambitious kinsman, five millions and a half of Englishmen were concerned, who were little disposed

to consider themselves as the absolute property of any master, and who were still less disposed to accept a

James lingered three days longer. He was occasionally sensible during a few minutes, and, during one of

these lucid intervals, faintly expressed his gratitude to Lewis. On the sixteenth he died. His Queen retired that

evening to the nunnery of Chaillot, where she could weep and pray undisturbed. She left Saint Germains in

joyous agitation. A herald made his appearance before the palace gate, and, with sound of trumpet,

proclaimed, in Latin, French and English, King James the Third of England and Eighth of Scotland. The

streets, in consequence doubtless of orders from the government, were illuminated; and the townsmen with

loud shouts wished a long reign to their illustrious neighbour. The poor lad received from his ministers, and

delivered back to them, the seals of their offices, and held out his hand to be kissed. One of the first acts of

his mock reign was to bestow some mock peerages in conformity with directions which he found in his

father's will. Middleton, who had as yet no English title, was created Earl of Monmouth. Perth, who had

stood high in the favour of his late master, both as an apostate from the Protestant religion, and as the author

Meanwhile the remains of James were escorted, in the dusk of the evening, by a slender retinue to the Chapel

of the English Benedictines at Paris, and deposited there in the vain hope that, at some future time, they

would be laid with kingly pomp at Westminster among the graves of the Plantagenets and Tudors.

Three days after these humble obsequies Lewis visited Saint Germains in form. On the morrow the visit was

returned. The French Court was now at Versailles; and the Pretender was received there, in all points, as his

father would have been, sate in his father's arm chair, took, as his father had always done, the right hand of

the great monarch, and wore the long violet coloured mantle which was by ancient usage the mourning garb

of the Kings of France. There was on that day a great concourse of ambassadors and envoys; but one well

known figure was wanting. Manchester had sent off to Loo intelligence of the affront which had been offered

to his country and his master, had solicited instructions, and had determined that, till these instructions should

arrive, he would live in strict seclusion. He did not think that he should be justified in quitting his post

without express orders; but his earnest hope was that he should be directed to turn his back in contemptuous

As soon as the fault into which Lewis had been hurried by pity, by the desire of applause, and by female

influence was complete and irreparable, he began to feel serious uneasiness. His ministers were directed to

declare everywhere that their master had no intention of affronting the English government, that he had not

violated the Treaty of Ryswick, that he had no intention of violating it, that he had merely meant to gratify an

unfortunate family nearly related to himself by using names and observing forms which really meant nothing,

and that he was resolved not to countenance any attempt to subvert the throne of William. Torcy, who had, a

few days before, proved by irrefragable arguments that his master could not, without a gross breach of

contract, recognise the Pretender, imagined that sophisms which had not imposed on himself might possibly

impose on others. He visited the English embassy, obtained admittance, and, as was his duty, did his best to

excuse the fatal act which he had done his best to prevent. Manchester's answer to this attempt at explanation

was as strong and plain as it could be in the absence of precise instructions. The instructions speedily arrived.

The courier who carried the news of the recognition to Loo arrived there when William was at table with

some of his nobles and some princes of the German Empire who had visited him in his retreat. The King said

not a word; but his pale cheek flushed; and he pulled his hat over his eyes to conceal the changes of his

countenance. He hastened to send off several messengers. One carried a letter commanding Manchester to

quit France without taking leave. Another started for London with a despatch which directed the Lords

England was already in a flame when it was first known there that James was dying. Some of his eager

partisans formed plans and made preparations for a great public manifestation of feeling in different parts of

the island. But the insolence of Lewis produced a burst of public indignation which scarcely any malecontent

In the city of London, indeed, some zealots, who had probably swallowed too many bumpers to their new

Sovereign, played one of those senseless pranks which were characteristic of their party. They dressed

themselves in coats bearing some resemblance to the tabards of heralds, rode through the streets, halted at

some places, and muttered something which nobody could understand. It was at first supposed that they were

merely a company of prize fighters from Hockley in the Hole who had taken this way of advertising their

performances with back sword, sword and buckler, and single falchion. But it was soon discovered that these

gaudily dressed horsemen were proclaiming James the Third. In an instant the pageant was at an end. The

mock kings at arms and pursuivants threw away their finery and fled for their lives in all directions, followed

by yells and showers of stones.25 Already the Common Council of London had met, and had voted, without

one dissentient voice, an address expressing the highest resentment at the insult which France had offered to

the King and the kingdom. A few hours after this address had been presented to the Regents, the Livery

assembled to choose a Lord Mayor. Duncombe, the Tory candidate, lately the popular favourite, was rejected,

and a Whig alderman placed in the chair. All over the kingdom, corporations, grand juries, meetings of

magistrates, meetings of freeholders, were passing resolutions breathing affection to William, and defiance to

Lewis. It was necessary to enlarge the "London Gazette" from four columns to twelve; and even twelve were

too few to hold the multitude of loyal and patriotic addresses. In some of those addresses severe reflections

were thrown on the House of Commons. Our deliverer had been ungratefully requited, thwarted, mortified,

denied the means of making the country respected and feared by neighbouring states. The factious wrangling,

the penny wise economy, of three disgraceful years had produced the effect which might have been expected.

His Majesty would never have been so grossly affronted abroad, if he had not first been affronted at home.

But the eyes of his people were opened. He had only to appeal from the representatives to the constituents;

Poussin had been directed to offer to the Lords Justices explanations similar to those with which Torcy had

attempted to appease Manchester. A memorial was accordingly drawn up and presented to Vernon; but

Vernon refused to look at it. Soon a courier arrived from Loo with the letter in which William directed his

vicegerents to send the French agent out of the kingdom. An officer of the royal household was charged with

the execution of the order. He repaired to Poussin's lodgings; but Poussin was not at home; he was supping at

the Blue Posts, a tavern much frequented by Jacobites, the very tavern indeed at which Charnock and his

gang had breakfasted on the day fixed for the murderous ambuscade of Turnham Green. To this house the

messenger went; and there he found Poussin at table with three of the most virulent Tory members of the

House of Commons, Tredenham, who returned himself for Saint Mawes; Hammond, who had been sent to

Parliament by the high churchmen of the University of Cambridge; and Davenant, who had recently, at

Poussin's suggestion, been rewarded by Lewis for some savage invectives against the Whigs with a diamond

ring worth three thousand pistoles. This supper party was, during some weeks, the chief topic of

conversation. The exultation of the Whigs was boundless. These then were the true English patriots, the men

who could not endure a foreigner, the men who would not suffer His Majesty to bestow a moderate reward on

the foreigners who had stormed Athlone, and turned the flank of the Celtic army at Aghrim. It now appeared

they could be on excellent terms with a foreigner, provided only that he was the emissary of a tyrant hostile to

the liberty, the independence, and the religion of their country. The Tories, vexed and abashed, heartily

wished that, on that unlucky day, their friends had been supping somewhere else. Even the bronze of

Davenant's forehead was not proof to the general reproach. He defended himself by pretending that Poussin,

with whom he had passed whole days, who had corrected his scurrilous pamphlets, and who had paid him his

shameful wages, was a stranger to him, and that the meeting at the Blue Posts was purely accidental. If his

word was doubted, he was willing to repeat his assertion on oath. The public, however, which had formed a

very correct notion of his character, thought that his word was worth as much as his oath, and that his oath

Meanwhile the arrival of William was impatiently expected. From Loo he had gone to Breda, where he had

passed some time in reviewing his troops, and in conferring with Marlborough and Heinsius. He had hoped to

be in England early in October. But adverse winds detained him three weeks at the Hague. At length, in the

afternoon of the fourth of November, it was known in London that he had landed early that morning at

Margate. Great preparations were made for welcoming him to his capital on the following day, the thirteenth

anniversary of his landing in Devonshire. But a journey across the bridge, and along Cornhill and Cheapside,

Fleet Street, and the Strand, would have been too great an effort for his enfeebled frame. He accordingly slept

at Greenwich, and thence proceeded to Hampton Court without entering London. His return was, however,

celebrated by the populace with every sign of joy and attachment. The bonfires blazed, and the gunpowder

roared, all night. In every parish from Mile End to Saint James's was to be seen enthroned on the shoulders of

stout Protestant porters a pope, gorgeous in robes of tinsel and triple crown of pasteboard; and close to the ear

Even in his country house the king could find no refuge from the importunate loyalty of his people.

Reputations from cities, counties, universities, besieged him all day. He was, he wrote to Heinsius, quite

exhausted by the labour of hearing harangues and returning answers. The whole kingdom meanwhile was

looking anxiously towards Hampton Court. Most of the ministers were assembled there. The most eminent

men of the party which was out of power had repaired thither, to pay their duty to their sovereign, and to

congratulate him on his safe return. It was remarked that Somers and Halifax, so malignantly persecuted a

few months ago by the House of Commons, were received with such marks of esteem and kindness as

William was little in the habit of vouchsafing to his English courtiers. The lower ranks of both the great

factions were violently agitated. The Whigs, lately vanquished and dispirited, were full of hope and ardour.

The Tories, lately triumphant and secure, were exasperated and alarmed. Both Whigs and Tories waited with

intense anxiety for the decision of one momentous and pressing question. Would there be a dissolution? On

the seventh of November the King propounded that question to his Privy Council. It was rumoured, and is

highly probable, that Jersey, Wright and Hedges advised him to keep the existing Parliament. But they were

not men whose opinion was likely to have much weight with him; and Rochester, whose opinion might have

had some weight, had set out to take possession of his Viceroyalty just before the death of James, and was

still at Dublin. William, however, had, as he owned to Heinsius, some difficulty in making up his mind. He

had no doubt that a general election would give him a better House of Commons; but a general election

would cause delay; and delay might cause much mischief. After balancing these considerations, during some

The writs were sent out with all expedition; and in three days the whole kingdom was up. Neversuch was

the intelligence sent from the Dutch Embassy to the Haguehad there been more intriguing, more

canvassing, more virulence of party feeling. It was in the capital that the first great contests took place. The

decisions of the Metropolitan constituent bodies were impatiently expected as auguries of the general result.

All the pens of Grub Street, all the presses of Little Britain, were hard at work. Handbills for and against

every candidate were sent to every voter. The popular slogans on both sides were indefatigably repeated.

Presbyterian, Papist, Tool of Holland, Pensioner of France, were the appellations interchanged between the

contending factions. The Whig cry was that the Tory members of the last two Parliaments had, from a

malignant desire to mortify the King, left the kingdom exposed to danger and insult, had unconstitutionally

encroached both on the legislature and on the judicial functions of the House of Lords, had turned the House

of Commons into a new Star Chamber, had used as instruments of capricious tyranny those privileges which

ought never to be employed but in defence of freedom, had persecuted, without regard to law, to natural

justice, or to decorum, the great Commander who had saved the state at La Hogue, the great Financier who

had restored the currency and reestablished public credit, the great judge whom all persons not blinded by

prejudice acknowledged to be, in virtue, in prudence, in learning and eloquence, the first of living English

jurists and statesmen. The Tories answered that they had been only too moderate, only too merciful; that they

had used the Speaker's warrant and the power of tacking only too sparingly; and that, if they ever again had a

majority, the three Whig leaders who now imagined themselves secure should be impeached, not for high

misdemeanours, but for high treason. It soon appeared that these threats were not likely to be very speedily

executed. Four Whig and four Tory candidates contested the City of London. The show of hands was for the

Whigs. A poll was demanded; and the Whigs polled nearly two votes to one. Sir John Levison Gower, who

was supposed to have ingratiated himself with the whole body of shopkeepers by some parts of his

parliamentary conduct, was put up for Westminster on the Tory interest; and the electors were reminded by

puffs in the newspapers of the services which he had rendered to trade. But the dread of the French King, the

Pope, and the Pretender, prevailed; and Sir John was at the bottom of the poll. Southwark not only returned

In the country, parties were more nearly balanced than in the capital. Yet the news from every quarter was

that the Whigs had recovered part at least of the ground which they had lost. Wharton had regained his

ascendency in Buckinghamshire. Musgrave was rejected by Westmoreland. Nothing did more harm to the

Tory candidates than the story of Poussin's farewell supper. We learn from their own acrimonious invectives

that the unlucky discovery of the three members of Parliament at the Blue Posts cost thirty honest gentlemen

their seats. One of the criminals, Tredenham, escaped with impunity. For the dominion of his family over the

borough of St. Mawes was absolute even to a proverb. The other two had the fate which they deserved.

Davenant ceased to sit for Bedwin. Hammond, who had lately stood high in the favour of the University of

Cambridge, was defeated by a great majority, and was succeeded by the glory of the Whig party, Isaac

There was one district to which the eyes of hundreds of thousands were turned with anxious interest,

Gloucestershire. Would the patriotic and high spirited gentry and yeomanry of that great county again confide

their dearest interests to the Impudent Scandal of parliaments, the renegade, the slanderer, the mountebank,

who had been, during thirteen years, railing at his betters of every party with a spite restrained by nothing but

the craven fear of corporal chastisement, and who had in the last Parliament made himself conspicuous by the

abject court which he had paid to Lewis and by the impertinence with which he had spoken of William.

The Gloucestershire election became a national affair. Portmanteaus full of pamphlets and broadsides were

sent down from London. Every freeholder in the county had several tracts left at his door. In every market

place, on the market day, papers about the brazen forehead, the viperous tongue, and the white liver of Jack

Howe, the French King's buffoon, flew about like flakes in a snow storm. Clowns from the Cotswold Hills

and the forest of Dean, who had votes, but who did not know their letters, were invited to hear these satires

read, and were asked whether they were prepared to endure the two great evils which were then considered

by the common people of England as the inseparable concomitants of despotism, to wear wooden shoes, and

to live on frogs. The dissenting preachers and the clothiers were peculiarly zealous. For Howe was considered

as the enemy both of conventicles and of factories. Outvoters were brought up to Gloucester in extraordinary

numbers. In the city of London the traders who frequented Blackwell Hall, then the great emporium for

Meanwhile reports about the state of the King's health were constantly becoming more and more alarming.

His medical advisers, both English and Dutch, were at the end of their resources. He had consulted by letter

all the most eminent physicians of Europe; and, as he was apprehensive that they might return flattering

answers if they knew who he was, he had written under feigned names. To Fagon he had described himself as

a parish priest. Fagon replied, somewhat bluntly, that such symptoms could have only one meaning, and that

the only advice which he had to give to the sick man was to prepare himself for death. Having obtained this

plain answer, William consulted Fagon again without disguise, and obtained some prescriptions which were

thought to have a little retarded the approach of the inevitable hour. But the great King's days were numbered.

Headaches and shivering fits returned on him almost daily. He still rode and even hunted;26 but he had no

longer that firm seat or that perfect command of the bridle for which he had once been renowned. Still all his

care was for the future. The filial respect and tenderness of Albemarle had been almost a necessary of life to

him. But it was of importance that Heinsius should be fully informed both as to the whole plan of the next

campaign and as to the state of the preparations. Albemarle was in full possession of the King's views on

these subjects. He was therefore sent to the Hague. Heinsius was at that time suffering from indisposition,

which was indeed a trifle when compared with the maladies under which William was sinking. But in the

nature of William there was none of that selfishness which is the too common vice of invalids. On the

twentieth of February he sent to Heinsius a letter in which he did not even allude to his own sufferings and

infirmities. "I am," he said, "infinitely concerned to learn that your health is not yet quite reestablished. May

God be pleased to grant you a speedy recovery. I am unalterably your good friend, William." Those were the

On the twentieth of February William was ambling on a favourite horse, named Sorrel, through the park of

Hampton Court. He urged his horse to strike into a gallop just at the spot where a mole had been at work.

Sorrel stumbled on the molehill, and went down on his knees. The King fell off, and broke his collar bone.

The bone was set; and he returned to Kensington in his coach. The jolting of the rough roads of that time

made it necessary to reduce the fracture again. To a young and vigorous man such an accident would have

been a trifle. But the frame of William was not in a condition to bear even the slightest shock. He felt that his

time was short, and grieved, with a grief such as only noble spirits feel, to think that he must leave his work

but half finished. It was possible that he might still live until one of his plans should be carried into execution.

He had long known that the relation in which England and Scotland stood to each other was at best

precarious, and often unfriendly, and that it might be doubted whether, in an estimate of the British power,

the resources of the smaller country ought not to be deducted from those of the larger. Recent events had

proved that, without doubt, the two kingdoms could not possibly continue for another year to be on the terms

on which they had been during the preceding century, and that there must be between them either absolute

union or deadly enmity. Their enmity would bring frightful calamities, not on themselves alone, but on all the

civilised world. Their union would be the best security for the prosperity of both, for the internal tranquillity

of the island, for the just balance of power among European states, and for the immunities of all Protestant

countries. On the twentyeighth of February the Commons listened with uncovered heads to the last message

that bore William's sign manual. An unhappy accident, he told them, had forced him to make to them in

writing a communication which he would gladly have made from the throne. He had, in the first year of his

reign, expressed his desire to see an union accomplished between England and Scotland. He was convinced

that nothing could more conduce to the safety and happiness of both. He should think it his peculiar felicity

if, before the close of his reign, some happy expedient could be devised for making the two kingdoms one;

and he, in the most earnest manner, recommended the question to the consideration of the Houses. It was

resolved that the message should betaken into consideration on Saturday, the seventh of March.

But on the first of March humours of menacing appearance showed themselves in the King's knee. On the

fourth of March he was attacked by fever; on the fifth his strength failed greatly; and on the sixth he was

scarcely kept alive by cordials. The Abjuration Bill and a money bill were awaiting his assent. That assent he

felt that he should not be able to give in person. He therefore ordered a commission to be prepared for his

signature. His hand was now too weak to form the letters of his name, and it was suggested that a stamp

should be prepared. On the seventh of March the stamp was ready. The Lord Keeper and the clerks of the

parliament came, according to usage, to witness the signing of the commission. But they were detained some

hours in the antechamber while he was in one of the paroxysms of his malady. Meanwhile the Houses were

sitting. It was Saturday, the seventh, the day on which the Commons had resolved to take into consideration

the question of the union with Scotland. But that subject was not mentioned. It was known that the King had

but a few hours to live; and the members asked each other anxiously whether it was likely that the Abjuration

and money bills would be passed before he died. After sitting long in the expectation of a message, the

Commons adjourned till six in the afternoon. By that time William had recovered himself sufficiently to put

the stamp on the parchment which authorised his commissioners to act for him. In the evening, when the

Houses had assembled, Black Rod knocked. The Commons were summoned to the bar of the Lords; the

commission was read, the Abjuration Bill and the Malt Bill became laws, and both Houses adjourned till nine

o'clock in the morning of the following day. The following day was Sunday. But there was little chance that

William would live through the night. It was of the highest importance that, within the shortest possible time

after his decease, the successor designated by the Bill of Rights and the Act of Succession should receive the

homage of the Estates of the Realm, and be publicly proclaimed in the Council: and the most rigid Pharisee in

the Society for the Reformation of Manners could hardly deny that it was lawful to save the state, even on the

The King meanwhile was sinking fast. Albemarle had arrived at Kensington from the Hague, exhausted by

rapid travelling. His master kindly bade him go to rest for some hours, and then summoned him to make his

report. That report was in all respects satisfactory. The States General were in the best temper; the troops, the

provisions and the magazines were in the best order. Every thing was in readiness for an early campaign.

William received the intelligence with the calmness of a man whose work was done. He was under no

illusion as to his danger. "I am fast drawing," he said, "to my end." His end was worthy of his life. His

intellect was not for a moment clouded. His fortitude was the more admirable because he was not willing to

die. He had very lately said to one of those whom he most loved: "You know that I never feared death; there

have been times when I should have wished it; but, now that this great new prospect is opening before me, I

do wish to stay here a little longer." Yet no weakness, no querulousness, disgraced the noble close of that

noble career. To the physicians the King returned his thanks graciously and gently. "I know that you have

done all that skill and learning could do for me; but the case is beyond your art; and I submit." From the

words which escaped him he seemed to be frequently engaged in mental prayer. Burnet and Tenison

remained many hours in the sick room. He professed to them his firm belief in the truth of the Christian

religion, and received the sacrament from their hands with great seriousness. The antechambers were

crowded all night with lords and privy councillors. He ordered several of them to be called in, and exerted

himself to take leave of them with a few kind and cheerful words. Among the English who were admitted to

his bedside were Devonshire and Ormond. But there were in the crowd those who felt as no Englishman

could feel, friends of his youth who had been true to him, and to whom he had been true, through all

vicissitudes of fortune; who had served him with unalterable fidelity when his Secretaries of State, his

Treasury and his Admiralty had betrayed him; who had never on any field of battle, or in an atmosphere

tainted with loathsome and deadly disease, shrunk from placing their own lives in jeopardy to save his, and

whose truth he had at the cost of his own popularity rewarded with bounteous munificence. He strained his

feeble voice to thank Auverquerque for the affectionate and loyal services of thirty years. To Albemarle he

gave the keys of his closet, and of his private drawers. "You know," he said, "what to do with them." By this

tune he could scarcely respire. "Can this," he said to the physicians, "last long?" He was told that the end was

approaching. He swallowed a cordial, and asked for Bentinck. Those were his last articulate words. Bentinck

instantly came to the bedside, bent down, and placed his ear close to the King's mouth. The lips of the dying

man moved; but nothing could be heard. The King took the hand of his earliest friend, and pressed it tenderly

to his heart. In that moment, no doubt, all that had cast a slight passing cloud over their long and pure

friendship was forgotten. It was now between seven and eight in the morning. He closed his eyes, and gasped

for breath. The bishops knelt down and read the commendatory prayer. When it ended William was no more.

When his remains were laid out, it was found that he wore next to his skin a small piece of black silk riband.

The lords in waiting ordered it to be taken off. It contained a gold ring and a lock of the hair of Mary.

FN 1 Evelyn saw the Mentz edition of the Offices among Lord Spencer's books in April 1699. Markland in

his preface to the Sylvae of Statius acknowledges his obligations to the very rare Parmesan edition in Lord

Spencer's collection. As to the Virgil of Zarottus, which his Lordship bought for 46L, see the extracts from

FN 2 The more minutely we examine the history of the decline and fall of Lacedaemon, the more reason we

shall find to admire the sagacity of Somers. The first great humiliation which befel the Lacedaemonians was

the affair of Sphacteria. It is remarkable that on this occasion they were vanquished by men who made a trade

of war. The force which Cleon carried out with him from Athens to the Bay of Pyles, and to which the event

of the conflict is to be chiefly ascribed, consisted entirely of mercenaries, archers from Scythia and light

infantry from Thrace. The victory gained by the Lacedaemonians over a great confederate army at Tegea

retrieved that military reputation which the disaster of Sphacteria had impaired. Yet even at Tegea it was

signally proved that the Lacedaemonians, though far superior to occasional soldiers, were not equal to

professional soldiers. On every point but one the allies were put to rout; but on one point the Lacedaemonians

gave way; and that was the point where they were opposed to a brigade of a thousand Argives, picked men,

whom the state to which they belonged had during many years trained to war at the public charge, and who

were, in fact a standing army. After the battle of Tegea, many years elapsed before the Lacedaemonians

sustained a defeat. At length a calamity befel them which astonished all their neighbours. A division of the

army of Agesilaus was cut off and destroyed almost to a man; and this exploit, which seemed almost

portentous to the Greeks of that age, was achieved by Iphicrates, at the head of a body of mercenary light

infantry. But it was from the day of Leuctya that the fall of Spate became rapid and violent. Some time before

that day the Thebans had resolved to follow the example set many years before by the Argives. Some

hundreds of athletic youths, carefully selected, were set apart, under the names of the City Band and the

Sacred Band, to form a standing army. Their business was war. They encamped in the citadel; they were

supported at the expense of the community; and they became, under assiduous training, the first soldiers in

Greece. They were constantly victorious till they were opposed to Philip's admirably disciplined phalanx at

Charonea; and even at Chaeronea they were not defeated but slain in their ranks, fighting to the last. It was

this band, directed by the skill of great captains, which gave the decisive blow to the Lacedaemonian power.

It is to be observed that there was no degeneracy among the Lacedaemonians. Even down to the time of

Pyrrhus they seem to have been in all military qualities equal to their ancestors who conquered at Plataea. But

FN 6 The first act of Farquhar's Trip to the Jubilee, the passions which about his time agitated society are

exhibited with much spirit. Alderman Smuggler sees Colonel Standard and exclaims, "There's another plague

of the nation a red coat and feather." "I'm disbanded," says the Colonel. "This very morning, in Hyde Park,

my brave regiment, a thousand men that looked like lions yesterday, were scattered and looked as poor and

simple as the herd of deer that grazed beside them." "Fal al deral!" cries the Alderman: "I'll have a bonfire

this night, as high as the monument." "A bonfire!" answered the soldier; "then dry, withered, ill nature! had

not those brave fellows' swords' defended you, your house had been a bonfire ere this about your ears."

FN 8 That a portion at least of the native population of Ireland looked to the Parliament at Westminster for

protection against the tyranny of the Parliament at Dublin appears from a paper entitled The Case of the

Roman Catholic Nation of Ireland. This paper, written in 1711 by one of the oppressed race and religion, is in

a MS. belonging to Lord Fingall. The Parliament of Ireland is accused of treating the Irish worse than the

Turks treat the Christians, worse than the Egyptians treated the Israelites. "Therefore," says the writer, "they

(the Irish) apply themselves to the present Parliament of Great Britain as a Parliament of nice honour and

stanch justice. . . Their request then is that this great Parliament may make good the Treaty of Limerick in all

the Civil Articles." In order to propitiate those to whom he makes this appeal, he accuses the Irish Parliament

of encroaching on the supreme authority of the English Parliament, and charges the colonists generally with

FN 9 London Gazette, Jan 6. 1697/8; Postman of the same date; Van Cleverskirke, Jan. 7/17; L'Hermitage,

Jan. 4/14/, 7/17; Evelyn's Diary; Ward's London Spy; William to Heinsius, Jan. 7/17. "The loss," the King

writes, "is less to me than it would be to another person, for I cannot live there. Yet it is serious." So late as

1758 Johnson described a furious Jacobite as firmly convinced that William burned down Whitehall in order

to steal the furniture. Idler, No. 10. Pope, in Windsor Forest, a poem which has a stronger tinge of Toryism

than anything else that he ever wrote, predicts the speedy restoration of the fallen palace.

"I see, I see, where two fair cities bend their ample bow, a new Whitehall ascend."

FN 10 As to the Czar: London Gazette; Van Citters, 1698; Jan. 11/21. 14/24 Mar 11/21, Mar 29/April 8;

L'Hermitage 11/21, 18/28, Jan 25/Feb 4, Feb 1/11 8/18, 11/21 Feb 22/Mar 4; Feb 25/Mar 7, Mar 1/4, Mar

29/April 8/ April 22/ May 2 See also Evelyn's Diary; Burnet Postman, Jan. 13. 15., Feb. 10 12, 24.; Mar. 24.

26. 31. As to Russia, see Hakluyt, Purchas, Voltaire, St. Simon. Estat de Russie par Margeret, Paris, 1607.

State of Russia, London, 1671. La Relation des Trois Ambassades de M. Le Comte de Carlisle, Amsterdam,

1672. (There is an English translation from this French original.) North's Life of Dudley North. Seymour's

History of London, ii. 426. Pepys and Evelyn on the Russian Embassies; Milton's account of Muscovy. On

FN 11 It is worth while to transcribe the words of the engagement which Lewis, a chivalrous and a devout

prince, violated without the smallest scruple. "Nous, Louis, par la grace de Dieu, Roi tres Chretien de France

et de Navarre, promettons pour notre honneur, en foi et parole de Roi, jurons sue la croix, les saints

Evangiles, et les canons de la Messe, que nous avons touches, que nous observerons et accomplirons

entierement de bonne foi tous et chacun des points et articles contenus au traite de paix, renonciation, et

FN 12 George Psalmanazar's account of the state of the south of France at this tune is curious. On the high

road near Lyons he frequently passed corpses fastened to posts. "These," he says, "were the bodies of

highwaymen, or rather of soldiers, sailors, mariners and even galley slaves, disbanded after the peace of

Reswick, who, having neither home nor occupation, used to infest the roads in troops, plunder towns and

villages, and, when taken, were hanged at the county town by dozens, or even scores sometimes, after which

FN 13 "Il est de bonne foi dans tout ce qu'il fait. Son procede est droit et sincere." Tallard to Lewis, July 3.

FN 14 "Le Roi d'Angleterre, Sire, va tres sincerement jusqu'a present; et j'ose dire que s'il entre une fois en

traite avec Votre Majeste, il le tiendra de bonne foi.""Si je l'ose dire a V. M., il est tres penetrant, et a

l'esprit juste. Il s'apercevra bient�t qu'on barguigne si les choses trainent trop de long." July 8.

FN 15 I will quote from the despatches of Lewis to Tallard three or four passages which show that the value

of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies was quite justly appreciated at Versailles. "A l'egard du royaume de

Naples et de Sicile le roi d'Angleterre objectera que les places de ces etats entre mes mains me rendront

maitre du commerce de la Mediteranee. Vous pourrez en ce cas laissez entendre, comme de vous meme, qu'il

serait si difficile de conserver ces royaumes unis a ma couronne, que les depenses necessaires pour y envoyer

des secours seraient si grands, et qu'autrefois il a tant coute a la France pour les maintenir dans son

obeissance, que vraisemblablement j'etablirois un roi pour les gouverner, et que peutetre ce serait le partage

d'un de mes petitsfils qui voudroit regner independamment." April 7/17 1698. "Les royaumes de Naples et

de Sicile ne peuvent se regarder comme un partage dont mon fils puisse se contenter pour lui tenir lieu de

tous ses droits. Les exemples du passe n'ont que trop appris combien ces etats content a la France le peu

d'utilite dont ils sont pour elle, et la difficulte de les conserver." May 16. 1698. "Je considere la cession de ces

royaumes comme une source continuelle de depenses et d'embarras. Il n'en a que trop coute a la France pour

les conserver; et l'experience a fait voir la necessite indispensable d'y entretenir toujours des troupes, et d'y

envoyer incessamment des vaisseaux, et combien toutes ces peines ont ete inutiles." May 29. 1698. It would

be easy to cite other passages of the same kind. But these are sufficient to vindicate what I have said in the

FN 17 Commons' Journals, February 24. 27.; March 9. 1698/9 In the Vernon Correspondence a letter about

the East India question which belongs to the year 1699/1700 is put under the date of Feb. 10 1698. The truth

is that this most valuable correspondence cannot be used to good purpose by any writer who does not do for

FN 18 I doubt whether there be extant a sentence of worse English than that on which the House divided. It is

not merely inelegant and ungrammatical but is evidently the work of a man of puzzled understanding,

probably of Harley. "It is Sir, to your loyal Commons an unspeakable grief, that any thing should be asked by

Your Majesty's message to which they cannot consent, without doing violence to that constitution Your

Majesty came over to restore and preserve; and did, at that time, in your gracious declaration promise, that all

FN 19 It is curious that all Cowper's biographers with whom I am acquainted, Hayley, Southey, Grimshawe

Chalmers, mention the judge, the common ancestor of the poet, of his first love Theodora Cowper, and of

Lady Hesketh; but that none of those biographers makes the faintest allusion to the Hertford trial, the most

remarkable event in the history of the family; nor do I believe that any allusion to that trial can be found in

FN 20 I give an example of Trenchard's mode of showing his profound respect for an excellent Sovereign. He

speaks thus of the commencement of the reign of Henry the Third. "The kingdom was recently delivered

from a bitter tyrant, King John, and had likewise got rid of their perfidious deliverer, the Dauphin of France,

who after the English had accepted him for their King, had secretly vowed their extirpation."

FN 22 Poussin to Torcy April 28/May 8 1701 "Le roi d'Angleterre tousse plus qu'il n'a jamais fait, et ses

jambes sont fort enfles. Je le vis hier sortir du preche de Saint James. Je le trouve fort casse, les yeux eteints,

FN 23 Memoire sur la proposition de reconnoitre au prince des Galles le titre du Roi de la Grande Bretagne,

FN 24 By the most trustworthy accounts I mean those of St. Simon and Dangeau. The reader may compare